Boiling management to a few helpful concepts would start with PLAN and secondly with IMPROVE. As the cliché goes the man who does not plan, plans to fail. So PLAN your day, plan your work, etc. The second is constant IMPROVEMENT. The Japanese call it KAIZEN. Much of management can be boiled down to these two concepts. In PLAN the idea is to foresee what can be done, do it, then evaluate success in the implementation. Look for the variance between the plan and the implementation and search for the reasons for the variance. The implementation can be better than the plan but the need is to ask? This is so that the positive variance can be improved further. If implementation is less than planned operation then the answer to the why will help remove all or part of the negative variance. Then plan again.

After foreseeing the work, the need is for IMPROVEMENT. The improvement can be in relationships, in operation, in timing, in simplicity, etc. It can be a myriad different things but the important thing is to see where it can be improved towards the goal. It is the goal that determines whether it is an improvement or not. The task is to look at the work in its many facets and levels and see where it can be improved. For some people all of management can be reduced to these two concepts—PLAN and IMPROVE constantly. A few squiggles can be added to this basic framework. One is to start from ignorance as Peter Drucker suggests.

If you knew nothing of the operation what would you do? He tells of light freighters that used to take six months to build because they used rivets. Kaiser during WWII revved up to producing them in one week because they welded the sheets because they did not know it is usual to use rivets. This in another form is thinking-out-of-the-box. Our thinking sometimes gets into grooves and we don’t see the forest because of the trees. Drucker urges the manager to look at the matter from a different angle or pretend he is meeting the problem for the first time. Getting out of the groove can produce new or innovative solutions.

A second management squiggle is PPA or potential problem analysis, an area to look at. After a decision has been made, a look at potential problems as a result of the decision has to be examined.

This can obviate a number of avoidable pitfalls. Searching for potential pitfalls ahead of time may enable the manager to avoid them. A third management nugget is getting or eliciting ideas and cooperation from others. An encouraging and open attitude for suggestions and help from others, whether expert or not, could come up with solutions or impulses towards greater success.

This open atmosphere may take time to build. And like trust can be destroyed in a flash. Building a house of cards can take a lot of time and patience while it can be blown away in a few seconds. Finally, identifying the problem or the opportunity either as material and systems versus human or person concern is helpful. Most improvements are about 80% in the materials and systems department but the initiative and sustainability belong to the person and human department.

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