Management: An Ancient Art

MANAGEMENT An Ancient Art Twenty centuries separate Julius Caesar and Robert S. McNamara, yet the two resemble each other in important respects. Caesar took over Rome by returning to the city at the head of an army that helped him consolidate power; McNamara became Defense Secretary at the head of a much smaller army of civilian experts from the RAND Corp., who helped him to fend off admirals and generals. Similarly, the original Henry Ford resembles Napoleon Bonaparte because both became so surrounded by yes men that they were unaware of structural problems. Howard Hughes is not unlike Charles I of England in the sense that each was the victim of inevitable change from personal rule to group rule. Charles lost his head. Hughes sold his TWA stock for $546.5 million.

Such similarities are the gist of a provocative book by English Author Antony Jay called Management and Machiavelli (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.; $4.95). Jay, a Cambridge-educated amateur historian, has an unabashed enthusiasm for Machiavelli. As a former television writer and editor for the British Broadcasting Corp. who has become an independent television consultant in London, he is fascinated by management. “The history of General Motors over the past 50 years,” he says, “is far more important than the history of Switzerland or Holland.” Mixing Machiavelli and management, Jay discovers some interesting and instructive corollaries between states and corporations.

The Prince.” The author considers management “a very ancient art.” The true predecessors of today’s executives are “the kings and princes and prime ministers and generals, the barons and cardinals and courtiers who have been trying to cope with the same problems for the past two or three hundred years.”

Jay sensed this concept accidentally. “I had just been reading Machiavelli’s The Prince,” he recalls, “on the day when a friend of mine in management began talking to me about takeovers. He complained that there is no book which explains to industrialists how to go about fitting a new acquisition into the corporate empire.”

In The Prince, Machiavelli had already solved the problem, although the Italian was discussing conquered territories: “Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot.”

Jay easily translated Machiavelli into modern corporatese: “Senior men in taken-over firms should either be warmly welcomed and encouraged, or sacked: because if they are sacked they are powerless, whereas if they are simply downgraded they will remain united and resentful and determined to get their own back.” Admits Jay:

“Killing them is going a little far for the corporation.”

The King’s Mistress. Corporations, insists Jay, are today’s equivalent of pre-19th century states even down to geographic control of territories (Du Pont over Wilmington and Boeing over Seattle, for instance) and their near-absolute grip on the careers and movements of their subjects (employees). Thus today’s corporate rulers should learn from their princely predecessors They should depend less on staff men (courtiers) and more on regional managers (barons), but at the same time not let the company become so decentralized that the barons will battle one another for the power that rightfully belongs at the top.

They should encourage renaissances and watch out for reformations “If a corporation suffers from a Luther,” concludes Jay, “it should start looking for a Loyola.” They should search for signs of stagnation and morbidity. Spain started going to pot under Philip II, but the death rattles of empire were not heard until much later. Singer Sewing Machine Corp was sinking the same way in the 1950s says Jay, until Donald Kircher moved in as president and began reviving it. Jay can find a historical analogy for almost everything about the modern corporation. “The boss’s secretary,” he observes, “can wield great power, like the king’s mistress, without any authority at all or at least not the sort you can show anybody.”