Менеджеры и менеджмент (Executives and Management) - 24 стр.

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CREATIVE THOUGHT, NOT QUICK FIXES
John K. Clements, an associate college professor, contends there is no better parable for the executive near-
ing retirement than King Lear. He believes students can learn more about management from the classes than from
all the finance textbooks written since the Dark Ages. "Management is essentially one of the humanities", he as-
serts. "It is the most human of enterprises".
In Clemens’s course, "Masters in Management", business majors analyse such works as Plato’s "Republic",
Plutarch’s "Lives", and Homer’s "Iliad" for lessons applicable to corporate life. The point is to learn that deal-
ing with people is more complex than dealing with numbers. Solutions require creative thought, not quick fixes.
Lear, for example, shows how disaster can result when an aging manager allows flattery to influence his choice
of a successor; in the "Iliad", Agamemnon and Achilles resemble rival executives who refuse to compromise
for the good of their company.
Clemens decries the recent state of the "how-to" best-sellers on management as oversimplified. "In busi-
ness", he says, "if you do A-B-C, D often will not happen".
Decades of business school education have conditioned managers to reach for rational, logical and
quantifiable decisions in the development of their business. For all the benefits this scientific foundation
has brought to modern organization theory, some analysts deplore the other side of this trend – the rele-
gation of human intuition to a distant backseat.
Conventional managers are often deterred from recognizing and using their own intuitive powers
because they feel that intuition is not intellectually respectable. The cult of rational manager has an iron
grip on such minds.
Intuition is the power or faculty of immediately apprehending that something is the case.
Apparently it is done without intervention of any reasoning process. There is no deductive or induc-
tive step-by-step reasoning, no conscious of the situation, no employment of the imagination – just a
quick and ready insight – "I just know".
Sherlock Holmes personifies the thinker who relies primarily on looking carefully at the evidence
and drawing correct deductions from the premises – establishing the truth of the matter, and then decid-
ing what to do. That is one strategy.
But the intuitive person doesn’t seem to follow that route. His mind tells him instantly what must
have happened or who committed the murder.
In practice, it is not a question of either/or. A Sherlock Holmes may work logically for a time and
then suddenly have an intuition, or conversely, an intuitive person may be equipped with formidable
powers of analysis which he habitually brings to bear upon his intuitions.
T a s k 2. Unscramble the words to figure out some of the creative problem-solving techniques managers
favor. Begin with the word in bold type.
1. and, problem, define, the, understand.
2. mood, yourself, relax, in, put, humorous, playful, a.
3. generate, passing, alternatives, before, several, any, judgments.

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