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Analytic Thinking, bureaucracy, business, complexity, effectiveness, Engineering, future, management, models, philosophy, Validity
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The most important function of management, particularly executive management, is setting future direction. That implies decisions and choices about the present and future.
Because engineering thinking or more broadly speaking analytic thinking predominates in many executive and consulting circles, it is believed that decisions require a degree of rigorousness similar to that of the scientific method in natural sciences. And so, it is firmly believed that analytic tools empower managers to make sound decisions. The result is a myriad of tools reminiscent of engineering speak – frameworks, trade-spaces, matrices – packaged in neat Power Point slides.
This all very good, but, as philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers remarks “tools are demanding – they do not confer the power of judging, they ask for the choice of the right tool for the right situation; in other words they oblige us to think and wonder”. The danger that Stengers cautions against is the rigid interpretation of the power of tools. Tool power should never be situated above human judgement. And when it does, this results in the tools getting a life of their own, and embedding the human element which is helpless to escape their hold. This ultimately results in a bureaucratic construct as the purpose of humans becomes not the seeking of meaning and validity, but rather the maintenance and upgrading of the tools. This also results in a proliferation of enforcer types at the expense of creative types, reducing the number and quality of choices about the future.
A more progressive view of management tools is as “enlightening abstractions, precious new tools for thinking” rather than “ready made instruments”. Also, in Stenger’s view, the relationship between user and tool is not one-directional; rather, “tools modify the ones who use them; to learn how to use a tool is to enter a new relation with reality, both an aesthetic and practical new relation”. In my experience, this dual directionality can also unfortunately work backwards: rigid tools can have a limiting effect on thinking.
Source of Isabelle Stengers quotations is “The Challenge of complexity: Unfolding the ethics of science – In Memoriam Ilya Prigogine”
Also check out Dave Snowden’s related blog entry.
The art and science of the possible 
I would suggest that current management thinking is based in an old model of natural science which is the problem. If they came uptodate it would OK and tools relate to theory, so gain the right tools are important. They key thing, as you imply is that tools should support or augment human decision making and judgement they cannot replace it
Dave, agree with your natural science point. In fact, most of the quotes I used in this piece come from Isabelle Sanger’s article in memoriam to Ilya Prigogine, one of the biggest advocates for the unification of natural and social sciences based in complexity. I am now reading his book, “The End of Certainty”, which discusses the philosophical implications of his his Nobel Prize work exploring the very edge of emergence as gleaned from dissipative structures in far from equilibrium thermodynamics.
For the tools argument, my article was inspired by observing time and again the development of tools which took a life of their own and ended up subjugating human talent rather than enabling it. As soon as I hear “matrix” or “framework” I twitch just like I assume you do when you hear “six sigma”.