Number of words: 432 Since McKinsey consultants visited Shell, in fact, the latter’s profits have swollen gigantically – never mind the sheer impossibility of proving that a chain of cause and effect links the consultancy with the profits. The story of Shell and McKinsey started in Venezuela, where two brilliant young consultants, Hugh Parker and … Read more

Number of words: 609 A story tells of two schoolboy friends, one brilliant at maths, one innumerate to the point of idiocy, who meet much later when the first is a professor and the second a multi-millionaire. Unable to control his curiosity, the professor asks the figure-blind dunderhead how he man- aged to amass his … Read more

Number of words: 751 Mesmerised managers have fallen for their own con-devices. They have been persuaded that new computer models, like new cars, or new soaps, or new cigarettes, represent some major advance on the previous ones. So they may- but not in terms of practical use. A few of the first computers ever built … Read more

Number of words: 630 The greater the risk, the smaller the case for the project. Risk-taking holds its pride of place among the managerial virtues for reasons deep in managerial psychology, for managers need no urging to take chances. The most purblind old buffer in the boardroom will cheerfully approve ventures of total insecurity. The … Read more

Number of words: 481 The marketeers have not only pushed production men into the cold – they have ousted the salesman. The standard sneer against ‘non-marketing-orientated’ companies is that they have merely called the sales manager a marketing manager. This is more sensible than importing a dear and dearly educated marketing manager and downgrading the … Read more

Number of words: 573 By business standards, however, McNamara’s reign at the Pentagon was an enormously expensive failure. His hatchet-men found many sweet cost savings – the duplicated purchasing which bedevils all widely spread businesses had become gross in the Pentagon, and the management techniques which produce better housekeeping were badly needed. But exacting more … Read more

Number of words: 430 The shareholders are remote licensers. They get a cut of any profits and in return they licence the managers to do as they please with the assets. More: they let managers do what they like (apart from outright theft) with the value of the shares. If the management longs to dilute … Read more