A Nugget of Management Wisdom
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There are only four types of officer. First, there are the lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm... Second, there are the hard-working intelligent ones. They make excellent staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered. Third, there are the hard-working, stupid ones. These people are a menace and must be fired at once. They create irrelevant work for everybody. Finally, there are intelligent lazy ones. They are suited for the highest office.
— General Von Manstein on the German Officer Corps
I recently came across this quote in a book that my good friend lent me. Notwithstanding the context in which the statement was made, it suggests that all people can generally be nicely pigeonholed within a matrix of four categories defined by two variables: diligence and intelligence. For the more visually-adept who want to picture this in matrix format, if each individual in a population were to be represented by a dot and the two dividing lines of the matrix represent continuums of diligence and intelligence respectively, the aforementioned matrix would comprise four shades of circle with their umbrae smacked right in the center of each cell of the matrix. Next, the statement proposes the right thing to do with each of these four segments of the population to increase productivity and generate value. My purpose in writing this article is to offer my assessment of the statement and to suggest improvements. As I concur that people can generally be divided into four categories as such, I will not comment further on that assertion but use it as my premise.
Before I go into any analysis of the statement itself, I contend that the statement is applicable in not only the military context but also any other organisation, commercial or otherwise. Indeed, any organisation that needs to achieve certain objectives requires some form of management strategy to ensure maximum utility of its human capital. However, the statement should not be misapplied to casual congregations where there is no need to achieve any obligatory set of objectives, such as a barbecue party or a fun fair.
Next, in order to effectively apply the management strategy propounded by the statement, several prerequisites need to be fulfilled: practical and reasonable metrics have to be put in place to measure diligence and intelligence, the organisation’s objectives need to be examined to produce a list of the necessary types of personnel (roles) needed to attain those objectives, the necessary diligence-intelligence balance needed for those roles needs to be ascertained, and an assessment of whether the right people are currently occupying the right roles needs to be conducted. Also, just to complicate things further, I put forth one more attribute that I believe is necessary to consider before any human capital manipulation can be effected: obedience.
In the execution of the first prerequisite, it is important to measure the relevant attributes of the individuals using contextually-suitable methods: test scores, past achievements, referrals, anecdotal evidence, general impressions, etc. Place each individual into the correct cell (use a table now that there are three variables). It is important to note that while diligence and obedience are general attributes, intelligence is not in that a competent person might have been misjudged as stupid simply because she was put in the wrong role. Therefore, it is vital to assess contextual intelligence, otherwise known as competence. Put the person who is incompetent at what she is currently doing but would be competent in doing something else in the intelligent category. However, if she is good at something that your organisation does not require, put her in the stupid category. On a side note, obedience should be taken to mean a lack of leadership tendencies.
The fourth prerequisite, whether the right people are doing the right things, is the starting point for the actual application of the statement. I find that while the statement offers sound general guiding principles, it makes for a rather rigid and sometimes absurd guideline to be applied in a variety of practical situations. I will adopt an attribute-by-attribute approach in my analysis of the statement:
1) Intelligence
The statement suggests that the stupid and lazy should not be tempered with. I find that, apart from the military or any other context where mere numbers constitute a competitive advantage over the competitor, a stupid and lazy member needs to be eliminated immediately, even if she is obedient, because she would be subtracting value from the organisation, most likely in the form of her compensation or time spent to train or motivate her. These individuals subtract value from the organisation even if they are paying to participate in the organisation.
The stupid, hardworking and obedient member is slightly better; she might have some minor ancillary utility. She should be maintained as long as her cost of maintenance does not exceed the value generated by her minor ancillary utility.
The stupid, hardworking and disobedient member is possibly the worst permutation; she has no clue whatsoever but enthusiastically wants to lead others and inadvertently makes a mess out of things. This sort of behaviour not only creates a lot of waste but also dampens the morale of the organisation. This group of individuals needs to be urgently removed.
Generally, stupidity should not be acceptable in any organisation that wants and needs to succeed.
2) Diligence
The statement further suggests that the intelligent and lazy should be the top leaders. From what I understand, this sentence was not meant to be a joke. My view is that laziness is not to be taken to mean plain sloth-like behaviour but an innate preference to think rather than to do. This sort of laziness is highly valued if the individual is adequately intelligent — he would be suited for the difficult thinking roles, such as strategic planning. Naturally, some degree of disobedience needs to be present (and hence, tolerated) in these individuals.
On the other hand, an organisation also needs its members who are diligent, intelligent and obedient because they are in all likelihood the core creators of value within any organisation. They should be recognised and rewarded as often as possible for their diligence, intelligence and obedience — ideally, a differential reward system should be implemented to create competition to enhance these attributes.
3) Obedience
In the eyes of authority, obedience is an essential quality that determines how effective an individual will be in fulfilling her role in the organisation, particularly if the organisation has objectionable objectives. The scientists of the Manhattan Project, who developed the atomic bomb, are a good example to illustrate the importance of obedience in the successful attainment of organisational objectives. In general, disobedient individuals who possess intelligence should not be disposed of, but measures must be put in place to placate them. While it is impossible to eradicate disobedience directly, any extra benefit conferred on these people will help to reduce resistance.
As an afterthought, it is also vital to eliminate all people with questionable levels of integrity, regardless of their other qualities. Warren Buffett once said something along the lines of “when I hire people, it is vital to look out for integrity, competence and motivation, and if the employee has no integrity, you better hope that he does not have the other two”. Dishonest members with shady intentions need to be thrown away as fast as possible.
In conclusion, human capital management is basically the art of manipulating other human beings. Those who succeed in this field are, ironically, those who are inhumane enough to be able to see people as mere aggregates of certain attributes in order to form objective decisions on how best to utilise these people to achieve the desired end goal.
RETARDED_MORON
NUS Faculty of Law (Class of 2012)
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it's late, go and sleep
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wall of text nopbdoy bothers to read
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Yes, yes, i am amazed at ur unprecedented wisdom and knowledge. You are worthy of being enrolled into NUS Faculty of Law.. May the Lord Almighty bless you on your road to excellence. Now what is the purpose of this chunk of text Mr/Ms Smartypants?
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Originally posted by Babelfish:
Yes, yes, i am amazed at ur unprecedented wisdom and knowledge. You are worthy of being enrolled into NUS Faculty of Law.. May the Lord Almighty bless you on your road to excellence. Now what is the purpose of this chunk of text Mr/Ms Smartypants?
the purpose is to show us that he is a retarded moron
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Originally posted by fireng:
the purpose is to show us that he is a retarded moron
His name itself is a form of pejoration..
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Originally posted by Babelfish:
Yes, yes, i am amazed at ur unprecedented wisdom and knowledge. You are worthy of being enrolled into NUS Faculty of Law.. May the Lord Almighty bless you on your road to excellence. Now what is the purpose of this chunk of text Mr/Ms Smartypants?
To show that anyone can understand management, or at least the essence of it, without undergoing formal education in that field. In other words, management degrees are generally useless and a sham (especially, though not in particular, if they come from Singapore). They add little value to anyone who has common sense, and anyone who does not have common sense will not be able to pick it up anyway. Accounting and finance degrees are of course a different story.
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You're getting way too arogant.
Uncle dont like you anymore.