Is Management scientific or artistic?

Is Management scientific or artistic? 09:26:03 Source: Chinese Entrepreneur Magazine comments 21 articles on entering the Forum

• Management should be an art major, and managers should be artists like painters, singers, writers, and directors. For artists, talent and practice are always more important than theory.

Wen/Huang tie Ying

Is Management scientific or artistic? This was originally an academic debate, but it has attracted more and more attention from the business community.

There is no reason to be concerned about this debate. If management is scientific, enterprises should recruit more Mbit/s and assign them the responsibility, because they are dedicated to management; when enterprises face major decisions and difficulties, they must also listen to the advice of the consulting company, because the consulting company is known as a doctor to treat the company.

On the contrary, if management is an art, enterprises should follow the employment principle of "no matter the black cat or the white cat catches the mouse is a good cat". When the enterprise is ill, do not trust the so-called external brain-the management experts of the consulting company can cure your illness, because the success of any art relies on the talent and efforts of the practitioners themselves, which is not closely related to normal colleges.

In fact, this debate emerged from the beginning of university teaching management. In the past, although there was early enterprise management, there was no such debate, because managers all switched from other professional to management. People's common sense is: how can a major that anyone can engage in be scientific? However, as enterprises grow and management becomes more and more complex and schools begin to teach management, some people propose that management is a science, and the debate begins.

The manager is an artist

Although I have a master's degree in Business Administration (MBA), I agree that management is an art. There are only two reasons:

First, till today, most of the world's enterprise managers are not yet from the School of Management, especially those well-known managers. Welch, Bill Gates, and Xinxiang have no management degree. In contrast, people engaged in science, such as doctors, engineers, and pharmacists, cannot eat without professional education. Therefore, if doctors, engineers, and pharmacists are specialized in science, management should be different from science.

Second, qualified doctors can practice in hospitals all over the world and treat people of different races; qualified engineers can work in different engineering and companies. However, managers fail. The managers who succeeded yesterday cannot guarantee that they are successful today. They are qualified managers in this company and not necessarily qualified in another company, even in the same industry. Therefore, management is a profession in which knowledge and technology cannot be repeatedly verified, or even not in the same person. Such a major is of course not scientific, because, science must be something that can be verified repeatedly.

In fact, management is not only not a natural science, but also an essential difference with the social science majors such as accounting and lawyers. Professional education for accounting and lawyers is also required for their careers, while management is not. So far, human management practices have proved that there is no fixed professional education and career channel that can make people managers. Management is really a major Roman, and from farmers to scientists can become excellent managers. On the contrary, the MBA, a graduate of the management major, may not be a manager.

What is science? Science is the ability to repeatedly prove the causal relationship with mathematics, logic, and experiments. For example, 1 + 1 must be equal to 2, and the acid-base synthesis must be salt. If we can find any inverse example and prove that 1 + 1 is not equal to 2, this principle is wrong.

What is art? Art means it cannot be proved repeatedly by mathematics, logic, and experiments, but it cannot be proved to be true or false. For art, 1 + 1 is sometimes equal to 2, sometimes not equal to 2. For example, balance can produce visual beauty, but non-balanced design can also bring beauty. The integrated command of the symphony can bring people to be touched, and the jazz freely played by musicians can also make people crazy.

From the difference between science and art, management should be more like art. For example, some enterprises use culture, team, Six Sigma, balance calculation method and ERP management methods and tools, and some enterprises do not use them at all. Even though the Toyota Motor plant opened the door to its competitors, the American automobile industry, which was the first in the automobile industry, took 30 years to learn that it would not be a very simple Toyota Production Method in terms of theory and method. Why? Although automobile manufacturing is scientific, the management of automobile manufacturing is art. It is a natural component of art and something that cannot be repeated or imitated. For example, the methods that can effectively motivate Japanese people with the spirit of collectivism are useless to Americans who advocate individualism. The management methods that are suitable for Baidu are not necessarily good for Haier. Different painters use the same paint brush, canvas, and paint to draw the same thing, but the effect is completely different.

Therefore, management should be an art major, and managers should be artists like painters, singers, writers, and directors. For artists, talent and practice are always more important than theory. This is why so many excellent managers are not MBA graduates. This is the same principle that writers often do not learn literature, and actors, painters, and musicians do not have to accept formal art education.

Between God and shape

It will be strange to say that managers are artists, because it is difficult for us to associate them with those who have long hair and are busy. However, their difference is only superficial, and the so-called god is not like. In fact, they are all maverick; otherwise, how can your company win in the competition? Believe it or not, draw a picture for the good managers we are familiar with. They must have something common: they are more organized, more decisive, and more risky than ordinary people, this is the artistic talent and temperament that managers should possess.

Like all artists, the talents of managers are also important. Without a management talent, managers cannot manage an enterprise even if they work harder. We often hear people say: He is the organizer of a genius. It is about the talent of managers. This is hard to learn, because it has both the components of DNA and the experience of life after the mother's stomach comes out. Management Psychology scholars found that a person's management ability is positively related to his negative life experiences when he was young.

According to the above understanding of management, when I manage an enterprise and face MBA graduates, I always say that the MBA diploma is not a manager's practice certificate, you must be an engineer, a legal engineer, a computer engineer, and a front-line employee competing for a manager position at the same starting line.

However, when I retired from the business field and went to Peking University to give lectures to MBA students, I spoke about the answer to this question, which was not as accurate as before. The reason is that my current career is to teach management teachers. If the school cannot teach managers, isn't I selling fake medicines? However, if you think about it again, isn't it true that there are so many famous universities and famous professors selling fake medicines there? What's more, how can people be so stupid? For generations of MBA students, buying them with hard-earned money does not make them a diploma for managers? As a result, I started to adopt the safest but least-used statement: management is the combination of art and science.

However, the teacher's career requires more conscience. In front of the students, I am always confused about the ideas I don't fully believe. Almost all majors in the world are the combination of art and science. That is to say, science also has the composition of art, and art also has the composition of science. Without the imagination of Superman, scientific guru Einstein would not discover relativity only by mathematical and logical abilities. As a result, his peers call him a "big artist in the field of science ". For example, surgeons need not only regular training, but also talent. Similarly, all art majors also have scientific components. Even if it is a purely deceptive art-magic, scientific means must be used in order to become a peak.

Therefore, to distinguish a major from science or art is based on the proportion of science and art. If the proportion of science is large, it is science, and vice versa. Therefore, the point of view that management is a combination of science and art is nothing.

In fact, everything is a balance in the world. However, the balance is by no means a half of the simple side, not a moderate approach. All balances are focused, and the focus determines the nature of things.

The artistic composition of enterprise management determines that management is the nature of art. However, it does not mean that management is neither scientific nor scientific management is useless, but in management, the scientific component does not play a major role as an artistic component. For example, people are not only selfish, but also need fairness and sense of accomplishment. Therefore, the personnel compensation system must reflect more work and more work; otherwise, employees will not work hard. This is the science of management. However, knowing the commonalities of people and the 360-Degree Evaluation and Delphi scoring methods that are successful in other companies is of little help to managers, because each manager is facing the following: how can we make the employees in our company feel fair and fulfilled? This is the question of art.

Management is the root cause of Art: management is ultimately the management of people, no one is not managed; but people are not unified parts and machines. College graduates and migrant workers cannot feel the same about fairness. The sense of accomplishment of American and Chinese employees is also different. More importantly, the same nation, graduated from the same class, and in the same company, the employees of the same department may have different levels of fairness and achievement. Although people share the same commonalities, it is precisely because the particularity of people forms different enterprises. There are no two people in the world, and there are no two companies in the world. Therefore, management is always specific. Because of this, Drucker said: "management is the art of practice ."

What is the art of practice? Is always in front of the Knowledge-do not manage the enterprise, never know what the enterprise management is; do always better than the knowledge-only through continuous correction attempts, the knowledge and skills for managing a specific enterprise tend to be mature and perfect.

Therefore, if managers do not know that the essence of enterprise management is art, their attention will inevitably be dispersed. This is the inevitable detour that many academic schools and managers who believe in management science must take. Since management is scientific, they need to find an MBA dedicated to management and ask the management consulting company to introduce and develop the "first and best" business strategy and management methods, in this way, their company can be well managed. Unfortunately, the result must have been a big deal and a detour. In the end, we can understand that management cannot be taught by others, but cannot be learned in the classroom. In practice, we must rely on managers to understand things in the east and west, enterprises can only manage their own diseases.

It's no wonder that IKEA's Customer Integration, Dell's direct sales, Walmart's hypermarket, and Southwest Airlines's low-price strategy cannot be learned by others! Because we can only learn the form of a home, but cannot learn God. This is what Sun Tzu said: "Everyone knows what I win, but I don't know what I win." (others only see how I win, but I don't know how I got these methods ).

Manage Non-MBA

When James came to Beijing to give a speech this year, in front of hundreds of audience members, I asked him: "Do you think managers are born, trained the day after tomorrow, or both born and trained ?"

He said: "Of course we must be born and trained the day after tomorrow. Because management is both scientific and artistic ."

I asked again: if this is the case, wouldn't we tell MBA students that some of you cannot be managers! Isn't it a very frustrating thing for MBA teachers ?"

"Yes, that's why I no longer teach MBA courses," he said ."

During dinner, I continued to ask him: "your" non-MBA Management "book has a lot of statistics, proving that many MBA graduates from the United States are not engaged in management jobs, most of them have gone to investment banks, accounting firms, and consulting firms. According to my observations, this trend is also the top choice of MBA in Chinese universities. If this is the case, MBA education is not so much about cultivating managers as about cultivating management service providers-people who provide services to managers. It would be better to change the MBA (Master of Business Administration) to MBS (Master of Business Service ?!"

"This is a very interesting idea," he said. I want to think about it ."

After dinner, when we say goodbye, he said, "If we change to MBS, there will be fewer people reading this subject ."

Yes! So far, I suddenly realized that there is no more commercial experience in college education. As long as everything is turned into a commodity, how can there be no exaggerated features? The teacher is also a person!

However, consumers are not stupid. Some MBA students told me: "We didn't want to become managers through MBA education. We just want to change careers ."

An EMBA student said more bluntly: "I spent more than 0.2 million yuan on reading books, mainly to make more business friends !"

So why do most management scholars and MBA teachers insist that management is a scientific point of view? One of the main reasons is that a considerable number of management courses are specialized in science, such as mathematics, economics, psychology, statistics, finance, and Information Engineering, teachers who teach these classes cannot agree that they are teaching art.

However, they ignore the fact that artists also need scientific knowledge. However, the fact that the composer wants to learn computer synthesis technology and the photographer wants to learn optical principles cannot change the artistic nature of these disciplines. Determining the essence of a thing is its focus.

Another reason is that most of the teachers who teach other art disciplines can engage in their own professional occupations, such as painting, and singing must be better than the average person. However, most management teachers are not engaged in management jobs. Therefore, if management is regarded as an art, they may feel discouraged, including the opinions of their students and ordinary people, all the teachers who teach management can only talk about it.

However, those who have such ideas just ignore a more important fact: the teacher who teaches management is the best business manager. They can package an art management major into a science major and create a demand for management education and management knowledge, accurately hit one of the most enterprising groups in human beings-entrepreneurs and managers who want to succeed quickly and create the most successful "Smoke-free industry" in business history-MBA education and consulting.

Believe it? Please take a look at the university. The richest school must be a business school, the richest teacher must be teaching and managing, and the highest-paying graduate must be an MBA. In addition, a new MBA from a consulting company can have a face-to-face meeting with the CEO of a large company, and even point to their business. Welch's tickets can sell for 5000 yuan, when Michael Potter came to China to sell his book "Competitive Strategy", he was able to take away dozens of thousands of dollars in lecture fees.

Why? Because you believe that management is scientific!