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You’ve probably already noticed that the book we’re using in class is quite a bit different than most traditional textbooks.
So I wanted to start off this first chapter by telling you just a little bit about how we came to the idea of using graphic novels to teach management.
To start, I think it’s natural to be a bit skeptical about using something that looks pretty similar to a comic book for a university level course.
The good news is that there are a lot of compelling reasons that support the value of this kind of presentation.
The idea of using graphics to illustrate important lessons or events can be traced back to ancient cave drawings as one of the earliest forms of communication.
So the idea isn’t that new at all.
The key difference between the concept of a graphic novel and something more like a comic strip is that graphic novels have an ongoing story that is being told.
That’s an important distinction because the use of storytelling has a rich tradition in education dating back to the stories Aesop, Jesus, Confucius, and others throughout time.
What we wanted to do with the Atlas Black story is apply a cast of memorable characters to the study of management.
This is in contrast with the practice of using a series of unconnected examples from different companies which is the method commonly used in most textbooks.
The problem with that method is that there can be significant information overload with so many different examples.
Another problem is that students may not be familiar with the specific companies being referenced.
Finally, the graphics used in texts are often stock photos with little real ties to the material being discussed.
Some folks were pretty skeptical about our approach and that actually encouraged us to do our own research on the subject.
In a study we published in the journal Business Communication Quarterly, we surveyed college seniors and we found that
both traditional textbooks and graphic novels were useful for the application of knowledge.
But we also found that students actually had better direct recall of lines from the graphic novel than from traditional texts.
And maybe that isn't so surprising given the storytelling elements of the graphic novel.
I like to make the comparison to films.
Many of us can recite hundreds of lines from our favorite movies, but I think very few individuals make a habit of reciting lines from textbooks.
So that gets us to the story of our main character: Atlas Black.
In this first chapter, we’re introduced to Atlas – a college senior in his last semester.
We chose this context because we wanted to highlight the importance of career planning as a key theme throughout the book.
It’s common in a college career to choose a major relatively quickly, then take all the required classes so you can complete the requirements for that major,
and then the idea of a specific job or career isn’t really revisited until the last semester.
So we hope that tension in the book is something that will encourage students to start thinking about career management as early as possible, but certainly before graduation.
Another element of the book we were very cognizant of is that we wanted Atlas to be a character the reader could relate with in the story in some way.
Maybe you can relate personally, or maybe he reminds you of someone you know or have known.
He has trouble paying his bills.
He has awkward encounters with his ex-girlfriend.
He didn’t exactly ace all of his classes.
He isn’t always the most motivated person.
Atlas is taking a class in business his final semester on the subject of strategic management.
And, like a lot of classes, the first course takes a historical perspective.
On the first day of class, the professor points out a couple of key issues that are important to understanding the study of management.
First, business is constantly changing.
Changes due to trends, demographics, consumer wants and tastes, and even generational differences are key in understanding management.
To make things more difficult, the study of management is quite different than something like the study of law.
A valuable way to learn about the legal system is to study cases because one case often builds on another.
But in business, no two problems are alike.
It’s important to learn from classic concepts and well-tested theories but at the same time there is always a potential twist that could change how concepts are applied today.
So, there is an inherent tension between the importance of learning classic truths while knowing they may not be applied in the same way they were originally.
Because of this dilemma a key point made in this first lecture is that to fully understand management one has to approach it as both an art and a science.
We begin the history lesson by learning more about the early scientific elements of the field.
And this takes us to the turn of the last century and Frederick Taylor.
Taylor was a mechanical engineer and he was frustrated by the lack of efficient management in American factories.
What Taylor observed in early American factories was nothing short of chaos.
Employees would often show up to work with their own tools.
Some workers might try and use a snow shovel to shovel coal while others had a tool more properly suited for the job.
This reality frustrated Taylor.
And working to improve this situation was the focus of his career that really launched the field of management as we know it now.
By the way, Taylor discovered that the ideal shovel load was 21 pounds so keep that in mind the next time you’re tasked with a gardening chore or digging a ditch.
Taylor’s book – Principles of Scientific Management – sought to improve on the rule of thumb guidelines than were the focus of most management practices in his time.
And in his book he outlines three principles.
First, careful study of worker motions and the scientific method should be used to understand how to approach tasks rather than simply rules of thumb.
The example of Taylor studying the ideal shovel load illustrates this principle.
The second principle focused on the role of formal managers who should monitor and guide workers to produce the most efficient outcomes.
This is the basis for modern human resource practices where selection of the best individual for the job is key.
And the idea of training employees was unique in an era where workers were often left to train themselves in absence of formal organizational training manuals that are common today.
Third, rather than create an adversarial relationship managers and workers would cooperate to achieve the best outcome.
This became the basis for famed management guru Peter Drucker’s concept of management by objectives
where managers and employees would work together to set goals that would be accepted by both parties.
So with these three ideas, Taylor became the ‘father of scientific management’ and launched a focus on efficiency that continues today.
There were a number of other influential individuals who had a tangential but nonetheless lasting impact on management history.
One of those individuals was Eadweard Muybridge.
Now Muybridge was hired by California Governor Leland Stanford – who was an avid gambler and racing track owner.
Stanford was engaged in a bet to find out if horses ever flew.
In other words, was there a point in time when all of their hooves left the ground at once?
To settle this bet, Muybridge developed a system of fast motion images to capture the horse running at different stages.
Based on his innovation, today Muybridge is know as the father of motion pictures.
And by the way, the answer is ‘yes’ – there is in fact a time when all of the horses hooves leave the ground.
Taylor had a number of contemporaries also championing this movement towards efficiency and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth are two early management consultants worth noting.
They were also concerned with studying the ‘one best way’ to accomplish tasks.
In fact, this was the slogan on Frank Gilbreth’s business card.
And they really got on board with the technology developed by Muybridge.
Where Taylor is more associated with time study, the Gilbreths engaged in the study of both time and motion.
They would set up a clock and then film different methods for accomplishing a task so they could examine the one best way to do a multitude of things.
They also applied scientific management ideals to managing their home.
Stories about these applications were later chronicled into a book titled Cheaper by the Dozen, written by two of their children.
The book was later adapted to a movie.
As an example of the kinds of things they studied in the household, they found buttoning a vest from bottom to top was four seconds faster than the other way around.
Their studies involved many elements of life and work.
In one study, the Gilbreths examined if it was efficient for baseball players to try and steal second base.
At that time, they concluded that it rarely made sense because even with en eight foot lead only athletes with world class speed could be successful.
They later used that data examining the throwing motion to teach soldiers how to most effectively throw hand grenades.
In those days, most folks relied on a straight razor for their morning shave.
Frank was curious if it was more efficient to try and shave with two razors.
He found he could in fact shave faster, but the increase in time efficiency wasn’t worth it
as you had to spend a lot of extra time bandaging up your face due to an increase in number of cuts.
They also conducted a study that resulted in life saving changes in the operating room.
Whenever you see a TV medical drama today, you’ve probably noticed all the tools nicely arranged on the operating table.
This idea was the result of a consulting project by the Gilbreths when they were commissioned to investigate why so many individuals died on the operating table.
They discovered basic lack of organization of surgical tools led to doctors spending a lot of time wandering around the operating room looking for the right tool,
which then led to longer patient exposure to open wounds that were more likely to become infected.
So, what may seem like common sense in retrospect was really the result of an early management consulting project.
The idea of scientific management was really sweeping the world in a way that had never been seen before.
For example, Ford used scientific management ideals to engage in mass production of automobiles.
President Teddy Roosevelt, noted for being a conservationist, was equally concerned about ways to increase national efficiency in the United States.
Scientific management enthusiasm wasn’t just limited to the United States.
Vladimir Lenin advocated the use of scientific management in the USSR.
As the gospel of efficiency spread, it was accompanied by criticisms of the scientific method and one of the most outspoken opponents was Upton Sinclair.
The work Sinclair is most known for is a book titled – The Jungle.
The book chronicled conditions in meat packing plants and other organizations where concern for worker safety was basically non-existent.
Meat packing plants were described as having leaky roofs, with rats scurrying everywhere to eat sausage by-products, and dead rats and their waste often made it back into the sausage.
Sometimes the odd finger fell into the mix as well.
Sinclair was hoping that exposure of these practices would lead to a socialist uprising.
Sinclair himself narrowly lost the race for Governor of California in 1934 under his EPIC – End poverty in California - platform.
But instead of catapulting Sinclair to political power, the public was outraged at all the disgusting facts about the meat-packing industry.
The book actually led to the creation of the FDA.
Sinclair later wrote that, “I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”
Sinclair and Frederick Taylor actually engaged in an editorial debate.
Sinclair was concerned that scientific management exploited and depersonalized workers.
He also questioned why worker pay did not increase proportionally to the increases in productivity.
For example, in the Taylor system worker pay increased by less than 20 percent even though productivity increased by over 350 percent.
Sinclair was concerned that 7 out of 8 men lost their jobs under Taylor’s system.
So this editorial debate opened up a series of issues that we still question today as a society concerning worker rights
versus those of firm managers, entrepreneurs, and other interested stakeholders.
Early management consultants focused on individual performance, and those advancements led to better firm performance.
Today the study of management focuses on both individuals as well as the organizations where they work.
Pioneers like Taylor and the Gilbreths focused on the one best way to perform a task and then worked to establish policies to aid in efficiency.
But in modern business, when it comes to understanding how a firm should be managed,
we don’t really think of one best way for a firm to operate because there are multiple successful strategies that might lead to success.
Industry boundaries are being blurred and this creates a need for unique competitive strategies.
For example, the cell phone industry faces competition with traditional land lines.
But it also competes with the gaming industry due the endless apps that exist.
Or it could compete against desktop or laptop computers in some ways due to the ability to check email and manage a lot of tasks that once were reserved just for PCs.
So nowadays we must also focus on the art of business where there are multiple unique strategies that can be successful for companies rather than always assuming there is a one best way.
And to begin to understand why some firms perform well while others struggle, this chapter takes a broad look at three key elements that determine the performance of organizations.
The first determinant of organizational performance is the firm’s leadership.
And the study of management has a lot to say about the importance of top management, leadership,
as well as information concerning how to make good decisions while avoiding common decision making biases.
So this is a topic we’re going to have a lot more to say about in later chapters.
The second determinant of organizational performance relates to unique resources that the organization may possess.
This can be anything from secret recipes for a restaurant to intellectual property such as patents in high-tech startups or pharmaceutical firms.
Oftentimes, a unique organizational culture allows some firms to attract top talent while others fail with the same goal.
The third determinant of firm performance is industry context.
Considerable research on this subject would suggest that this is perhaps the most important factor to understand when trying to learn about the profit potential of a particular company.
If some industries are more profitable and thus more attractive than others, then the choice of industry to compete in is one of the most important ones that a manager can make.
After class, Atlas and his sidekick David head to the local coffee shop.
And they encounter Tess, a barista that it’s clear they know pretty well.
We wanted to have this context as a reoccurring setting for a few reasons.
First, coffee shops are common to college towns and that’s one of the other key places outside of the campus setting where learning often occurs and different opinions are tossed around.
So what we wanted to do in this setting is show the application of learning.
For example, Atlas makes a quip suggesting that the kind of academic principles noted in class may not be that relevant in the business world.
And in particular, he picks on the idea of a mission statement.
What we wanted to do in this scene is illustrate how things like mission statements really can be important.
And while memorizing the statement may not be key for all members of the organization, understanding how an organization is different from competitors
and how that impacts the thoughts and actions of employees, customers, suppliers, and others is a very important point to take to heart.
The first chapter concludes with the introduction of a character known only as Black.
We wanted to introduce a darker character to build tension and momentum in the book.
And this character was also important for showing a cohesion between the introduction of concepts, the application of concepts,
and then just a general pondering of why the concepts we’re trying to convey are important in a sit under the oak tree and think kind of way.
So instead of a series of unrelated concepts, this book shows how concepts might build upon each other as Atlas and his sidekick David move toward this idea
of starting their own business, and their struggles to manage that challenge is the tension that drives the story throughout the rest of the book.
And the Black character is a part of the story.
So I hope that you’ll enjoy the story, but more importantly I’m confident that the material will help you have a better understanding of management.
And, I truly believe that knowledge of these concepts will help you manage your career, relationships, time, and many other elements relevant to our world
and the organizations we work in and encounter daily.