What Is The Fog Of Management?

Simply put, management fog results from a confusion of management theories represented in a single management doctrine. To understand management fog, it is necessary to believe, first, that every organization has a management doctrine – well defined, documented, understood, and disciplined, or not – and, second, that every management doctrine reflects one or more theories of management.

The halls of management are populated with scores of "packaged" management theories, that is, management theories that are coherent in and of themselves. Since the first widely embraced "packaged" management theory, Frederick Taylor's The Principles of Scientific Management circa 1911, we have seen a proliferation of academic management theories ranging from Luther Gulick's famous POSDCORB Principles circa 1937, to Douglas McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y circa 1960, to Deming's Total Quality Management, Goldratt's Theory of Constraints, Drucker's Knowledge Workers, Senge's Learning Organizations, Porter's Value Chains, and Prahalad's Core Competencies, as well as market derived theories and concepts such as Material Requirements Planning, Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, Profit Improvement through Marketing Strategies, Portfolio Management, Total Cost Management, Activity Based Cost, Planning Programming and Budgeting, Business Process Reengineering and High Involvement Change.

Although every theory accepts the supremacy of the First Law of Management - Maximize the Yield on Cost, and while they each may have their own virtues and manner of addressing the First Law, they rarely cohabitate well with each other in a single management doctrine. In fact, they may conflict with one another not only in the variables they think are important in the First Law, but in their analytic approaches, business rules and decision logic.

Most management doctrines are in a constant state of flux as new management theories come and go in the name of adaptability or agility. Management doctrines range in their fog factor from light mist given homogenous management theories, to dense clouds when the management theories are heterogeneous. The density of the Fog of Management is directly related to the degree of heterogeneity of a doctrine's component management theories.

So, if management's purpose is to reduce the Fog of Management, where does it start? The answer lies in The Second Law of Management: "All management decisions are informed by analysis."

Long story short, the most frequently performed management task is analysis. Of course, the purpose of analysis is to inform decisions. Typically, analysis is performed within the context of a management theory, which means that it is defined by the functions and variables established by the theory. Since reducing management fog requires the conflation of different management theories into one homogeneous management doctrine, it stands to reason that analytic activities and products should be synthesized into a coherent "analytic process." The synthesis of analytic products is the primary way to abate the Fog of Management and conflate diverse management theories into an efficient and effective management doctrine.