"How Should Who Lead Whom to do What?"

by Dr. Clare Graves

YMCA
Management Forum 1971-1972

From the Historical Collection of the work of Dr. Clare W. Graves
- presentations, papers, recorded transcripts, notes-
William R. Lee                                                                                                                      August 2003

Basically the intent is very simple. It is to bring before you one way to make the specifics of each managerial situation more manageable - to bring before you some clues upon which appropriate management can be based in different managerial situations. The substance of this way is encompassed in the title of this paper; How, Should Who, Lead Whom, to do What?" - a title which suggests that there are some subtle relationships between:

1. Methods for managing.

2. The manager or supervisor utilizing the available methods.

3. The supervised person - the one who is expected to respond to the methods. And…

4. The nature of the work being done by those who are being supervised or managed.

One relationship, which must be known if management is to be effective, derives from research in the field of cybernetics - a discipline that has markedly affected the managerial world in recent years.

Managers and administrators are well aware of the impact cybernetics has had upon their work. But my title suggests that they are not as attentive as they might be to one of its research results. They have not, as Eugene Koprowski says:

- sufficiently shifted their decision making activity away from the mechanics of the decision making process.

- away from how to collect information, how to retrieve information, and how to process information through decision making theory.

They have not turned as much as they might:

- to the thoughtful identification of problems on which to concentrate their energies and a wide range of innovative solutions. (Koprowski, 1968)

This they have not done because they don't have a means for innovating solutions even when they are able to recognize them.

As a result many ailing organizations suffer because their managers cannot see their problems and because they don't have a means for innovating solutions even when they are able to recognize them.

This oversight, however, cannot properly be attributed to managers. It is not they who should be blamed for the laxity of other people. The fault lies with us behavioral scientists - with us who have failed to build on certain foundation blocks laid down 

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