The first step in avoiding failure and achieving success is the acquisition of knowledge of eight specific liberal arts that can impact the situation under analysis
פורסם: Jan 2020 צילום: יח"צ
There is a way to solve management problems which gives better answers than “quantitative analysis for business decisions.” It outperforms quantitative analysis because it is faster, considers many factors which are frequently more important. and some like ethics and social responsibility which are frequently ignored. It is a Liberal Arts Analysis.
A Liberal Arts Analysis will help to avoid solutions which have led some organizations to fail although a quantitative analysis focused on maximizing profits or sales showed that that a particular action would lead to success, but instead led to failure. This is what can happen when factors which are important to the public, customers, employees, or some other stakeholder are ignored. This is what happened to Enron, Circuit City, Blockbuster Video, the Atari, Kodak, Polaroid, Borders, Sharper Image and any others.
The Specific Liberals Arts Specified by Peter Drucker
Drucker, “the man who created management” specified eight liberal arts as knowledge that must be included. These are: Economics, Ethics, History, Humanities, Philosophy, Physical Sciences, Psychology, and Social Sciences. The first difference between a liberal arts analysis and a purely quantitative one is that: much of the knowledge you need you may already have! We sometimes mistakenly refer to much of this knowledge as “common sense.” In other words, we have so mastered this knowledge that we consider it obvious in many cases and assume that it is known by all. It isn’t and it is dependent on our experiences and what we learned. That’s right, this acquisition of liberal arts knowledge is personal and starts when you start reasoning and thinking and begins accumulating almost automatically beginning with much which you have previously accumulated from whatever source.
Knowledge Acquisition Before Needed to Solve a Problem
Books have been the most convenient way to gain knowledge for some time. They still should be a major vehicle in anyone’s planning. You don’t need a computer, batteries, earphones or anything else. Regardless books are a good basis for knowledge acquisition before it is needed as well as after an issue has been identified and you must do research.
Use of a library was once the main way for those that did not yet acquire their own personal collection. You got not only books, magazines, tapes, CDs and various other publications, but the assistance of librarians to assist you in locating what you what you needed. The Internet and a “Google Search” has largely replaced books and libraries because of the convenience and efficiency. Nowadays, frequently you can log into many libraries’ collections to locate exact books you need without stepping away from your computer.
In Drucker’s day, he had no choice, and Drucker read many books in libraries and at home. He kept a stack of books along with newspapers by his bedside throughout his life. We know this because his widow, Doris, revealed this way of constantly maintaining and expanding his store of knowledge during an interview. Drucker kept reading even after he had become the acknowledged expert in his field.
They weren’t just management books either. Many were frequently history books. He incorporated history into much of his writing and the books gave him a unique perspective, examples and ideas for the 39 management books and hundreds of articles that he wrote during his lifetime. In fact, books contain both general and specialized knowledge needed in your profession whatever it is. They are particularly valuable because fiction and non-fiction both contain knowledge of subject matter or different ways looking at a problem or an issue that you are drawn to because of your work or maybe just because of your interest in the subject.
Knowledge through Serendipity
The word “serendipity” comes to us courtesy of 18th century English author Horace Walpole. Walpole had discovered a lot of unknown facts about various topics by accident during his recreational reading which helped him in his writing. He had randomly been reading old books and come across some surprising insights that had an immediate application in his work. Achieving some notable success in this manner, he adopted it as a formal process of discovery and coined the term “serendipity” to describe it. The word itself came from a fairy tale he read using this method of discovery entitled, The Three Princesses of Serendip in which the royal trio travel to strange lands and had various adventures and mishaps. The princesses made all sorts of discoveries by accident. But “Serendip” wasn’t a nonsense word. It’s the ancient name of modern Sri Lanka, from whence the princesses in the story originated. Any kind of reading is useful in the acquisition of knowledge and because serendipity may be useful in your attainment of liberal art knowledge, sometimes when you least expect it. I once found the solution to a management problem when I read a science fiction novel.
Knowledge Obtained from Intentional or Unintentional Discussion
This is one excellent reason for joining clubs and associations having to do with your profession or interests: you witness and sometimes get involved yourself with discussions of subject matter crucial to your knowledge store for future decision-making. Many times, you will even get advance notice that a topic in which you have considerable interest will be presented and discussed at a meeting. At other times, it is pure serendipity when any discussion occurs. Either way, you will be rewarded many times over by taking a small notebook or tape recorder to your meetings.
Knowledge from Teaching
Drucker wrote that “No one learns as much
about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.” That may be why occasionally you’ll come across a brilliant
teacher and later discover that he or she had been a poor student. More than a
thousand years before Drucker, the Roman philosopher Seneca said, “While we teach, we learn.” In modern times,
students recruited to tutor others, were found to work harder to understand the
material, could recall it more accurately, and then apply it more effectively.
Another sign: student teachers score higher on tests than students who are
learning only for their own sake. This has been used in a deviously clever
linked mentoring program taught at the University of Pennsylvania which first
gets college undergraduates to teach computer science to high school students,
who in turn are persuaded to instruct middle school students on the topic.
Clever, huh? We can use this concept by seeking opportunities to instruct
others in the liberal arts knowledge we want to assimilate ourselves.
There are plenty of opportunities to teach.
Sometimes advanced degrees are required, but in many cases, you need only to raise your hand to volunteer,
and sometimes you get paid for it.
Knowledge Gained through Lifelong Learning
“Lifetime Learning” is a term that has grown up over the last fifty or sixty years. Technology, time availability, affluence all came together to create the opportunity for what has been called "ongoing, voluntary, and self-motivated" pursuit of knowledge for either personal or professional reasons and plenty of organizations have jumped in to grasp this opportunity, even traditional degree granting colleges and universities.. They expand the service to their market by offering non-credit courses. Even a prestige school like Harvard, and many colleges, offer not only courses, but full programs priced at thousands of dollars to attend.
Knowledge Gained while you do something else
Maybe I’ve misnamed this method. It does require some effort, but not much. The idea is to use a psychological subliminal technique so you can learn at a subconscious level when the mind is focused elsewhere else, even sleeping. This is called subliminal learning.
The normal conscious way of learning is through repeated experience. Understanding and doing with practice is frequently added. Through these processes, the new information you have learned is “mastered” and stored in your mind on an unconscious level. However, you don’t need to think about it and if subliminal, it can still be recalled automatically when you need it.
For both mental and physical actions, subliminal learning bypasses the conscious experiences of practice, and repetition, Instead, information is transmitted directly to the unconscious mind. If I send the same subliminal messages repeatedly and frequently enough to my brain the same outcome will occur as learning it by other methods.
Knowledge from your own Experiments or Studies
There is no law against conducting your own experiments, surveys, or studies and you can gain useful insights in this way when this information is required.
Knowledge from Quantitative Calculations and Analysis
Economics is part of liberal arts, only you must not stop there. Focusing on maximizing profitability or any single factor alone may cause you to miss other factors which may lead to serious problems by overlooking something of greater importance to different stakeholders or something else.
Summary
Of course, you learn a lot as you progress in life, but you’ll learn a lot more if you make it a concerted effort. Moreover, there are an infinite number of ways to acquire the knowledge needed for your own liberal arts analyses. This doesn’t mean you need to know everything, but the more you know of the liberal arts, the better.
*Adapted from a forthcoming book The Power of Liberal Arts Management and syndicated.
*הכותב ד"ר ביל כהן הנו מומחה בתורת המנהיגות. ד"ר כהן הינו מייג’ור גנרל בדימוס בחיל האויר האמריקאי, בעל תואר דוקטור בניהול מאוניברסיטת קלרמונט. כתב למעלה מ- 50 ספרים שתורגמו ל- 22 שפות בנושאי ניהול ומנהיגות. ביל כהן שימש כיועץ בעמדות בכירות וכמרצה באוניברסיטאות הטובות בארה”ב בינהן ביה”ס לניהול באוניברסיטת קלרמונט וב-UCLA. בנוסף, הוא מעביר הרצאות וסמינרים בנושא מנהיגות בכל זרועות הצבא האמריקאי ובאקדמיה הצבאית וזכה בפרסים על הרצאותיו בעולם. מעבר להיותו גנרל בצבא ארה”ב, ד”ר כהן הנו בעל דרגת רב סרן בחיל האויר הישראלי והשתתף בקרבות אוויר במלחמת יום כיפור. שימש בתפקידי ניהול בכירים במספר חברות וכיהן כנשיא של שתי אוניברסיטאות פרטיות. ביל כהן היה חבר דירקטוריון במספר מועצות מנהלים ומועצות סחר עירונית, ממשלתיות ושל תאגידים שונים.ביל כהן היה תלמידו הישיר לדוקטוראט של פיטר דרוקר אבי תורת הניהול המודרנית שאמר עליו בין היתר כי ” ביל כהן היה סטודנט אשר אני והקולגות שלי למדנו ממנו לפחות כפי שיכולנו ללמד אותו”.
ד"ר ביל כהן הוא נשיא המכון לאמנות המנהיגות, מייסד ונשיא לשעבר של המכון ללימודי ניהול מתקדם בקליפורניה CIAM וחבר בצוות המומחים של קבוצת ד"ר עדנה פשר שות'
קבוצת ד"ר עדנה פשר ושות' היא הנציגה הבלעדית של תוכנית CIAM בישראל
Tags: אסטרטגיה ניהול
