Page 135 - merged.pdf

•Six Greatest Management Thinkers 115

quality stationary for the boss and his elite, muzak, bells and buzzers, company
shrinks, outside directorships for the chief executive and the company plane.

Townsend’s real claim to fame ought to be the fact that he was president of Avis
when that company successfully challenged the market leader Hertz. Many of the
tests of the organisation he suggests have been the subject of much effort by manag-
ers in the intervening years, but still cause the problems he identified. Here’s an
example in full.

‘C: Call yourself up

‘When you are off on a business trip or vacation pretend you’re a customer. Tel-
ephone some part of your organisation and ask for help. You’ll run into some real
horror shows. Don’t blow up and ask for name, rank and serial number – you’re
trying to correct not punish. If it happens on a call to the Dubuque office, just
suggest to the manager (through channels, dummy) that he make a few test calls
himself.

‘Then try calling yourself up and see what indignities you’ve built into your own
defences.’

But the people side is uppermost in Townsend’s mind. (In fact he chooses McGregor’s
book The Human Side of Enterprise as one of the two best books he has read on the
subject of ‘getting things done through organisations’.)

Under P for personnel we get the succinct advice to fire the personnel depart-
ment. His view is that they get in the way of managers hiring the people who they
can work with. ‘The important thing about hiring is the chemistry or the vibrations
between boss and candidate: good, bad or not there at all.’ Leaning too heavily on
the personnel department is, in Townsend’s view, an abdication of responsibility
masquerading as delegation.