Transcript of History of Management

[Music] management jobs and careers didn't exist a hundred and twenty-five years ago so management was not yet a field of study now of course managers and management are such an important part of the business world that it's hard to imagine organizations without them although we can find the seeds of many of today's management ideas throughout history not until the past few centuries did systematic changes in the nature of work and organizations create a compelling need for managers examples of management thought and practice can be found throughout history working from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. coffee breaks lunch hours crushing rush hour traffic and endless emails and non-stop meetings are things we associate with today's working world work hasn't always been that way however in fact the design of jobs and organizations has changed dramatically over the past 500 years for most of humankind's history for example people didn't commute to work work usually occurred in homes or on farms in 1720 almost 80% of the five point five million people in England lived and worked in the country as recently as 1870 two-thirds of Americans earned their living from agriculture even most of those who didn't earn their living from agriculture didn't commute to work with small self-organized work groups no commute no bosses and no common building there wasn't a strong need for management during the industrial revolution from 1750 to 1900 however jobs and organizations changed dramatically first unskilled laborers running machines began to replace high paid skilled artisans this change was made possible by the availability of power steam engines and later electricity as well as numerous related inventions whereas artisans made entire goods by themselves by hand this new production system was based division of labor each worker interacting with machines performed separate highly specialized tasks but were a small part of all of the steps required to make manufactured goods mass production was born in rope and chain driven assembly lines moved work to stationary workers who concentrated on performing one small task over and over again while workers focused on their singular tasks managers were needed to coordinate the different parts of the production system and optimize its overall performance productivity skyrocketed at companies that understood this instead of being performed in fields homes or small shops jobs occured in large formal organizations where hundreds if not thousands of people worked under one roof before 1800 business educators taught only basic bookkeeping and secretarial skills and no one published books or articles on management today if you have a question about management you can turn to dozens of academic journals scientific management thoroughly studies and tests different work methods to identify the best most efficient way to complete a job Frederick Taylor is the father of scientific management he began his career as a worker at the Midvale steel company Taylor was promoted to pattern maker supervisor and then chief engineer at Midvale Taylor was deeply affected by his three-year struggle to get the men who worked for him to do what he called a fair day's work Taylor who had worked alongside the men as a co-worker before becoming their boss said we who were the workmen of the shop had the quantity output carefully agreed upon for everything that was turned out in the shop we limited the output to about I would think one-third of what we could have very well have done Taylor explained that as soon as he became the boss the men who were working under me knew that I was unto the whole game of soldiering or deliberately restricting output when Taylor told his workers I have accepted a job under the management of this company and I am on the other side of the fence I'm going to try to get a your output the workers responded we warned you Fred if you try to bust any of these rates a rape Buster was someone who worked faster than the group we will have you over the fence in six weeks over the next three years Taylor tried everything he could think of to approve output by doing the job himself he showed workers that it was possible to produce more output he hired new workers and trained them himself hoping they would produce more but a very heavy social pressure as Taylor called it from other workers kept them from doing so pushed by Taylor the workers began breaking their machines so they couldn't produce Taylor responded by firing them every time they broke a machine or for any violation of the rules no matter how small such as being late to work tensions became so severe that some of the workers even threatened to shoot Taylor looking back at the situation Taylor reflected it's a horrid life for any man to live not being able to look any workmen in the face all day long without seeing hostility there and feeling that every man around him is a vital enemy he said I made up my mind to either get out of the business entirely and go into some other line of work or to find some remedy for this unbearable condition the remedy that Taylor eventually developed was scientific management Taylor who was once described scientific management as 75% science and 25% common-sense emphasized that the goal of scientific management was to use a systematic study to find the one best way for doing each task to do that managers had to follow four principles the first principle was to develop a science for each element of work study it analyze it determine the one best way to do the work for example one of Taylor's controversial proposals at the time was to give rest breaks to factory workers doing physical labor we take morning lunch and afternoon breaks for granted but in Taylors day factory workers were expected to work without stopping when Taylor said the brakes would increase worker productivity no one believed him nonetheless through systematic experiments he showed that workers receiving frequent rest breaks were able to greatly increase their daily output second managers had to scientifically select train teach and develop workers to help them reach their full potential before Taylor supervisors often hired on the basis of favoritism and nepotism who you knew was often more important than what you could do by contrast Taylor instructed supervisors to hire first class workers on the basis of their aptitude to do the job well in one of the first applications of this principle physical reaction times were used to select bicycle ball bearing inspectors who had to be able to examine ball bearings as fast as they were produced on the production line for similar reasons Taylor also recommended the companies train and develop their workers a rare practice at the time the third principal instructed managers to cooperate with employees to ensure that scientific principles were actually implemented labor unrest was widespread at the time the number of labor strikes against companies doubled between 1893 and 1904 as Taylor knew from personal experience workers and management more often than not viewed each other as enemies Taylor's advice ran contrary to common wisdom of the day he said the majority of these men believe that the fundamental interests of the employees and employers are not necessarily antagonist ik scientific management on the contrary has for its very foundation the firm conviction that the true interests of the two are one in the same that prosperity for the employer cannot exist through a long term of years unless it's accompanied by prosperity for employees and vice versa the fourth principle of scientific management was to divide the work and responsibility equally between management and workers prior to Taylor workers alone were held responsible for productivity and performance but said Taylor almost every act of the workmen should be preceded by one or more preparatory acts of the management which enable him to do his work better and quicker than he otherwise could above all Taylor believed these principles could be used to determine a fair day's work that is what an average worker could produce at a reasonable pace day in and day out after that was determined it was management's responsibility to pay workers fairly for a fair day's work in essence Taylor was trying to align management and employees so that there was good for employees and there was good for management motion study is breaking each task down into its separate motions and then eliminating those that are unnecessary or repetitive though admitted to MIT Frank Gilbreth began his career as an apprentice bricklayer while learning the trade he noticed that bricklayers used three different sets of motions one to teach others how to lay bricks a second to work at a slow pace and a third to work at a fast pace wondering which was best he studied the various approaches and began eliminating unnecessary motions for example by designing the stand that could be raised to waist height he eliminated the need to bend over to pick up each brick turning to grab a brick was faster and easier than bending down by having lower paid workers place all the bricks with their most attractive side up bricklayers didn't waste time turning a brick over to find it by mixing a more consistent mortar bricklayers no longer had to tap each brick numerous times to put it in the right position together gilbreth's improvement raised productivity from 120 to 350 bricks per hour and from 1,000 a to 2,700 bricks per day as a result of his experience with brick laying Gilbreth and his wife Lillian developed a long-term interest in using motion study to simplify work improve productivity and reduce the level of effort required to safely perform a job indeed Frank Gilbert said the greatest waste in the world comes from needless ill directed and ineffective motions motion study broke down each task or job into separate motions and then eliminated those that were unnecessary or repetitive because many motions were completed very quickly the gilbreth's used motion picture films than a relatively new technology to analyze jobs most film cameras at the time were hand cranked in this variable in their film speed so Frank invented the micrometer a large clock that could record time up to 1/2 one thousandth of a second by placing the micrometer next to the worker in the cameras field of vision and attaching a flashing strobe light to the workers hand to better identify the direction and sequence of key movements the gilbreth's could use the film to detect and precisely time even the slightest fastest movements motion study typically yielded production increases of 25 to 300% Taylor also strove to simplify work but he did so by managing time rather than motion as the gilbreth's did Taylor developed time study to put an end to soldiering and to determine what could be considered a fair day's work time study worked by timing how long it took a first class man to complete each part of his job a standard time was established after allowing for rest periods a workers pay would increase or decrease depending on whether the worker exceeded or fell below that standard Lillian Gilbreth was an important contributor to management in her own right she was the first woman to receive a PhD in industrial psychology as well as the first woman to become a member of the Society of industrial engineers and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers when Frank died in 1924 she continued the work of their management consulting company which they shared for over a dozen years Lillian who is concerned with the human side of work was one of the first contributors to industrial psychology originating ways to improve office communication incentive programs job satisfaction and management training her work also convinced the government to enact laws regarding workplace safety ergonomics and child labor a Gantt chart is a graphical chart that shows which tasks must be completed at which times in order to complete a project or a task as shown here a Gantt chart visually indicates what tasks must be completed at what time in order to complete a project it accomplishes this by showing times in various units on the x-axis and tasks on the y-axis though simple and straightforward Gantt charts were revolutionary in the area of seat-of-the-pants management because of the detailed planning information they provided as Gantt wrote by using the graphical forms it's the Gantt charts value is very much increased for the general appearance of the sheet is sufficient to tell how closely the schedule is being lived up to in other words whether the plant is being run efficiently or not dance said such sheets show at a glance where the delays occur and indicate what must have our attention in order to keep the proper output the use of Gantt charts is so widespread today that nearly all project management software and computer spreadsheets have the capability to create charts that track and visually display the progress being made on a project finally Gantt along with Taylor was one of the first to strongly recommend that companies train and develop their workers in his work with companies he found that workers achieved their best performance level if they were trained first at the time however supervisors were reluctant to teach workers what they knew for the fear that they would lose their jobs to more knowledgeable workers Gantt overcame the supervisors resistance by rewarding them with bonuses for properly training all of their workers dance approach to training was straightforward a scientific investment in the detail of each piece of work and determination of the best method and the shortest time in which the work could be done a teacher capable of teaching the best method in the shortest time ward for both the teacher and the pupil when the latter was successful modern Gantt charts also show the dependency relationships between activities and current schedule status today when we hear the term bureaucracy we think of inefficiency in red tape incompetence and ineffectiveness and rigid administrators blindly enforcing rules when German sociologist Max Weber first proposed the idea of bureaucratic organizations however these problems were associated with the monarchies rather than bureaucracies in monarchies there were kings queens Sultan's and emperors that ruled and there were a Council of Elders wise men or males heads of extended families that ruled at the top of leaders typically achieved their positions by virtue of birthright for example when the Queen died her oldest son became King regardless of his intelligence experience education or desire likewise promotion to prominent positions of authority in monarchies were based on who you knew not what you knew it was against the historical background of monarchies that Weber proposed the then-new idea of bureaucracy because Bureau means desk or office and crisi means to rule bureaucracy literally means to rule from a desk or office according to Weber bureaucracy is the exercise of control on the basis of knowledge there are seven elements that according to Weber characterized bureaucracies qualification based hiring employees are hired on the basis of their technical training or educational background merit-based promotion promotion is based on experience or achievement managers not organizational owners decide who is to promote chain of command each job occurs within a hierarchy the chain of command in which each position reports and is accountable to a higher position a grievance procedure and the to appeal protect people in lower positions division of labor tasks responsibilities and authority are clearly divided and defined impartial application of rules and procedures rules and procedures apply to all members of the organization and will be applied in an impartial manner regardless of one's position or status recorded in writing all administrative decisions acts rules and procedures will be recorded in writing managers are separate from owners the owners of the organization should not manage or supervise the organization fairness supplants favoritism the goal of efficiency replaced the goal of personal gain and logical rules and procedures took the place of traditions or arbitrary decision-making in bureaucracies managers are supposed to influence employee behavior by fairly rewarding or punishing employees for compliance or non-compliance with organization policies rules and procedures in reality however most employees would argue that bureaucratic managers emphasize punishment for non-compliance much more than rewards for compliance ironically bureaucratic management was created to prevent just this type of managerial behavior though his work was not translated and widely recognized in the United States until 1949 frenchman henri fayol was an important contributor to the field of management as Taylor was like Taylor and the gilbreth's fails work experience significantly shaped his thoughts and ideas about management but whereas Taylor's ideas changed companies from the shop floor up fails ideas were shaped by his experiences as a managing director or CEO and generally changed companies from the board of directors down fail is best known for developing five functions of managers and 14 principles of management as well as for his belief that management can and should be taught to others the most formative events of fails business career came during his years as managing director of an integrative steel cup that owned several coal and iron ore mines and employed ten thousand to thirteen thousand workers fail argued that managers needed to perform five managerial functions if they were to be successful planning organizing coordinating commanding and controlling because most management textbooks have dropped the coordinating function and now refer to fails commanding function as leading these functions are widely known as planning determining an organization's goals and a means for achieving them organizing deciding where decisions will be made and who will do what jobs and what tasks leading inspiring and motivating others to work hard and achieve organizational goals and controlling monitoring progress towards goal achievement and taking corrective action when needed in addition according to fail effective management is based on 14 principles let's take a look increase production by dividing work so that workers complete smaller tasks or job elements a manager's authority which is the right to give orders should be commensurate with the managers responsibility clearly defined rules and procedures are needed at all organizational levels to ensure order and proper behavior to avoid confusion and conflict each employee should report to and receive orders from just one boss one person and one plan should be used in deciding the activities to be carried out to accomplish each organizational objective employees must put the organization's interest in goals before their own compensation should be fair and satisfactory to both the employees and the organization that is don't overpay or under pay employees avoid too much centralization or decentralization strike a balance depending on the circumstances and employees involved from the top to the bottom of an organization each position is part of a vertical chain of authority in which each worker reports to just one boss to avoid confusion and conflict order can be obtained by having a place for everyone and having everyone in his or her place in other words there should be no overlapping responsibilities equity kind fair and just treatment for all will develop devotion and loyalty this does not exclude discipline if warranted and consideration of the broader general interests of the organization stability low turnover meaning a stable workforce with high tenure benefits an organization by improving performance lowering costs and giving employees especially managers time to learn their jobs because it's a great source of strength for businesses managers should encourage the development of initiative or the ability to develop and implement a plan in others develop a strong sense of morale and unity among workers that encourages coordination of efforts administrative management is an important part of the management history the human relations approach to management focuses on people particularly the psychological and social aspects of work this approach to management sees people not as just extensions of machines but as valuable organizational resources in their own right human relations management holds that people's needs are important and that their efforts motivation and performance are affected by the work they do and their relationships with their bosses co-workers and work groups in other words efficiency alone is not enough organizational success also depends on treating workers well Follette believed that the best way to deal with conflict was not domination where one side wins and the other side loses or compromise where each side gives up some of what it wants but rather integration said Follette there is a way beginning now to be recognized at least and even occasionally followed when two desires are integrated that means a solution has been found in which both desires have found a place that neither side has to sacrifice anything so rather than one side dominating or both sides compromising the point of Integrative conflict resolution is that have both parties indicate their preferences and then work together to find an alternative that meets the needs of both according to Follette integration involves invitation and the clever thing is to recognize this and not to let one's own thinking stay within the boundaries of two alternatives which are mutually exclusive she casts power as with rather than over others giving orders involves discussing interactions in dealing with resentment Authority flows from job knowledge and experience rather than position leadership involves setting the tone for the team rather than being aggressive and dominating which may be harmful coordination and control should be based on facts and information in the end Follett's contributions added significantly to our understanding of the human social and psychological sides of management Peter Parker the former chairman of the London School of Economics said about Follette people often puzzle about who is the father of management I don't know who the father is but I have no doubt who is the mother the Hawthorne studies were conducted in several stages between 1924 and 1932 at a Western Electric plant in Chicago the first stage of the Hawthorne studies investigated the effects of lighting levels and incentives on employee productivity in the relay test assembly room where workers took approximately a minute to put together a coil an armature contact Springs and insulators in a fixture and secure the parts by means of four machine screws two groups of six experienced female workers five to do the work and one to supply the needed parts were separated from the main part of the factory by a 10-foot partition and placed at standard work benches with necessary parts and tools over the next five years the experimenters introduced various levels and combinations of lighting financial incentives and rest pauses or work breaks to study the effect on productivity curiously however production levels increased whether the experimenter x' increased or decrease the lighting paid workers based on individual production or group production or increased or decrease the number and length of rest pauses in fact mayo and his fellow researchers were surprised the production steadily increased from 2,400 Relays per day at the beginning of the study to 3,000 relays per day five years later the question was why mayo and his colleagues eventually concluded that two things accounted for the results first substantially more attention was paid to these workers than workers in the rest of the plan mayo wrote before every change of the program in the study the group is consulted their comments are listened to and discussed sometimes their objections are allowed to negate a suggestion the group unquestionably develops a sense of participation in the critical determinations and becomes something of a social unit for years the Hawthorne effect has been incorrectly defined as increasing productivity by paying more attention to workers but it's simply not about more attention from management the Hawthorne effect cannot be understood without giving equal importance to the social units which become intensely cohesive groups for the first time human factors related to work were found to be more important than physical conditions or designs of the work together the increased attention for management and the development of a cohesive work group led to significantly higher levels of job satisfaction and productivity in short the Hawthorne studies found that were kurz feelings and attitudes affected their work the next stage of the Hawthorne studies was conducted in the bank wiring room where the group consisted of nine wireman three solder errs and two inspectors each of these groups performed a specific task and collaborated with the other two in completion of each unit of equipment the task consisted of setting up the bank terminals side by side on frames wiring the corresponding terminals from bank to bank soldering the connections and inspecting a test set of short circuits or breaks in the wire the solder 'men service the work of three wire men while productivity increased in the relay test assembly room no matter what the researchers did productivity dropped in the bank wiring room again the question was why Mayo and his colleagues found that differences in performance were due to group dynamics the workers in the bank wiring room had been an existing work group for some time and had already developed strong negative norms that governed their behavior for instance despite a group financial incentive for production the group members decided that they would wire only 6000 to 6600 connections per day depending on the type of equipment they were wiring well below the production goal of 7300 connections that management had set for them individual workers who worked at a faster paced were socially ostracized from the group or binged in on the arm until they slowed their work pace thus the group's behavior was reminiscent of the soldiering that Taylor had observed Mayo concluded work was or done in accord with the group's conception of a day's work that is what succeeded only by the individual who was cordially disliked in the end the Hawthorne studies demonstrated that the workplace was more complex than previously thought that workers were not just extensions of machines by highlighting the critical role positive or negative that group group norms and group behavior play at work Mayo strengthened Follett's point about coordination make just one change in an organization and others some expected in some unexpected will occur thanks to Mayo and his colleagues for their work on the Hawthorne studies managers better understand the effect that group social interactions employee satisfaction and attitudes had an individual and group performance the Hawthorne effect showed that when management paid more attention to workers productivity increased but equal importance should be given to the social units or teams that were created which demonstrated that human factors were more important than physical conditions or the work itself Bernards ideas published in his classic book the foundations of the executive influenced companies from the Board of Directors on down he's best known for his ideas about cooperation and acceptance of authority bernard proposed a comprehensive theory of cooperation in formal organizations in fact he defines an organization as a system of consciously coordinated activities or forces of two or more persons in other words organization occurs whenever two people work together for some purpose whether it be classmates working on a cross project together Habitat for Humanity volunteers donating their time to build a house or managers working with subordinates to reduce costs improve quality or increase sales bernard place so much emphasis on cooperation because cooperation is not the normal state of affairs failure to cooperate failure of cooperation failure of organization disorganization disintegration destruction of an organization and reorganization are classic facts of human history according to Bernard the extent to which people are willing to cooperate in an organization depends on how workers perceive executive authority and whether they're willing to accept it many managerial requests or directives in which acceptance of managerial Authority is automatic in general people will be indifferent to managerial directives or orders if they are understood are consistent with the purpose of the organization are compatible with people's personal interests and can actually be carried out by those people acceptance of managerial authority that is cooperation is not automatic however ask people to do things contrary to the organization's purpose or for their own benefit and they'll put up a fight while many people assume that managers have the authority to do whatever they want bernard referring to this friction of supervisor authority believe that workers ultimately grant managers their authority in general operations management uses a quantitative or mathematical approach to find ways to increase productivity improve quality and manage or reduced costly inventories the most commonly used operations management tools are methods of quality control forecasting techniques capacity planning productivity measurement and improvement linear programming scheduling systems inventory systems work measurement techniques and cost-benefit analysis in 1791 when the US government worried about a possible war with France ordered 40,000 muskets from private gun contractors all but one contractor built handmade muskets assembled by skilled gun finishers who made sure that all the parts fit together thus each musket was unique if a part broke a replacement part had to be handcrafted but one contractor Eli Whitney who is better known for his invention of the cotton gin determined that of gun parts were made accurately enough guns could be made with standardized interchangeable parts so he designed two machine tools that allowed unskilled workers to make each gun part the same as the next today because of Whitney's ideas most products from cars to toasters to space shuttles are manufactured using standardized interchangeable parts but even with this advanced manufacturer still could not produce a part unless they had examined it firsthand this all changed however with the prototype for the first time precise drawings permitted manufacturers to make standardized interchangeable parts without first examining a prototype once standardized interchangeable parts became the norm and after parts could be made from the design drawings alone manufacturers ran into a costly problem that they'd never faced before too much inventory inventory is the amount and number of raw materials parts and finished products that a company has in its possession in fact large factories were accumulating parts inventories sufficient for two or three months more than they needed on a daily basis to run their manufacturing operations a solution to this problem was found in 1905 when the Oldsmobile Motor Works in Detroit burned down management rented a new production facility to get production up and running as quickly as possible after the fire because the new facility was much smaller there was no room to store large stockpiles of inventory therefore the company may do with what it called hand-to-mouth inventories in which each production station only had enough parts on hand to do a short production run because all of its part suppliers were close by Oh's mobil could place orders in the morning and receive them in the afternoon even without telephones just as with today's computerized just-in-time inventory systems so contrary to common belief just-in-time inventory systems were not invented by Japanese manufacturers instead they were invented out of necessity more than a century ago because of a fire consequently throughout history organizations have pushed for and quickly adopted new information technologies that reduce the cost or increase the speed in which they can acquire store retrieve or communicate information the first technologies to truly revolutionaries the business of the use of information were the paper and printing Prats in the 14th century water powered machines were created to pulverize rags into pulp to make paper paper pieces which were already lower than those of animal skin parchments dropped dramatically less than a half century later Gutenberg invented the first printing press which greatly reduced the cost and time needed to copy written in for me chin in 15th century Florence Italy a scribe would charge one floor in the Italian unit of money to hand copy one document page by contrast a printer would set up in print 1025 copies of the same document for just three Florence within fifty years of its invention the printing press cut the cost of information by ninety nine point eight percent what Gutenberg's printing press did for publishing the manual typewriter did for daily communication before 1850 most business correspondence was written by hand and copied using the letterpress with the ink still wet the letter would be placed into a tissue paper book the hand press would then be used to squeeze a book and copy the still wet ink onto the tissue paper by the 1870s manual typewriters made it cheaper easier and faster to produce and copy business correspondence but of course by the 1980s slightly more than a century later typewriters were replaced by personal computers and word processing software with the same results finally businesses have always looked for information technologies that would speed access to timely information the Medici family which operated banks throughout Europe's in the early 1400s used Post messengers to keep in contact with their more than 40 branch managers the post messengers who predicated the US Postal Service Pony Express by 400 years could travel 90 miles per day twice what average riders could cover because the MIDI seas were willing to pay for the expertise of providing them with fresh horses the need for timely information also led to companies to quickly adopt the Telegraph in the 1860s the telephone in the 1880s and of course internet technologies in the past three decades one way to deal with organizational and environmental complexity is to take a systems view of organization the system's approach is derived from a theoretical model in biology and social psychology developed in the 1950s and 1960s a system is a set of interrelated elements or parts that function as a whole rather than viewing one part of an organization as a separate from other parts a systems approach encourages managers to complicate their thinking by looking for connections between the different parts of the organization indeed one of the most important ideas in the system's approach to management is that organizational systems are comprised of parts or subsystems which are simply smaller systems within larger systems subsystems and their connections matter in Systems Theory because of the possibility for managers to create synergy synergy occurs when two or more subsystems working together can produce more than they could working apart systems can be open or closed closed systems can function without interacting with their environments but nearly all organizations should be viewed as open systems that interact with their environments and depend on them for survival therefore rather than viewing what goes on within the organization as separate from what goes on outside the system's approach Courage's managers to look for connections between the different parts of the organization and the different parts of its environment a systems view offers several advantages first it forces managers to view their organizations as part of and subject to the competitive economic social technological and legal or regulatory forces in their environments second it forces managers to be aware of how the environment affects specific parts of the organization third because of the complexity and difficulty of trying to achieve synergies among different parts of the organization the system view encourages managers to focus on better communication and cooperation within the organization finally it makes managers acutely aware that good internal management of the organization may not be enough for survival survival also depends on making sure that the organization continues to satisfy critical environmental stakeholders such as shareholders in customers suppliers governments and local communities no management ideas or practices are universal although any theory or practice may work much of the time none of them works all of the time how then is a manager to decide what theory to use well it depends on the situation the contingency approach to management clearly states there are no universal management theories and that the most effective management theory or idea depends on the kinds of problems or situations that managers or organizations are facing at a particular time in place in short the best way depends on the situation one of the practical implications of the contingency approach to management is that management is much harder than it looks in fact because of the clarity and obvious mnestheus okay most of them students and workers often wrongfully assume that a company's problems would be quickly and easily solved if management would just take a few simple steps if that were true few companies would have problems a second implication of the contingency approach is that managers need to look for key contingencies that differentiate today's situations or problems from yesterday's moreover it means that managers need to spend more time analyzing problems situations and employees before taking actions to fix them finally it means that you need to pay particular attention to qualifying phrases such as usually in these situations for this to work and under these circumstances doing so will help you identify the key contingencies that will help you become a better manager [Music] you