Business Thinkers Who Changed How Managers Talk

Efficiency and best practice. Taylor, a Philadelphia engineer, timed workers with a stopwatch and published The Principles of Scientific Management in 1911, arguing that every task had one best way that managers should design and workers should follow. Efficiency, standard procedures and time-and-motion all trace to him. His famous pig-iron study was later shown to be exaggerated, and unions attacked his methods for deskilling and speeding up work.

Power with, not power over. Follett, a Boston social worker and political theorist, argued in the 1920s that conflict could be integrated rather than compromised and that authority should come from the situation, not the hierarchy. Her phrases about power with people and the law of the situation anticipated later talk of empowerment and collaboration. She was largely forgotten for decades until writers such as Drucker rediscovered her.

Human relations and the Hawthorne effect. Mayo, an Australian at Harvard, interpreted the Hawthorne studies at a Western Electric factory near Chicago from the late 1920s as showing that attention and social belonging mattered more to output than lighting or pay. That gave managers the language of morale and human relations. Later reanalyses found the original data much weaker than the story built on it, and the Hawthorne effect is now disputed.

Objectives and knowledge workers. Drucker, an Austrian-born writer, studied General Motors from the inside for Concept of the Corporation and in 1954 introduced management by objectives in The Practice of Management. He coined the term knowledge worker and insisted the purpose of a business is to create a customer. Management by objectives was often turned into rigid target-setting, which Drucker himself warned against.

Quality and systems. Deming, an American statistician, taught Japanese engineers statistical quality control from 1950, and in Out of the Crisis set out 14 points, including ending quotas, driving out fear and improving the system rather than blaming workers. Plan-do-check-act and continuous improvement entered manager-speak through him. Many firms adopted his tools while ignoring his attack on targets and performance rankings.

Marketing myopia and globalisation. Levitt, a Harvard professor, argued in his 1960 essay Marketing Myopia that railways declined because they thought they were in the railway business rather than transport, giving managers the question of what business they are really in. His 1983 article helped popularise the word globalization. His prediction that standardised global products would win was soon contradicted by firms adapting to local tastes.

Theory X and Theory Y. McGregor, an MIT professor, argued in The Human Side of Enterprise in 1960 that managers' assumptions shape their methods: Theory X assumes people avoid work and must be controlled, Theory Y that they seek responsibility when conditions allow. The labels became a standard shorthand in management training. Critics note it is a framing device rather than a tested theory, and that most workplaces mix both.

Competitive advantage and five forces. Porter, a Harvard economist, gave strategy its standard vocabulary in Competitive Strategy in 1980: the five forces that shape an industry's profits, the choice between cost leadership and differentiation, and later the value chain. Every MBA student meets his diagrams. His consultancy Monitor Group went bankrupt in 2012, a point critics enjoy, and later scholars stress how fast industry structures now change.

Excellence and walking about. Peters, with Robert Waterman, wrote In Search of Excellence in 1982, drawn from McKinsey research on admired American companies, and popularised phrases such as a bias for action, sticking to the knitting and management by walking around. It became the first business blockbuster. Several of its excellent companies stumbled within a few years, and Peters later said some of the data had been loosely handled.

Emergent strategy. Mintzberg, a professor at McGill in Montreal, followed real managers through their days and found they worked in brief, interrupted bursts rather than planning calmly. He argued that much strategy emerges from actions rather than formal plans, and in The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning attacked the planning departments of the 1970s. He is also a persistent critic of the MBA as training for managers.

Habits and win-win. Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, published in 1989, sold in enormous numbers and put phrases such as be proactive, begin with the end in mind, win-win and paradigm shift into everyday office talk. He sold the approach to companies through training courses. It is self-help rather than research, built on character ethics and his own religious outlook, and its evidence base is anecdotal.

Core competence and the bottom of the pyramid. Prahalad, with Gary Hamel, argued in a 1990 Harvard Business Review article that companies should be seen as bundles of core competences rather than portfolios of businesses, a phrase managers adopted widely, often loosely. His later book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid urged companies to serve the world's poor profitably. Critics found the pyramid market smaller and harder to serve than promised. He died in 2010.

The learning organisation. Senge, at MIT, brought systems thinking to managers in The Fifth Discipline in 1990, arguing that organisations should learn continuously and that problems often come from feedback loops nobody sees. Learning organisation and mental models became common phrases. Many companies used the label without changing how they worked, and the idea proved easier to describe than to measure.

Portfolio careers and the shamrock. Handy, an Irish-born former Shell manager who taught at the London Business School, predicted in The Age of Unreason in 1989 that organisations would shrink to a core of staff, contractors and flexible workers, his shamrock organisation, and that people would build portfolio careers. Much of it came true, including the insecurity he warned it would bring. He died in 2024.

Change management. Kotter, a Harvard professor, argued in a 1995 article and the book Leading Change that most corporate transformations fail and set out eight steps, starting with creating a sense of urgency and a guiding coalition. The idea that change is a process to be managed, and the phrase sense of urgency, became staples of consultancy. Researchers note the eight steps were drawn from his own observations rather than systematic testing.

Disruption. Christensen, a Harvard professor, argued in The Innovator's Dilemma in 1997 that well-run companies fail because they listen to their best customers, while cheaper, simpler products improve from the bottom of the market until they take over, as with disk drives and steel mini-mills. Disruptive became the most overused word in business. The historian Jill Lepore challenged his case studies in 2014, and he himself objected to the term's loose use. He died in 2020.

Good to great. Collins, a former Stanford lecturer, wrote Built to Last with Jerry Porras and then Good to Great in 2001, which studied companies that outperformed and gave managers the hedgehog concept, the flywheel, level 5 leadership, getting the right people on the bus and the big hairy audacious goal. Several of his great companies, including Circuit City and Fannie Mae, later collapsed, and critics say his method picks winners after the fact.

Blue ocean strategy. Kim, with Renée Mauborgne at INSEAD, argued in Blue Ocean Strategy in 2005 that companies should create uncontested markets, blue oceans, instead of fighting rivals in bloody red oceans, using examples such as Cirque du Soleil. Blue ocean and red ocean entered strategy meetings worldwide. Critics point out that the examples are chosen after the fact and that new markets tend to fill with competitors quickly.

Psychological safety. Edmondson, a Harvard professor, found in the 1990s that better hospital teams reported more errors, not fewer, because members felt safe to admit mistakes. Her idea of psychological safety, a shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking, spread widely after Google's Project Aristotle named it the top factor in its effective teams. It is often misread as comfort or niceness, which she rejects.

Start with why. Sinek, a former advertising executive, gave a 2009 talk and wrote Start with Why, arguing that inspiring organisations communicate their purpose before their products, drawn as a golden circle of why, how and what. It became one of the most watched business talks and made purpose a fixture of company statements. His claim that it reflects how the brain works has been criticised as a loose reading of neuroscience.

The lean start-up. Ries, a software entrepreneur, drew on Toyota's lean manufacturing and customer development ideas to write The Lean Startup in 2011, giving founders and corporate innovation teams the minimum viable product, build-measure-learn and the pivot. The vocabulary spread far beyond start-ups. Critics say the method suits cheap software experiments better than hardware or regulated products, and that pivot became a polite word for failure.