The Myth and Reality of the Managerial Mystique

Robert McNamara and Harold Geneen both identified themselves with the practice of management. Their respective careers were on a trajectory of success, yet both were caught in the trap of mistaking the part for the whole, of believing that a technique of managment could substitute for imagination applied to situational thinking. For McNamara, the mantra was the methodology of cost-benefit analysis; for Geneen, it was acquisition as the instrument for corporate growth. As McNamara confesses in his book, he failed in his leadership by not examining the assumptions underlying the successive escalations of U.S. military presence in Vietnam and by not examining critically the reports from his commanders in the field and their recommendations for escalation. In the case of Geneen, his mania for growth led to a slavish reliance on the formula of the price-earnings gain through acquisitions without regard for the way the financial marketplace values conglomerates. ITT became incomprehensible to stock analysts and the broader financial community, which eventually led to its breakup and sale.