Gaga Gurus

Adrian Wooldridge & John Micklethwait: The Witch Doctors: Making Sense of the Management Gurus

National Review, April 7, 1997

Witch doctors! It's an engaging title, promising bile, sarcasm, and maybe, just perhaps, a sneer or two. After all, this is a book about management gurus, those experts whose ever-changing theories fill bookstores and empty factories. Well paid and annoying, they scream out for a little abuse. In this book, they don't get it. As the authors note, somewhat smugly (they do write for The Economist), "it would have been much easier (and often far more pleasurable) to have trashed the industry." But they reject the hatchet in favor of a "scalpel job." In many respects they succeed. Often drily funny. The Witch Doctors is a succinct guide. If something can be said in a couple of pages, that's all the authors use, an approach that could put Tom Peters in the poorhouse. There are longueurs, but this is a management book that the reader will actually be able to finish. It even has a hero, the "ever-prescient" Peter Drucker.

Born, like so many other terrifying polymaths, in Habsburg Austria, Drucker was one of the first to take management theory beyond the mechanical approach developed by time and motion men such as Frederick Taylor or GM's Alfred Sloan. He also realized that he could make a living out of this. He became, in short, an early "knowledge worker," a Druckerism, typical in both its ugliness and its accuracy, which describes what he saw as a rising class of employees, valued more for brains than for brawn.

Like many Druckerisms it is also rather obvious. Drucker took some genuine insights, added a little nonsense and a bit of hype, and transformed his profession. Shamans to the suits, the management theorists (and their consultant spawn) are now everywhere. Messrs. Micklethwait and Wooldridge summarize the wares on offer. Much is bogus. Yet American managers currently spend $15 billion a year on outside, well, management.

Are they mad? No, say the authors. In a competitive world, a manager has to be seen to be doing something, anything, to keep ahead. Management theory feeds on this fear. Consult dull books with punchy titles, bring in McKinsey, go whitewater rafting with the guys from marketing: it will all help create an image of dynamism. As The Witch Doctors shows, this is all based on the illusion that there is a magic bullet, a permanent solution to problems of management. There is not, of course. For the management industry this is just fine. "The beauty of the system is that none of the formulas work—or at least they do not work as completely as the anguished or greedy buyers hope. The result is enormous profits for the gurus but confusion for their clients." As the authors write about "re-engineering," management theory "is less than it was originally cracked up to be. But that does not mean it is useless."

It is also less important than this book would have us believe. True, the how of today's restructurings may have been thought up by a Bain or McKinsey, but to call management theorists "the unacknowledged legislators of mankind" goes too far. As the authors themselves partly concede, the whys lie elsewhere, in capitalism's relentless process of creative destruction. The consultants may prefer to mask this, to cloak their function with talk of "empowerment," but for the most part this is just chatter. Gradgrinds in Guccis, they are really selling systems intended to motivate employees to be highly productive, but very cheap. Messrs. Micklethwait and Wooldridge probably grasp this, but at times even they can be taken in: "Teams . . . can be vital for innovation. . . Firms lay on special facilities to encourage them. Sun Microsystems offers laundry and dry-cleaning services. . . to members of teams who work round the clock." How generous.

To the NR reader, checking stock prices with quiet satisfaction, this hypocrisy may sound splendid, reassuring even, but it comes with a cost. The happytalk is starting to sink in, something that this book does not really consider. All those sharing, mushy, left-wing sorts of words are beginning to have their effect. The modern corporation is, after all, a soft target. Ownership is diffused, parceled out in tiny units across mutual funds and pension plans. These may have their own agendas, like the state pension funds happy to divest from a Texaco or a Philip Morris, pleased to make a political point with their retirees' savings. Meanwhile, management wants its bien-pensant approval too. Action is affirmative, daughters are taken to work, and everyone recycles. Before too long, people feel free to ask what a company for.

It's a stupid question. One of the answers, what this book calls "that stakeholder thing," is even worse. It takes a village, goes this argument, to run a corporation. A duty is owed to all "stakeholders": employees, consumers, the "community," and, oh yes, even shareholders. The authors are too clear-eyed to agree. German stakeholder capitalism is creaky, and the best way to deal with some of the problems in the Anglo-Saxon model "is to give more power to shareholders, not less."

And then the authors quote Gordon Gekko (Olivet Stone's, not NR's) in eloquent support. This is a bit like inviting David Duke to speak in favor of CCRI. Are the authors ashamed of their own conclusions? Perhaps. They are at pains, after all, to distance themselves from that rough Milton Friedman. He does know what a company is for. One thing only: to make money legally. This, we are grandly told, "looks ever less defensible."

This is not quite political correctness, but more a lofty Bill Bradleyism. It pops up throughout the book and reaches its irritating nadir in a discussion of management "diversity."

This, naturally, is a Good Thing. "America's WASP elite," whatever that may be, is singled out for the usual abuse. It is dominated by men, you see, and it simply lacks the multicultural "experience" essential (did the author ask the Japanese about this?) to mastermind the conquest of world markets. These "middle-aged, blue-suited, white shirted men" are clearly doomed to repeat the failures of their WASP predecessors. Failures, presumably, like the British Empire, the Industrial Revolution, Coca-Cola, and Ford.

Ludicrous of course, but just tough it out. Unlike most books on management. The Witch Doctors is enlightening. And worth finishing.