How to Run Any Organization (Theodore Caplow)
by Rob Redmond - July 8, 2007
How to Run Any Organization is a classic treatise on the entire topic of management with references to some of the great works in history. Caplow has penned a fine introductory text on leadership which is as useful to a business manager as it is for the leader of almost any kind of organization. This is a solid basic text with which to start your journey of learning the things that have been solid management principle for half a century.
For the Karate instructor who follows the articles on this site regarding how to manage a business, this book is an excellent start. Caplow’s book begins with the manager who takes over an organization and gives step by step advice as to how to establish authority, communication, productivity, morale, and change. Caplow’s book was written in 1974, but this does not take away from its authoritative nature. Most everything ever written about the topic of management that is worth reading was authored before 1980.
When you start reading books on leadership and management, something becomes clear very quickly: Most of the books written since 1980 are “touchy feely” and deal primarily with trying to convince managers not to be so harsh and numbers-oriented with their people. New authors of management books ask leaders to be more considerate of maternity leave, ensure people take lunches and vacations, and warn against toxic environments where people work too hard and are left without outside lives.
That’s nice, but it doesn’t help me as a manager lead a group of people. What is needed by a new manager is a book that tells what to do, not a book that talks about what not to do.
Every new leader will flow through the four phases of ability - the first being conscious incompetence - and start off believing that he knows how to lead a group of people. This belief will be based upon all of the things that he has seen his previous leaders do with which he disagreed. Taking the reins, the new manager will attempt to undo everything that the bogeyman in his mind that he has constructed would want to do. This feels good to the new leader, but it is not good in fact.
Eventually, things start to go wrong, and the new manager will either remain blissfully unaware or will awaken to the fact that he has no clue what he is doing.
Caplow’s book is a cure for this, and his greatest advice is to the person taking over a new organization and his Machiavellian suggestion that the new leader consider where he came from and who he following in order to determine exactly how to establish himself as the leader. He recommends gaining control of the budget immediately and takes the new leader all the way to the end game: choosing a successor and retiring.
Caplow’s book does not tell us everything that we need to know about management. While it references some small material on power politics and management by objectives, following this book with others on management reviewed here is highly recommended.
How to Run Any Organization is a must-read for the new manager, and I highly recommend it.
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