Before the curtain falls, three final words !

Arthur Miller’s shattering play All My Sons is currently playing to packed audiences  in London’s
West End. The story concerns a businessman, Joe Keller, who built a
successful manufacturing company during the second world war, selling
engine parts to the US Air Force, but who has kept a terrible secret
hidden ever since.

As the drama unfolds family tensions explode, and ... well, if you have never seen the play, get hold of a copy of the text or, better still, buy a ticket for the current superb production.

Keller is a deeply flawed man. He tries not to think about the wider
responsibilities he faces in the world beyond his factory gates. But in
seeking to justify his actions during war time, he does, perhaps
unwittingly, hit upon a reasonable and rather important argument. You
have to understand the kind of pressure he was under, he says. You have
to “see it human”.

Management is about getting work done. This means that, sooner or later, people are going to be involved. It is remarkable how many senior executives have told me over the years, with a
hint of wonder in their voices, that their business is “really a people
business”. As if there were any other kind!

Managers climb the career ladder thanks to their financial performance, or through their successful completion of tasks and projects. But in time they find,
often to their horror, that most senior jobs are largely concerned with
managing other people.

The big question facing managers over the next few years is this: will it be possible for businesses to remain competitive, keeping up and preferably improving the quality of what
they do, without making impossible demands on employees?

Consider Apple’s beautiful new iPad, that small object of desire. They are really cool,
aren’t they? Some of you may even be reading this column on one.
Customers naturally want them to be affordable.

But now consider also the wave of suicides and suicide attempts at Foxconn’s
manufacturing plant in Shenzhen, southern China, which is where many
Apple products, including iPads, are assembled. Must a competitively
priced new gadget come at the cost of young lives? We need to see it
human. And pass over the comments of Louis Woo, a Foxconn executive, who
attributed part of the suicide problem to the high number of employees
aged between 18 and 24, “the prime age for suicides in China”.

What does the future have in store for us? Short of some fantastic scientific innovation that uncovers vast new sources of clean and
sustainable energy, it seems likely that the world faces many severe and
related problems.

As Rich Lyons, the dean of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, points out, the straight line extrapolations on a number of important graphs lead you to
a pretty scary place.

Over the next few decades the earth’s population looks set to climb to about 9bn. Temperatures and sea levels are rising. But we may not have enough habitable land, water, energy or
food to cope with these changed circumstances. Future healthcare costs
in a world of greatly increased longevity are daunting. See it human.
The outlook is bad.

That is why Haas is completely revamping its MBA syllabus. Business as usual is not even close to being good enough any more. Haas wants its graduates to be people who will do something
about those scary straight line extrapolations, slowing if not
necessarily reversing the trends. Dean Lyons calls this sort of activity
“path-bending leadership”, because it will bend that 45-degree line
back nearer to the horizontal.

These are the great management challenges for the 21st century. But from next week someone else will be analysing them here. Because, sadly, this is my last column in this
slot.

It has been an enormous privilege, and great fun, writing these pieces. I am grateful to the many readers who have responded so generously, if not always uncritically, to my work. And if anyone is
worried about not being able to read my words in the future, in due
course if you search the blogosphere hard enough you will find me there.

Management is an urgent, profound and moral task. Even the flawed and forlorn figure of Joe Keller seems to realise that. We need, as much as ever, to
act on his simple instruction to us: see it human. If you remember
nothing else that has appeared in this space over the past four and a
bit years, please try to hold on to that thought.