Un bon manager est un manager mongol

[Rincevent]

Trouvé dans les archives de BBC News, cet article m'a fait pensé à quelques saillies (involontairement) drôlatiques de Timur, ainsi qu'à son pseudo : http://www.liberaux.org/style_images/lib.o…resize-down.gif

http://www.liberaux.org/style_images/lib.o…resize-down.gif

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Guide to management, the Genghis Khan way

By Jennifer Quinn

BBC News Magazine

He killed and pillaged and is widely seen as the epitome of the tyrannical ruler, but was Genghis Khan all bad?

As the BBC prepares to broadcast a revisionist history of the 13th-Century Mongol leader, one historian speculates that Genghis possessed "many of the qualities of a good chief executive."

Disregarding what this might say about the management style of some businesses today, would you want him as a boss?

"On one level, he is a megalomaniac," military historian Dan Snow says. "But on another level, given that you have to judge him by the standards of his time, he was a very good manager."

Mike Petrook, of the Chartered Management Institute, a professional body that represents managers and helps them develop their skills, says a good boss must have both solid technical skills and the ability to deal with people. It seems Genghis possessed those requirements, including the capacity to lead and inspire, a knack for managing change and information, and the desire to succeed.

Here are five reasons you might wish your manager was a megalomaniacal dictator with a taste for world domination.

1. PROFIT SHARING

The profits in the 13th Century were, technically, the spoils of victory and quite frequently included living people who were then subjected to a life of misery. But for Genghis's armies, the booty pillaged from the vanquished was a big part of their annual income and their leader was careful to make sure his soldiers got their fair share.

"Genghis realised that and he felt that employees should be recognised for working hard," says Mr Snow, the co-presenter of BBC2's Battlefield Britain series. Snow calls Genghis one of his "top five guys" - at least in terms of military savvy and leadership. "It made them love him and they would follow him to the ends of the earth."

Genghis understood that to keep his armies happy, they needed to be shown appreciation. And that sharing of the spoils of war engendered loyalty among his troops, says John Man, author of Genghis Khan: Life, Death, and Resurrection.

"He knew that, certainly in the early days, that what held all this together was the pay system," Mr Man says. "Everything was his, but it was his to give away, which he proceeded to do. All his officers were paid extremely well."

2. HATED OFFICE POLITICS

Now, Genghis didn't mind a little bit of gossip - he was a prodigious gatherer of intelligence - and he certainly liked to know what was going on. But he couldn't tolerate dishonesty, says Mr Man.

He is especially admiring of Ghenghis's ability to manage - while recognising that some extraordinary atrocities were committed in his name. One of the areas in which Genghis was unique was in his appreciation for allegiance.

And it wasn't only loyalty to Genghis of which the general was especially approving, Mr Man says. Genghis couldn't tolerate those who went behind their boss's back to rat out potential coups or plots, either.

"He punished those who were disloyal, even if they were disloyal to his enemies," the author says. "He would say: who can trust a man such as these?"

3. RAN A MERITOCRACY

If you were working for Genghis, and you did well, you would be rewarded.

The son of peasants himself, Genghis had a very harsh childhood, Mr Man says. And perhaps because of his humble beginnings, he recognised there was talent to be found in all classes of society.

"He was pretty remarkable in that he was able to employ people smarter than himself in order to install good government," Mr Man says, "which was pretty innovative."

Because he wanted to establish an empire that would last, he understood that he had to create institutions of government, like a postal system and a taxation system. To do this, Genghis needed records. But he was illiterate.

So he imported some whiz kids - think Silicon Valley meets the Gobi Desert - to invent a new form of writing. It's still in use in parts of Mongolia. Once you were a member of Genghis's firm, the boss rewarded hard work with promotions - and didn't give his kids, or his golf partner's nephews, the plum posts.

"Most companies do this now," agrees Mr Snow. "Gone are the days of old school ties.

"His officers were promoted on merit. He demonstrated absolute loyalty, rewarded courage and said if you are good, you'll move up the ranks. He didn't say, 'I'm going to get 20 years service out of you and then promote a 17-year-old aristocrat'."

Mr Snow says that if Genghis was heading a company today, he'd know the names of all his employees, from his top men to the guys in the mailroom.

"He'd know their names, be able to chat about the football on Saturday," Mr Snow says. "He knew what motivated his men."

4. EMBRACED CHANGE

If Genghis were running your office today, you wouldn't be tapping out invoices on a dodgy laptop or sitting in a broken-down pool car on the M25 during rush hour. He was a firm believer in trying new things.

Mr Snow says when the Mongols saw the Chinese armies using new weapons effectively, he captured their men and put them to work for him.

"He embraced new technology," Mr Snow says. "He forced Chinese engineers to join his army and quickly adapted to their technological innovations."

5. THOUGHT AHEAD

Though Genghis wasn't a big fan of office gossip, he was very big on knowing what his enemies were up to. But more importantly, when he decided on a new course of action - a battle, an invasion - he researched it thoroughly before charging ahead.

"It's all about knowing what your competition is doing," Mr Snow says, "and Genghis Khan was absolutely scrupulous about sorting out all the intelligence he could. Although 200,000 men and horses would go stampeding across a border, it was months after it had first been proposed."

Aiding Genghis in all he did was the absolute belief that he was anointed by God to lead and to conquer, which made him a uniquely determined general.

"There was one huge advantage he had, and that's that he thought he was divinely chosen," Mr Man says. "The only drawback to that is that you have to get others to believe it too."

Ce à quoi fait écho ce post de Workers Comp Insider :

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Management Lessons from Ghengis Khan

As the summer draws to a close, it's a good time to step back and take the long view. In this case, the view goes all the way back to 1200 AD. My daughter's high school summer reading included an intriguing book entitled: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, by Jack Weatherford. The great Khan's name probably does not come to mind when you think of the world's management innovators. Indeed, most of us think of the "Mongol Hordes" as a scourge of civilization, a brutal and merciless force that arose in the far deserts of China and swept westward in a destructive path. There's some truth to that image, but a huge dose of western-centric prejudice as well.

Weatherford has set out to revise the historical perspective on Khan. He sees him as a great innovator, a master strategist and a brilliant manager. As the first person to unite the Mongol tribes, Khan created the largest and last of the great nomadic powers, conquering all the way from India to the gates of the west.

While Weatherford has made no attempt to translate Kahn's experience into lessons for today's managers, the Insider has leapt into the void and done just that. Here are a few of the management lessons that emerge from a reading of Weatherford's book:

Reward merit: Khan moved away from hereditary privilege by promoting his most talented followers. As a result, his organization benefitted from the best talent, not just Khan's relatives.

Discipline is key: demand self-control and discipline from every warrier and every leader. He abolished the long-established practice of stealing wives, which fragmented the tribes into warring camps. After a conquest, the spoils were carefully inventoried and then divided for the benefit of all.

Organize, Organize, Organize: Contrary to the "mongol horde" image, Khan developed a meticulous system for organizing his army. Using a sequence of tens, his basic unit was a squad of 10 warriers, united in a company of 10 squads, eventually reaching an army of multiple thousands. Every camp had the same physical lay out, so messengers could move from camp to camp and find the leadership without the delay of having to ask directions.

Turn your opponents strengths into a weakness, part one: confronted with great walled cities, Khan built a higher wall of logs around the outer wall of the city, so his men could look down into the city and strike fear in the hearts of its people.

Turn your opponents strengths into a weakness, part two: Khan would have his armies flee in mock terror of armed knights. The knights, in all their splendid (and cumbersome) gear, would pursue his army to the point of exhaustion. Khan's disciplined warriers then swung back and easily obliterated the bewildered knights. Khan's destruction of the princes of Russia was a blow from which that country never recovered.

Use psychology and trickery: Khan's amassed troops might prepare for battle with an eerie silence, spooking their opponents. Khan's troops would light multiple fires, so they appeared to have more troops than they actually did. Using selective violence, Khan struck terror into the hearts of his opponents, while offering all but the leaders an opportunity to join his ranks.

Be fast: Khan never used an infantry. All his warriers were on horseback and all carried or acquired their own provisions as they rode. They didn't need a long baggage train. They crossed the desert in winter, to minimize the need for water. They tightly wrapped their bodies in scarves to keep internal organs from bouncing around during their 60 mile a day rides. His warriers wore leather, not metal armor, so they were much more mobile than their western counterparts.

Embrace new technologies. Khan invited his captives to join him. In this manner, he brought in skilled masons, architects, engineers and writers whom he encountered in both the far east and the west.

Have faith in your own faith, but be tolerant of others: Unique among leaders of his time, Khan tolerated all religions. While confident in his own faith, he tolerated the faiths of others. He even sponsored perhaps the first religious debate in history. By contrast, Louis IX of France, convinced that the mongols were the lost tribe of Israel, punished Jews in France with extraordinary brutality - for which, naturally, he was dubbed "St. Louis."

To be sure, Khan's own legendary brutality severely limits his utility as a role model for contemporary managers. He was fond of rolling his opponents into carpets and stashing them beneath his tent floor, where they starved to death. He was known to use catapults to hurl men, women and children over the walls of a beseiged city. He rounded up peasants from the countryside, pushing them ahead of his troops to absorb the first blows of his opponents and to fill up the moats in front of walled cities. Upon capturing a city, he immediately slew all the leaders and all of the wealthy.

Admittedly, this is not exactly an "I'm OK, You're OK" approach to leadership. (Then again, it might remind some people of "Chainsaw" Al Dunlop, the legendary CEO of Sunbeam Corp.) In any event, Genghis Khan cast a long, long shadow in history, so in the waning days of summer, we thought it was worth a few moments to reflect on some of the innovations he brought to the ever-evolving menu of management tools