"Start with Taylorism, add a layer of Druckerism and a dose of McNamaraism, and by the late 1970s, you had the great American corporation that was being run by bean counters -- or at least by the bean-counter mentality. Everything was reduced to numbers and finance. The CEO of General Motors announced that GM wasn't in the business of making cars, it was in the business of making money. (This came as a shock to most of GM's customers, who were in the market to buy a car -- or even better, a way of life -- not to spend money.) That may account for the rise of Japanese automakers, who most certainly were in the business of making cars -- and, in particular, cars that customers would definitely want to buy, since they were low in cost and high in quality, and they got plenty of miles to the gallon of gas in the age of OPEC-inspired oil embargoes.

"Back to Xerox. Xerox hired MBAs with IQs of 180 or higher, and they spent all of their time and energy arguing about 'cross-elasticities of demand.' Meanwhile, they were content to make crappy copiers (albeit the first copiers). But they didn't care about the product or the people or the customers. It was all about the numbers. The numbers, the numbers, the numbers. I was fed up with the numbers."

- Tom Peters


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pv: Eu não gosto do Tom Peters. Principalmente pelo efeito colateral de suas idéias: Você S/A, por exemplo. Tem hora que ele parece uma combinação bizarra tipo: Lair Ribeiro + Felipão + Walter Mercado.

Mas tenho que reconhecer que o cara é bom de 'graffiares', de provocações. Mesmo quando confessa suas mentiras em In Search of Excellence, o cara se vira muito bem. Acho sacanagem colocar Drucker no mesmo balaio com McNamara e Taylor, mas entendo que os efeitos colaterais das idéias de Drucker tbém fizeram muito estrago. Infelizmente, sem a compensação da aplicação de suas melhores idéias.