Forty-Eight-Hour Answers, No Study Committees

“A Kaiser trademark was his ability to perceive hidden opportunities and make quick, sound decisions. He occasionally referred complex issues to “committees,” but he did not tolerate time-consuming “studies.” He typically selected a few men, challenged them to analyze an issue which might occupy a score of people for weeks in another company, and demanded an answer in “three or four days.” Within forty-eight hours he started ringing up key members: “Do you have anything yet? How soon will you have it?” In such a fluid, unstructured environment, bureaucracies could not form, much less survive.”

“In their influential, widely read study, In Search of Excellence, Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr., traced managerial development in several dozen of the “best-run” American corporations. In many examples drawn from the 1960s and 1970s, they observed that the most effective corporate leaders were highly visible and practiced “hands-on,” personal guidance of their operations. 1 Similar examples could have been drawn from Kaiser’s managerial activities decades earlier. Kaiser’s approach to management was hardly original or unique. His respect for his “associates” could have been borrowed from James Cash Penney, founder of the chain stores bearing his name, or from many other astute entrepreneurs. His skill in challenging bright young men to compete with each other might similarly have been patterned after that of Alfred P. Sloan, who created General Motors’ famed “decentralized” system of separate automotive divisions. In refusing to permit important decisions to become trapped by “study” committees, in abhorring bureaucratic red tape, in sensing instinctively who in his organization could provide immediate assistance in a crisis, Kaiser resembled many successful industrial leaders.”