Comments on: McNamara

By: The Institutional Logic of War « Code and Culture

The Institutional Logic of War « Code and Culture — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:28:20 +0000

[...] lost Robert McNamara last week, although I was too busy to blog it at the time. (Organizations and Markets was more timely). McNamara began as an academic, educated at Berkeley and working at Harvard. [...]

By: Warren Miller

Warren Miller — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 01:23:13 +0000

Let us not forget that, as the president of Ford Motor Co., McNamara killed the Edsel. It’s amazing to me that a guy who could recognize a lemon car couldn’t recognize a lemon war. An old friend of mine put it this way: “You know, people told me in 1964 that if I voted for Barry Goldwater, we’d have 500,000 men in a land war in Asia. Well, I voted for Goldwater, and you know something? I’ll be d***ed if we didn’t have 500,000 men in a land war in Asia.”

For what it’s worth, after McNamara got his undergraduate degree from UC-Berkeley in 1937, he went straight to Harvard Business School. He graduated in 1939, spent a year with Pricewaterhouse, and then returned to teach at HBS in 1940. I guess it speaks to the arrogance of the Harvard faculty back then that they would think that a 24-year-old has anything to say on the subject of business that tuition-paying students would find useful. I would have demanded my money back.

By: Bart

Bart — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:19:18 +0000

He was even president of ford motor company before becoming secretary of defence. For a complete lodown on the man, see the pbs documentary: “fog of war”.

By: REW

REW — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:30:36 +0000

I am an unabashed believer in systems thinking and the “systems approach” ascribed to the Whiz Kids. My cynicism, a product of old age, suggests that the the biggest problem with “managing by the numbers” is that it becomes “managing TO the numbers”. Some set of strategic measures are identified, incentives are aligned to either minimize or maximize these measures, and the system is switched on. At the limit, humans are encouraged by this method to mismeasure, lie, cheat, and steal — whether it is mortality statistics in Viet Nam or asset values on Wall Street.