Monat: Oktober 2018

1. The begining of the swiss confederation

With the opening of a new important north-south trade route across the Alps in the early 13th century, the Empire’s rulers began to attach more importance to the remote Swiss mountain valleys, which were granted some degree of autonomy under direct imperial rule. Fearful of the popular disturbances flaring up following the death of the Holy Roman Emperor in 1291, the ruling families from Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden signed a charter to keep public peace and pledging mutual support in upholding autonomous administrative and judicial rule. The anniversary of the charter’s signature (August 1, 1291) today is celebrated as Switzerland’s National Day.

Between 1315 and 1388 the Swiss Confederates inflicted three crushing defeats on the Habsburgs, whose aspiration to regional dominion clashed with Swiss self-determination. During that period, five other localities (cantons in modern-day parlance) joined the original three in the Swiss Confederation. Buoyed by their feats, the Swiss Confederates continuously expanded their borders by military means and gained formal independence from the Holy Roman Empire in 1499. Routed by the French and Venetians near Milan in 1515, they renounced expansionist policies. By then the Swiss Confederation had become a union of 13 localities with a regularly convening diet administering the subject territories.

2. Neutrality 
was established in 1815, enabled and facilitated the integrality and common identity of Switzerland. It also enabled independence and commercial freedom.

3. The Battle of Morgarten
The swiss army was very creative in their military plan for the „schlacht am moorgarten“ in 1315.
They had to manage this plan properly in order to be successful.

ANNE RACHETER

She comes from a design background, as she was trained as a graphic designer. Afterwards, she specialised in visual communication and later on worked as a design strategy director.

As a design director, she combines design and management processes in a company. She brings together different parties and communicates goals within an organisation. 

RAPHAEL ROSSEL

His professional roots lie in journalism, interior design and industrial design.

Now what makes him a design manager is that he combines these fields. This is why he founded the de-lay GmbH agency in 2008, that has since specialised in communication mandates from the design industry. He now manages different projects such as the editorial department of the lifeathome.ch digital magazine. He works as a managing director of the Ikea Foundation Switzerland and occasionally teaches at Swiss design universities as a visiting lecturer in art direction and brand identity.

THOMAS PETRIG

He has graduated from the Bachelor program „Design Management, International“ at Hochschule Lucerne. After working as an assistant at DMI, he was an in-house consultant at Swisscom. Today he works as a Human Centered Design Consultant and Co-Creator at Creaholic SA.

The team of entrepreneurs at Creaholic helps clients to invent, innovate and adapt to challenges by generating sales with new products and services. While doing so, Thomas Petrig uses his knowledge about people’s needs and how designing products, services and experiences, brings value to them. He works on a methodological level with his clients and supports them in their design processes. For example in building up an innovation culture in a business.

by Ivana Gubser

Somehow everyone knows what management is and what a manager does. At least everyone thinks they know. I’ve always had some kind of picture of management, too, and I’ve been playing down some empty phrases when the subject came up. But I don’t really know what a leader does in a company and where this profession actually comes from until I’ve read the article by Claude S. George. Ok, of course I don’t quite know yet, because this job is much more complex and demanding than I thought and it takes a lot of time to really get to grips with the subject of management.
For instance: Did you know that management is thousands of years old? Of course, it wasn’t called that back then, but If you go back in time, you will see that management is very old and has existed in all centuries, in one way or another. From the Stone Age to the modern age, in all areas there have been and still are leaders. From the birth of chiefs, to elected leaders and representatives, there are leading figures who are needed, especially in times of crisis and change. There have always been leaders who have taken responsibility and guided others in their work.

Let’s take for example Salomon, who directed the establishment of trade agreements , leaded construction projects and has signed peace agreements in the tenth century B.C.
Or the Egypt, who managed to build something incredible for this time. Building the pyramids required incredibly well structured organization and planning. To build them it needed approximately 100’000 men for twenty years, who had to be guided and observed. The Egyptian managers already knew about the value of planning. They truly respected managerial authority and responsibility and saw the value in Job descriptions. Or let’s take the Babylonians, who already documented work processes and tasks at that time, 2000 and 1700 B.C., to have control over them.
Furthermore, let’s have a look at Moses, whose knowledge in government, creating rules and law or in interpersonal relationships made him a great leader and manager.
And of course not to forget the Greeks, who created a democratic government also introduced scholarships and science in their society and these scientific methods became fundamental for following leaders like, for example, Frederick W. Taylor. And also like Frederick Taylor, they already worked on efficiency methods. Plato was the one who said, that no man ought to work in wood and iron at the same time, because then he would not be able to excel. And it was also Plato, who gave the first theory of the division of task, which is essential nowadays. “Perhaps the Greeks more then any other people provided us with the most extensive documentation of management principles, which describe the universality of management, specialization, managements as a art, employee selection, delegation of authority and motion study”. All these traits supply to our modern way of managements.
The expression management is maybe pretty new, but the mandate a manager does, has been there since forever. „In fact, all the truly great leaders of history were managers. Managing countries, managing explorations, managing wars and managing other men’s efforts.” There has always been a need of people to be guided.
Management started in the family organisations, which then transformed into tribes and then they became political units, like for example the Babylonians or Egypt’s. They created financial control and invented protocols and record meetings. They all created something, which is still significant for today’s society and related to management skills.

It is obvious that in these early times, management thought existed, yet it was still a bit superficial and not really worked out yet. But even today, people are still working out the right principles and ways to manage things and people. I think it becomes clear, that management is everywhere and managers are needed in all walks of life. In economics, in education or in ourselves. Today management is a central part of all our doings and beings. And to master that skill of being a good leader in whatever position you want to be, is a difficult and great challenge.

The word management has always been somewhat of a mystery for me until some years ago. It was to connected with a sense of an unreachable, controlling elite and common stereotypes (e.g. humans that act without emotions) as the main driving force in that elite. As I got more open due to various experiences throughout the years, I understood that management is a very broad term, applied to almost everything that is connected to how we live our lives.

Management in common sense means for me, the ability to resolve complex problems that concern a large number of people. It is the base of the system that keeps our world, and our lives the way we grew up – without it, we would be much less able to sustain our way of living.

But how did this system we have in place today get so widely spread and successful?
To understand that I will in the following illustrate a brief history with some prime examples of management thoughts applied to different times and cultures in the distant past.

One of the first examples of early adoptions of management practises, where the Egyptians about 5000 until 525 Bc. While the pyramids in their structure and appearance, seem very rudimentary and basic today, a huge amount of organization lies behind them.
All stones had to be carefully labelled and transported from the far away stone sites to the construction sites of the pyramids.
As all of this was done without machines, there was a vast number of slaves and workers involved in these architectural projects. Time and resource management was inevitable, therefore, to avoid chaos. For instance carefully planned transports of the stone blocks, which were mostly conducted during the flooding periods of the Nile because transport on land was too tedious to sustain.

A second great civilization that adopted and applied management ideas practices the Babylonians. The „code of Hammurabi“ was one of the earliest written testimonies on law, dated between 2000 and 1700 B.C. It contained a paragraph about a minimum wage, stating a precise amount of grain to be given for a field worker on a given workday. Laws on responsibility of workers were also written down, describing the consequences of mistakes in work processes, which were most often met with punishments related to the damage created. Therefore, people with more complex and dangerous tasks had bigger responsibilities than people with simple tasks, something we still see today.

As a concluding example, the Greek civilizations showed a very strict system of work division. The ideas of Plato stated that the more distinct and specialized a mans craft is, the more expert he may become in it. Therefore, in his Republic, there was a division of work responsibilities and professions in the cities, while on the land, professions stayed a bit more general.

This meant that in a city a house would be built by a number of specialized workers, each only contributing a small fraction of the work, but in what they did, highly proficient, while on land, due to a lack of workers, a house would maybe be built by one or two builders, and be of less quality therefore.
Further, the Greek practices us first principles of management, which could be adopted in a wide range of contexts. Socrates would argue that the duties of a good businessman and the ones of a general were in principals the same. Both have to be recognized as an authority and followed by their subordinates, and both should find appropriate allies in order to be victorious or successful. Basics of good teambuilding were described as well as a system that rewards good behaviour or performance, and punishes failure. We see that these principles are similar to ours today.

Studying the history of management, it becomes clear that it is not a modern invention, but has been a base of human society for as long as it existed in large groups. Task division, authority and first thoughts on laws in managerial contexts have existed in a number of civilizations, and today we still find remains of those in our world.

Management has been in an unrecognized position until 1900 even though it is actually found everywhere, such as households, churches or governments. The reason for that unrecognized position is the lack of a theoretical basis on management, especially in ancient cultures, meaning that no one could profit from other experiences. Findings had to be discovered over and over again as the exchange of ideas and practices was not possible. The actual necessity of having to accomplish goals has led to managerial principles. Plato and Socrates have been the first ones to verbalize management as a separate process. However; there was no scheme of management thought.

In the following, I will present several examples from the past where management has been playing a crucial role for a culture in order for their development.

Egypt 

The pyramids are the best example to show how much management skills were needed to finalise such a huge project. Just think about the amounts of material that had to be collected, workers that had to be found or the entire transportation to complete this enormous task. In that case, priests or military officers were in charge and consequently, could be named one of the first managers in history. They have soon realized the value of planning and handing out detailed job descriptions. Moreover, they supported documents for every move they made. Nothing in their government happened without written testimonies.

Babylonia

The Babylonian had adopted many laws about property, real estate and trade and more importantly, have documented those properly. In their culture, if work was not done right, they would always punish the supervisor and not the team itself. In effect, they realized that managers have to see the whole process and take responsibility for the outcome of the project. Another great example for their managerial abilities is the Code of Hammurabi. It is the oldest known code of law, regulating what was wrong or what was right.

Hebrews

One great example of a leader and manager was Moses. He showed great governmental ability by making new laws or directing human relations. Additionally, Moses understood the principle of work delegation and that it made processes more efficiently and organized. 

Greece

The Greek have developed a democratic government with all necessary managerial complications. Throughout that, they realized that the maximum output was reached by the use of uniform methods. Furthermore, specialization was the order. The famous philosopher Plato stated in his laws that no man should work in wood and iron because he will not excel in neither one, meaning that we should always focus on one task and specialize ourselves in it. Socrates states that the duties of a good business man and a good general are the same namely to make subordinates willing and obedient, put the right man in the right place, punish the bad and reward the good.

In summary, since the very beginning of mankind, management has moved from family organisation, to tribes and finally to political units. Through the decades and centuries, the principle of specialization has been developed. Financial control and record keeping have been invented over the time. One example that evidences recognition of management responsibilities is the Code of Hammurabi. Not to mention the Chinese who were the first to recognize the need for methodological means of employee selection and staffing or the Greek who have provided documentation of management principles in Xenophon’s study.

I therefore conclude that management is as old as humanity. It has always been a part of us and of our cultures. Over the hundreds of years, we have further developed our managerial skills and gained great practice in it. Thanks to technological advances, we were able to share our experiences and learn from it. In our society today, it is out of question that management plays an integral role in all business-related processes.

written by: Lara von Däniken