In the United States, American automotive manufacturers are faced with huge stockpiles of unsold new cars. In Europe, EADS does have problems with production of the AIRBUS A380, which could lead to losses in the billions. Siemens is having a row with the Korean multinational BenQ due to the consequences entailed in the sale of the Siemens Mobile Divsion. The list of headlines feeding the press could be extended arbitrarily. And all that even though businesses have never conducted more market research than today. Early warning systems of the most sophisticated kind are being deployed. Whole legions of planning staff, controllers and other experts, including internal and external consulting teams are employed. Conferences, seminars and conclaves are held and attended and global communications networks and resources are applied. Bankruptcies, misfortune and mishaps are covering the economy and I see with great worry that the uninhibited globalization could turn into a bloodcurdling trap, endangering the livelihood for many of us. For God’s sake, what is going wrong? Why are economies on all continents moving from one disaster situation to the next? Is it really due to management tools, or is it rather the management itself? I do not want to make excuses for the managers at all and simply blame the management tools. It is a fact that we live in a time where tools are ruling the people and not the other way around. This already begins with the continuous safeguarding of decisions. What used to define the entrepreneur and his decisions are nowadays is taken over by number columns, opinion polls, team and group decisions, analysts or even political procedures.

It is those management tools which bring about mishaps and bankruptcies and this leads to misfortune for managers. These tools are surely important and beneficial as an aid. However, they are expected to perform a service which they do not have the ability to. They are expected to lead. For instance, if it is only market research results that are supposed to decide which type of car is being built in the future, either a gas-guzzling off-road super cruiser or an energy-efficient city car for errands and shopping for everyday life, knowing that crude oil supplies are limited and that the price and going to go up accordingly, then the disempowerment of managers through the tools at their disposal becomes evident. There is also a danger of analysts and their charts and evaluation theories, which often are simply based on numbers and theoretical considerations, degrading business leaders to helpless servants, which serve more the development of newspaper circulation than the businesses they are responsible for.

Why is that so? Handing over the leadership role and the decision-making process to the management tools are often the consequence of excessive demands and misinterpretation of leadership skills. Insecurity they try to cover up, lacking stability in a restless time, chumminess, denial of the meaning of reason and fear of existence are just some of the reasons that get to us all. I say us all, because the exemplary cases which occupy us so much and because they touch so many, cannot belie the fact that we could all more or less get into danger no longer being able to decide, but that these tools take over this task for us. And then they fail, because by themselves they cannot be a substitute for successful company management or decision-making processes. They cannot be a substitute for human leadership.

How can we free ourselves from the dominance of these management tools and thus turn the power of action back to the mind? We have to give back a first-class significance to truthfulness. This is going to help us gain back security and perspective, so that we can achieve constancy. All of this together finally leads to sovereignty which allows us to employ management tools successfully as aids.