Whether we’re conscious of it or not, every management decision is motivated by a desire to find universal answers to very specific questions. People who succeed in organizations tend to be pragmatic problem solvers. They have to be, because of the myriad challenges they face. How to grow the enterprise. How to get work done. How to find customers. How to be themselves in the workplace. And so on. Because there are no easy answers to these complex problems, they test the answers by starting a company, launching a project, or making a move. As they succeed and fail, the most attentive of them learn from the results. The history of business is thus the story of entrepreneurs, executives, leaders, and employees, lurching from one experimental answer to another. They gain expertise and acumen, and profits and revenues, and, along the way, add to the theory of management.
