Improvement: A Hundred-Year Plan for Progressive Management

What is improvement? It is accurately described as the process of a thing moving from one state to a state considered to be better, usually through some action intended to bring about that better state. The concept of improvement is important to governments and businesses, as well as to individuals. This is a seemingly harmless concept that everyone can agree on in all its applications. Yet, it is surprisingly controversial when applied to the management and leadership of organizations. For nearly 140 years, efforts to systematically improve management practice have encountered one barrier after another and commission of repetitive mistakes that thwart sustained progress towards better leadership and management practice. What should by now be common practice in organizations, progressive management, remains a rarity.For progressive management to advance, its promoters and practitioners need to understand the principal arguments against it and the recurring mistakes that are made which serve only to further extend the useful life of classical management. Improvement puts progressive management into historical perspective and helps readers understand the progress that has been made and what has yet to be achieved. It provides clear guidelines that current and future generations can put into practical use so that progressive management will gain wider acceptance and continuously evolve in response to changing conditions.