Man vs. Machine

A friend recommended this toolbar called 'stumbleupon' that randomly takes you to a website that has content from a list of your favorite categories. While trying it for the first time today, I came across a website called "World of Inspiration". Though I did not dig deep into it, on the first page I found this interesting quote:

“Take away my people, but leave my factories, and soon grass will grow on the factory floors. Take away my factories, but leave my people, and soon we will have a new and better factory.”

Andrew Carnegie

How true!! I have always been a firm believer of the philosophy that any system, any process, any society, any civilization, and business model, is to a large extent dependent on the people at the helm of its affairs for it to be a success. Look at USA over the past century and then look at China over the past couple of decades. Can anybody say for sure if democracy or communism makes a nation successful? Look at the erstwhile USSR and look at Pakistan. Can anybody opine with certainly if socialism or democracy can be responsible for the downfall of a country?

It has been of interest to me to know the corporate structures and company mission statements or guiding principles of successful corporations. I am yet to find a methodology that 'works'! I have seen corporations that are run on lose democratic principles (McKinsey), and companies that are still run by a chain of family members (Hershey's). Few if any can question the success of these giants, and few if any can explain the linkage between their corporate structure and business growth.....especially if the analysis was done simultaneously for both and compared. Books like "Built to Last" do explain the reasons some corporations have withstood the test of time, but fail to explain the reasons why many corporations vanished in spite of that.

All this has led me to believe in Andrew Carnegie's quote mentioned earlier, and my quote mentioned right after that :-).