HENRI FAYOL -- Still relevant to-day

Henri Fayol, a French engineer and director of mines, was little unknown outside France until the late 40s when Constance Storrs published her translation of Fayol's 1916 " Administration Industrielle et Generale ".
His theorising about administration was built on personal observation and experience of what worked well in terms of organisation.

Like Peter Drucker he also had 5 main functions of management;

1. to forecast and plan - prevoyance -- Examine the future and draw up plans of action to meet future changes in demands and circumstances. If management is not about this then what is it about? Sometimes we do not get it right but often we nearly get it right and that is better than getting it wrong.

2. to organise -  build up the structure, material and human capacity and talent of the organisation to achieve organisational goals

Fayol - Still relevant

3. to command - ensure that desired tasks/projects are completed in a proper and timely fashion by ensuring the allocated resources perform properly.

4. to co-ordinate -- bind together, unify and harmonise activity and effort in the pursuit of the entity's goals -- ensuring we are rowing the boat together in the right direction

5. to control - see that everything occurs in conformity with policy and practise of the organisation and that if it does not, then we take corrective action to ensure it does.

These principles seem a bit dusty today but if you put them in a more modern context they are still relevant and useful.

We can still learn from the past and we will re-visit Fayol's writngs at a later date to see whatelse we can glean from them.