The need for a management plan

We are holding our Conference in circumstances that could offer a greater opportunity of advancement for our country than for many years. Yet the chance will pass us by unless we, the managers, seize it and shape it to our needs and to the nation's needs. You may think that it is over‐stating the importance of the profession of management to say that it is only better management that can now achieve success for Britain. Yet my only reason for being slightly optimistic today is that one can see some hope of hard events forcing the powers that be towards acceptance of practical management judgments and away from the proposals of the “theorists”, political or otherwise, with which our country is so greatly encumbered. If Britain is to survive then we must stop listening to those who have never had to face a dissatisfied customer or a difficult trade unionist: people who have never added anything to the stock of the nation's wealth and yet are always willing to tell the nation what to do, so long as they themselves do not have to do it. Policy must now be made by those who have to manage successfully, day by day, difficult situations in industry, commerce, and our export trade. It is the managers who must now have their chance to show by practical action what the nation has to do to survive and prosper.