Tiny Duffy Meetings: The Concept of the Corporation Chapter 2

I like the image or at least the name of Tiny Duffy, who was enforcer for the Huey Long character in Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. Drucker’s discussion of management meetings suggests how Tiny Duffys work. They listen. They go to management meetings and sit on the edges. They hear the discussion and try to determine what ideas are behind it. I once heard a cast study about a new restarant. The place proving popular and had large crowds on weekend nights. On one night, a waiter asked the manager to step into the kitchen, where she met the entire staff. The staff was demanding a riase or they would quit. The case asked “What do you do?”

The question was misleading. The right answer was not an action but a strategy. “That won’t happen.” Is the right response. “I will know the discontents among the staff and make sure that they never rise to that level.”