St. Gallen Management Model

St. Gallen Management Model compresses a messy business into a few moving parts. The compression loses detail and gains sight.

The model's real service is conversation. It gives a group of people the same picture to point at. Half of management is just getting everyone to look at the same wall.

The idea is simple, and like most simple ideas it is easy to nod at and hard to use. The nod is free. The use costs attention, every day, in small change.

The best school principal is visible at the gate in the morning and invisible during the teachers' period. Presence at the right hour, absence at the right hour — that is the whole craft.

An organisation is only a group of people who have agreed, for now, to pull in roughly the same direction. Write it on the wall of the mind, not the wall of the house. The house already has enough instructions.