Creating, managing and growing a company requires the existence of a project, wanting to provide solutions to people’s needs, even before they have realized it.

These foundational times, in which character and project are predominating, are followed by times in which the company travels along paths governed by the natural history laws of all companies.

We are not talking about laws, in the sense of legal norms, we are talking about phenomena that occur following guidelines, which seem almost mysteries, but which occur by the very nature of a social organism such as companies or even States. Companies or States that, even having different objectives and purposes, comply with the same laws, by the mere fact of being formed by biological units that live in association, regardless of politics, religion and even the historical period. Over the past 2,500 years many thinkers have written about it, each in his style, highlighting this identity of the natural laws that plan over human societies.

Due to its impact on business life, four stand out:

Sun Tzu (Kingdom of Wu 545 – 470 BC), Nicolas Machiavelli (Florence 1469 -1527), Cyril N. Parkinson (United Kingdom 1909-1993), Lawrence J. Peter (United States 1919-1990). They all have in common that they wrote, not on hypothetical topics, but from everyday experience.

Due to its proximity in our time, we will focus on N.C. PARKINSON and L. J. PETER.

PARKINSON considers time management, productivity improvement, management mechanisms for new projects and the prevention of loss of efficiency that the administrative processing of human organizations can produce as a priority. His observations are specified in a series of laws that do not require an explanation due to their clarity:

1. “Employees have a tendency to give each other work.”
2. “An employee wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals.”
3. ¨The work expands to fill the time available for completion.”
4. “The number of employees within a bureaucracy tends to increase by 5 to 7% per year regardless of the amount of work that needs to be done.”
5. “Expenses tend to increase to cover and even exceed all income.”
6. “The time devoted to any item on the agenda tends to be inversely proportional to its importance.”
7. “No matter how much empty space there is in an office, more will always be needed.”

According to PARKINSON, one of the missions of the director of a company is to prevent compliance of these 7 natural laws that govern the life of companies.

From his part, PETER considers the management of the hierarchy a priority, which is specified in a series of observations that do not require an explanation either, due to their clarity:

1. “People who do their job well are promoted to positions of greater responsibility.”
2. “This chain of promotions continues until they reach a position, in which they cannot even describe the objectives of their work, reaching their level of incompetence.”
3. “Consequently, in any hierarchical organization everyone tends to rise to occupy a position for which they do not serve.”
4. “When a sufficient number of incompetent employees accumulate in an organization, the organization becomes incompetent.”
5. “When the organization becomes incompetent, pathological reactions occur in the behavior of employees:

   5.1 Desire for recognition, even in the event of non-compliance with the provisions, including salary increases and new positions in the hierarchy

   5.2 Self-assignment of representative and hierarchical titles

   5.3 Desire for larger offices with expensive decoration, carpeting and the help of a personal secretary

   5.4 Increase in eccentric behaviors based on suspicions towards other employees

6. “As a consequence of the above, they increase the new staff, to compensate for the inefficiency of the organization, and superfluous expenses.”
7. “Finally the organization collapses, and corrective measures must be taken that, if they had been taken at the first symptom, would have kept the organization at its level of efficiency and prevented its collapse.”

According to PETER, the action of the director of a company is considered a priority to prevent compliance of the following 7 natural laws that, in his opinion, govern the life of companies.

Thus, Cyril N. PARKINSON AND LAWRENCE J. PETER warn us against events that occur inadvertently, in organizations, although they respond to natural laws and cause their collapse.

As always at Veterinaria Digital we support the adoption, in agricultural companies, of measures that prevent compliance with the Parkinson and Peter forecasts, and in this way the countries have a healthy agricultural sector, capable of meeting the needs of their citizens.