We have been telling the wrong story
For years, companies have been described through a simplistic split.
On one side, engineers and technical experts, the people who design, build, test, calculate, and solve.
On the other, managers, supposedly in charge of organizing, planning, arbitrating, and deciding.
That story is comfortable.
It is also deeply incomplete.
The factual basis relayed by RTBF, drawing on an analysis attributed to The Conversation, brings back a missing piece: modern management did not develop away from engineering work. It took shape in the 19th century in direct contact with engineering activity, inside mines, factories, networks, and major infrastructures. And among the key figures, Henri Fayol stands out.
That detail matters.
Because it reminds us of something many organizations have forgotten: the logic of organization was not born far from reality. It was born inside reality.
Henri Fayol was not an abstract theorist
Henri Fayol is often described as one of the fathers of modern management. What is less often emphasized is that he was first a mining engineer and then an industrial executive. Britannica describes him as a French industrialist who managed a large coal mining company before publishing his ideas on organizing and supervising work beginning in 1916 (Britannica). Academic work also shows that his administrative theory grew out of practical operating and executive experience, not detached theory (Emerald, Persee).
In other words, Fayol did not observe organizations from a distance.
He had to deal with real complexity: coordinating people, allocating resources, absorbing constraints, and holding together technology, economics, and time.
That is where the subject becomes highly relevant again.
Management did not appear as a decorative layer added on top of technology. It emerged when technology became complex enough to require collective discipline.
When complexity grows, organization becomes strategic
As technical systems grow larger, individual expertise alone stops being enough.
You need to align functions.
You need to arbitrate between short term and long term.
You need information to move.
You need to turn vision into coherent execution.
That is why the modern definition of innovation insists on implementation. The OECD states that innovation is not simply an interesting idea, but a new or improved product or process that has been made available or brought into use (OECD).
This is where many companies still get it wrong.
They keep acting as if innovation were mainly the result of a few brilliant minds.
In practice, it also depends on the quality of the collective architecture that connects ideas, decisions, methods, and teams.
The great split that slows companies down
The modern problem is rarely a lack of talent.
It is the artificial separation between the people who understand reality and the people who are supposed to drive transformation.
When engineering, operations, product, strategy, and management live in silos, the same pattern usually appears:
committees talk about innovation;
slides multiply;
trade-offs get diluted;
and the people who truly understand field friction lose influence.
The company does not necessarily lack ideas or intelligence.
It lacks continuity between vision and execution.
That is exactly what I defend in my book, chapter 11: organization and structures must be designed as visible pillars serving vision, strategy, and innovation, rather than operating as a self-justifying machine.
Innovation is not a lone-hero story
This point changes everything.
Innovation is not a corporate superhero myth.
It is team work guided by a leader.
That view aligns with research on psychological safety. Amy Edmondson defined it as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking, and Google later highlighted it as a core factor in team effectiveness (MIT PDF, Google re:Work).
Why does that matter here?
Because an engineer, product expert, operator, or project leader who understands the field but no longer dares to speak inside a rigid organization becomes a silent sensor.
And a company that silences its best sensors slows down, often before it realizes it.
Reconnecting engineering and management
The goal is not to glorify engineers against managers.
The goal is more demanding.
It is to reconnect what should never have been separated:
understanding reality,
structuring action,
strategic vision,
and the ability to mobilize a collective.
Engineers do not only carry technical solutions.
They can also carry organizational logic, sequencing, rigor, method, and transformation discipline.
And the most useful managers are not the ones who drift away from the field.
They are the ones who make the organization clearer, smoother, and more able to turn an idea into impact.
That is also the logic of my book, chapter 11: a high-performing structure does not exist to protect the org chart. It exists to make aligned and effective execution possible.
The lesson for today
At a time when AI, global value chains, speed pressure, and technical density are all increasing, it becomes risky to separate corporate steering from the people who deeply understand systems.
When a company cuts management off from engineering, it loses accuracy.
When it cuts organization off from the field, it loses speed.
When it cuts vision off from execution, it loses impact.
By contrast, when it reconnects these dimensions, it regains three decisive strengths:
coherence,
execution power,
and innovation that stops being a slogan and becomes a collective capability again.
Fayol’s lesson is therefore more current than many fashionable speeches about the future.
Management only creates value when it stays connected to reality.
And in companies, reality is often held by the people who build, test, measure, correct, and understand constraints before everyone else.
In other words: engineers did not only help build products.
They also helped build the way human beings work together around a shared vision.
References
(RTBF) = https://www.rtbf.be/article/la-place-meconnue-des-ingenieurs-dans-l-histoire-du-management-11687758
(OECD) = https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2018/10/oslo-manual-2018_g1g9373b.html
(Britannica) = https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henri-Fayol
(Emerald) = https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/13552529510095134/full/html
(Persee) = https://www.persee.fr/doc/sotra_0038-0296_1986_num_28_1_2030
(Google re:Work) = https://rework.withgoogle.com/intl/en/guides/understanding-team-effectiveness
(MIT PDF) = https://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/Group_Performance/Edmondson%20Psychological%20safety.pdf
