Lead the means, and results follow.
Manage by Means (MBM) is SAM’s approach to building organisations that handle complexity in a structured, sustainable way. Instead of focusing only on targets and outcomes, we strengthen the means that enable performance: principles, structures, interfaces, capabilities and ways of working. We defined the concept, introduced it in the book Profit Beyond Measure, and have refined it inside client organisations ever since.
You may recognise some of these scenarios.
Most organisations that come to this work are running management models built for stability, in environments that no longer are. A few signs we hear often:
An improvement programme - lean, operational excellence, Six Sigma - started strong and quietly stalled.
Transformations keep failing to bring people’s engagement and commitment along the journey.
Day-to-day decisions rely on detailed control from above rather than shared principles.
Functions collaborate by escalation, and the friction between them slows everything down.
The organisation performs, but adapts slowly, every change is a project instead of a habit.
We strengthen the means that enable performance.
This is an embedded engagement inside your leadership and operations, a way of leading can’t be handed over in a slide deck. SAM brings over 45 years of experience in creating sustainable performance through systems thinking, organisational capability and practical transformation.
We start from how the organisation actually runs.
Go and see, not survey: working inside your organisation, we trace how principles, structures, interfaces and capabilities shape today’s performance, and where detailed control has quietly taken the place of shared direction.
We build shared principles, not thicker rulebooks.
With your leaders and teams we articulate the principles and clarify the interfaces that let people decide well locally: so collaboration crosses functions without friction, and direction holds without micromanagement.
We coach until the culture carries it.
New habits need coaching in real time, at the workstation rather than in the classroom. We stay alongside leaders while the way of working takes hold, so the organisation keeps evolving after we step back.
This way of thinking creates a culture at Scania where strong values and principles give a gut feeling of what works, making it easier to run the organization. Well-established principles guide our methods and our methods naturally yield results.
What changes.
Clearer operational direction, and faster, more local decision-making.
Improved cross-functional collaboration and reduced organisational friction.
A stronger, self-sustaining continuous-improvement capability.
An organisation that evolves continuously while keeping direction and coherence.
The instruments behind the work.
The thinking behind Manage by Means is documented and practised through SAM’s own tools: read first, then lived in the room.
Profit Beyond Measure
The book by H. Thomas Johnson and SAM founder Anders Bröms that introduced Manage by Means.
See method →Jiang: Journey of Learning
A board game that deepens a team’s shared understanding of MBM once the basics are in place.
See method →Principlay
Simulations of real work where principles become visible in practice.
See method →Management System Checkup
A concrete, forward-thinking diagnosis of operations, culture and managing system.
See method →Ready to lead by means?
Tell us how your organisation is led today, and where it strains. We’ll bring nearly fifty years of Manage by Means practice into the conversation.