Origins
The group was part of a management science operation within the Army Air Force known as Statistical Control, organized to coordinate all the operational and logistical information required to wage war. Thornton had been recommended to the assistant secretary of War, Robert A. Lovett, by a mutual acquaintance who thought Lovett would find use for the ambitious and energetic Thornton. Upon finding mass confusion, Thornton developed the idea of an information gathering organization within the service, and gained Lovett's support to create the organization, which recruited and trained officer candidates who were selected through intelligence testing. After the war, some of the group discussed opportunities to go into business together.
Thornton wrote to several corporations, offering their services as a group — all ten, or nothing. Henry Ford II had recently taken over the company from his ailing grandfather and, needing management help badly, agreed.
Starting at Ford
The group initially worked together as one organization, the planning department, headed by Thornton. McNamara was Thornton's deputy. Miller focused on reports for senior management, Lundy on financial planning, Mills on facility and program plans, Reith on administrative budgets, and Wright, Moore and Bosworth on administrative issues. Over a few years, they all attracted favorable attention for their work, and some began to move on to other assignments.
The "Whiz Kids" helped the company to implement sophisticated management control systems to govern the company, control costs, and review strategic progress. They instituted modern recruitment and training programs and career planning, aimed to provide Ford Motors with a pool of financial talent.
Robert Strange McNamara was an American businessman and government official who served as the eighth United States secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson at the height of the Cold War. He remains the longest-serving secretary of defense, having remained in office over seven years. He played a major role in promoting the U.S.'s involvement in the Vietnam War. McNamara was responsible for the institution of systems analysis in public policy, which developed into the discipline known today as policy analysis.
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Henry Ford II, sometimes known as "Hank the Deuce" or simply "the Deuce", was an American businessman in the automotive industry. He was the oldest son of Edsel Ford I and oldest grandson of Henry Ford. He served as president of the Ford Motor Company from 1945 to 1960, chief executive officer (CEO) from 1947 to 1979, and chairman of the board of directors from 1960 to 1980. Under his leadership, Ford Motor Company became a publicly traded corporation in 1956. From 1943 to 1950, he also served as president of the Ford Foundation.
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The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is a 2003 American documentary film about the life and times of former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, illustrating his observations of the nature of modern warfare. It was directed by Errol Morris and features an original score by Philip Glass. The title derives from the military concept of the "fog of war", which refers to the difficulty of making decisions in the midst of conflict.
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Whiz Kids, or variants, may refer to:
Whiz Kids was a name given to a group of experts from RAND Corporation with which Robert McNamara surrounded himself, in order to turn around the management of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) in the 1960s. The purpose was to shape a modern defense strategy in the Nuclear Age, by bringing in economic analysis, operations research, game theory, computing, as well as implementing modern management systems to coordinate the huge dimension of operations of the DoD, with methods such as the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS). They were called the Whiz Kids, recalling the group at Ford Motor Company that McNamara was part of in the 1940s and 1950s.
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