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| Volume 4, Issue 9 - September, 2005 • Editor’s Note • Beyond Scientific Management In Taylor’s work, you will find the roots of what we attribute to Demming and Juran. There are the beginnings of LEAN, TQM, Re-engineering and much of what we believe to be modern management thinking. Amazing to think that it has only taken us about 90 years to start to implement some of the ideas about which he wrote. Taylor believed that, “The principal object of management should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employee.” I personally believe there is one other component and that is to provide the best value for the client or customer. If we as managers do all three, we are bound to have a winning organization. Taylor suggested that most workers believe that employees and employers are antagonistic if not enemies. (I have been in a variety of facilities where it doesn’t feel like we have made much progress on this front in the last 90 years.) He went on to say that the true interests of both are the same and that prosperity for one cannot be achieved with prosperity for the other. While not wide spread, there is growing momentum for transparency and acceptance of Open Book Management. This is a great step in the direction of building trust between employers and employees and enthusiasm in the mutually beneficial goals of the organization. There is another aspect of Taylor’s work where we have barely begun to tap the potential that exists. Taylor talked about the importance of developing each worker to his state of maximum efficiency so that they might achieve the highest grade of work for which their natural abilities fit them and when possible giving them the particular class of work to which they are best suited. Generally, we hire people to do a job, we may provide training and coaching, but then they succeed or fail pretty much on their own. The truth is that we do very little as managers to help people achieve their maximum potential. We may make opportunities available to them that will help them in their job, but seldom do we help them find their highest aptitude and help them move toward a career in that area. Maybe the best way to explain what I am talking about is to refer to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Abraham Maslow published his first theory of human motivation in 1943 outlining the different levels of human need. He suggests that our first needs are physical and biological and once those are satisfied then we strive to satisfy the next level of need which is security and so on. Over the past 100 years we have seen a workforce that has moved up the hierarchy of needs past working just to survive. We have also extended our life expectancies. Our workforce is older, smarter, better educated, exposed to more than ever before in human history and has access to more information than ever before. We have a workforce that has moved up the scale of needs. At the same time we have seen the amount of information explode. From 1965 to 1995 more information was produced that in the preceding 5000 years. Today we expect knowledge to double every 5 years. Dee Hock, author of Birth of the Chaordic Age advises, “We now live in a world of such complexity, diversity and multiplicity of scales that
there is little possibility of achieving constructive, sustained governance with existing concepts of organization.” “We are at the very
point in time when a 400-year old age is dying and another is struggling to be born, a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously
greater than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, the possibility of the regeneration of relationships, liberty, community, and ethics such as
the world has never known... “. In today’s world if our institutions are to survive and prosper, they are going to have to undergo a tremendous metamorphosis. These organizations are going to have to engage all of the stake holders in a vision that through empowerment helps the people involved move towards self actualized achievement. Our existing organizations are more in line with the comic strip Dilbert than with the ideal. I hope it doesn’t take another 90 years to see some real progress on helping employees achieve maximum efficiency in the highest grade of work for which their natural abiltities fit them. • Reader Question Thanks for the question Stu. If you would like to read my response or submit a response of your own, please visit http://www.takingaim.blogspot.com and post your comments there. If you have a subject that you would like to see covered in future issues of “Taking Aim,” please send me an email at aim@CannonAdvantage.com.
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Development Change Management Customer Service Assessment for ISO Requirements Smart Thoughts from Smart People – "Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sours life; love sweetens it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love anoints its eyes." Harry Emerson Fosdick "It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen." Claude M. Bristol "With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable." Sir Thomas Buxton "There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them." Denis Waitley Taking Aim © 2005 Bob Cannon, The Cannon Advantage Newsletter. All Rights Reserved. The Cannon Advantage visual branding by Zarney Creative. For contact information, click “Resources.” |
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