In one line: Frederick Taylor’s idea that work can be studied, measured and redesigned like any engineering problem. It is the root of industrial engineering and project management, and also of their blind spots about people.
Core idea
Frederick Winslow Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) [1] argued that “rule of thumb” methods, passed between workers by habit, wasted enormous effort. Management, he said, should take on new duties, which he grouped under four heads:
- Develop a science for each element of the work, replacing rule-of-thumb methods.
- Scientifically select, train and develop each worker, rather than letting workers choose and train themselves.
- Cooperate with workers to make sure the work is done by the scientific method.
- Divide work and responsibility between management (planning) and workers (doing).
His most famous illustration comes from Bethlehem Steel. By studying the loading of pig iron (motion, rest periods and pay), he claimed one worker’s daily output rose from about 12½ tons to 47 tons, with higher wages.
How it works
Taylor’s tools became standard practice:
- time and motion study: measure each step of a task
- standard methods and tools: one best way to do each job
- task allocation and planning departments: planning separated from doing
- incentive pay: pay linked to output
In practice
Taylor’s influence is everywhere in engineering management: work breakdown, labor estimates, standard work, productivity metrics, even timecards and charge numbers. So is the critique.
- Separating planning from doing treated workers as interchangeable parts and threw away their knowledge.
- His own account of the pig-iron worker reads today as condescending.
- Later thinkers turned the idea around: Deming put the system rather than the worker at the center, and Lean and Toyota-style management ask front-line workers to improve their own methods.
The class discussion usually lands on a balanced view: measurement and method are powerful, but only when paired with respect for the people doing the work.
Questions to ask yourself
- Where does my organization still separate the people who plan work from the people who do it, and what knowledge is lost?
- Which of our productivity metrics would Taylor recognize, and which would Deming object to?
- When I estimate a task, do I ask the person who will do it?
Connections
- Descendants: Origins of Modern Project Management, Lean. Counterpoint: Deming’s Quality Philosophy.
- The human side: Situational Leadership. A modern echo: Cross-Cultural Operations.
- Capabilities exercised: Inquiry, Ethical Actions and Integrity, Realizing the Vision.