Productivity Reimagined

5The Top-Down Knowledge MythMyth: Managers always have the answers and keep workers productive by telling them what to do

In his highly influential 1911 book Principles of Scientific Management, Frederic Winslow Taylor related a story about how he had directed a worker, whom he called Schmidt, to nearly quadruple his output, measured in tons per day of pig iron loaded onto a truck. Taylor’s method was to assign a supervisor to direct Schmidt’s exact movements, and to increase Schmidt’s pay for meeting that target by 60%.

Central to Taylor’s method was his assertion that by observing the movements of Schmidt and other laborers, he could determine the most efficient way of doing the work, which he called the “one best way,” and then instruct workers accordingly.

The directions were very precise. When the supervisor told Schmidt to “walk,” he was to walk. When he told him to pick up a “pig” (piece of pig iron), he was to pick up a pig. When he told him to sit down, he was to sit down.

Taylor honed his approach at Bethlehem Steel, where he was head of engineering. The publication of Principles of Scientific Management made him an overnight phenomenon. Soon he was lecturing all over the world, and lauded in both business and academic communities.

The impact was enormous. Thousands of stopwatch-bearing “efficiency experts” were hired to conduct time-and-motion studies and instruct workers, based not on workplace knowledge but on “scientific” principles. The approach was adopted first ...