Yesterday Bandit lobbed an awesome salvo about F.W. Taylor and his theory/practice of scientific management. Despite the fact that management academics have poked fun at Taylor and Taylorism for well over 50 years, managers love it!
Think I’m making this shit up? What about:
BPR (Business Process Reengineering)
TQM (Total Quality Management)
Six Sigma
(SCM) Supply Chain Management
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and for the climax….
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)
More recently, as Roger Martin reports in a Business Weekarticle, the blue-blood management consultancy- McKinsey- has recently declared that the ‘art’ in management is out and that ’science’ is in. That is, McKinsey, in its recent report outlining a blueprint for the future of management, has declared (as if they’ve never heard of Taylor) that management has now become a science.
Martin recalls that when he heard McKinsey’s Martin Baily saying this, with a straight face, at a recent management conference, he was shocked out his post-dinner stupor. What? Baily’s myopic and naive pronouncements prompted Martin to write the Business Week piece.
Now Back to Shoveling (Shit)
In one of Taylor’s time and motion studies, dating back to around 1915, he wrote about the ’science of shoveling.’ If you stand here, and turn three inches to the left, and bend your knees 2.7 inches, then release, you can maximize your output. His famous time and motion studies, sadly, now make up the management handbook for most of the fast food chains in the world. Ever wonder what those pieces of tape around the milk shake machine at McDonald’s are for?
Which begs a question? If (and apparently it has already happened) and when most of the high value-add processes in business are fully automated and scientized, what is left?
This isn’t a whine about automation. Rather, it is a recognition that many if not most business problems that arise are different than those that came before, and thus require new and unique solutions- not formulas. This is why Martin, IDEO’s Tim Brown, GE’s Jeffrey Immelt, and P&G’s AG Laffley suggest that design thinking is so important as a framework for imagining and building things and services that people actually want and needand not things that are cranked out like algorithms and sold down thier throats as the new apple-a-day.
Or, Let’s Make a Deal
We’ll have our machines do most of the work, and when the machines shits out the waste, we’ll give you a call and you can shovel it our back. That’s it! The SSUA (Shit Shovelers Union of America).
Any Takers?
The Butcher
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