Building the Fit Organization by Daniel Markovitz

Author:Daniel Markovitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2016-04-12T04:00:00+00:00

Standard Work Versus “Scientific Management”

Talking about the correct or best way to do a task raises the uncomfortable specter of Frederick Taylor and “scientific management.” In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Taylor espoused the belief that work processes could be broken down and analyzed in order to improve productivity and efficiency. In this regard, Taylor was ahead of his time. However, the singular image of Taylorism is a well-dressed, educated man holding a stopwatch, timing the movements of uneducated, hourly workers in overalls doing unskilled labor, and telling them what to do and how to do it.

TWI’s approach to “standard work” differs dramatically from Taylor’s approach. In TWI, the people actually doing the work define the best way to do it—not an external consultant or a vice president three levels removed. In a fit organization, leaders don’t mandate how work should be done. Rather, they act as coaches if there are problems in following the standards, or they use their power at the top of the hierarchy to eliminate obstacles to doing the work the right way. (Paul Akers, president of FastCap, whom I wrote about in Chapter 1 and Chapter 6, is a model of this kind of leadership.) But ultimately, it’s the people doing the work who are the experts, and it’s they who determine the best way to do the job. Dick Fosbury is a perfect example.

How do they create the standard? In a manufacturing environment, there are three elements they consider: the pace at which they have to work in order to meet customer demand; the sequence of processes involved in producing the product; and the inventory of parts they need to do the job. In an office environment, the parts inventory isn’t relevant, and the sequence of processes may apply only in some instances. Nevertheless, at its most fundamental level, the people doing the work define the simplest, easiest, most intuitive possible process to produce quality work.

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