The Industrial Revolution enhanced manufacturing processes in Europe and in the United States, and brought a huge wave of economic progress beyond the early 1800s. Many people still see this golden era as an inspiration to drive today’s productivity and work structures. But what got us here won’t get us ahead in an age of knowledge and information.
In the early 1900s, Frederick Taylor popularized the theory of scientific management, or Taylorism: applying the use of empirical methods to labor productivity in order to maximize economic efficiency. Workers’ tasks were clocked to the second, recorded, and optimized. Lunch hours and break times were tracked and kept to a bare minimum. To this day, we see vestiges of Taylorism in our corporate culture. Clocking our 9 to 5, and then some. All in the name of clearing more emails. Getting in more meetings. Delivering that extra report.
Here’s where they’ve got it all wrong. In knowledge and information work, the quality and volume of our work is determined by factors beyond the mere amount of time and effort put in by human workers. We are not conveyor belts. The sooner we start acknowledging that all of us are not conveyor belts, the faster we can get to creating and shaping great workplaces.
Great and balanced workplaces begin with the notion that human productivity in knowledge and information work is not rigid and formulaic. It is not a fixed output determined by the input of time and effort. Many other things come into the picture: Inspiration, creativity, understanding the psychology of peak flow states.
We are not conveyor belts. We shouldn’t treat ourselves like one.
Working Woke 