Frederick Taylor – Management Guru. Part 3.
Watch on KineScope.
Although the Midvale workers weren’t happy with his methods, Taylor was becoming more and more interested in scientific solutions to problems. His eyes were now better and so he decided to return to his studies. But this time he didn’t want to study law at Harvard; instead, he wanted to become an engineer. He started a course at the Stevens Institute of Technology, a local university. The course was hard and it meant that Taylor had to study for three or four hours in the evening after a long working day at Midvale.
As Taylor learnt more about his subject, he thought of ways of using engineering ideas in other areas of life. One of these was tennis.
Because Taylor’s family was so religious, he wasn’t allowed to work on Sundays. But they didn’t mind if he played tennis. So every Sunday, Taylor and his friend, Clarence Clark, practised tennis for hours and hours and hours. In 1881, they decided to enter the US national tennis competition – the event that is now called the US Open. Taylor knew that he and his friend were good players, but he wanted to prepare for the competition in a modern, scientific way.
Taylor realized that a good tennis player needed to be fit. But how could he get fit, when he spent so much time working and studying? Taylor’s solution was simply to reduce his amount of sleep. So, after finishing his studies just after midnight every day, Taylor put on his running shoes and ran for several kilometres through the dark empty streets of Philadelphia. At first, the local police often stopped him and asked him questions. But soon they just shook their heads and said, ‘It’s that strange young Mr Taylor again.’
Taylor also thought hard about the tennis equipment that he was using. He was sure that he could find a way of improving it. During their Sunday practice-games, Taylor and Clark tested several new ideas.
When they arrived at the national tennis competition, people were immediately interested in them. One of the other players pointed at the unusual thing in Taylor’s hand.
‘You’re not going to play tennis with that, are you?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ replied Taylor. ‘Why not?’
‘But it looks like a spoon,’ said the young man. Everybody laughed.
‘Just wait and see,’ said Taylor calmly.
By the end of the competition, the laughing had stopped. Although their equipment was strange, Taylor and Clark didn’t lose a game and became winners of the US national tennis competition of 1881.
Back at the Midvale Steel Works, the bosses were starting to notice young Frederick Taylor. They admired his energy and his tough attitude to the workers. They also liked his ideas for new tools and machines. Certainly, nobody threw his plans on the fire any more! Soon after he finished his course in engineering in 1883, Taylor was made Midvale’s Chief Engineering Officer. In just six years he had gone from the job of an ordinary worker to become one of the company’s top managers.
People outside Midvale were also beginning to hear about Frederick Taylor. In 1890, he was asked to become General Manager of the Manufacturing Investment Company, a business that owned a number of paper factories. Taylor was very pleased. It was a better job and it paid more money. More importantly, it also gave him more opportunities to test his ideas about engineering and management.
But the Manufacturing Investment Company was not really ready for Taylor’s ideas and he was soon having problems with both the bosses and the workers.
The owners of the company were worried about the large amounts of money that he started to spend on new machines and new equipment.
‘The business can’t afford this,’ they told him. ‘We need to make the money before we can spend it.’
But, as always, Taylor had a scientific reason for the spending.
‘Each worker,’ he explained, ‘is worth $3,000. So if a machine can replace a worker and it costs less than $3,000, it makes perfect economic sense to buy it.’
But the owners of the company didn’t agree.
The workers at the company’s factories were also soon angry with Taylor. To make the company’s factories safer, Taylor told some of the workers that they had to work behind bars.
‘You must understand,’ explained Taylor, ‘that this is in your interests. I want you to be safe at work.’
But the workers didn’t see things like that.
‘We can’t work behind bars,’ they complained. ‘What does he think we are? Animals? It’s like working in a zoo.’
Taylor felt that everyone was criticizing him and he became more and more unhappy in his job. To make things worse, the company was not making a lot of money. Everyone agreed that Taylor had lots of ideas, but did they work? The answer seemed to be, ‘No’.
Taylor didn’t know what to do. Should he stay or should he go? In the end, he didn’t have to make a decision.
In 1893, the US economy hit some serious problems. Suddenly, nobody had any money. People stopped buying things. The value of the US dollar dropped like a stone. It was clear that the Manufacturing Investment Company could never be a success. Taylor had to leave and find a future somewhere else.
The next few years were difficult for him. Although he tried very hard, he couldn’t find a regular job. Instead, he sold advice about engineering and management to a number of companies in the north-east of the USA. It was a job that allowed Taylor to see how other companies operated. The more he saw, the more ideas he had. Now, he just needed a chance to test them.