Frederick Taylor – Management Guru. Part 2.
Watch on KineScope.
Midvale was a group of five or six old buildings in the dirtiest part of the city. Thick black smoke poured from its chimneys into the sky. The workers were rougher than at his last job and the bosses were tougher. But Taylor knew that he could succeed.
His experience over the past few years had made him interested in machines. When Midvale’s owner, William Sellars, asked some of the workers for their opinion of his plans for a new machine, Taylor saw a great opportunity. He took Sellars’ plans home and studied them carefully. He immediately noticed a few problems and over the next few days, he worked late into the night to find some solutions to them.
At the start of the next week, he knocked on William Sellars’ door.
‘What do you want?’ shouted Sellars, when he saw the young worker.
‘I want to talk to you about your plans for the new machine,’ said Taylor. ‘I’ve found one or two problems, I’m afraid, sir.’
‘Oh, have you?’ said Sellars.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Taylor. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve drawn some of my own ideas. I think they’ll solve the problem.’
‘Give them to me,’ ordered Sellars.
Nervously, Taylor gave him his papers. They were the product of several nights of long, hard work.
‘Taylor,’ said Sellars. ‘I believe that I asked you for your opinion of the new machine. Is that right?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Taylor.
‘And when I ask for your opinion,’ continued Sellars, ‘I expect your opinion. I do not expect your ideas.’
Sellars turned away for a moment and threw Taylor’s papers on to the fire in the corner of the room.
‘Do you understand?’ asked Sellars.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Taylor, as his ideas disappeared in smoke up the office chimney.
The bosses at Midvale were certainly tough with Taylor, but they could also see that he was too intelligent to stay in the same job for long. After a few months, they asked him to become the manager of a small group of workers. Taylor was excited. He thought that the workers at Midvale were lazy and he was sure that he could make them work harder.
The workers were immediately worried by him.
‘You don’t expect us to work harder or produce more, do you?’ they asked.
‘Of course, I do,’ he replied. ‘But don’t worry, I’ve got a few ideas to help you. We’re going to start to work scientifically.’
For the next three years at Midvale, Taylor and his workers were at war.
Taylor believed he could find the best possible way of doing every job in the factory. So he studied each worker’s job until he had found a way of doing it more quickly. Then he taught the new way of working to one of the workers in his team. Taylor was a good teacher and the worker was soon working more quickly than before. Unfortunately, the other members of the team didn’t like it. They felt that it made the rest of them look bad. Before long, Taylor found that every member of his team was working at the same slow speed as before. This made him very angry.
‘You’re here to work!’ he shouted at the men. ‘If you work harder, the company will make more money. If the company makes more money, you’ll make more money. When you work harder, it helps everyone. Don’t you understand?’
But the workers didn’t understand and Taylor had to try tougher methods. Now, when he taught a worker a new way of working, he made it completely clear that the worker had to work more quickly. If he didn’t work more quickly, Taylor sacked him.
But, of course, each time a worker was sacked, it made the situation even worse. And it wasn’t long before the workers took more serious action. They started breaking the factory’s machines. Taylor’s bosses were frightened and they asked him to solve the problem immediately. His solution was simple. Each time a machine was damaged, the workers had to pay for it.
The damage to the machines soon stopped, but Taylor’s methods didn’t. On one occasion, he noticed a very small mark on one of the workers’ machines.
‘You’ll pay for this,’ he said to the worker who operated it.
‘But I didn’t do it,’ said the worker. ‘That mark has always been there.’
‘Don’t give me excuses,’ said Taylor. ‘You’ll pay for it.’
The workers in Taylor’s team started to produce more, but his attitude was causing serious problems and his friends started worrying.
‘I don’t think it’s safe for you to walk home at night alone,’ said one of his colleagues. ‘People are saying that some of the workers are planning to shoot you.’
Frederick Taylor laughed.
‘Let them try,’ he said.