Taylorism - The enemy of Agile, DevOps & Lean

Taylorism - A Quick Overview

Have you heard of Fredrick Winslow Taylor? No? Peter Drucker argued that "Taylor more than Karl Marx, deserves a place in the pantheon of modern intellectual thought alongside Darwin and Freud". Yes, he was that influential and you may not realize it but his influence is all around you. Taylor is regarded as the father of scientific management and is also considered as the first management consultant (thus also the father of many Dilbert strips and the TV Series House of Lies :)).

So here is Taylor’s key idea:

‘It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and enforcing this cooperation rests with the management alone’

So what did he do with this? Well, in late 1800s, Taylor started applying this principle to steel factories to improve efficiency. As Steve Spears notes in his book “High Velocity Edge”, his hypothesis being that “the brains of the organization developed optimal procedures for the brawns to employ.” Taylor thought that by analyzing work, the "one best way" to do it would be found. He was also instrumental in defining the concept of “time and motion” study as well as influenced the creation of the famous “Gantt Chart”.

In the steel factories of late 1800s and early 1900s, Taylor became a sought after consultant to improve factory efficiencies. In the subsequent years, the influence of his scientific management proliferated across industries (manufacturing, railroad, education, municipality, automotive, textile etc.) and countries (USA, France, Britain, USSR, Canada). Another trivia - Harvard University offered its first graduate degree in business management in 1908 and based its first year curriculum on Taylor’s scientific management.

So yes, Peter Drucker’s statement does make a little sense. The scientific management method is also referred to as “Taylorism”

Taylorism in Corporate World

So do you see the influence of Taylorism around you? I see it everyday. General Stanley McChrystal in his book “Team of Teams” notes:

Taylorism is embedded in all organizations. At the top we envision the strategic decision making. At the bottom we imagine action by those taking direction. From our conception of leadership to the form of our organizations, reductionism laid the foundation of contemporary management.

That rings so true but as you peel the onion, there is a lot more to it than that. To summarize, here are just few influences of Taylorism around us based on my observation:

1. Functional Specialization: In the name of cost optimization & efficiency, many organizations are functionally specialized thus siloed and disconnected from each other.
2. Top down, hierarchical structures which assumes and enforce the Taylorism view that certain people (based on their title) are responsible for thinking (the brains) and others are to simply follow directions (the brawns). BTW, this also contributes to some "ivory towers" inside the organization.
3. Detailed Processes & Procedures: Numerous detailed frameworks, processes, standards, policies and procedures around us codifies the key Taylorism principle that there is “one best way” to do things.
4. Planning, Procedures & Prevention: In many companies, there is an over emphasis on planning, procedures and prevention. This is another key tenet of scientific management which arguable worked very well in the mostly static world of steel factories of 1800s.
5. Rewards biased to people leaders: In most companies, the HR Processes and principles on rewarding its people are mostly biased towards hierarchical concepts such as people leadership, organizational scope and span.
6. Focus on Time Tracking: Our concept of time tracking for the employees and equating time spent to output is a concept that was core to Taylor’s rationale of “Time and Motion” studies in steel factories.
7. Leaders as People Managers: In many companies, the key role of leaders is assumed to be managers, to manage people. This is again influence of the Taylorist view that people need to be “managed”.
8. Lack of Psychological Safety: There is also a side effect of all of above. The whole system does not encourage an open culture where it’s OK to speak about problems with the system or question it.

Taylorism - The Enemy of Lean

I am not going to spend a lot of time on this as it’s a well documented and institutionalized relationship today - Concepts of lean are almost opposite of Taylorism. Where Taylorism is seen as static optimization of work imposed by “those who know” and “those who do”, lean is about self-reflection and seeking smarter, less wasteful dynamic solutions together.

The very genesis of lean was on the Toyota factory floor where every worker on the floor was empowered to “think” and “act” to improve the overall process and share that learning across the organization. It was very bottom-up philosophy which empowered every worker to “think & act” in complete contrast to the “Top-Down” philosophies of Taylorism. Since then, lean has shown to result in better efficiencies, employee engagement and business successes.

Taylorism - The Enemy of DevOps and Agile

It’s no surprise then that Taylorism would hinder the concepts of Agile and DevOps. After all, Agile and DevOps are based on bringing the “lean” principles to the “knowledge work” that companies engage in.

Here are some key tenets of DevOps & Agile where Taylorism influence called out earlier are hindrances for successful adoption:

1. Cross Functional Team: The value stream approach in DevOps and the concept of “cross functional team” in Agile flies in the face of sub optimization that functional specialization leads to. Functional specialization in Enterprise IT leads to queues, wait times and bottlenecks in the delivery of value to business. Functional silos also hinders knowledge sharing and continuous learning that is a key tenet of both Agile & DevOps. As General Mcchrystal notes:

Shared consciousness in an organization is either hindered or helped by physical spaces and established processes. Often, efforts to facilitate Taylor inspired efficiencies have produced barriers to information sharing and the kind of systemic understanding we needed to pervade our task force.

1. Empowered Workforce: In both Agile and DevOps, there are specific foundational tenets on an empowered workforce where every team member is empowered, responsible and sometimes accountable for thinking, acting and innovating. Many companies organize teams around virtual agile constructs but maintain a top down, rigid hierarchical HR structures that results in a weird matrixed orgs. This results in conflicting objectives and directions and attempts to control the behavior of individuals. Any attempt to manage the individuals or teams is also counter to the concept of “self managed and self directing” teams in both Agile and DevOps.
2. Creativity & Innovation: Again, detailed processes and procedures could work in a static world but in the complex world we live today, the “one best way” does not exist. As Sidney Dekker in his book "Drift into Failure" observes - "Organizations are complex adaptive systems. Control is little more than an illusion.. order emerges from interactions of subsystems." Also, detailed processes and procedures inhibits creativity and innovation among employees with explicit disincentives in the concept of deviating from “one best way”.
3. The new VUCA world: In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world, "Planning, Procedures and prevention" are much less effective than the static, simpler world of the past.
4. Rewarding People: many traditional organizations only have higher paid positions and titles for people leaders only and not for the experts. This codifies the hierarchical concept that the “work” is less important than the management/planning aspect. Of course, many tech organizations have always acknowledged this from very beginning and have has parallel career paths for people leader and experts. Many traditional organizations are just catching up.
5. Focus on Outcomes: Anyone who has worked in IT know that your output is not strictly dependent on the no of hours you spend on your desk. So most progressive organizations hold people accountable for output and not for the no of hours they put in or how many vacation days they take. It’s been shown in many recent studies that detailed time tracking is a hindrance to productivity.
6. Leaders as Enablers: As I mentioned, the key tenet of agile is empowered, self managed teams. That is polar opposite of the whole concept of “people need to be managed” central to Taylorism. Leaders in the modern world need to now pivot to empowering, coaching and encouraging high performing teams. From being people managers, they need to become creators, enablers and sustainers of high-performing teams.
7. Psychological Safety: The Taylorism influence prevents employees from speaking out against the system, questioning it or proposing ways to improve it or even abandon it. This has resulted in many organizations now beset with frameworks and processes (from the waterfall days) that simply don’t work anymore in Agile/DevOps world. And people are afraid to question or change it because their leaders don’t. Though the following observations by Amy Edmondson was for overall organization, it can very well be applied to the world of Enterprise IT:

The same script - unreachable target goals, a command and control hierarchy that motivates by fear, and people afraid to lose their jobs if they fail - has been repeated again and again. In part that’s because it’s a script that was useful in the past, when goals were reachable, progress directly observable, and tasks largely individually executed. Under those conditions, people could be compelled to reach them simply by fear and intimidation. The problem is that in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world, this is no longer a script that’s good for business.

Here is a graphic to illustrate the overall conflict between the influence of Taylorism and Lean/Agile/DevOps:

Parting Thoughts

Don’t get me wrong. Taylorism isn’t without merit and we wouldn’t have made progress in standardization, automation and scaling innovations across the world but for the concepts of Taylorism. However, it’s important to recognize its limit and applicability in a fast changing environment. It’s important to acknowledge and question these influences because it’s key to change things up to achieve the potential value of our Agile & DevOps journeys.

Another thought and a word of caution. The new focus on AI and automation of knowledge work seems very similar to the origins of Taylorism in the factories. Interesting to see where that will lead us to. But that topic is for another day.

References

High Velocity Edge - Steven J. Spear

Team of Teams - Gen. Stanley McChrystal etc.

The fearless organization - Amy C. Edmondson

The Unicorn Project - Gene Kim

Drift into Failure - Sidney Dekker

How is Lean different from Taylorism

Principles of Scientific Management - Fredrick W. Taylor

Fredrick Winslow Taylor - Wikipedia

Scientific Management - Wikipedia