Workplace evolution: From 'cogness' to 'cognition'

The adrenaline rush of individual achievement is undeniable. But when teams get together and score a big win, the exhilaration is at another level altogether. We have talked about individual flow over the past few blogs, and the magical impact it has on performance. Imagine if all members of a team get into the flow state –

• Complete clarity on roles
• Total absorption and passion – in fact a sense of oneness with work
• No sense of time
• Always high on energy levels
• Seamless collaboration
• Ready and waiting for any/every challenge

That level of team synergy can undoubtedly achieve much more than any individual peak performer can. For leaders as well as managers, achieving this kind of team flow is of critical importance. In a highly competitive and increasingly commoditized marketplace, this can be the ‘X’ factor that keeps your business a cut above the rest.

In the next few blogs, Human Intelligence will explore some well-known management theories that have been brought out by leading luminaries in this field – to understand how to make a team click.

The Science of Management

One of the earliest theories of management was the Scientific Management theory developed by Frederick Taylor in 1909. At that point in time, management had very little contact with workers and no sense really of optimizing processes. The scientific management approach, on the other hand, brought in some very revolutionary ideas for those times:

1. Select methods based on science, not “rule of thumb.” Workers should not get to decide the best approach, management should decide it scientifically.

2. Assign workers jobs based on their aptitudes. Do not assign roles randomly. Assess individual capabilities before assigning roles, and train them to work at peak efficiency.

3. Monitor worker performance. Make periodic evaluations of your workers’ efficiency and provide additional instructions when necessary.

4. Properly divide the workload between managers and workers. Managers should be focused on planning and training, while workers should be focused on execution.

Taylor also promoted the idea of a ‘fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work’. A worker who was more efficient needed to be motivated with a higher payment compared to his less productive co-worker. Through his experiments, he also concluded that some people could work more efficiently than others.

The management’s first responsibility was to be able to hire the right people for the right job. While Henry Ford’s assembly line process actually seems to be inspired by Taylor’s Scientific Management theory, Taylor was surprisingly critical of Ford. He felt that Henry Ford had created a force of unskilled workers who were merely “cogs in the machine”.

Theory X and Y Management

It is important for a team leader to know his/her team members well – their background, strengths, aspirations and motivating factors. Douglas Mcgregor’s Theory X and Theory Y are among the most popular theories in the management space.

Theory X makes the assumption that people inherently dislike work and the job is just a way to earn their bread. Therefore, the leadership style for them has to be task oriented and authoritative. They have to be constantly supervised and a carrot and stick approach needs to be followed.

Theory Y, on the other hand, assumes that people may be inherently committed to their work. It also assumes that employees can exercise self-direction and self-control to achieve their organisation’s objectives and do not necessarily need coercion. In this case, managers need to give them clear opportunities to grown and contribute, following a more participative and decentralized management style.

Theory X, with its top-down, authoritarian approach, appears to be more suited to the Industrial Revolution where workers used to operate assembly lines. The very idea is that having a big factory with several tiers of management can work. There is strong centralization and very little delegation. But in large organisations employing thousands of people, such clear process-driven control may become unavoidable. Therefore, the Theory X approach is still followed widely, though we may not hear about it often.

Where do these theories stand today?

Theory X and Scientific Management approaches are both riddled with critical flaws. More recent theories like Management by Objectives, Continuous Improvement and Business Process Reengineering prioritise individual responsibility and try to push decision making at all levels. Experience of senior management matters, but people at every level of the hierarchy need to be heard. The popular approach now is to train people, make suitable interventions to improve their productivity and effectiveness, and then allow them some degree of independence to decide on the best way to do their work (depending on their level of maturity and commitment).

Monitoring is still important, but I firmly believe that people should be able to express themselves at work – rejoice in their successes and learn from their failures.

Moreover, Taylorism is entirely process oriented, instead of focusing on people and teamwork. In the present paradigm where AI is expected to take over most ‘assembly line’ kind of operations, humans cannot hope to be as efficient as machines. They have to take up higher value jobs, deploying more ‘human’ traits like creativity, care, innovation that machines cannot replicate. A top down structure as proposed by Taylor will not work in such a scenario.

I argue that Theory X, on the other hand, may still be relevant, albeit in a different context. Earlier, it was about workers feeling compelled to work for a living. Today, a different kind of dissatisfaction is being observed. This was reflected in a 2020 Mckinsey survey, where 82% of employees felt it was important that their organization had a ‘purpose’. Imagine that! Purpose?

The search for meaning at work is a relatively new idea, according to Aaron De Smet, a senior partner at McKinsey. While the Industrial Revolution was more transactional, more and more employees now take that as a given, and want more. In 2018, a survey of American professionals showed nine out of 10 workers were willing to trade a percentage of their earnings for work that felt more meaningful. This is especially true of Gen Z workers. According to a survey by jobs site Monster, around 70% of Gen Z respondents ranked purpose as more important than pay. They feel that since work occupies most of their waking hours, it must give them the meaning that they are also seeking in life itself.

Huge pay packages are motivating, but not the sole pursuit of people anymore. Another interesting survey by UKG, a US-based human capital management solutions provider, reveals that around 88% of Indians (vs 70% in the US) are willing to trade their high paying jobs for mental wellness. Around 33% of them admit that long working hours were the major cause of stress. Demanding jobs (30%), self pressure (29%) and unreasonable workload (27%) were other reasons cited for stress. Only 51% of them would discuss stress with their manager, and 30% of them would do so once a month.

Employee demotivation and lack of engagement, therefore, is of an entirely different nature in such cases, as compared to the Theory X approach. Therefore, it merits a different approach. Authoritative styles of management do not have the same impact as employees are not desperate to stick to a particular job if it does not suit them.

Task orientation has to be synergized with relationship building, so that every member of the team feels connected to the organization. Instead of viewing them with suspicion and playing ‘monitor’ all the time, management needs to engage with such people and generate interest and excitement regarding ‘bigger picture’ objectives of the organization. Moreover, the mental health of employees is strongly correlated with the overall health of your organisation, and needs a more hands on approach. People are no longer content with just being ‘cogs in the wheel’ anymore.

The next blog will be dedicated to the importance of ‘vision’, how it drives people and makes the difference between good and great organizations.