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The Errors of Scientific Management

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This is a good, short summary of the main thinking behind scientific management and its core flaws. Scientific management (treating people like robots rather than people) is relevant to us today because it shows exactly how not to treat people. From Treat People Right!: How Organizations and Employees Can Create a Win/Win Relationship to Achieve High Performance at All Levels:

Scientific management called for standardized, specialized, and machine-paced jobs in the name of efficiency and low labor costs. People were expected to add little value beyond their manual labor. Two carrots were used: financial incentives and the threat of being fired. A key assumption was that in return for having a job, people should be willing to act like machines for eight hours a day.

Scientific management has been shown to be highly flawed. Its use in large organizations for decades caused low intrinsic motivation on the part of employees and high rates of turnover and absenteeism, and a strong inclination to solve workplace problems through unionization. Sometimes employees would engage in counterproductive behaviors and even sabotage. Ultimately all of this opened the door to foreign competitors [note what happened to the American automobile manufacturers, beginning back in the 1970s].

Drucker: Do Not Cut Back on Expenditures for Success in Hard Times

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From Management Challenges for the 21st Century:

The most common, but also the most damaging, practice is to cut back on expenditures for success, especially in poor times, so as to maintain expenditures for ongoing operations, and especially expenditures to maintain the past.

The argument is always: “This product, service or technology is a success anyhow; it doesn’t need to have more money put into it.”

But the right argument is: “This is a success, and therefore should be supported to the maximum possible.” And it should be supported especially in bad times when the competition is likely to cut spending and therefore likely to create an opening.

Management Is:

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Here’s a thought on one way to describe what management is:

Managing is turning talent into performance in a way that develops the person in the process.

Using Jott and Evernote Together

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Lifehacker has a good post on how you can use Jott and Evernote together.

Jott is a transcription service. So using the iPhone app, you can use your voice to leave yourself a note, and Jott automatically transcribes it.

These notes need to be processed just like your in box — they are really another in box, in fact. When processing them, the less than two-minute actions should be done right away. Longer than two-minute actions should be put on a list.

But what about the non-actionable stuff you just want to remember? For example, there are a few key things after a meeting that you want to write down for reference, but they aren’t necessarily actionable. That’s where Evernote can be useful. Evernote is basically an electronic notebook, which allows you to group your notes into notebooks, tag them, and sort them by title, date, etc.

The way to use Jott and Evernote together is to email those “reference”-type jotts to your Evernote account. Jott will have already transcribed it, so it saves you that work. Then, once in Evernote, you can title the note, tag it, and put it into the notebook you want. The article shows you how to do this.