• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1056 0

For that matter, the way the company and its work were organized also seemed untouched by the passage of time. There are still more than a hundred steps involved in making a pair of shoes, each step done by hand with the help of rudimentary machines. All this handwork helps ensure the shoes’ outstanding quality. But in following this whole manufacturing process step-by-step, from cutting the leather with special knives (a process called “clicking”), to the hand waxing and polishing of the finished shoes, the similarity to nineteenth-century industrial organization was unmistakable. Every person worked at a specific position, repeating the same small operation the whole day, day in, day out, on a timeworn, noisy, and rather dirty shop floor. These highly skilled workers, making some of the best men’s shoes in the world, looked surly and depressed. Many were overweight. The only enthusiastic workers we saw were a new hire, who had asked to master several positions so that he could regularly switch to escape the monotony, and a couple of shoe waxers who—although uncomfortable—were sitting next to each other and chatting a lot.

The CEO of this plant, who runs it for an international corporation that now owns the shoe company, explained that he was fully aware of the situation. He knew of sophisticated machinery to replace the aging equipment in the plant—equipment for which spare parts are impossible to obtain because no one makes them anymore. He was aware of all the modern shoe-making methods, of lean manufacturing and continuous improvement, used, for example, seventy miles north, at Toyota’s Burnaston facility. But he couldn’t change anything, he said, as he was blocked by the opposition of local managers and fear of disrupting production even for one day.

Whether these reasons were true or just excuses for his indecisiveness, the fact is that exactly the same type of organization that Wedgwood and other British industrialists implemented during the Industrial Revolution is perpetuated today in some companies that have the best products in their industries. It’s true, of course, that modern machinery, computers, and a cleaner environment have made their way into many other companies. But in most of them the key principle of Wedgwood’s organization has survived: People are told how to do their work and are controlled and judged on how well they succeed in following orders. Companies have structures to support telling and controlling, and the inevitable “management for the 3 percent” to catch the few who evade the controls. Thus, they create the employee disengagement and incur the hidden costs and underperformance that stand in the way of greatness.

But if the “how” culture is subpar for both business and people, and business is cutthroat, with competitors seeking advantages wherever they can find them, how could such a flawed form of organization persist for so long? Why hasn’t the pursuit of best practices, such as Toyota’s, long ago eliminated the excesses introduced by men like Josiah Wedgwood?

WHY THE “HOW” CULTURE PERSISTS

A famous experiment involving five macaques and a banana—which admittedly may or may not have happened—offers a clue to help unravel this mystery.

The macaques are in a cage. A banana hangs from the ceiling, with stairs leading up to the tasty treat. But the moment the first macaque starts to climb toward the banana, the researcher sprays him—and all the other macaques—with cold water. The macaques quickly get the message: Reaching for the banana—or even letting anyone else do so—is a bad idea. Once they’ve learned their lesson, the researcher replaces one of the five macaques with a newcomer. Sure enough, the rookie spots the banana and heads for the stairs—whereupon he is tackled by the other four, who remember and fear the cold-water treatment. Frightened, he stops his initiative.

Once the newcomer has learned his lesson, another veteran of the water hose is removed and replaced by another neophyte. The process repeats itself, with the first replacement joining in the beating of the new