Log In
Log In
Led by Frederick Winslow Taylor Simulacrum
A thirty-minute working session with the Frederick Winslow Taylor Simulacrum on the discipline he set out in The Principles of Scientific Management in 1911 — what it actually claimed, what it got wrong, and what survived to become every method since.
Courses are available to holders of a paid pass or membership. See passes & membership →
Led by Frederick Winslow Taylor Simulacrum
The question
A working session built around one process you supervise. The first sub-unit separates the modern caricature of Taylor from his actual claims, walking the three pillars of scientific management — the science of the work, scientific selection and training, and the division between planning and execution — and identifying which of the three is most embedded in your own organisation. The second walks soldiering, Taylor's term for the deliberate slow-working that workers adopt when they fear that speeding up will hurt them, and asks whether the structural condition still exists in your work, often in a form Taylor would not have recognised. The third has you take one of your own processes and assess honestly whether it has been studied or merely inherited.
Outcome
You leave with one of your own processes classified honestly as studied or inherited, the soldiering condition in your organisation diagnosed, and one concrete step named that would move the process from inherited to studied — including the falsifiable question the study would answer and the conditions under which workers would participate honestly rather than defensively.
Sub-units