Remember the titans: Frederick Taylor, the world?s first management consultant

By Anant Gupta

The seeds of management consultancy, which has now become one of the most sought-after fields, was planted in 1893. Frederick Winslow Taylor, perhaps one of the first management consultants in the world, proudly carried his business card which read ‘Consulting Engineer – Systematizing Shop Management and Manufacturing Costs a Specialty’.

Taylor promoted himself as someone who could engineer change by improved efficiency and management. He had good reason to believe he could, as he was, after all, the founder of scientific management, a powerful technique where science is applied to aid management in improving workforce efficiency and increasing output.

Early days and education

The son of a lawyer, Taylor entered Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire in 1872, where he excelled scholastically. At Exeter, one of his professors used to note how much time each student took to solve a particular problem. Then by calculating the ratio of the average time taken by the students to the time he himself took, he calculated the exact time he should allow the class to complete a similar problem in an examination. Taylor picked this study of ‘time and motion’, to later incorporate in his study of workers and their efficiency. Even though Taylor cleared the entrance examination for Harvard, he was forced to abandon plans for matriculation, as his eyesight had deteriorated rapidly from night study.

Midvale Steel Company

After his sight was restored in 1875, he was apprenticed to learn the trades of patternmaker and machinist at the Enterprise Hydraulic Works in Philadelphia. Three years later he went to the Midvale Steel Company, where, started working as a machine shop labourer, progressing successively to become a shop clerk, machinist, gang boss, foreman, maintenance foreman, head of the drawing office, and finally chief engineer.

At Midvale, Taylor set out to devise methods to extract maximum work from high potential workers. This move was met with resentment from many workers under him, who believed the selection of few high-performing workers would render the remaining men jobless. However, the doubling of productivity by employing Taylor’s methods pleased the management, and they encouraged Taylor to stick with his techniques.

Later on, in a bid to devise a system which would restore relations between the management and the workers, while maintaining the high-level output he desired, Taylor sought permission from the President of the steel company to perform scientific management experiments. In a series of three experiments ranging over a few years, Taylor analyzed how workers responded to different weight loads they had to carry, and the effect on their output when they started to tire out.

By performing precise mathematical calculations along with mathematician Carl G. Barth, Taylor identified the exact workload a man could carry all day long without suffering exhaustion, taking into account the energy expended during a round trip, the motion of the elbows and arms, the weight of the load and other factors. The implementation of the findings led to a dramatic increase in output of each worker at Midvale. Bolstered by his own success, Taylor chose to leave Midvale and opened his own consultancy, advising top management on how to improve productivity with existing or even lesser resources.

His series of experiments and subsequent observations led him to publish his most famous work to date “The Principles of Scientific Management”.

 Principles of Scientific Management

Taylor held the view that efficiency could be improved by assigning the right task to the right person. A person capable of performing a particular task, with sufficient motivation, could well exceed the average worker in throughput. This methodology of scientifically selecting workers and assigning them specified roles led him to coin the term ‘scientific management’. During one of his consulting assignments, at a large steel plant called Bethlehem Steel Plant, Taylor formulated 4 principles of scientific management. They are as follows:

1. Any worker should be scientifically selected with careful scrutiny. Such a worker should dramatically increase his output in the same task, and would consequently receive more pay to perform at a higher level in the specified task.
2. Every worker should be given sufficient training to perform their tasks. No worker should be expected to learn only on the job, since it reduces efficiency and destroys quality. Managers should guide and train employees to increase their output.
3. The manager and the worker should share an equal workload. Manager should be responsible for applying scientific management principles to increase efficiency, and the worker should perform the specified task.
4. Any worker should apply their common sense to perform a task instead of following ‘rule-of-thumb’ method. Each one should seek to maximize their efficiency in the best manner possible.

A case study: The story of the ‘ox-brained’ Schmidt

The above principles were encapsulated in a short story concerning a worker named Schmidt, who happened to have worked at Bethlehem Steel Plant. Schmidt was carefully picked from 75 other workers due to his build to load 47 tons of pig iron, significantly up from the current target of 12.5 tons a day. The decision had been taken after analyzing working habits and motivation levels of Schmidt, which aligned with the management’s expectations. Schmidt seemed to stay fresh even after the day’s work, which involved heavy lifting, was over. Hence he could be expected to lift more weight if asked to do so.

At current wages, he was already planning to build a house and seemed clear that higher wages would motivate him to work harder. The management also considered his intelligence level, which ranged between a brick and an ox. This was acceptable since a more intelligent person might feel higher workload ungratifying and demotivating. The discussion mentioned in Taylor’s book highlighted all these facts, and it was soon established that Schmidt was performing at a much efficient rate when offered slightly higher pay to do so. This led the author to conclude that his method of ‘initiative and incentive’ – where workers show initiative to do more work and receive higher incentives to do so was a success.

A mechanic at Tabor Co. one of Taylor’s flagship companies in 1905. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Impact of Taylorism – then and now

Taylor’s motto of “pay the man, not the job” received polarizing reactions. Taylorism was shunned by the labor unions, as it gave more power to the management in deciding the suitability of a worker. They feared it would lead to more job insecurity among workers, since those workers found unsuitable to improve their output level would find themselves out of job. However, Taylor reassured the union that such men would be relocated to different areas of work, and it would also save the workers from performing at a job which was unsuitable for them in the first place. On the other hand, big business empires, such as the Cadbury family and the Rowntree Company were particularly enthusiastic about adopting Taylor’s techniques.

Many critics found the comparison between the brain of an ox and dull workers like Schmidt insulting. Taylor was also denounced for assuming that a man’s sole motivation for doing more work would be higher pay. However, very few could deny the impact that Taylor’s methods had on production. He was also commended for realizing the role of management in training workers, and equal sharing of workload between them.

In today’s working world, Taylorism, though not profound and very much obsolete, is still the backbone of the engagement process between the employer and the employees. The idea of imparting formal training to employees to improve their productivity, and providing incentives to high-performing workers, has become the staple practice for any firm, all thanks to Taylor.

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Anant Gupta is a writing analyst at Qrius