Taylorism: Work Faster!

Summary

Summary of "Taylorism: Work Faster!" Episode of Stuff You Should Know

In the December 17, 2024 episode of Stuff You Should Know, hosts Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant delve into the intricacies of Taylorism, exploring its origins, implementation, and lasting impact on the modern workforce. The episode provides a comprehensive examination of Frederick Winslow Taylor's principles of scientific management and contrasts them with the contributions of the Gilbreths, offering listeners a nuanced understanding of early 20th-century management theories and their relevance today.

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1. Introduction to Taylorism

The episode opens with a light-hearted banter between Josh Clark and Savannah Guthrie, setting the stage for a deep dive into Taylorism. Taylorism, or scientific management, is introduced as a system aimed at improving economic efficiency and labor productivity through systematic studies and optimization of workflows.

Josh Clark [02:25]: "Efficiency was not in and of itself a naughty word on either side of the political spectrum at the time."

2. Frederick Winslow Taylor: The Father of Scientific Management

Frederick Winslow Taylor, born in Philadelphia in 1856, is profiled as a pioneering figure in the realm of efficiency and industrial management. Despite his promising academic trajectory, Taylor's career was shaped by personal challenges, including failing eyesight, which redirected his path towards engineering and management.

Savannah Guthrie [04:11]: "He's a very smart guy and was all set to take Harvard by storm before his eyesight started to fail."

Taylor's tenure at the Midvale Steel Company is highlighted, where his obsession with minimizing movements and maximizing precision led to over 30,000 experiments in metal cutting. This period culminated in his influential book, On the Art of Cutting Metals (1907), considered a seminal text in the metal cutting industry.

Josh Clark [05:50]: "He definitely put his money where his mouth is. And that's how he first kind of got into the idea of becoming an efficiency expert."

3. Implementation of Taylorism at Bethlehem Steel

The discussion transitions to Taylor's most notable application of his theories at Bethlehem Steel. Taylor's approach involved setting ambitious production targets based on his "law of heavy laboring," which proposed that workers could achieve fourfold increases in productivity by following meticulously designed workflows.

Savannah Guthrie [13:08]: "Taylor did, he called the law of heavy laboring."

This aggressive push for efficiency resulted in significant resistance from workers, leading to strikes and eventual legal scrutiny. A fictional character, Schmidt, is introduced as Taylor's ideal worker—meticulous, obedient, and highly motivated by monetary incentives.

Josh Clark [17:42]: "If your manager tells you to pick up that pig iron and take six steps... you do that too, with no back talk whatsoever. That's a high priced man."

4. The Rise of Management Consulting

Taylor's methodologies inadvertently gave birth to the management consulting industry. Companies like KPMG and McKinsey owe their existence to Taylor's establishment of a new profession focused on optimizing business operations through scientific management.

Josh Clark [12:48]: "These huge, just mega world influencing Companies came from this guy basically making up the profession."

5. The Gilbreths and Thurbligs

The episode introduces Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, another duo instrumental in the development of scientific management. Unlike Taylor, the Gilbreths emphasized the humane aspects of efficiency, focusing on reducing unnecessary movements through their concept of "therbligs"—basic units of motion.

Savannah Guthrie [25:56]: "They call these things Thurbligs, which is their name roughly spelled backwards."

Lillian's contribution to domestic science is also explored, showcasing how the Gilbreths extended principles of efficiency beyond the workplace into the home, influencing modern kitchen designs like the famed kitchen triangle.

Josh Clark [34:42]: "They ended up getting a dog they named Mr. Chairman. Like, that was how they ran their family."

6. Criticisms and Downfall of Taylorism

Despite its initial promise, Taylorism faced substantial backlash for its dehumanizing effects on workers. The episode highlights how Taylor's methods often led to deskilling, making workers feel like replaceable cogs in a machine rather than valued employees. This approach undermined job satisfaction and increased employee turnover.

Savannah Guthrie [43:27]: "Deskilling a worker... makes them feel replaceable."

The 1911 House Committee hearing exposed the flaws in Taylorism, leading to its decline in federal facilities. However, the principles of Taylorism persisted, deeply embedding themselves into American industrial practices.

Josh Clark [44:02]: "Taylor certainly won the day. That's just how the economy is in America."

7. Legacy and Modern Relevance

Taylorism's obsession with productivity laid the groundwork for contemporary management practices, including the rise of automation and AI in the workplace. The hosts draw parallels between Taylor's envisioned managers and today's computerized systems that dictate workflows, suggesting a persistent legacy of scientific management principles.

Josh Clark [48:01]: "Computers, AI... they've fulfilled the role of managers that Taylor envisioned."

Moreover, the discussion touches upon the management consulting industry's questionable practices, hinting at future episodes that might explore this topic in depth.

8. Final Reflections and Listener Engagement

Concluding the episode, Josh and Savannah reflect on the broader implications of Taylorism, emphasizing the importance of worker well-being and job fulfillment. They advocate for management practices that prioritize employee happiness as a pathway to genuine productivity and economic success.

Savannah Guthrie [46:29]: "If you invest in your workers' well-being and actual happiness and fulfillment with their job, they're going to work more for you."

The episode wraps up with heartfelt listener mail from Stanley, expressing gratitude for the podcast's role in his life, underscoring the personal connections that such discussions can foster.

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Notable Quotes

• Josh Clark [02:25]: "Efficiency was not in and of itself a naughty word on either side of the political spectrum at the time."

• Savannah Guthrie [04:11]: "He's a very smart guy and was all set to take Harvard by storm before his eyesight started to fail."

• Josh Clark [05:50]: "He definitely put his money where his mouth is. And that's how he first kind of got into the idea of becoming an efficiency expert."

• Josh Clark [12:48]: "These huge, just mega world influencing Companies came from this guy basically making up the profession."

• Savannah Guthrie [25:56]: "They call these things Thurbligs, which is their name roughly spelled backwards."

• Josh Clark [34:42]: "They ended up getting a dog they named Mr. Chairman. Like, that was how they ran their family."

• Savannah Guthrie [43:27]: "Deskilling a worker... makes them feel replaceable."

• Josh Clark [48:01]: "Computers, AI... they've fulfilled the role of managers that Taylor envisioned."

• Savannah Guthrie [46:29]: "If you invest in your workers' well-being and actual happiness and fulfillment with their job, they're going to work more for you."

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Conclusion

This episode of Stuff You Should Know offers an in-depth exploration of Taylorism, presenting both its historical significance and its enduring influence on modern management practices. Through engaging dialogue and insightful analysis, Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant elucidate how early 20th-century theories continue to shape today's workplace dynamics, prompting listeners to reflect on the balance between efficiency and employee well-being.

Transcript

[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

Nobody does the holidays like today. From festive performances and great gift ideas to tips for the perfect holiday feast, join us every morning on NBC and make today your home for the holidays.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck. And Jerry's here, too, timing us, telling us to hurry up, scowling at us even. Which makes this another average episode of Stuff. You should know. She said, get this in 45 minutes on the nose, no more, no less. And then she went and walked out of the room holding a pillow.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Was that me or Jerry?

[Josh Clark]

That was Jerry.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Okay. I'm usually the timekeeper.

[Josh Clark]

Are you? I never noticed with your new swatch.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah, no, I just feel like I'm the one that's like 45 minutes and you're like, no, let's make it three hours.

[Josh Clark]

I don't like three hour podcasts, but I also don't like living under the clock, which is why I probably would not have personally liked Frederick Winslow Taylor.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah. Should we talk about this guy?

[Josh Clark]

I don't think we have any choice. And by the way, this is not a biopic. It's not a biography or a profile. It's about a man that you can't not talk about. But really, this is about his whole system. Okay. I just want to make that clear to you.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Well, I don't want to hear about that guy.

[Josh Clark]

Well, TS you're going to have to.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Big thanks to Livia because she pushed out another banger here. Thanks in part by this great, great article in the New Yorker from Jill Lepore, who Livia calls a genius. Absolute genius, in fact, is a quote.

[Josh Clark]

She definitely is.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Great article. Anyway, I think the setup that Livia gave is kind of worthy of going over a little bit, because when you look at the 1900 through the 1920s and 30s, you looked at an America that was really changing in that these huge Industrial Revolution born industries were all of a sudden like, hey, now we're now we're kind of corporations and now we have middle managers and CEOs and things and it's a little different than it used to be. And so we need to start kind of really thinking about how to squeeze every dime out of this company we can and make these workers. We'll call it efficiency, but between us, let's say, let's call it working them to the bone until they're near exhaustion so we can maximize profits.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I could just hear our left leaning listeners going boo his but efficiency was not in and of itself a naughty word on either side of the political spectrum at the time. Because you could also hope that a more efficient factory or a more efficient workforce or a more efficient whatever would increase productivity, but also give workers like more free time and then ideally a larger share of the profit in the form of higher wages.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Right, that's how that works.

[Josh Clark]

Right, exactly. I mean, I can't imagine a more naive progressive movement than that. But that's exactly what they were hoping for. But not just hoping for, they were fighting for, agitating for it, doing whatever they could, taking it to the courts. Sometimes they were successful. But I think we all know, spoiler alert, in the long run, they lost thus far.

[Savannah Guthrie]

That's right. And a lot of the work being done on efficiency can be laid at the feet of a person and then some other people. But initially at least this guy that you mentioned, Frederick Winslow Taylor, who was from Philadelphia, born in 1856, had an attorney father and abolitionist mother. He's a very smart guy and was all set to take Harvard by storm before his eyesight started to fail. Right after that got better. He may not have gone to Harvard, but he was still a really smart guy and ended up studying engineering at night and became a chief engineer for the Enterprise Hydraulic Works in Philly. And then Midvale Steel Company.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, at Midvale Steel Company. That's where he really made his name. I think that's where he became the chief engineer. And one of the things he did as he was working his way up was he was I guess, out of the gate, obsessed or at least deeply interested with the idea of doing something in the least number of movements, the most precise way, the most foolproof way. And that if you studied a task closely enough and understood it well enough, you could find the most efficient way to do it. And so over like his 26 year career at Midvale, he conducted more than 30,000 experiments in metal cutting, figuring out which tool went with which motion went with, you know, how to grab the tool the best way. And from that he ended up writing a book called on the Art of cutting metals in 1907. And from what I saw for years and years, that was considered like a bible in the metal cutting industry. And so he definitely put his money where his mouth is. And that's how he first kind of got into the idea of becoming an efficiency expert.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah, I think this is a certain kind of brain because I am on that spectrum a little bit and trying to weed out inefficiencies with certain things, but I'm on the side of the spectrum that is also. It comes from laziness. So I'll try and do that because I'm inherently kind of lazy, I think. So I'm like, I look for ways to cut corners to still get the job done.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Savannah Guthrie]

And I've had people compliment me in the old days, like on film sets, like, hey, you know, I see what you're doing there and you're the kid I would hire twice. Whereas the guy next to you who's just like, no, man, let's just make eight trips and just hump it and do it right. He's like, I know he thinks he's getting it done just the old fashioned way. He's like, but you're the guy we would hire a second time.

[Josh Clark]

And your response is like, well, can I go home early?

[Savannah Guthrie]

Probably so. But that was always my aim. But it's interesting that, you know, I had that a little bit in my brain, but not like this guy did. Like, he, he was obsessed with efficiencies such that he thought. And he, he's kind of right in some ways that one of the biggest threats to getting something done in a productive, efficient way was slacking off in what he called systematic soldiering. And I kind of agree with that to a certain degree.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Remember in our Peter Principal episode, we talked about a corollary to that called Parkinson's law, which is like a tongue in cheek law. That work expanded to fill the time allotted.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah, if you're sitting there like making widgets, sorry to be cliche, but that's what I'm going with. Eight or ten hours a day. You're not going to be the most efficient you can be. You're going to be about as efficient, as ambitious as you are. Like, your ambition, how far you want to go, is basically equal in some weird ratio to the amount of efficiency that you produce at your job. Right. So if you're like, I'm happy here, I'm not Going to bust my hump like that guy to go an extra half mile because I'm not going to get anything in return. So I'm just going to do my job at a pace that I find acceptable and that the people I work for find acceptable. And I mean, if you want to call that slacking off or being lazy, fine. And Frederick Taylor definitely did. But it's also just kind of like being a human being, you know?

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah. And to be clear, because I think I. It seems like I might have been mischaracterized here. The film set thing. I was. I wasn't like, let's just do the minimum. I was. I was in a situation in this specific incident where I was trying to do a little extra work by getting a cart loaded rather than just making a ton of trips. And the guys. And he was like, no mess with getting that cart out. Let's just hump all this stuff back and forth. And they were like, hey, guys. Or to me, hey, guy. And I said, my name's Chuck.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Savannah Guthrie]

And they said, hey, Chuck, you're the guy I would hire twice. Because you were taking the time to do it more efficiently. Not like, hey, I admire, like, the lazy side of you.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And they appreciated your soft touch with the donkey that pulled the cart.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Right. But it was lazy in that I didn't want to do all those trips. So that's where it initially sprang from, was I don't want to have to tote all that stuff eight times. Does that make sense?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I think the reason you're. Man, we're really going deep on this. But I think the reason that you're feeling mischaracterized is because you're misusing the word lazy. That's not lazy. That's what they call work harder or work smarter, not harder.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah, but you only do that if you get a little laziness in you.

[Josh Clark]

No, that's not necessarily true. I think it's just sensible.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Okay, but I'm also lazy. Then how's that?

[Josh Clark]

Okay, there you go. But they're not necessarily inextricably tied together in that instance. Okay. Anyway, I don't think what you just described qualifies as laziness. But what Frederick Taylor considered laziness, he called something called systematic soldiering, which I still can't make heads or tails of. It does not make any sense to me. Does it to you?

[Savannah Guthrie]

Well, what does soldiering mean?

[Josh Clark]

I don't know. I mean, you go off and fight battles or you go and follow orders. I don't Know, I don't know what he means.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Did you look up soldiering?

[Josh Clark]

No, I didn't. I just accessed my brain data banks.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Well, I'm going to look it up. Go ahead. We'll do a rare look. Okay, well that's serve as a soldier or to. Aha. Oh, well no, that doesn't make any sense either. Like soldiering on.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Persevering. Yeah. Doesn't make any sense to me officially as well.

[Josh Clark]

It makes no sense because that was his term, systematic soldiering.

[Savannah Guthrie]

I would call it systematic leaning against something.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, right. That's what he called slacking off. And like this guy was an aristocat through and through. Right. His mother's family came over in the early 1600s, I think to America. So like he was a wealthy blue blooded Quaker boy who, because his parents were like do gooders, his mom certainly was. She was a suffragette, an abolitionist. He was raised to care about humanity, but he also didn't have that spark of compassion that it takes to care about humans individually. So he cared about creating a better society for humans. But he couldn't really help but look down on other people he considered lower than him, including immigrants. So he did notice things like, you're not working as hard as you can, I'm going to see to it that you work harder. And he felt totally comfortable with filling that role. And he actually created that role for himself to fill, which is pretty remarkable if you ask me.

[Savannah Guthrie]

That's right. So he was at Midvale and he sort of started breaking down the operations of the jobs that they had there at Midvale. And he was like, you know, there's some elementary operations that happen here. So we're going to form an estimating department where we're going to sit around and do time studies, which he got from class at Phillips Exeter. And we're going to time workers doing all these little small tasks. We're going to add that up to the, to the hole and kind of average it out and say, hey, you should be able to do this in that amount of time and we'll adjust accordingly, we'll incentivize accordingly. And he said, and you know what else? This is now a new career. I'm going to be a consulting engineer in management and I'm going to charge you to tell you how bad you're doing things.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And so those management companies like KPMG and McKinsey, they would not exist ostensibly had Frederick Taylor not created that field. Like that's what he created. These huge, just mega world influencing Companies came from this guy basically making up the profession.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah. And you know what, we should give a good example here because what he was really most, or not most well known for, but something he became very well known for, was his work at Bethlehem Steel. And he started looking at the process of loading iron onto rail cars, pig iron, and said, all right, we need to figure out how much of this stuff is reasonable for one of these men to load onto a rail car. The average right now is 12 and a half tons a day. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to get 10 large, powerful Hungarian workers and say, hey, load as much as you can as fast as you can. 16 and a half tons is your goal. And they did that in 14 minutes, whereas 12 and a half tons was the daily rate for their average worker. So that's 71 tons in a 10 hour day. He rounds it up to 75 and then said, yeah, but you know what, People get tired and they need breaks. So let's whack off 40% of that and we'll just make. We'll just call it even. At 47 and a half tons per day, which is four times as much as you've usually been doing. That's the new expectation.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And that thing about people getting tired, he called the law of heavy laboring. And from what I can tell, he made up that law that I just put into scare quotes. And this is a really good example of what he did. Like, he was supposed to be precise in finding like ultimate efficiency, but he was arbitrarily rounding up and arbitrarily coming up with 40% off based on this law that he made up. And now you kind of start to get to see like behind the veil or like the meat that's on the bones. I don't know the analogy I'm looking for, but you can pull back the curtain, that's the one. And see that this stuff is actually not what Frederick Taylor cracked it up to be.

[Savannah Guthrie]

The Great Oz.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Not so much.

[Josh Clark]

Right. It wears no clothes.

[Savannah Guthrie]

All right, so when this happened, some people said, I ain't doing this. They quit. They got fired. Some people tried and couldn't do it. Some people were so tired from trying to load that much or that they couldn't come back the next day. And things got really heated. He hired armed guards to walk him home at night. Taylor did, because he was so worried. And then he said, all right, I'm going to create a new fake scenario. And this is something that I've Seen businesses do that. I hate when they create, like, you know, here's our worker Todd, and Todd, you know, and it's all just made up bs. And that's what he did with Schmidt.

[Josh Clark]

Here's the thing, though. So Schmidt, yes, was a fictional invention essentially of Taylor's making. But he went around the country giving this lecture or wrote in his books, like as if Schmidt. This actually happened about Schmidt. Yeah, that was a great movie. I really felt uncomfortable when he made a pass at the wife of the friendly couple that he met. Other than that, I thought it was a great movie. Yeah, I think at that point that was actually just an outtake of Jack Nicholson doing his thing.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Keep rolling the cameras. This is great.

[Josh Clark]

So he put out there that the Schmidt character was a real deal thing, not a made up thing, not a made up anecdote to prove his point. And he actually did consult at Bethlehem Steel where Schmidt supposedly worked. But the upshot of all of it was this. There was this guy named Schmidt who is known to work very hard. And he was also very motivated by money because he was building his own house and he needed as much money as he could get to build said house.

[Savannah Guthrie]

But not too bright, right?

[Josh Clark]

Not too bright. That's a really important point that Taylor would hammer home any chance he got. This guy was sluggish, mentally speaking is the way that he put it. But he got through to him with a pep talk. Whereas essentially he said, are you a high priced man? And Schmidt was like, I don't know what you're talking about. And when he wrote about Schmidt, he. He like replaces W's with V's and stuff. He's a German immigrant. And he said, well, this is what a high price man does. He does everything that his manager tells him to do. If your manager tells you to pick up that pig iron and take six steps and then set it down over there, you do that. If your manager tells you to sit down and rest for 90 seconds, then after 90 seconds, he tells you to get up and then go grab that piece of pig iron. You do that too, with no back talk whatsoever. That's a high priced man.

[Savannah Guthrie]

You want to be a Mr. Big Boy Pants.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. And high priced men make more money. So we'll give you not just the $1.15 an hour that you're making, we'll give you $1.85 for making this 47 and a half ton quota. And all you have to do is do what your manager tells you. And this is the other thing that I guess Frederick Taylor revolutionized, in a way, he divided the workforce into two parts. Managers who had the brains and did the bossing around and workers who were, according to Taylor, meant to do exactly what their managers told them. And if you put the two together, you would have the most efficient way to say, like load pig iron onto a railroad car.

[Savannah Guthrie]

That's right. In this anecdote that he, you know, sort of preached around as if it were real, he said, then I did this. It worked so great. Schmidt was so happy and rolling in doe, Right. I got all of his co workers to jump aboard because I showed him what a Mr. Big Boy Pants look like. And everybody wanted big boy pants. And so everybody, as long as you just do what your boss says, then you're going to make more dough and forget the fact that I'm choosing the very strongest workers to set the standard for everyone. And then in 1911, a US House committee said, yeah, but we can't just forget that because you can't just pick the strongest worker and say that's the standard for everyone. And so he got into a bit of a tit for Tatum in that committee meeting, I guess, with Chairman William Balshop Wilson. And he said, what about if you don't have big boy pants men on your staff or all big boy pants men? And he said, well, it has no place for a bird that can sing but won't. And he kind of got smacked down for that because he was just lifting lines out of books that he had written.

[Josh Clark]

Well, yeah, Also, William Wilson said basically, like, we're not dealing with singing birds. We're dealing with men here who are part of society and for whom. For whose benefit society is organized. Right. So you can't, essentially, you can't treat people like automatons and drones and robots. You have to consider them as human beings. And the lines from his book that you mentioned, apparently Jill Lepore reported that he did so poorly in this committee hearing that, by the way, if you want to ever be nervous about a committee hearing, you have to go testify at, go to one that's literally named after you. This hearing was called the House Committee to Investigate Taylor, Not Taylorism, Taylor and Other Systems of Shop Management. And so he actually ordered one of his underlings to go steal William Wilson's copy of his book and I guess wasn't successful and just kind of went ahead with the terrible testimony. But as we'll see, he used it to turn bad publicity into any publicity, which is good publicity.

[Savannah Guthrie]

That's right. The long and short of it with Bethlehem Steele, at least was that they fired him. They quit the tailors and methods that he had brought in and he said, all right, pay me $100,000 and we'll call it even. Which is about three and a half million bucks today. And that's probably a good time for a break, eh?

[Josh Clark]

Agreed.

[Savannah Guthrie]

All right, we'll come back and move on from Taylor for a moment to talk about the Guild breaths right after this.

[Josh Clark]

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[Josh Clark]

Okay Chuck, you mentioned that we're going to talk about the Gilbreath, so I say we do that now. We're talking about Frank and Lillian Gilbreth and anyone who has ever read the book or seen the movie or the remake, Cheaper by the Dozen. This is the family that that movie and that book were based on. Frank and Lillian Gilbreth were one of the more amazing, interesting couples that came out of the 20th century.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah, for sure. And two of their kids wrote that book in 1948. And it was fun. It's a classic for a reason. They remade it for a reason for sure.

[Josh Clark]

To make money.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Frank was a bricklayer in his earlier life. And he was one of these people that thought, including two, but not limited to cat skinning, that there was one best way to do any task. And so he was one of those guys where he was like, hey, that scaffold for laying bricks is kind of great. But what if there was a shelf on the scaffold for those bricks and mortar and you don't got to bend over and pick that stuff up? And what if you had some really low paid laborers that would stack the bricks on the frames for them, positioned in the right direction so they don't even have to turn the bricks, like, really drilling down on these efficiencies.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And it seems like Frank kind of came up with this. This interest independently of Frederick Taylor, even though he and Lillian and Taylor would essentially form kind of a cadre of cohorts, I guess.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Whoa.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Savannah Guthrie]

What a band name that is.

[Josh Clark]

This is like an independent thing. This is an independent. These were two independent groups who eventually came together because they helped develop this field out of thin air. So what the Gilbreths did, Lillian and Frank. Together, they formed the Gilbreth, Inc. A management consulting firm. They got really, really in the weeds about the movements it took to carry out a task. And they figured out that you could break any task down into 18 different kinds of movements. Right. So you're not necessarily going to have all 18, but no matter what task you're talking about, it's going to be made up of no more than those 18 specific kind of movements. Things like searching for an object with your eye, grasping an object, reaching for it, disassembling it. And they call these things Thurbligs, which is their name roughly spelled backwards.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Do you think when they met Taylor initially, they were just like, oh, my God, you're into efficiency and so are we. And Taylor said, I think you mean a fish. And they just, like, fainted.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I think. Right. They're like, you're our guy.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah, Thurbligs. So they were also big into rich hall and Snigglets. Not to date myself. But, yeah, they made up a word and they said, any action you can take is a Thurblig. And we want to get rid of as many therbligs as possible to make efficiency the most. To maximize it as much as one possibly can.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And to do that. So they would use their kids. They ended up having a dozen kids, 11 of whom made it to adulthood. One of them died at age five of diphtheria, sadly. And I don't know how, but they plan to have six boys and six girls. And I think they were successful at that. No idea how they did that, because we're talking about the beginning of the 20th century.

[Savannah Guthrie]

It's called luck.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Because there is no way to do that.

[Josh Clark]

And they decided to raise their kids under these principles of efficiency. But they weren't weirdo clinical types. Like, this was a tight, cool family. Like, the kids were participatory. Like, they would have family meetings, and each kid had a vote. And so they would have a family meeting, and someone would put forward a motion. Like, I say we get a dog, and someone would second it. And then they put it to a vote. And then, you know, the ayes had it. So they ended up getting a dog they named Mr. Chairman. Like, that was how they ran their family. But they were all very focused on efficiency because they were obsessed with it, but not in a deleterious way or a deleterious way. They were. I guess the best way to put it is Lillian was searching for the most efficient way to do something so that you have more free time to go do happy things. She said, so it can increase your happiness minutes, essentially. So it was a really different viewpoint of the same thing compared to Frederick Taylor.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah. I mean, Taylor you kind of talked about a little bit early on, but he did think it was a win win. He was like, this is great because it'll run more efficiently and it'll trickle down, essentially. They didn't call it that yet, but that's sort of the same notion, that it'll just trickle down to the worker, all this efficiency, and they'll get better wages and stuff will be cheaper and stuff like that. Management will never, ever take advantage of that and make you work harder just to increase profits.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly.

[Savannah Guthrie]

And of course, that's exactly what happened in every case. But I don't know. Like, I'm kind of wondering about Taylor's heart and, like, what was in there, you know?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, I think I explained it already. I'm sticking with my idea.

[Savannah Guthrie]

I don't know. I think he's one of those guys that was so brain obsessed on efficiency. I don't know that he had, like. I don't know if he thought that part through such that he was like some evil person set out to exploit a worker.

[Josh Clark]

No, I don't think he was evil. I don't think that he set out to exploit workers. But I think even after he saw what his invention was being used for, he was indifferent to that. And that says volumes about him. He never denounced it, he never called people out for misusing it, and he actually helped foster its misuse to exploit workers. So I think he was a bit of a misanthrope, not evil. And that wasn't ever his intention to be evil. But when it turned kind of evil, he was. He was like, sure, let's keep going if you guys are giving me money.

[Savannah Guthrie]

I wonder if he might have been in an age where there weren't certain diagnoses available for what he, you know, may have had going on.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, maybe. For sure. I mean, it's possible, I think, that we're barreling toward a future where every single person has a diagnosis of some sort or another.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah, maybe.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it'll be interesting.

[Savannah Guthrie]

You mean, like there's no perfect person and everyone has an issue that they're dealing with?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think we already know that, but we haven't come up with a label for every single one of those types of issues that people are working with. That's the difference that I'm talking about.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I don't know. I think sometimes that thing empowers people.

[Josh Clark]

I agree. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. I'm just interested to see where we're going. But, yes, I agree. We've. We've in large part, as a society, scuttled the idea of the Ubermensch. And Nietzsche is very unhappy about that.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah. You know what Nietzsche can do?

[Josh Clark]

What?

[Savannah Guthrie]

I'll tell you all fair.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Ironically, though, it was a Supreme Court justice who we've talked about, I feel like, quite a bit on the show, who kind of bumped Taylor up to celebrity status.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Savannah Guthrie]

How did we pronounce his name the first 25 times we said it?

[Josh Clark]

It's Brandeis.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Okay, that sounds right.

[Josh Clark]

Like light ice, but a little different.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Right. Like Bud ice.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Didn't Miller Light have an ice, too? Didn't everybody have an ice for a while?

[Savannah Guthrie]

Light ice? I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

No, I screwed it up then because I should have said Bud ice, but, yeah, that's what I was going for. I know. Milwaukee's best head in ice.

[Savannah Guthrie]

What was the deal with that? Icebrood. What even was that?

[Josh Clark]

I think it got you tanked faster.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Really?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I think it had something. It messed with the alcohol content or the way it was delivered or something like that.

[Savannah Guthrie]

So you had to drink 17 Miller Lites instead of 14, right?

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. No, the opposite. You had to drink 12 instead of 14.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Okay. All right. Anyway, back to 1910. Brandeis, Louis Brandeis, the Supreme Court justice called a meeting with the Gilbreths and the Taylorites. Taylor couldn't come, but he sent his representatives and said, I want to talk about what I'm calling scientific management. And I am concerned because I see what's happening with big business, and I think it's getting out of hand. I want to break up these monopolies. And I think the consumer and the worker should be served. And I think I called one couple here who's probably interested in that, and another group of people who sounds like they probably aren't.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And Brandeis is ironic because he was dyed in the wool, progressive, like you said. He was worried about big business. And so the idea that he's the one that made this concept that's historically viewed as exploitive of workers famous and, like, introduced to the world and essentially gave it its, like, breakout moment, it's just terribly ironic. But the whole basis of that is that he was arguing before the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was holding hearings on railroad rate hikes. The railroad says, stuff's getting expensive. We need to increase the prices that we charge to carry freight, to move freight. And of course, that has cascading effects all throughout society. And prices were going to go up, and Brandeis represented a bunch of companies that were going to have to pay those increased rates. And Brandeis argument was that the railroad companies don't need to raise their rates. They need to get more efficient. And here's how they can do it. This guy named Taylor has figured out a scientific way of getting more efficient, and that's how they can keep their prices low and still keep their profits high.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah, and there was a lot of press coverage on this. And this is really what pushed Taylor over the edge as far as becoming kind of famous for what he was doing. And that is the year. I'm sorry, the next year is when he put out the Principles of Scientific Management, which was probably easily the biggest business book maybe of the 20th century, but at least the first half of the 20th century.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. And he was riding on the publicity from that Interstate Commerce Commission hearing. But also that congressional hearing that came, I think, later that same year, he saw an opportunity to get his name out there, even though his name was kind of being dragged through the mud.

[Savannah Guthrie]

That's right. And one thing about Taylorism that we would learn soon enough. And I guess Gilbrethism. Did they even call it that?

[Josh Clark]

No, I don't think so. They weren't those types.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Well, I'm going to call it that. Gilbrethism was that it didn't have to be kept to the workforce. Because Lillian Gilbreth found herself alone for the last 48 years of her life when Frank died of a heart attack at the age of 55 in 1924. And she said, all right, don't tell anybody. I'm no homemaker myself. Not into it at all. I don't even do the cooking in my house. But I think I can shift these efficiency ideas to the house and make the home place a more efficient workplace for getting everything done from like vacuuming to baking biscuits.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Have you ever heard of the work triangle in a kitchen?

[Savannah Guthrie]

Oh, yeah, that's a. That's a classic kitchen chef thing.

[Josh Clark]

She came up with that as far as I know.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

For those of you.

[Savannah Guthrie]

I did not know that, but. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But for those of you who don't know what it is, the kitchen triangle is like the. The places where you do the most work. And so the idea is that they should be all within a step or two from one another. The sink, the oven, and the ice cream maker. I don't remember what the third one is. The dishwasher.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Dishwasher. Interesting.

[Josh Clark]

I think those are the three today, at least.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

So anyway, she came up with that. If you have a kitchen island, you can thank her. I've seen. So, yeah, she just kind of pivoted because people were finding out that there was a woman that ran Gilbreth Inc. The management consulting firm, and were just walking away from their accounts because it was run by a woman. So she had no Choice. She had 12, 11 kids to raise and had to provide for him. She wanted to send them all to college. So, yeah, she pivoted to Home ec. But it wasn't just her. It's not like she invented Homec out of whole cloth. It was already being developed by a very famous, or should be famous lesbian couple, Flora Rose and Martha Van Rensselaer. Rensselaer. Yeah. Rensselaer. Right.

[Savannah Guthrie]

I have no idea how to pronounce that.

[Josh Clark]

R E, N, S, S, E L A E R Rensselaer. Yeah, that's what I'm going with. And the reason I specifically called them out as a lesbian couple is because they were out as a lesbian couple in, I believe, the 1920s or 30s. I had a. I mean, you just did not do that. And they were like, say something. Just bring it. And they just went on challenge for their lifetime, from what I knew. But they wanted to turn working in the home into something scientific, domestic science, which kind of elevated its status as well as made things easier for the woman working in the home.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah. And eventually you could even find Taylorism in public schools. And it's interesting to think of it this way. There was a Massachusetts superintendent who told the National Education association that educators needed to analyze the returns of their investment rationally. We ought to purchase no more Greek instruction at the rate of 5.9 pupil recitations for a dollar. The price must go down or we shall invest in something else. And it sounds silly, but I get that. It just sounds like a funny way to talk about it. But it's basically like we need to invest in these kids, the things that really matter. And not necessarily reciting a Greek poem or something like that.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. The only question is, who decides what really matters? And I think one of the things about that is that at the time when that guy was talking like that, kids in public schools were viewed as being trained and molded into the workers of tomorrow. So it was the government and the economy who decided what was important. And, yeah, we weren't making a lot of money off of reciting Greek poems, like you were saying. So that would get scuttled in the face of, say, I don't know, shop class, maybe?

[Savannah Guthrie]

What class? Shop.

[Josh Clark]

Shop. Yeah.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah, I had shop. We didn't have a car auto shop, though. Did you guys have that?

[Josh Clark]

No, I was just fascinated by that. They had one on Saved by the Bell, and I always thought that was the coolest thing.

[Savannah Guthrie]

It felt like something that was in generations previous to us. We just had shop class where you made lamps and stuff like that.

[Josh Clark]

Well, there was a huge shift in the American economy from car making to lamp making in the early 80s, so I'm sure that's what the result was.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Shall we take our second break or.

[Josh Clark]

Soldier through systematic Soldier? Yeah, I say we take our second break.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Okay, let's do it. We'll be right back.

[Josh Clark]

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[Savannah Guthrie]

Okay, we're back. By the way, I think the kitchen triangle is probably the fridge and not the dishwasher would be my guess.

[Josh Clark]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I forgot about the fridge. Yes, yes, absolutely.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Thank you. I bet you're right though. I bet it's sink, stove, oven and fridge would be my guess.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. Yeah, I think you're right.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Cause what if you don't have a dishwasher?

[Josh Clark]

Right? And I'm sure that she didn't have a dishwasher in the 1930s and 40s. So you know. Yeah, so you're right, Chuck. Just say it again.

[Savannah Guthrie]

I think it was the fridge.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Savannah Guthrie]

All right, so we're going to talk a little bit about just sort of what did Taylorism accomplish ultimately? There is a lot of irony in that. A lot of it was so scientific, supposedly, but a lot of the stuff was made up or just sort of made up or kind of a sham. This wasn't new. Stuff like timing people on tasks and teaching people to do more specific things had been around for a long time. But one of the effects of Taylorism is definitely like, you know, deskilling a worker, making them feel. And not that working is all about emotions, but you don't want to make your employee feel like a robot that can be replaced by a robot. You want to give them a little bit of agency, ideally in a job, and not just say, move your body this way, move your hand that way, punch that thing, and then return back to position one.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And so deskilling workers, taking away the overall understanding of making, say, like an oven and just giving them the one job of putting the door on the oven as it's coming down the assembly line, not only does that take away from job satisfaction, it also makes you way more replaceable. Because you don't have to train somebody to build a whole oven. All you have to do is train them to put that oven door on, and then you train somebody else to put the thermostat in the oven and so on and so forth. And you, the owner of the factory has that oven you want, but you have a bunch of replaceable workers that you can pay fairly low wages even combined, compared to somebody who builds the oven from scratch. That is a huge, like you said, that was already underway. But Taylorism and the fact that it was so pervasive and widespread, especially in America in the first half of the 20th century, really solidified that as like a basis of the American workforce.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah, Another effect. I mean, I guess we've kind of said it in several different ways from the beginning, but the idea that the Gilbreaths had that there would be a happiness quotient involved and where you could work more efficiently so you could just have more time and better wages to spend with your family. It just, you know, it didn't work out that way. Even though the whole idea of Taylorism at its base isn't inherently anti worker, it sort of ends up being that way when the profits are being spread around the top tier and all they want is more and more of those profits.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. And so to be clear, it wasn't like every single time Taylor showed up, like, that's just how it went. There were some successful pushbacks over the years. There's one specifically at the Watertown Arsenal in Massachusetts in 1911. They made guns. I Think for the government it was a federal arsenal. And Taylor sent one of his emissaries, essentially told him to just make up a number. You don't even need the stopwatch part. And I think word of that got out and really kind of undermined that. But also just the process of being timed, doing your job. One of the workers said, I'm not doing that, you can't time me. And he was fired on the spot. And the rest of the workers were like, oh yeah, well, we're going on strike. And they ended up being successful because again, this was a federal arsenal. And those congressional hearings to investigate Taylor, one of the results of them was that the US federal government banned Taylorism from being used in any way, shape or form in any kind of federal facility or agency. Yeah, but, but overall, I mean, Taylor certainly won the day. I mean that's, that's just how the economy is in America and other like minded countries. Like, even though we've kind of walked away from it overtly, it's just gotten more and more entrenched over the years rather than further and further away.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, probably the most, you know, the biggest contribution was it just raised the awareness and an obsession with productivity. And productivity is great, it's not like that's a bad thing. But again, like when you're dealing with human beings to feel like a cog and to feel completely replaceable, there's no way, like you're not serving your own purpose as a, as a business owner because you're not going to have good and happy employees ultimately. And replacing employee after employee, even if you're just training them to put the oven door on, that's still an inefficiency, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Right? No, for sure. And yeah, that's a really great point.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Like you want to keep employees.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But I'm sure some bean counter at some company somewhere was like, no, you still make more money firing and training employees than you do making them happy. Although that seems to not be the case. I was reading up on management consulting, which I think deserves its own episode down the line because apparently it's just totally fraudulent. So I think it'll be a really great interesting episode. But some studies have shown from what I saw just briefly reading about this, that the happier your workers are, or I should say economies that have happier workers like more fulfilled workers typically have, they're richer for the most part. I guess America is an outlier because I think overall workers are not necessarily happy with their jobs or lack of job. But supposedly if you invest in your workers well being and actual happiness and fulfillment with their job, they're going to work more for you, they're going to work harder because they care about what they're doing.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Totally.

[Josh Clark]

So totally. Yeah. And then one of the other big things that shows that Taylorism is still alive and well today, Chuck, is computers, AI, whatever you want to call it, they've fulfilled or they're fulfilling the role of managers that Taylor envisioned. So remember, the manager was in charge of figuring out the best way to do something and then instructing the worker to do it exactly that way at exactly that time. That is what computers do today for workers, which is a bizarre reversal of authority, I guess, if you think about it. But that's the way it is. Especially in places like, you know, big warehouses or call centers, there's computers essentially running the show.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah, for sure. And it created the management consultant industry. I think we should do one on that. I don't, I'm sure you remember, and I won't be very specific here, but because we've been owned by a lot of companies over the years, but one of one time one of the companies that owned us hired a dude that came in and we were like, who's this guy? And so I can't remember someone who knows how these things work took us aside and they were like, he, he's. I guess I don't know if he was a management consultant or what his official job was, but they're like, his job is to come in here and fire people and rip this place apart and then probably get a nice exit and move on to another job where he'll do that exact same thing.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. That's what the industry does.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Do you remember that guy?

[Josh Clark]

No, I don't remember that guy.

[Savannah Guthrie]

You gotta tell me, I'll remind you. Off air.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, please do.

[Savannah Guthrie]

I know Jerry's like screaming his name off air right now.

[Josh Clark]

Just one last thing. Do you have anything more about Taylorism?

[Savannah Guthrie]

Uh, no.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, great. Well then I do have just one last thing. If you want kind of a light hearted look, a comedy with heart at efficiency, check out the 1991 film the Efficiency Expert, starring Anthony Hopkins.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Oh, I thought you're gonna say gung ho.

[Josh Clark]

That was, yeah, kind of a different one, but yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of crossover, for sure.

[Savannah Guthrie]

What's this Tony Hopkins picture? What is it?

[Josh Clark]

The Efficiency Expert. It's exactly what you just described. And he ends up in a, I think a factory where the workers make. They change his view of Things, I think they kind of turn him around.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Oh.

[Josh Clark]

If I remember correctly, I haven't seen it before.

[Savannah Guthrie]

That wouldn't have worked with the other guy that I mentioned. He was unflappable.

[Josh Clark]

Well, anyway, we're about to end. Well, wait, hold on. We got to do listener mail, don't we?

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah, and then I'll tell you.

[Josh Clark]

By the way, Chuck, I gotta tell you that we ended on 45 minutes on the nose.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Holy cow.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. Way to go, champ. Oh. Since I said way to go, champ, of course that means it's time for listener mail.

[Savannah Guthrie]

This is just a nice thank you. Hey, guys. Heartfelt thank you. Started listening in 2012, and my time, although my time spent listening to podcasts has fluctuated, yours has been one of the constants. Started listening to keep my mind occupied when I had hours of mundane tasks in the lab where I worked after college. And I've continued to listen through a career change, relationship changes, getting my first dog, Luna. He sent a picture of Luna and becoming a homeowner. I'm listening still as I'm planning a second career change and going through a little lonelier stretch of my life. And your podcast has kept me laughing and feeling connected to the world through challenging times, and I sometimes feel like there isn't the right combination of words to express my gratitude completely.

[Josh Clark]

I feel like they just put those words together.

[Savannah Guthrie]

I feel like you're right. Some of my favorite moments in recent shows have been Chuck's throwaway line about a fairy hoax confession happening at a Men Without Hats concert that got Josh Chuckle not once, twice, but three times. And in the 15th annual Sysk Halloween Spooktacular, the curious sound like laughter, yet not laughter that Josh made, which sounded like it had Chuck literally crying with laughter, which is absolutely true. That may be the most I've ever laughed at something that you did.

[Josh Clark]

I think it is, man.

[Savannah Guthrie]

I hope that you know, for some of your listeners, your podcast has been as meaningful to us as the Simpsons or Peanuts may have been to you.

[Josh Clark]

Wow. Wow. Wow. Who was that?

[Savannah Guthrie]

Stanley knows how to drive it home. He signs it. All the best, Stanley. A hayseed, right?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, nice. Thanks, Stanley. You're a true listener through and through, aren't you? I love that humble. Like, I can't figure out how to put the words together, but here they are.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Yeah, in perfect order.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. Well, if you want to be like Stanley and make me say wow, not once, not twice, but thrice, then you can try your hand at it. Send us an email to stuffpodcastheartradio.com Stuff.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know if you know this, but when you don't have time to read the Washington Post, you can listen to it. Almost every article has a listening option, and right now you can become a Washington Post subscriber for just 50 cents a week. It's an incredible deal. Stay on top of what's happening by signing [e-mail] pod that's washingtonpost.com pod.

[Josh Clark]

When.

[Chuck Bryant]

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