Shifting Perspectives: From Mechanistic Machines to Living Systems
“Deep in most of us, below our awareness, indelibly implanted there by three centuries of the industrial age, is the mechanistic, separatist, cause-and-effect, command-and-control, machine model of reality. If you do not think your internal model of reality is not largely based on the machine as metaphor, carefully keep track of every thought and every expression you have or hear that is based on the machine metaphor — got a screw loose — monkey wrench in the machinery — nuts and bolts question — get down to brass tacks — sand in the gears — grease the wheels — put the pedal to the floor — stuck in low gear — hit the nail on the head — get down to brass tacks — get up a head of steam — he’s bombed — jet set — built like a tank — change gears — turn this ship around — hit the brakes — rudderless ship — let’s take off — locked up — in our sights — steamroller it — blast off — give it wheels — no one at the wheel — ticking like a clock — well-oiled machine — running on empty — crank it out — gone ballistic — shoot the works — you can easily list thousands… Our internal model of reality is in conflict with rapidly changing external realities.” — Dee Hock, Visa founder
Taylorism: A Mechanistic Lens
“In each period there is a general form of the forms of thought; and, like the air we breathe, such a form is so translucent, and so pervading, and so seemingly necessary, that only by extreme effort can we become aware of it” — Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead’s observation aptly captures the essence of our cognitive evolution. For a significant period, the machine metaphor has dominated our organisational thinking. Many organisational leaders, drawing from their military backgrounds, introduced warlike metaphors and army-like hierarchies into the corporate world. However, a clear demarcation in this journey begins with Taylorism, a paradigm rooted in scientific management principles, where organisations were likened to finely tuned machines.
In our latest episode of The Innovation Show, we host former Dean of The Harvard Business School Kim Clark and his co-authors and children Jonathan and Erin. Kim described a transformative experience when he visited a mechanistic auto manufacturer in Detroit.
“The plant was large, noisy, dynamic, and very interesting. But there also was a palpable sense of tension in the plant. Our visit and later studies taught us that it was tension born of a distant, adversarial relationship between the people working on the floor of the plant and the hierarchy of supervisors, managers, and executives who controlled everything done on the front line. The feeling of powerlessness of the people on the final assembly line, for example, was unmistakable. The moving line paced their work, and every action they took was highly choreographed. The people were like cogs in a machine. The loss of leadership and human potential was staggering. What we saw in that assembly plant, we also saw all throughout the parent organisation. It did not matter whether we were in the engineering department or in marketing or in finance or human resources or operations or product development, we saw the same reliance on power over people to achieve control and compliance through a web of bureaucratic rules administered through a coercive hierarchy and the same loss of human and technical potential.”
This mechanistic (or what the Clarks call “Power-Over”) paradigm was the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylor’s doctrine, referred to as “scientific management,” advocated for systematic analysis and optimisation of work processes, treating employees as mere components in the industrial machine.
In his book, “The Principles of Scientific Management”, Taylor depicts labourers as idiots,
“…so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type . . . the workman who is best suited to handling pig iron is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work.”
Although Taylorism was instrumental in the war effort, aiding agricultural workers in weapon assembly and significantly increasing efficiency, it largely overlooked the human aspect. Work was (and in many cases, still is) divided into compartmentalised, specialised tasks, with workers programmed through strict rules and elaborate pay scales to focus solely on their assigned functions. Each focussed on their separate cog in the machine and they were each treated like a cog in the corporate machine. Expert engineers designed the jobs, set the pace, and inspected the products. The experts did the thinking. The labourers did the doing. Those who adhered to the rules were rewarded with pensions. Those who faltered faced discipline or dismissal.
This scientific approach began in the early 1880s when Taylor meticulously timed workers’ movements to identify the most efficient working methods. Although these methods produced remarkable productivity gains in the short term, they eventually entrenched industrial work in a rigid and dehumanising manner. Living within a machine-like structure fostered deep-seated discontent, distrust, and resentment, which stifled creativity and productivity and increased the likelihood of sabotage.
Luckily those days are over 🙃!
The Persistence of a Paradigm
“Power Over treats power, position, and status as ends in and of themselves, nurturing socially destructive tendencies and behaviours, including exploitation of others, corruption, and in the extreme, even physical and psychological abuse. The Power Over paradigm is so deeply embedded that the executive actions that are its effect are often confused as “leadership” actions. They are not. It is that simple.” — Erin Clark, Jonathan Clark and Kim B. Clark
In their book, “Leading Through”, Erin, Kim and Jonathan Clark acknowledge how the mechanistic paradigm (what they call a Power Over paradigm) remains dominant in many organisations. “It is in primary and secondary schools, in colleges and universities, in health clinics and large academic medical centres, in the newest high-tech startup and large, multinational corporations, in nonprofits, in local and federal agencies, and even in families.” “Power Over (paradigm) is like a legacy computer system — pervasive, deeply embedded, very influential, and almost invisible. Its effects are to weaken moral responsibility, damage human and organisational potential, and obstruct initiative and innovation in organisations of all kinds.”
People remain stifled by bureaucracy, coerced by narcissists (who are rewarded for their destructive nature) and even monitored by technology. Just look at the popularity of “The Mouse Jiggler”, a piece of technology designed to evade software surveillance.
As one Amazon customer reviews it, “I am able to simply mount my mouse in this device and take several 30-minute toilet breaks with my manager none the wiser.”
Speaking of Amazon, it is a (ahem) Prime example of a modern organisation with an outdated mechanistic model. Despite being a relative newcomer, founded in 1994, with a commitment to disruptive innovation with sophisticated technology Amazon used a mechanistic “Power Over” paradigm as its core operating system. Bezos focused on achieving high volume, precision, consistency and low cost, and the ability to rapidly and efficiently build many fulfilment centres across the world. He focused on close monitoring of people’s work in the centres through sensors, video, and software, coupled with rules and metrics of performance built into the software that managed people in real-time at work. This is “technological Taylorism”. One metric, “time-on-task,” gave supervisors and managers information about the minute-by-minute behaviour of workers. Improvement and innovation would come through the machinery, the sensors, and the software. Amazon has even patented a bracelet monitor worker movement, which will either be used to train a robot or provide additional surveillance. The company is also deploying AI cameras to surveil delivery driver behaviour.
For Amazon, process automation was crucial to scaling without significantly expanding HR staff. This automation essentially transformed individuals with names and identities into mere numbers within the system. As a result, frontline workers in the fulfilment centres were regarded as expendable “human resources,” simply extensions of the machinery controlled by algorithms.
These policies and principles illustrate the pervasiveness of the mechanistic model, the “Power Over Paradigm”. In effect, what Amazon created in its fulfilment operations was a digital-era version of the industrial enterprises created in the Second Industrial Revolution. As the Clarks put it, “People who survived became talented cogs in an ambitious innovation machine.”
However, just before he stepped down as CEO in July of 2021, Bezos announced two new leadership principles — strive to be the earth’s best employer and success and scale bring broad responsibility. In the wake of criticism and the changing nature of work, Bezos initiated some major changes and rewrote Amazon’s source code.
Their new principle, Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer is a nod to the new paradigm:
Leaders work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher performing, more diverse, and more just work environment. They lead with empathy, have fun at work, and make it easy for others to have fun. Leaders ask themselves: Are my fellow employees growing? Are they empowered? Are they ready for what’s next? Leaders have a vision for and commitment to their employees’ personal success, whether that be at Amazon or elsewhere.
These new principles are an acknowledgement of a changing paradigm, more human, less machine. While some will remain sceptical of Amazon’s attempts, it remains a signal of change.
As the world becomes more digital, we must become more human
Thanks for Reading
For more on the shift from a “Power-Over” to a “Leading Through” Paradigm, check out our latest episode of The Innovation Show with Erin, Kim and Jonathan Clark.
You can be in to win a copy of their new book: Leading Through | Activating the Soul, Heart, and Mind of Leadership (HBR Press) by joining our Substack community here: https://substack.com/@theinnovationshow
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