What is more interesting a DAG, slicing tensors, or discussion on human motivation or just taking the human out of the equation and using RPA ..... "Widgets as workers" are definitely something to look for, but I won't hold my breath for software cyborgs to raid the enterprise just yet; repetitive tasks are bound to extinction, that I wont argue. As I look for deep learning the brain of the organization, and fuzzy algorithms, an offshoot to indulge in, the fact remains that organizations are more human than machine; they are more nuanced than an exact science.
You can't motivate an algorithm, you can tune it, you can make it better, but its cold calculations can only handle tasks it is meant to optimize. Algorithms have few fixed needs and hence are boring, they are only interesting while in development. Humans on the other hand are infinitely more fascinating and just for that we will continue our discussion.
So the question is how we lead ourselves and other warm machines with their pattern recognizing cognitive processing to peak performance. Are our organizations Theory X based, or Theory Y based, or maybe they decided to have the last "letter" on it and adapted Theory Z or are a mix of X, Y and Z along with some borrowed concepts from F.W Taylor's principles of scientific management. There is much literature available in field of organizational theory but for this blog I will focus on few excerpts from the mentioned works.
Some of the assumptions in principles of scientific management such as the tendency of the average worker to take it easy and that most people in an organization are average, is a bit hard to swallow and seems a harsh assessment of human nature. I do agree that the "employers knowledge of a given class of work gets tainted by their own experience which gets hazy by age and casual and un-systematic observation of their men"....(aka MBWA and although Gemba may work on shop floors, it will fit the above statement by Taylor) but what follows after wards seems very autocratic and Victorian explanation of employees...the evolution of organization is missed since the measurement of knowledge worker is a more excruciating a task then measurement of a factory widget maker. Even if the modern worker is software widget maker the complexity of innovation, the abstraction of work and varied paths to revenue realization make management of initiative and incentive that more difficult.
On the other hand it will be too short sighted to quote and nit pick few choices from Taylor's seminal work. The premise of Taylor is employer and employee are in it together, and there is a win/win for both. It does however seem to portray the "average" worker as a more controllable form of a resource which is inclined to "soldiering". If the traditional knowledge of the workman is converted to rules, laws and formulae by data collection... productivity enhancement through AI and machine learning will make Taylor proud, and not in the least at the cost of the worker but in hopes that as repetitive work is handed off to machines to continuously improve, the worker is inevitably forced to evolve into a more thinking being as science replaces rule of thumb, and process follows a trial, and co-operation is developed based on process and eventually despite the nature of work there is equal division of responsibility between management and workman.
By now you must be thinking where are the X, Y and Z. Theory X and Theory Y are theories of human motivation developed by Douglas McGregor. In (over) simplified terms distrust of employees is Theory X and trust in employees is Theory Y. Theory Y is where Maslow and Scanlon Plans come in and Theory X is the command and control model of military driven largely by employees' trained to accept the dictates of management. But in the age of information even military has to evolve and quoting Stanley McChrystal from Team of Teams, where he sees military as "....not a well oiled machine but an adaptable , complex organism" pointing that the game, even for a very structured and hierarchical organization like army has changed from command and control to more empowered smaller units.
For some background on Theory Y and Z and we need to go back in time and sift through the very enjoyable papers by Maslow and the Scanlon plans, and while we will ignore the Hawthorne studies and Murray's system of needs, we will use Maslow's hierarchy of needs as encompassing similar concepts. Maslow's studies are geared towards generalization of theory of motivation based on physiological and "softer" human needs and the Scanlon plan had its origination in a more tasked organizations such as manufacturing plants, but both of them in some way influenced Theory Y. I will skip the Theory Z of Dr. Ouchi as it is based on similar principles of Theory Y and extends it to Japanese cultural ethos (and I haven't had time to really go through it in detail).
The scientific management may be able to fine tune tasks by timing and optimizing details, but humans, the predominant productivity engines of the organizations, are not just driven by monetary incentives, besides there is always a wall to financial lures. Theory X and Theory Y are specific way of thinking about organization human resources. Concepts of soldiering and loafing are usually attributed to the Theory X that pictures employees as devoid of ambition, zeal, drive and commitment. Theory Y on the other hands give employees a more positive nod. Although Theory X gets associated with Taylor's concept Soldiering and loafing, it is a very narrow view of principles of scientific management. Practically, if you feel Big brother is watching, and employees are coerced, controlled, directed by punishment, you are in Theory X environment, If you feel you have opportunities to learn and grow with the organization, and the other needs like self esteem, self respect, self confidence, autonomy for achievement, competence and earning deserved respect of fellow beings, are met for the individual (for now we can leave the discussion of quantifying those to the side) you are in Theory Y. I will be the first to admit these are not easy distinctions to make since there are lot of gray areas within each and most organization employ a mix of theory X and Theory Y but in the long run companies, culture does shift in one way or the other. Also both Theory Y and Taylor's principles eventually point towards bridging the gap between employer and employee needs, the mechanisms may differ in each.
Lastly what are the evolutionary effects of Theory X and Theory Y, along with Taylor's principles of scientific management on an organization. Here I will borrow, rather generously, from Darwin's basic theory, with organizations as a specie. If we think about it McGregors basic tenants of Theory Y are evolutionary. An environment where a living cell or a being continuously evolves is a akin to an organization where it's employees grow. Each generation of employees will have individuals that will meet the rigors of business and will help sustain or grow the business, those are survivors. The interaction of individual traits of those survivors with organizational environments will produce, observable, desirable attributes and collectively the organization will become a specie on its own with company culture as its life force. If unable to collect enough "survivors", it will become extinct where by its survivors, those workers with desirable traits, will either form a new species "entrepreneurs" or will be adapted by the surviving collectives, competitors, to start their survival cycle again.
It all starts from what theoretical assumptions management holds about managing and if the collective behavior of the organization is, a consequence, a cause or a symptom. Evolution is not voluntary, it is mandatory.... now lets think where each of our organizations lie in the spectrum of cultural evolution from A to Z
