The Management Consultant Who Changed the World For the Worse
One of my favourite authors is the communications theorist and cultural critic Neil Postman. I found his classic book Amusing Ourselves to Death so powerful that I don’t own a TV. This makes for astonished intakes of breath at parties. But I find his analysis of contemporary society – that it more closely resembles Huxley’s decedent Brave New World than Orwell’s totalitarian 1984 – persuasive.
I’ve been re-reading another one of Postman’s book recently, the lesser known Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. His thesis is that the US is the first modern culture to have shifted from a technology-using worldview to a technology-dominated one. This is one ‘culture war‘ that is not usually included in debate but that is far more deep-seated in the American psyche.
This isn’t a book review, so I’ll spare you the summary. Postman considers the question of when America changed into a Technopoly, a state in which culture “seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology”. To answer this question, Postman turns not to scientists or industrialists or politicians, but to a now almost forgotten management consultant.
Fredrick W Taylor published a book in 1911 called The Principles of Scientific Management. Now just pause and ponder that title for a second. Management is about managing people. Taylor claims this can be achieved scientifically, that is, objectively, impersonally, mathematically. People are reduced to bits of technology that require engineering. Postman claims that this book…
…contains the first explicit and formal outline of the assumptions of the thought-world of Technopoly. These include the beliefs that the primary, if not only, goal of human labour and thought is efficiency; that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment; that in fact human judgment cannot be trusted, because it is plagues by laxity, ambiguity, and unnecessary complexity; that subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking; that what cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value; and that the affairs of citizens are best controlled by experts.
Postman also has brilliant things to say about language and statistics as examples of ‘invisible technologies’. But for now, I have a few questions. How far has this technological mind-set, this treating people as bits of technology, infected our thinking on such topics as time management, psychometric testing, and the other tools of modern HR? And when were human beings demoted to a ‘resource’ anyway?
Let me know if you can think of any more examples of Technopoly in the workplace.
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You may want to see the newly published book, The Numerati by Stephen Baker. We wrote a post on it here:
http://blog.rivetmaker.com/2008/09/yesterday-i-read-business-weeks-article-management-by-the-numbers-about-ibms-efforts-to-improve-productivity-through.html
And you might also be interested in how Ann Taylor stores’ Atlas computerized efficiency system.
I think these tools do more harm than good.
Susan
http://www.engagesage.com
http://www.rivetmaker.com
Thanks for this comment, Susan. I wasn’t aware of Baker’s book. It seems to be in the same vain as Darrell Huff’s classic How to Lie With Statistics, only with an emphasis on exploiting our private data.
In the book I blogged about, Postman also traces the insidious application of statistics to areas like eugenics, intelligence measurement, opinion polling, and information-overload. With the exception of the first example on my list, all the rest have made their baneful effects felt in the modern workplace.
Like the man says, “There is no escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has always been, and we solve nothing fundamental by cloaking ourselves in technological glory.”
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