Improvising Toward Customer Satisfaction and Employee Engagement

In my previous post, I drew a contrast between the principles of Scientific Management (aka Taylorism) and the improvisational approach to conducting the work of an organization. Today I’d like to describe some real-world examples that put this contrast in sharp relief.

While conducting some research about the Gallup Organization’s 12 Elements of Great Managing, I found an excellent article by Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter in which they describe the negative effects of Taylorism on employees’ engagement and involvement in their work. Wagner and Harter write:

“By not only ignoring the views of workers …, but even mocking their worthiness to have an opinion about their own efforts, Taylor taught – by contrast – the importance of the Seventh Element of Great Managing, [which] is measured by the statement ‘At work, my opinions seem to count.’”

Ignoring? Mocking? Companies don’t treat their people like that in these enlightened times, do they?

They do, say Wagner and Harter - who then go on to describe from personal experience an encounter with a flight attendant who, when asked whether hot chocolate was available on the flight, said contemptuously, “We used to have some. Maybe all the flight attendants drank it. Don’t ask me. My opinion isn’t worth a lot around here.”

In other words, I’m just a Worker. I do as I’m told. I’m not paid to be a Thinker. F.W. Taylor would be proud.

Take this little “moment of truth” (as another airline CEO, Jan Carlzon of Scandinavian Airlines, refers to employee-customer encounters), multiply it hundreds of times per day, thousands of times per year, and you have a recipe for employee disengagement and customer dissatisfaction.

Contrast that depressing vignette with the situation at Southwest Airlines, which conveys to its employees the simple yet powerful message “Have fun while keeping fares low.” As the Heath brothers write in their book Made to Stick: “A new employee can easily put these ideas together to realize how to act in unscripted situations. For instance, is it all right to joke about a flight attendant’s birthday over the P.A.? Sure. Is it equally okay to throw confetti in her honor? Probably not – the confetti would create extra work for cleanup crews, and extra clean-up time means higher fares. It’s the lighthearted business equivalent of the foot soldier who improvises based on the Commander’s Intent.” [emphasis added]

Simply put, telling people what to do at every turn, in the name of control, efficiency, and predictability, is the antithesis of letting them improvise toward a well-crafted, simple goal – and the death of employee engagement and customer satisfaction as well.