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Where is Frederick Winslow Taylor now that we really need him? Taylor is the father of scientific management. No less a personage than Peter Drucker considers him to be one of the three men who most shaped the modern world — the others being Sigmund Freud and Charles Darwin.
HE IS THE MAN who made the time-and-motion study an intrinsic part of American manufacturing. He is the man who determined that labourers could move the most material during a day if their shovels were designed to pick up stuff in piles of 21 and a half pounds, exactly. No more, no less.
He was the fellow who gave rise to generations of “efficiency experts,” who could bring order and increased productivity to almost any endeavour. He reasoned that any human pursuit, not just factory work, could be broken down into component parts, turned into a system of movements and made more efficient.
Taylor died in 1915. He never had reason to tackle the problem of modern electronic communications. When he passed away, the telephone was still trying to achieve mass among businesses and individuals. There was not a lot of extra efficiency to be wrought from picking up a telephone, talking into it and putting it down again.
Not so, as the same century draws to a close.
To be wired today means at least dealing with three forms of immediate communication: the telephone, electronic mail and facsimile transmission. Each requires constant tending during the workday — and beyond. Just as we hated the advent of the home answering machine (initially thought to be a rude way to handle incoming calls), now we hate it when a person doesn’t employ all these methods of receiving and responding to messages.
Worse, they’re just the start. To be wired today also means being wireless. Pity the poor “on-call” professional who hasn’t clipped on the pager and tossed the cell phone into the briefcase.
The tie that binds together the new media is a rising insistence on immediacy. The new forms of communications all chirp for immediate attention and action. But, the single human mind will always have difficulty dealing with multiple demands at the same time.
The problem rises to a feverish new level with the advent of instant messaging, which is — at least for now — all the rage on the Web. Activerse Inc., for instance, indicates that it is being wooed by Lotus Development Corp., Netscape Communications Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc., all of which apparently covet its Ding! software that allows not just instant messages, but instant chat and instant file transfers.
The difficulty confronting the individual trying to get work done at his or her desk is: Which chirp do you respond to first? The e-mail that has just landed in your in-box from your boss? The instant message that has popped up on your screen from a co-worker who has to solve a production problem immediately? Or the call from a potential customer that has just come in on the phone?
It’s enough to give a person mental whiplash. All are important; all have to be dealt with; and all should be handled on the spot.
Indeed, even Taylor would be hard-pressed to come up with a standard sequence of hand, ear, mouth and eye movements to effectively handle the multiple messages and devices at the same time.
At best, the task falls instead to Taylor’s alma mater, the Stevens Institute of Technology. Gary Lynn, an associate professor in its school of technology management, suggests one rule of thumb in this age of increasing urgency of messages: When there’s no excuse, there’s no excuse.
Basically, that translates in his view to taking the phone call first. The phone conversation still carries the most weight, provides the most effective interaction and, once started, is not easily aborted — particularly, if the caller has any sort of import.
After that, you’re more or less on your own. Instant messages probably take precedence over e-mail, which in turn takes precedence over faxes — until there are too many people trying to use instant messages, where they will just nullify each other.
The real key: disciplining oneself to ignore the phone, the instant message, the e-mail and the fax when there’s real work to be done.
And then, turning on only those communications portals that are really needed, when they are needed.
The toughest lesson to learn: Just because the phone rings (or instant message box trills), doesn’t mean it has to be answered.
The only way to make time and motion work effectively when a person has no time is to eliminate some forms of motion altogether.
Receivers have to — and will — find ways to take back control of their communications from senders.
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