Creativity is Unusual

It is often argued that studying creativity or even exploring what it means to be creative is an effete distraction from the more important business of getting things done in the moment.   This position is exceedingly short-sighted.   There is nothing meaningful to be done by practical men until creative ones have shown them what to do.

Certainly, it is necessary to deal with routine sustenance tasks in a competent manner, but this is a necessity rather than a goal.  One may focus on efficiency, but this merely accomplishes the same task as before with less cost.   Efficiency is accomplished in paying close attention to the existing processes rather than considering whether there might be a far more effective method of achieving the goal to which the process was originally attended – without pausing to consider whether there might be better goals to pursue.

The results of creativity, however, are significant accomplishments that effect dramatic changes and entirely new processes.  Creativity seeks to change, rather than perpetuate, the traditional methods of accomplishing goals that are laborious, tedious, and unfulfilling.   What creativity creates, in effect, is greater effectiveness by pursuing an alternate goal or taking a significantly different course to a given destination.   Where this does not occur, there is no creativity.

The same phenomenon occurs in academic situation where students are encouraged to think, but rewards are bestowed on those who toe the line and follow the canon.   Professors and students who pursue unusual or disagreeable ideas are shunned and discredited by any means necessary.   Students are not taught how to think, but told what to think, and are tested and graded on their ability to memorize and repeat traditional knowledge rather than using their minds in an original and creative manner.   And so, the firms that look to academia to provide “fresh” minds and “new” ideas are disappointed by constrained minds that merely find clever ways to support stale ideas.

Even the “creative” arts in the present day do not explore new ideas, but instead reproduce the ideas of the past.  The most creative minds of the present culture are not being creative at all - they are making sequels, remakes, and adaptations of the known.   The “alternative” has become mainstream and feeds upon itself rather than continuing to challenge traditions and offer new ideas.

Ultimately, the reason that creativity is so rare is because it is actively discouraged.  There is a conflict in each person when confronted with the risk entailed in doing something new and different, and it is tempting to retreat when there is a known and reliable method of achieving a goal, however onerous and wasteful its methods.   Creativity entails a much higher degree of risk than following conventions, and people differ greatly in the degree to which they are willing and able to tolerate that risk.

So in the current culture a great deal of empty praise is given to creativity and innovation while actual behavior favors traditional approaches that yield more immediate benefits with greater certainty.  In business, managers promote the idea of innovation while discouraging any risk-taking, and the system of rewards and punishments is rigged to discourage creativity even in organizations that loudly proclaim its necessity.   New ideas are actively discouraged in favor of business as usual, and even when they are adopted they are often mangled and stripped of their potential in sacrifice to the status quo.

The Suppression of Creativity

It is often argued that studying creativity or even exploring what it means to “be creative” is an effete distraction from the more important business of “getting things done” in the moment.   This position is exceedingly ignorant and shortsighted.   There is nothing meaningful to be done by practical men until creative ones have told them what to do.

Certainly, it is necessary to deal with routine sustenance tasks in a competent manner, but this is a negative goal.  One may focus entirely on efficiency, but this accomplishes the same thing as before with fewer expenses.   Efficiency is accomplished in paying close attention to the existing processes rather than considering whether there might be a far more efficient and effective method of accomplishing the same goals – or whether there might be better goals to pursue.

The results of creativity, however, are significant accomplishments that effect dramatic changes and entirely new processes.  It seeks to solve, rather than ameliorate, the problems with traditional methods of accomplishing goals that are laborious, tedious, and unfulfilling.   What creativity creates, in effect, is greater satisfaction with less tedium.   It makes substantial, positive, and life-improving changes.

There is a conflict in each person when confronted with the risk entailed in doing something new and different, and it is particularly tempting to perpetuate a known and reliable method of achieving a goal – however onerous and wasteful its methods, it seems the safer choice.   Creativity involves a much higher degree of risk than following conventions, and people differ greatly in the degree to which they are willing and able to tolerate that risk.

So in the current culture a great deal of empty praise is given to creativity and innovation while actual behavior favors traditional approaches that yield more immediate benefits with greater certainty.   Some token effort is made to innovate, but this quickly gets dragged back to the existing practices with some consideration of minor improvements that do not change the nature but merely reduce the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness of business as usual.

In everyday business, which consumers the majority of our waking attention, managers promote the idea of innovation while discouraging any risk-taking, and the system of rewards and punishments is rigged to discourage creativity even in organizations that loudly proclaim its necessity.   New ideas are actively discouraged in favor of business as usual, and even when they are adopted they are often mangled and stripped of their potential in sacrifice to preserving the status quo.

The same occurs in academic situation where students are encouraged to think, but rewards are bestowed on those who toe the line and follow the canon.   Academics who pursue unusual or disagreeable ideas are shunned and discredited by any means necessary.   Students are not taught how to think, but told what to think, and are tested and graded on their ability to memorize and repeat traditional knowledge rather than using their minds in an original and creative manner.

Even the “creative” arts in the present day does not explore new ideas, but instead reproduces the ideas of the past.  The most creative minds of our culture are not being creative at all - they are making sequels, remakes, mash-ups, and adaptations of the known.   The “alternative” is become mainstream and feeds upon itself rather than continuing to challenge traditions and offer new ideas.

As such, the suppression of creativity is not limited to boardrooms and business meetings, but is pervasive throughout current culture.   There is no single source of anything new, and the focus is on repeating the past in the safest and least distracting manner.  Perhaps that seems cynical - but in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it is entirely accurate.

Increasing Human Efficiency

It is interesting, and more than a bit depressing, to read some of the classical works on topics such as management and economics - as it can very often be observed that a "new" trend is merely the revival of an idea that has been around for decades or centuries. And that there are many ideas that seem confounding simple - such that you can't read them without a sense of "of course this is so" and "why would anyone think otherwise" - but have been ignored or abandoned.

Reading Walter Dill Scott's book on Increasing Human Efficiency gave me exactly that sense.  Written in 1911, it outlines a number of ideas that seem entirely reasonable, and which have largely been ignored or forgotten over the course of the past century.   My sense is that productive workplaces employ at least some of the principles he mentions, and that unproductive ones ignore some or all of them.

There are so many principles in this book that are clearly beneficial to efficiency and effectiveness of work, and which are just as clearly being violated in many workplaces, that to do it justice would require re-typing the entire book - but to keep this meditation manageable, I'll focus on five ideas that seemed to strike a nerve.


The efficiency of work can only be improved by a change in the technique or technology by which it is done.  Simply insisting that men work faster and harder is insufficient.

Scott considers the practices of "scientific management" in which a manager observes his workers, notices the practices of those who are most efficient, and then teaches those practices to the less efficient worker in order to boost productivity.

Frank Gilbreth's work with masons is an excellent example: Gilbreth noticed the average worker used eighteen motions to lay a single brick, where the productive worker used but seven, and he was able to eliminate two of them.   By teaching a five-step process to a crew, he was able to boost the productivity from 40 bricks per hour per man to 120 - tripling the speed of work.

However, this practice does not seem to exist in the modern workplace.   Managers simply set production quotas without providing any indication of how they may be achieved: if you produced 1,000 units last month, you goal for this month is 1,100 or if you completed a task in thirty days you must now do it in twenty-eight.   Ask "how may I accomplish this?" and the answer will be "figure it out for yourself."

The bosses (who are not managing anything, merely bossing people around) do not even understand what a worker does, but insists that he must somehow figure out on his own a way to do it faster and better.  This is not scientific management by any means, and yet it is all too familiar to many workers.


In order to discover more efficient ways of working, the worker must be allowed to experiment with the process and technique by which he accomplishes a task.

Scott's insistence that men must be taught a process by which to work is mitigated by the insistence that they be provided some latitude in getting their work done: so long as their product is good and the rate of production is acceptable, they should be left alone.

The value in giving workers such latitude, and even being tolerant of some temporary decreases in productivity, is that they have the freedom to innovate - to deviate from standard practices and discover more efficient ways of working, which workers have an uncanny ability for doing.  If held too rigidly to standard procedures, the workers can only become as efficient as the procedure.

To discover a new method requires deviating from the prescribed method, in a process of trial and error to discover more efficient means of accomplishing a goal - with the risk that the new method may not be more efficient, and acceptance that a new method may be less efficient at first but be modified or habituated to gain proficiency.

But again, this does not happen. In the present day, workers are given the paradoxical command to "innovate while following procedures" - which is as logical as ordering them to "sit down while standing up."   It simply cannot be done, so workers end up following procedure - to attempt to innovate is to risk punishment merely for doing something in an unauthorized manner, and since the reward for success is paltry (if any at all) and the punishment of failure grievous, most workers regard innovation as an unacceptable risk.


When a worker's task is intellectual, more dependent on thought than physical action, he can only be productive if he is protected from distractions.

Scott gives special attention to the "intellectual worker," those who are in positions where the activity of their work is more mental than physical.   It would be entirely foolish to expect the task-worker to complete his work while he is constantly being physically jostled - and it is equally foolish to expect the mental-worker to give focus to his work while being constantly distracted.

This is clearly violated in the present workplace under the banner of "collaboration," which eliminates quiet places in the office in favor of creating an environment in which employees are constantly talking to one another, in meeting rooms or on the work floor, and having no opportunity to retreat to a quiet place and attend to the work that results from the conversation.

While it cannot be disputed that information exchange is a good thing, there can be too much of it.   In a circus-like environment in which there is too much noise and motion to remain focused on a thought for more than a few minutes, the mental worker simply cannot get tasks done in an efficient manner.   And yet, "open" office spaces with constant noise and distraction have come into fashion, in direct contradiction to Scott's principle of the necessity of concentration.


Loyalty is reciprocal.  An employer wins the loyalty of his workers by showing loyalty to them.  He cannot expect them to be attentive to his welfare unless he is attentive to theirs.

During the early industrial era, the workplace became a very unpleasant environment, and unions formed to protect the basic health and safety of workers, as well as to negotiate a fair wage, reasonable hours, and continuity of employment.  The result was a hostile relationship between employee and employer, and perhaps the worst in human history outside of the institution of slavery or serfdom.

An yet, even in his age of antipathy, there were stunning examples in which union workers would abdicate the terms of their contracts to give an extra effort to help employers in time of need: to work longer hours, accept less pay, and otherwise sacrifice for the good of their employers.

Scott was very quick to point out that "loyalty begets loyalty" and through real-world examples demonstrates that in every instance that workers were loyal to an employer during a time of crisis, the employer showed great loyalty to the workers well before the crisis arose.

There are many firms even in the present day that covet that level of devotion - and worse, who expect that level of devotion as a matter of course.   It is not uncommon for salaried workers to be expected to work fifty-hour weeks for no additional pay on a long-term basis (and sometimes on an ongoing basis), for exceptional performance to go unrewarded, for the annual increase in pay to be well below the increase in the cost of living.  And all of this from firms who wonder why employees have no loyalty to them.


Work becomes efficient when the worker is able to apply his skills in a consistent manner and discover methods of efficiency.  Any change disrupts his progress to efficiency, and constant change prevent him from ever becoming efficient.

Of all the various methods of increasing the efficiency of work, Scott considers habituation to be the most powerful.   The worker gains efficiency where there are consistent practices he may follow, devoting his attention to the things that are most important by being able to ignore the many things that are unimportant.   Any change in procedures, particularly for routine and inconsequential parts of a job, require attention and discipline until they can become routinized - and it is wholly unproductive if the practices that are changed are not contributing to production.

And yet, in the modern workplace, the pace of change is relentless.  Employees must constantly be attentive to the "new way" of doing something that is different to the "new way" it was done the month before.   It is insisted, without rationale, that changes bring improvement - but it is a consequence that constant change prevents efficiency from ever developing.  The employee is prodded from one awkward and unfamiliar way of doing things to another awkward and unfamiliar way, never becoming habituated enough to gain efficiency (and to reap the full benefit of the method prescribed).

It is not that change is universally undesirable, but should be mitigated: a change should be made when it provides an improvement to a process that creates greater efficiency in the work.  But in the present day, change is seldom explained - and it is wondered if it is ever considered in any meaningful way.   And moreover, many changes are implemented to create efficiency for non-productive staff (such as accounting clerks) by placing additional burden on productive staff (those who do the work to produce and deliver the product or service of the firm).

***

In all, I have the pessimistic sense that I should perhaps simply stop reading so much to and instead focus my attention on mindless acceptance of things such as they are.   Knowledge of a better way only makes the present ways more noxious - and discovering that the "better way" has existed for decades or centuries but has simply been ignored depresses me profoundly.

Sustainability and Monopoly

The notion of "sustainability" seems to be popping up more often of late in conversations about enterprise management.   It's nothing particularly new, as it comes back under various names every so often and then goes away again.   My sense is that it's not at all a bad idea, just that the present culture is unready to embrace it in spite of its benefits.

The core concept is that focusing on serving a fixed number of customers, rather than seeking to constantly increase the number of customers served, is a more plausible long-term strategy because it facilitates planning and operational efficiency.

Much of the waste in business operations is pinned to the hope that the firm will sell more product next year than last year - managers ramp up production and staffing to provide products (goods or services) for 20% more customers in the next year.   When those new customers fail to materialize, the cost of the extra capacity is waste, which causes the firm to lose money on unnecessary expense and, in some cases, collapse from the financial burden of having spent an unnecessary amount of money to provide capacity that cannot be sold.

It is also a problem if more customers than anticipated are gathered by the various efforts to grow the firm, in that the company finds its staff and facilities insufficient to serve the massive influx of customers and its inability to provide service as promised is a disappointment to new customers (who are turned away) and old ones (whose quality of service diminishes as the company struggles under the strain) as well, and damages the reputation of the brand.

Both of these problems can be avoided by assuming a fixed customer base, which renders a fixed level of demand, which requires a predictable amount of production.   That is to say that a business is capable of profitably serving a certain number of customers, beyond which point growth becomes unprofitable and the firm becomes unsustainable.   Hence, a firm should be managed for long-term stability rather than constant growth.

All of this makes perfect sense, but for one thing: avarice.   I would not go so far as to claim all businesses are greedy and want to suck up as many consumer dollars as they can get - but I can say that I have never heard of a firm that doesn't covet growth and is willing to focus on providing quality of service to a limited market - and whose long-term strategy is to serve only as many customers as necessary to cover costs and generate a fair profit, and to the rest say "No thanks, we have as much business as we can competently and profitably serve right now."

To my knowledge, there is only one kind of company that seeks sustainable operations as a long-term strategy, and that is a monopoly.

Monopoly Efficiency

A monopoly exists when one firm serves 100% of the market and there is no competition.   This is generally considered by panic-mongers to be a bad situation because the monopoly "controls" the market and can use this power to charge exorbitant prices - though reason tells us this could not happen in a free market because entrepreneurs would quickly recognize the opportunity to underprice a monopoly and would enter the industry, thus ending the monopoly.  The only way for a monopoly to occur in a free market is if one firm provided service of acceptable quality at a fair price (what's wrong with that?) or for government to favor one firm and prevent competition (which, ironically, is called a "natural monopoly").

For the latter reason, monopolies exist in otherwise free markets, generally in the form of "public" utilities.  In most markets, there is no competition for electricity, water, waste disposal, and other services of that nature because local governments support one provider and prevent competition.   And what can be noticed is that these businesses run their operations with exceeding efficiency because of the predictability of demand.

Granted, there can be some objection to the suggestion that utility companies are efficient - though it is based largely on ignorance.  Most people complain about their monthly bill but haven't run the numbers.  Had they done so, they would quickly recognize that compared to the cost of purchasing an electric generator and paying for maintenance and a constant supply of fuel, the local electric monopoly's prices are in most cases very low.

The reason a monopoly is able to be efficient and reduce waste is that demand is highly predictable.   Except in rare instances, people do not move into or out of a service area in large numbers.  And in aggregate, there is very little fluctuation in the amount of power or water consumed by a population.   The monopoly can therefore make accurate plans for serving a fixed number of customers and eliminate the waste of overproduction.

Adopting Monopoly Thinking

In non-monopoly markets, there is a great deal of delusion.   Companies assume they have the ability to grow their business infinitely, and every firm in an industry assumes a 5% or 10% growth rate in the following year - even when there is not any reason to expect the same level of growth in aggregate market demand.

For example, take firms that produce diapers for babies under one year old.   In the United States, about four million children are born each year - a figure that has not fluctuated much in twenty to thirty years.  These firms should be well aware that this means there are four million customers per year (given that last year's customers "age out" of their product) and this figure is unlikely to fluctuate by much.   There is no significant increase or decrease in need, hence none in demand.   The only way these firms can grow is by stealing customers from one another - such that one firm's gain is another firm's loss.  In that situation, it is completely irrational for any firm to expect a 10% increase in business each year for the next decade (unless it can offer a significantly and sustainably better value proposition to consumers).

It would be far more rational, and efficient, for one of those firms to recognize that it has a 20% market share, and will not likely increase it, and so should set its production budget to manufacture and distribute enough diapers for 800,000 families and its marketing budget to merely replace any customers who may defect - then price its product to provide a reasonable and consistent return to long-term investors.

But this is not done: the combination of avarice and delusion lead firms to the belief that they can somehow manage to grab more of the market from competitors - often without making any improvement in product quality - and that its competitors will not be siphoning off their existing customer base.   The net result is an exorbitant expense of marketing and waste in the manufacturing operations - which causes firms to become inefficient, unprofitable, and unsustainable.

The reason firms do not collapse on a regular basis can be attributed to consumer surplus.  The customers pay not only the cost to manufacture and distribute the products they need at a reasonable profit to the providers, but they also pay for the waste of their providers' inefficient business operations.

It would also stand to reason that the firm that plans for a sustainable level of business could minimize this waste and more competitively price its product, resulting in a slow but sustainable growth in its market until it has reached the point of saturation in terms of the value proposition that is acceptable to its market segment.

Segmentation and Monopolization

While it is likely not possible for a firm to establish a monopoly in a regulated economy (regulators would prevent this, even if the market favored a single company's value proposition), many firms do seek to monopolize market segments - and doing so should likely give them the ability to apply sustainable monopolistic thinking to their operational strategy.

Consider the previous example, in which demand for diapers could be predicted according to birth rates in a given market.  A firm that proposed to sell all diapers to all ages would likely be recognized as a monopoly and shut down by regulators.   A firm that proposed to sell diapers for first-year infants would draw less attention.   And a firm that proposed to sell diapers for first-year infants of middle-income families in twelve states would draw even less attention.

To win a monopoly over such a well-defined market segment should be more feasible, as the firm could readily identify the needs and price sensitivities of a specific target with a relative degree of accuracy - and so long as it could find a way to manufacture a product that served their needs well at a price that customers found to be attractive, it should have little difficulty creating for itself a sustainable market.

***

I'm aware, at this point, that I've taken off into a realm of speculation based on a plausible theory and have perhaps gone a bridge too far.   But I expect the core theory is plausible: that a firm can define a specific market segment, plan for a specific market share, and thereby eliminate waste and gain operational efficiency at a level that is both profitable and sustainable.

The primary obstacles to doing so are likely cultural challenges: the present culture of "more and more each year" in defiance of all logic is likely difficult to impossible  - and attempting to use reason to dispel irrational beliefs is a difficult proposition indeed.

The Spork: Symbol of Bad Customer Experience

For the first time in quite a while, I tried to eat fried chicken with a spork (and ended up eating it with my hands).  The spork was popular for a time, some decades ago and I haven't seen one in ages, and do not miss it at all.   I realize that some people wax poetic about their fond reminiscences of sporking.   For me, it's more in the nature of post-traumatic spork disorder.

For anyone who's not had the displeasure and isn't familiar with the instrument, a spork is a hybrid utensil that combines a spoon that stabs you in the tongue with a fork with tines that are too short to be of much use for anything except breaking into small, easy-to-swallow pieces of jagged plastic.   If it sounds like a particularly stupid idea for an eating utensil, that's because it is exactly that.

But what occurred to me (other than "dammit, I have to eat with a spork") is how perfect the utensil is as the embodiment of the practice of entirely ignoring the customer experience in pursuit of operational efficiency.   The only reason I can think of for a spork to ever have existed is efficiency.   It is cheaper to offer customers one utensil rather than two, and it's easier to stock and manage inventory.   Cheaper for us, more efficient for us, and terrible for the customer.  Two out of three ain't bad.

I don't think that any decent restaurant ever offered its customers a spork - it was the sole providence of factory food mills, quick-service restaurants, public school cafeterias, and other places where quality is compromised.  No reputable flatware manufacturer has ever, to my knowledge, included a spork in its product line - though a quick search of the internet turned up a few as novelty gifts.   And except for fanboys, no-one has ever relished the thought of using one.

It also occurs to me that, while the spork itself is virtually extinct (and it's a species the world is better off without), there many businesses that are still handing out sporks by the dozen in a figurative sense.   Any instance in which the customer is expected to compromise the quality of their experience because the business has found a way to save a little money or effort on its own part is a spork.

So when a restaurant makes customers wait on their own orders at a counter rather than offering table service, or when a grocery shop makes customers bag their own groceries, or when a retailer makes customers ring up their own orders ... then they are handing out sporks.  

It's likely important for designers and process owners to pause to consider, when any project's goal is efficiency for the organization, whether they might be handing our sporks as a result.   Chances are they are doing exactly that.

Efficiency Isn't Innovation

In general, the approach to improving things, products or processes, begins with analyzing the as-is situation and identifying areas in which problems could be fixed or improvements could be made.   That is to say that it begins rooted in present reality and ends with only minor changes.   This is different to, and likely preventative of, true innovation, which requires starting with a blank slate and imagining the possibilities that might exist, independent of what currently does exist.

It is a common, but fundamental error, to regard anything new through the lens of existing processes.  This results not in innovation, but efficiency improvements, as firms seek to streamline what they are presently doing rather than considering whether there might be an entirely new way ("new" being the "nova" in "innovation") to achieve the desired goals - or even to change the way in which the goals are defined if doing so is necessary to achieve a better outcome.

In many instances, efficiency improvements are merely automation.   In the early industrial era, automation merely replicated human motion with machines; and in the present era of information technology, automation merely replaces human thought processes with digital ones - but "merely replaces" means the that task remains the same, it is just performed by a different actor.

For example, a computerized accounting system automates the way in which invoices are processed, in that the very same thing is done with databases and spreadsheets that nineteenth-century clerks did with ledgers and quill pens.   The process is made faster, and less labor is required, but the process itself has not changed.

In that sense, replacing a worker with a machine or a clerk with a computer system is not innovative at all: it's doing the same thing more quickly and efficiently, but still doing the same thing.   To innovate requires asking: what goal are we attempting to achieve by doing things this way ... and is there a different way in which we might achieve it?"

Knowledge of existing business practices is not only unnecessary, but can be harmful.   That's not to say that they can be completely ignored - the inputs and outputs are likely still the same (though one might reconsider whether the inputs or outputs could be improved) - but all the "stuff" in the middle is entirely irrelevant.   So long as the goals of the process are achieved, the rituals by which they are pursued is irrelevant.

As a final note: innovation is not always necessary, and sometimes efficiency improvements are the best that can be done - let's not throw that concept away entirely.  But at the same time, let's not assume that the two are similar or can be accomplished in the same way.  To be innovative in the outcome requires being innovative in the process - and that holds true even when the process is one of defining processes.

Compromising Experience

I noticed an off-brand of tomato sauce at the supermarket - it caught my eye because it was sold in a slightly larger can than the other brands between which it was shelved, and it struck me as an interesting and effective packaging gimmick - but on closer inspection, it led my thoughts in a different direction: to the way in which customer experience is compromised for other goals.

Specifically, the "large" off-brand can contained 16 ounces of product - an even pint - whereas the leading brands were sold in odd quantities, 15 ounces or 14.5 ounces.   Quite some time ago, most products were packaged in more or less even quantities (a 16-ounce pint, an 8-ounce cup, or a 4-ounce half-cup) and that today, most brands seem to offer slightly less (14 ounces, 7.5 ounces, 11 ounces) that don't even come out to an even quantity in metric units.

This is a common observation, and the knee-jerk reaction among people who notice is along the lines of "they are cheating me."  There's some argument that firms were faced with increasing ingredient costs and made a compromise: to keep the unit cost to the customer the same, they would reduce quantity per unit, so it's for the economic benefit of the customer that package sizes were reduced so the package price could stay the same.  I don't think this dismisses the complaint, especially since the producers who short their content during a crisis never seem to size their products back up to the previous standard when ingredient costs normalize.  Also, when you consider price-per-ounce, the customer is still paying more, and the producer is hoping they don't notice.

But more to the point, companies that make such decisions have clearly failed to consider the impact to customer experience.   That is to say that the producer didn't consider the consequences of downsizing their product after the financial exchange - specifically to the experience of the consumer who will be using the product after it has been purchased.

Obviously, a shopper buys tomato sauce because it is an ingredient in a recipe (I'm not aware people heat the stuff up and eat it like soup) - and the recipe calls for a pint of tomato sauce.   So in a situation where 16 ounces is needed and the product is sold in 14-ounce increments, the ultimate outcome is negative:

• Compromise: the customer can buy one can and accept that the meal they make will taste slightly off due to the imbalance.   The conclusion: "Brand X makes my recipes taste worse"
• Complexity: the customer can buy one can and adjust the remaining ingredients proportionally, doing the calculations to consider that if they use 14 ounces of tomato sauce rather than a pint, they would have to add 1.75 tablespoons of basil instead of two.  The conclusion: "Brand X makes cooking more complicated."
• Dissatisfaction: Another consequence of the previous solution, downsizing the recipe to accommodate a smaller package, also means having less benefit (food) than is needed.  It's just a little less, bit it leads to the conclusion: "Brand X does not fully satisfy my needs."
• Guilt: the customer can buy two cans, use 16 ounces, and throw the other twelve ounces away because it is not needed.   The conclusion "Brand X is wasteful."
• Obligation: the customer who buys two cans and has leftover, and can't bear the guilt of throwing away perfectly good food, could find another use for the leftover 12 ounces.  The conclusion: "Brand X burdens me with additional tasks"
• Disgust: the customer who has leftover and fails to make use of it quickly will eventually notice a smell of rotten tomato in his refrigerator, emanating from a container of leftover sauce that has turned foul.  The conclusion: "Brand X is disgusting"

I don't think that any of these conclusions are attributes a firm would like to be associated to its brand - nor do I think that if the full range of outcomes were considered, producers would have been so hasty to make this compromise.   All that was considered is that reducing package volume would enable the firm to maintain profit, and maybe get people to buy an extra unit once in a while.   And if customer experience were really considered, it would be clear that all of these problems are not worth saving a nickel or a dime on the purchase price.

It's worth noting that all of this is speculation - that customers have largely accepted the compromises above, though likely not because they had a choice: all a customer can do is decide whether to accept what is offered or undertake the effort to find other alternatives, and when their preferred brands and close competitors all made the same operational decision, the customer has to accept as fact that tomato sauce now comes in 15-ounce cans (for all brands) and to ratify the decision with their dollars.

It would be interesting to see if the emergence of a competitor (the off-brand that caught my eye) will lead the remaining brands to upsize their packages, but I don't expect that to be so.   People have strong loyalty to the brands they buy habitually and accept disappointment as a matter of course, and its likely that recipes that call for "a can" of product are used by the people whose palates are not that discerning to begin with.   It's a bit depressing, and very counterproductive to the general welfare ... but such is the way of things.

I recognize that I am lapsing in a cynical state of mind and meditating on this topic urther will likely not be productive - but to end with a quick summary of the points: decisions made for reasons of economy and efficiency can easily achieve their primary goals, but often at the cost of customer experience - and that it's worthwhile, and perhaps even critical in the long run, to pause for a moment to consider the full breadth of the consequences.

Division or Unification of Labor

I heard a fairly convincing two-part argument against Smith's principle of the division of labor.   I use the qualifier of "fairly" because I don't think that it entirely disproves the theory, nor does it replace it, but it does cast some doubt as to whether it is universally applicable.

Division of Labor

As a refresher on the original principle: Smith suggested that dividing a task into a number of simpler tasks, and training workers to perform only a small step in an overall process, enabled considerably greater production with considerably less skilled hands.  It's the theory that was best demonstrated by assembly-line production, and the astounding level of output that could be achieved.

Smith's example was that of a pin factory: each worker performs a simple task: one draws the wire, another cuts it, another straightens it, another grinds the head, and another sharpens the point.  And by this method, a small group of illiterate farmhands could, with very little training, far outproduce an equal number of master blacksmiths.

Strictly speaking, this was not the origin of the division of labor.  Even before Smith's theory was put into practice, separate tradesmen mined the ore, smelted the metal, and fashioned it into useful objects.   Blacksmiths also specialized according to the kinds of objects they were most skilled in fashioning, and there were separate "smiths" for various kinds of metal.    So in essence, Smith was merely observing an existing phenomenon, but he took it to the extreme.

First Rebuttal: Divisibility

The first rebuttal to Smith's theory draws on an example that seems patently ludicrous - but which seems no less extreme than the example proposed by Smith: that of typing a letter by using fifty or so workers, each of whom uses a machine that has a single key: one person types a lowercase "e", another an uppercase "T", another a comma, another the spacebar, etc.

This follows the very principle of the division of labor, and illustrates the dysfunction of taking it to extremes.  The amount of time to load and position the paper, strike the key, remove the paper, and transport it to the next workstation overwhelms any benefit of specialization, and requires a tremendous amount of coordination to move it from one worker to the next in proper order.

Plainly, the task can be performed most efficiently by a single skilled worker than a team of unskilled workers, and it makes little sense (and much waste) to subdivide it.  As such, the unification of the tasks involved into one skilled typist makes far more sense than the division of labor among many unskilled hands.

And to that point, the unification of labor is taken further by the elimination of the typist - as it is presently common for the author of a letter to do his own typing, and likely far more efficient, as the speed at which keys can be struck is of relatively minor effect.

Second Rebuttal: Skilled Labor

A second rebuttal, more philosophical than functional, is that Smith's theory was created at a time when skilled labor was in short supply: it was the perfect solution to the problem of manufacturing when there was not a ready supply of skilled blacksmiths and illiterate laborers had to be trained to perform tasks in a short amount of time (five years of apprenticeship was not feasible).

But in the present day, most workers are at least semi-literate and considerably more intellectually sophisticated than their eighteenth-century counterparts.  So it lo longer seems necessary or desirable to break down a task into functions that are so simple that they could be performed by a trained chimp or replaced by a mechanical device that repeatedly performs the same sequence of basic motions.

It's also worth considering that the manufacturing of goods has become a relatively minor part of the present economy.   Most workers in the post-industrial world are involved in what is generally called "knowledge work," in which the intellectual component is of far greater importance in the generation of value than the manual tasks involved in producing physical artifacts.

Many of the most highly-compensated professions produce no physical artifact at all: a doctor, an attorney, and an executive do not (directly) produce any physical object.  And neither is this work adaptable to the division of labor beyond a certain degree.   It can be argued that the work of a physician has been divided into specialized forms of medicine (podiatrists, oncologists, cardiologists, etc.) and that some of the tasks are handed off to labs or clinics (blood work, X-rays, etc.), but there remains the need for a general practitioner to manage the care of a given patient in a holistic manner, calling in specialists when it is beneficial.

In more abstract terms, an intelligent person is capable of performing more sophisticated tasks, and more tasks, and there is not a practical need to subdivide labor.  In addition to being counterproductive, it is patently unnecessary in a culture in which there is ready availability of an educated workforce.

Reconciling the Extremes

Each of these arguments takes an extreme position - the complete division of a process into minute tasks, or its complete unification onto a single workbench.  As in many things, my sense is that neither extreme is right, but represent the ends of a continuum along which an intelligent choice must be made.

When a task is too divided, there arises a need for administration and control, and the number of errors as a result of miscommunication and misdirection rise.  I vaguely recall an article that suggested it can be assessed by the ratio of non-productive employees who supervise and audit work as compared to the number of employees who are directly productive.   Where that ratio is less than 1-to10, the overhead cost of administration likely exceeds the efficiencies of division of labor.   Seems a bit arbitrary, but likely a good indicator that consideration is necessary.

When a task is too unified, productivity decreases.  I don't expect the argument of an educated workforce holds much weight here: I don't think education would have been a factor in Smith's pin-factory example.  The most educated and skilled blacksmith would still be capable of producing far fewer pins than an assembly-line of uneducated workers.  I can recall no guidance on this issue, but it seems to me that it has much to do with task-switching, and perhaps the same ratio of 1-to10 could be used to assess whether the nonproductive time of a given worker (switching from one task to the next) as compared to the productive time (performing a given task) likely exceeds the efficiency that can be gained by specialization, when considering both the time to move work from one person to the next as well as the overhead costs of coordination and control.

In terms of managing knowledge-workers, the educational factor likely comes into play.   While some individuals claim to be able to perform all tasks related to a given act of production with expert precision, it is very seldom true.   I've found this to be the case in print and Web production, where individuals arrogantly claim to be experts at every facet - only to find that they are very good at one or two things, marginally competent in a few others, and woefully inadequate at the rest.  There does seem to be a finite number of things a person can do very well, and when a task requires expertise in too many dimensions, unification of labor produces a low-quality and low-volume result.

As such, it seems necessary to determine the point between the extremes for any given task or process: division or unification of labor to the logical extreme is not a panacea for all forms of work - but instead, the idiosyncratic nature of the task, and the idiosyncratic capabilities of the individuals who perform it, must be intelligently assessed to arrive at a point where productivity, cost, and quality have achieved an optimum balance.

Innovation vs. Efficiency

The description of a proposed "efficiency innovation" has stuck in my craw - or more aptly, the description of an "innovative" idea that achieved greater operational efficiency rubbed me the wrong way, and biting my tongue to hold back the objection ("That's not innovative at all") has led me with a need to explore the conflict in the relatively safe environment of my notebook. And so ...

It seems to me that an "efficiency innovation" is a contradiction-in-terms. Efficiency is one thing, innovation another, and while they are not polar opposites, they are dissimilar enough that it would be extremely rare for a given proposal to be both an innovation and an improvement in efficiency.

To begin with core definitions: innovation seeks to create something that's altogether new, whereas efficiency seeks to streamline new processes - that is, efficiency seeks to reduce the costs of production, or to increase the output of production without incurring additional costs. In effect, efficiency does not create anything new.

As such, it seems to me that the creation of the new is the touchstone for determining whether a proposal is "innovative." If a proposed idea changes the task to produce more output with less effort (by reducing the number of employees, making existing employees more productive, gets customers to buy more of the same product, etc.), it will likely be a good idea, and potentially quite profitable, but it is not an innovation.

Both efficiency and innovation can lead to organizational growth - but again, it's not the phenomenon of growth, but the means by which growth is achieved, that differentiates efficiency from innovation. Specifically, growth as a result of innovation creates new products, new customers, new processes, and/or new positions (there may be other factors I am overlooking) - the organization "grows" by means of doing something it has not done in the past. Growth in an efficient organization occurs only from growth in existing markets, by adding people who do more of the same: if an idea results in selling more widgets, growth occurs when another production line or factory is added to handle the increased demand - but such growth is essentially replicating existing positions and processes to handle higher volume.

More so than their ultimate impact upon an organization, innovation and efficiency are distinguished by the way in which changes to the organization are conceived. Efficiency looks at history (what have we done in the past, and how can we do more with less?) whereas innovation looks to the future (what are we not doing now, that we could be doing?). As such, an efficient idea can be mathematically derived from historical data (a production ratio of X widgets per hours at a cost of Y dollars based on last month's figures); whereas innovation must be a complete supposition (there is no past data that can be used to project a future state).

As such, organizations tend to favor efficiency over innovation, because efficiency can be said to derive from "real" numbers and a more reliable method of projecting the future, while innovation does not yield to the same method of proof: innovation is based entirely on supposition with a lack of "hard evidence," and is therefore seen as being more risky and less dependable.

(I could go off on a tangent about how an innovator can struggle to produce historical proof, based on similar phenomena, but that is a very bad practice born of desperation to gain acceptance for innovation in a culture of efficiency, which is an entirely separate rant. I'll choke that back for now.)

This returns again to the notion of "the new." To come up with an idea to improve efficiency, one does not necessarily need to look outside the organization: merely consider existing operations to find an opportunity to streamline (cut costs, improve output). In some instances, it is possible to seek efficiency by looking outside the organization - chiefly for marketing efficiencies that seek to sell existing products to different markets, or get existing customers to purchase in greater quantity. It could be argued that this is "innovation" because it deals with "new" customers or "new" uses of an old product - but that seems to rather cheapen the definition of novelty.

The point I working toward is that to come up with an innovative idea, you must look outside the realm of what presently exists. Existing products or customers may be the place where the seed of an innovation can be identified, but an innovative idea very quickly leaves the real of what is familiar to explore notions that are "new" and have little correlation to the routines of existing operations and the parameters of existing relationships with external parties. The innovator must conceive of "that which could be" with very little assistance from "that which already is."

And to return to the implied thesis of the present rant: is it possible for an idea to be rightly called an "efficiency innovation" given the stark contract between efficiency and innovation? I am reluctant to say that such a thing is impossible, but only because those who say things such as "impossible" and "never" are often embarrassed by reality. And so, while I concede that it might be possible, I must state that I have never heard of such a thing, nor am I able to imagine a scenario that fits the bill.

Clarification

It occurs to me that contrasting two notions often leads to the sense that one is being extolled and the other denigrated - in this case, that "innovation" is good and "efficiency" is bad. To be clear: it's not my intention to create or give credence to such a notion. Both efficiency and innovation are valuable, and an organization must seek both innovation (to discover ideas for new operations) and efficiency (to be profitable in present operations) in order to have long-term success. Specifically, I am not saying efficiency is bad - but merely that efficiency is not innovative.

How Bureaucracy Crushes Innovation

The notion that bureaucracy crushes innovative ideas is nothing new, and the notion that a small company with little administrative process can easily out-maneuver larger organizations with greater resources is generally accepted or presented as an apathetic excuse for lack of progress so often that it's become virtually axiomatic. But how does this happen?

My sense (and sadly, my experience) is that great ideas occur even within the confines of heavily bureaucratized organizations, but are crushed before they can come to fruition, largely because of the internal politics. And to escape from yet another abstraction, by "politics" I mean the conflict among priorities among various parties within an organization.

To run through the process:

An innovative idea generally occurs when an individual stumbles across an idea for an improvement to the product, generally driven by notions of quality. The stimulus for most great ideas, I believe, is focused on the needs of the customer, and geared toward some facet of the product that makes it better for the consumer - whether it's the design of the product itself, the way in which it is distributed or marketed, or the way in which the customer is supported after the purchase.

I want to underscore the notion that it is an individual who comes up with the idea. While teams, groups, and departments may contribute to an idea and "help" to develop it, cognition and discovery take place in the single mind of a single person: there is no collective consciousness that causes multiple people to come up with the same idea simultaneously - one person has an idea.

And this is the first stumbling block: the individual communicates the idea to others close to themselves: their boss, their team, their department. At that point, the idea is developed - some people will help to improve the idea itself, some people will compromise the idea to forward their own agenda, some will contribute just to be part of the action.

This is not necessarily evil: those who seek to jump on the bandwagon may be motivated by the desire to undermine the idea, or to claim credit for it, but to assume this is the primary motive of every such person is overly pessimistic. In a healthy team culture, the motivation is simply to help a colleague, and the people who seek to contribute, whether by suggesting ideas of their own or providing a critical perspective, have the intention to improve the idea.

If the innovation survives this first test, it's the presented to others who have the authority to provide resources to develop and implement the idea. Typically, these are the accountants and financiers, whose sole agenda is to determine whether the notion makes sense from a monetary perspective: will it generate a profit? To be worth investment, there must be a return: either by increased revenue or decreased expenses.

Neither is this necessarily evil: the difference between a business and a charity is that the former seeks to make money for its investors. The greatest idea, one that makes the product an ideal solution to customer needs, isn't worth pursuing if the business is going to lose money (or make less money) on every sale because the costs exceed the benefits.

If the innovation survives the accounting tests, there is then a period of development, which includes both the planning stage and the execution stage. This is a minefield for innovative ideas, where there are a multitude of people, each with their own agenda, who will see any new idea as a bundle of opportunities and threats.

And again, this is not necessarily evil. For example, an operations manager might be concerned about the stability and security of the operation for which he is responsible - the resistance to innovation is not necessarily an ignorant fear of change, but often a more rational and calculated concern over the impact of the new development to the existing operation.

And finally, the idea that has made it this far down the belt-line is launched, them managed by operations staff, where the watchwords are "faster" and "cheaper," to which "better" is very often sacrificed. Unless the innovation is for an efficiency improvement, the additional effort necessary to execute upon a new idea is regarded as an inefficiency to be reduced or eliminated. And while the idea might be implemented as intended, over time, changes made to improve efficiency may undermine its effectiveness.

As such, these conflicting agendas tend to crush innovative ideas, or modify them to the point where they no longer achieve their intended results.

Phases of Innovation

I've been struck by a notion, which probably needs much more refinement, that the nature or character of "innovation" is heavily influenced by environmental factors - it's not quite as simple as the level of economic development or the phases in the product lifecycle. Though it's similar in a number of ways, it's different enough that the character of innovation can't be neatly ascribed to those existing theories.

Discovery Phase

During the earliest phases of the product lifecycle, development and introduction, innovation is largely a matter of invention: an entirely new product is invented, which was never before in existence, and it's also discovered that the product serves some human need (which is important, as many of the "discoveries" of science have little application to human needs, at least initially).

The "discovery" phase also carries over to the second phase of the product lifecycle, introduction, in the sense that , while the supplier has discovered a new product by a process of invention, the buyer must also discover it - traditionally, by the supplier communicating information to the market to advertise the product, but more recently by word-of-mouth.

In this phase, innovation is characterized by invention and application: a product is created, and it is matched with a consumer need.

Manufacturing Phase

The manufacturing phase of innovation occurs during the introduction and growth periods of the product lifecycle, during which time innovation is geared toward developing methods of producing a product (or a service) in sufficient quantity to satisfy market demand.

The transition from discovery to manufacturing is a vulnerable period, during which a company that discovers a product seeks to bring it to the market before its competitors. My sense is that there are many instances in which one company has invented something is beaten to market by another, especially in the technology industry.

In this phase, innovation is characterized by entrepreneurship: the product must be produced and delivered to the consumer.

Efficiency Phase

The efficiency phase of innovation may occur during the last three phases of the product lifecycle: growth, maturity, and decline. It's generally characterized by multiple producers entering the market, competing largely on the basis of price.

Competition in this phase is for share of market: efficiency can take the form of the least costly manufacturing process (by cutting costs, price can be lowered to gain competitive advantage) or the most productive manufacturing process (being able to supply in quantity, such that customers who want the product immediately can buy from you rather than waiting for a competitor to catch up to back orders).

As such, innovation in this phase generally consists of cost reduction and supply-chain management, with the goal of gaining share of market.

Service Phase

The service phase may, in some products, be substituted for the efficiency phase, though for most products that come to mind, it generally occurs afterward, when firms are more or less equal in their ability to produce a good cheaply and in sufficient quantity and seek to differentiate themselves from competitors in ways that customers value.

Customer preference is of primary importance: given that the good is readily available from multiple sources, and there is little differentiation in product price, competitive advantage is won by the firm that best satisfies customer needs in terms that have less to do with the physical properties of the product or its price, but have to do with the success of the product in satisfying consumer needs other than those directly addressed by the product itself (core value is not sacrificed, but augmented).

As such, innovation in this phase consists of quality improvement and customer relationship management, with a goal of gaining customer loyalty and improving share of wallet.

***

I'll concede that this is very early thinking, and as such may be a bit half-baked and ill-defined. I expect I'll return to it later for more detailed consideration - just wanted to jot it down in this notebook for now.