Cracking the Leadership Code. Alain Hunkins

COMMAND AND CONTROL ENDURED

      Command-and-control was the dominant mode of leadership for most of the 20th century. In hindsight, it's hard to believe that so many employees would put up with practices and conditions that we'd now find intolerable. But there were quite a few factors that existed that allowed leaders to successfully employ command-and-control for so long.

      Jobs and Education Were Scarce

      At the turn of the 20th century, the standard of living was much lower than it is today. Disposable income was the privilege of only a wealthy few.

      There was no middle class to speak of. In 1900, the average family had an annual income of $3,000 (in today's dollars). Most people had no indoor plumbing, no phone, and no car. About half of all American children lived in poverty. Most teens didn't attend school; instead, they labored in factories or fields.⁷

      Working to put food on the table was no metaphor. It was literal. Opportunities for steady employment were few and far between. People who landed a factory floor job with a regular paycheck were primed for obedience; questioning authority would put their golden egg at risk. As such, they'd put up with a lot of lousy behavior.

      Factory Work Paid Well

      On a cold day in January 1914, an estimated 10,000 people lined up outside of Ford Motor Company's employment office desperate to be hired.⁸ Henry Ford had announced an extraordinary offer to job candidates: he was willing to pay $5/day. That was more than twice the average factory wage at the time. Ford set a precedent that was followed by other companies over time: pay your workers well, and turnover and absenteeism will go down. After this wage increase, the Ford Motor Company doubled its profits in less than two years.

Ford's move to raise wages also gave birth to the U.S. industrial middle class. A salary of five dollars a day allowed workers to enjoy a standard of living the likes of which had never been seen by working-class people. There's a sign outside the abandoned Model-T plant in Highland Park, Michigan, that says, “Mass production soon moved from here to all phases of American industry, and set a pattern of abundance for 20th-century living.”⁹

      Workers knew (and were often reminded by managers on the floor) that if they didn't want to do the work, there were five other people outside who'd be ready to jump at a moment's notice. The golden handcuffs of high wages kept most people obedient in the command-and-control system.

      Work Was Static

      For most employees, factory work didn't involve a great deal of technical skill. The basic job functions of what needed to be done on the assembly line could be learned relatively quickly. The skill that was in demand was perseverance. Workers would have to stand in one place on the line and do the same thing over and over again. All day. Every day.

      Because the work process was so repetitive, managers were not interested in things being done differently. Traits such as innovation or creativity were off limits for employees. “Just do your job” was a key operating principle.

      After all, there were production quotas to hit. Managers didn't want anything to stand in the way of that assembly line. Thus, a “do as I tell you to do” ethic became the norm.

      Business Cycles Were Slow

      Managers focused on command and control of the labor force because on a day-to-day basis, things stayed pretty much the same. For example, the Ford Motor Company started manufacturing the Model T automobile in 1908. They kept manufacturing that same make and model of car until 1927. For 20 years, the Model T didn't change. As Henry Ford famously said, “Customers could get it in any color they wanted, as long as it was black.”

Because the speed of market changes was so slow, leaders weren't worrying about external threats to their business model. What they did last month they'd do next month. This plodding pace enabled leaders to spend their time and energy on controlling the workforce to preserve the status quo.

      Less Access to Information

      At the start of the 20th century, employees had no way of knowing and no way of finding out if the grass was greener at some other company. There was no LinkedIn to network for new job opportunities, no monster.com to read up on new job postings, and no glassdoor.com to find out if the company you're interviewing with is a place that you'd actually want to work.

      Living in this information vacuum, workers were stuck in their circumstances. However, because the lack of information was such a cultural norm, no one expected anything else. They just put up with their situation.

      Through its first few decades, command-and-control achieved tremendous results. In this new industrial era, it was considered an essential part of business success. Its philosophy expanded from factories to many other sectors of the economy. As it grew, it also migrated to business school classrooms, where it became standard dogma for much of the 20th century.

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT'S INFLUENCE ON BUSINESS SCHOOLS

      Did you ever wonder where business schools came from? They haven't been around forever. Harvard University was the first American university to offer a Master's in business administration. Founded in 1908, it based its first-year curriculum on Frederick Taylor's principles of scientific management. The program was built on analysis, synthesis, logic, rationality, and efficiency.

The MBA approach to managing a business was built on the belief that an organization (and its people) functioned like a machine. With proper tinkering on the part of management, the machine could be engineered for the ultimate prize: continuous peak efficiency. Every challenge the organization faced was an engineering problem to be solved. Sound familiar?

      If you listen closely to the language of business, you can still clearly hear the language of engineering. Its mechanistic, dehumanizing influence has affected beliefs, words, and behaviors in the workplace for more than a century. Some common examples of this include these concepts:

       Your job fits in a box on the bottom of the org chart.

       You report to your superior. You are his or her subordinate. You report up to that person.

       You are a rank- and-file employee.

       If we don't have direct reports, we may have dotted-line responsibilities.

       Salaries are one of the biggest costs we incur around here.

       We don't have enough human resources.

       Let's deploy for this new product launch.

       I'm going to send this up the food chain for approval.

       Let's interface before the 3 p.m. meeting.

       Get the proposal ready double-time!

       It's important that we drill this down to the front lines.

       We'll get this out to the masses.

      How would it make you feel to know that there are leaders who are meeting together, trying to find the best way to drill stuff into you, along with the rest of the frontline masses?

      In large organizations, personnel networks were modeled on the military, with layer on layer nested into the chain of command. Control was established through rigid hierarchy, structures, and processes. Rules were designed to maintain order and the status quo. Going outside the lines was considered a rebellious act and insubordination.

In this system, newly minted MBA graduates would join “high-potential” programs in large companies. Once on board, they would rely on the strengths that got them jobs in the first place: analysis and problem-solving.