From the hours of 4 or 5 a.m. to 8 or 9 at night, man, woman and child could be found behind closed – often locked – factory doors. They went to work before sunup and trailed home in the dark. The longest break, a half hour for tea, was the best respite most people could expect, which likely felt as ghastly as it sounds.
Although things have changed for the more humane since then, if reading the above gave you an unsettling prickle of familiarity, you wouldn’t be alone. This system of management, called command and control, is still widely used today.
Command and control might be “historically proven,” but it only makes sense if the person running the show is a complete genius, and the employees, mental midgets incapable of independent thought. These days though, organizations tend not to be this stratified: smart, educated people can be found at all levels of a company, and as you’ve probably already realized if you’ve ever held a job, that someone holds a senior position doesn’t always indicate smarts.
So what do you think happens when you try to force people of equal intelligence into a strict hierarchy as in the command and control system?
71% of people wind up hating their jobs, that’s what.
Dispatches From The Front 