76 •
The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
the general superintendent.” This is the experience of Vance’s protagonist,
a low-level employee of a gigantic corporation. He wants to point out the
enormous inefficiency of carrying tools to and from a storeroom, and he
uses various subterfuges to take his suggestion
to higher level supervisors
including, finally, the CEO.
The CEO then directs him downward through another channel of
the bureaucracy until he finally finds Dodkin. Dodkin is a bottom-level
employee who has been feeding “interpolations” to a computer, whose
output, in turn, guides the entire organization’s activities. The protagonist
then convinces Dodkin to retire, arranges for himself to be demoted so he
can take over Dodkin’s job, and then feeds the computer his own interpo-
lations. The story becomes far less funny when one realizes that there are
organizations with the kind of silo mentality and departmental barriers
that make this kind of situation possible in the real world.
* * *
That which one has to fight hardest against in bringing together a large num-
ber of people to do work is excess organization and consequent red tape.
To my mind there is no bent of mind more dangerous than that which is
sometimes described as the “genius for organization.” This usually results in
the birth of a great big chart showing, after the fashion of a family tree, how
authority ramifies. The tree is heavy with nice round berries, each of which
bears the name of a man or of an office. Every man has a title and certain
duties which are strictly limited by the circumference of his berry.
If a straw boss wants to say something to the general superintendent, his
message has to go through the sub-foreman, the foreman, the department
head, and all the assistant superintendents, before, in the course of time, it
reaches the general superintendent. Probably by that time what he wanted
to talk about is already history. It takes about six weeks for the message of a
man living in a berry on the lower left-hand corner of the chart to reach the
president or chairman of the board, and, if it ever does reach one of these
august officials, it has by that time gathered to itself about a pound of criti-
cisms, suggestions, and comments. Very few things are ever taken under
“official consideration” until long after the time when they actually ought to
have been done. The buck is passed to and fro and all responsibility is dodged
by individuals—following the lazy notion that two heads are better than one.
* * *
The following segment could be construed as support for a silo mental-
ity because it seems to discourage communication between departments.
Cross-functional meetings are currently the generally accepted practice in
Machines and Men • 77
world-class organizations. Ford apparently meant that people were not to
go looking into other people’s jobs, and assembly line work left little time
for such extracurricular activities. If, however, the workers saw some-
thing, like a sheet
of metal with holes in it, they were encouraged to ask
what became of the metal that was in those holes. They also asked and
discovered what might be done to reduce or eliminate the material waste
in question.
The subsequent discussion meanwhile suggests the modern concept of
self-directed work teams: “A group of men, wholly intent upon getting
work done, have no difficulty in seeing that the work is done. They do not
get into trouble about the limits of authority, because they are not think-
ing of titles.” The person who is best able to do a necessary task simply
does it.
* * *
Now a business, in my way of thinking, is not a machine. It is a collection of
people who are brought together to do work and not to write letters to one
another. It is not necessary for any one department to know what any other
department is doing. If a man is doing his work he will not have time to take
up any other work. It is the business of those who plan the entire work to see
that all of the departments are working properly toward the same end. It is
not necessary to have meetings to establish good feeling between individuals
or departments. It is not necessary for people to love each other in order to
work together. Too much good fellowship may indeed be a very bad thing, for
it may lead to one man trying to cover up the faults of another. That is bad
for both men.
When we are at work we ought to be at work. When we are at play we
ought to be at play. There is no use trying to mix the two. The sole object
ought to be to get the work done and to get paid for it. When the work is done,
then the play can come, but not before. And so the Ford factories and enter-
prises have no organization, no specific duties attaching to any position, no
line of succession or of authority, very few titles, and no conferences. We have
only the clerical help that is absolutely required; we have no elaborate records
of any kind, and consequently no red tape.
We make the individual responsibility complete. The workman is abso-
lutely responsible for his work. The straw boss is responsible for the workmen
under him. The foreman is responsible for his group. The department head
is responsible for the department. The general superintendent is responsible
for the whole factory. Every man has to know what is going on in his sphere.
I say “general superintendent.” There is no such formal title. One man is
in charge of the factory and has been for years. He has two men with him,
