Employers valued compliance and consistency over high performance and differentiation.
The work being done was mostly boring.
The workers were poorly educated and had very low skill levels.
Meeting expectations meant following very specific work parameters.
There was a great need for workers to respect authority and comply explicitly with everything they were told to do.
Workers had to endure high levels of boredom.
Everything was measured by time. Quality was assumed within the confines of the routine, and time was used to maximize efficiency (Eisner, 2002).
These rules and standards led the way for mass production, which required large numbers of people working in strict unison and close quarters to produce a consistent product with high quality, in great quantity, and at a lower cost than ever before (Jones, 2000). This method drove people from rural areas into the city for these new factory jobs. It also drove the need for larger schools, which likewise structured themselves in a way that both mirrored the common thinking of the time and served as a mechanism for delivering future workers for these emerging institutions (Gray, 1993). In order to prepare workers for the Industrial Revolution, schools constructed during that time were organized to do the following.
Schools were set up to reward compliance over high performance. Students were much better off going along with the crowd than standing out (Eisner, 2002).
Students were taught that putting up with boredom was part of their work expectations. Complaining about boredom was not an option, and learning to live and comply with it was the expectation (Eisner, 2002).
Fear, threats, and intimidation were utilized to keep control. This has proven to be historically effective in managing workers doing low-intellect, high-muscle jobs (Reason, 2010).
Even though schools were technically designed as learning institutions, the real measure or metric was time. Students were taught to move en masse by taking breaks, eating lunch, and going back to work with a large group. All activities were controlled by a bell system very similar to the factories that students would be joining in just a few years (Jones, 2000).
Sadly, many of the conventions in place during the Industrial Revolution still carry a significant level of importance in our schools today. Having trained thousands of teachers and administrators at this point, I can say with confidence that there are still greater rewards in most schools for conformity than there are for creativity. These schools also admit to being more focused on the metric of time than the progress of learning. Similarly, they value the illusion of control over the opportunity to be creative.
Still not convinced that your school is carrying around elements of this old managerial framework? Ask math teachers why algebra is taught before geometry. During the Industrial Revolution, to stay organized and streamlined, policy makers and school leaders decided to choose algebra over geometry because A comes before G alphabetically (Thompson, 2005). Learning theorists tell us that the levels of abstraction necessary to learn algebra may be difficult for students in the latter years of middle school and early years of high school (Thompson, 2005). Not surprisingly, algebra continues to be one of those courses with an extraordinarily high failure rate in every state (Pappano, 2012). Here we are over one hundred years later, and we continue to follow an unsuccessful tradition based on alphabetical order.
The Carrot and the Stick
As the Industrial Revolution unfolded, the United States developed management techniques that revolved around carrots and sticks. It was generally assumed that people performed more admirably if leaders clarified their expectations by offering explicit rewards and punishments (Skinner, 1938). Those in charge would put a metaphorical carrot in front of an individual or group of workers and encourage them to move forward. Leaders would likewise wave a threatening stick as an ominous reminder of what would happen if the workers didn’t follow the prescribed direction.
So does the carrot-and-stick routine work? Does it work for students? Does it work for teachers and staff? The answer is yes and no. Rather than relying on stories or homespun wisdom, I’m going to share some science with you. In studying human performance, we’ve come to realize that if you are providing human beings with a simple task with relatively few decision points and the need to execute maximum effort, the system of carrots and sticks works quite well (Ayres, 2010). After all, the human brain is capable of many nuanced expressions and iterations. While the ability to examine options puts us at our most creative, it can also be somewhat of a distraction. We’ve all had the experience of spending more time considering our options than bearing down and getting to work. Therefore, in terms of carrots and sticks, if the job at hand is excruciatingly simple, the performance level will go up if the brain can associate some sort of punishment or reward associated with the simple choices in front of it.
Quite remarkably, however, there is an avalanche of research suggesting that the more complex the challenge, the more ineffective the carrot-and-stick routine becomes (Pink, 2009). In fact, even if you take away the notion of the stick and just focus on incentives, this research is clear that offering an incentive can become a distraction to an otherwise open and creative mind. What’s important to understand is that the evolution of our culture certainly saw a time when jobs were simple, tasks were boring and routine, and people weren’t asked to problem solve or collaborate with any great depth at work. Those days are over. However, just like the algebra problem, we unfortunately are living through a time in which the accelerated demands of the economy and new working environment in conjunction with our ideas about what it takes to get the best out of people have outpaced the leadership strategies available to us.
Before going further, I want to make it clear that we did make some progress in the latter half of the 20th century in terms of how we think about leadership, organizational behavior, and systems. Younger readers may find this hard to believe, but it wasn’t that long ago when this simple notion that workers should be comfortable and somewhat happy on the job wasn’t assumed and had to be taught as a matter of undoing old management principles.
The Humanist Movement
In what’s generally referred to as the Humanist Movement, leaders were advised to treat workers with a greater sense of humanity and concern. Rather than seeing them as replaceable parts of a big machine—as was the design in the industrial model—leaders were taught to show concern for people and offer reinforcement and encouragement (Rogers, 1959).
For the first half of the 20th century, it was common for workers to fear their bosses. In the second half of the 20th century, bosses attempted to portray a kinder, gentler, and more understanding image of management. Thanks to technology and the acceleration of the skill level needed in most jobs, the feelings that workers have about their bosses are perhaps less relevant than they once were. If you’re the boss, bluntly put, it isn’t all about you. In the most highly productive organizations, the workers don’t spend their days perseverating on every nuance of behavior from their boss or manager. Their focus is on their own work. They have the autonomy to lead in their own right and are busy finding solutions to problems rather than focusing on the maladies in management or leadership.
It should be clear that leading with a fear orientation simply doesn’t work (Reason, 2010). The learning and growth challenges that students and staff (including you) face each day are adequately complex, and the simple application of sticks and carrots won’t improve your performance. In fact, there is a significant amount of evidence that shows when fear is introduced, it actually