Process, Learning & The Division of Labour

With every piece of new work or indeed any new experience we undertake in our lives we go through a process of learning. We may watch the task, repeat the task, read about the task - there are many different ways of learning how to do something and a thousand scholarly scientific textbooks that will tell you all about it.

But why is this relevant to process? The answer is simple - the benefits of process are fundamentally based on the way humans learn.

In a former life I was a commis chef. One day I was given a task to make the tomato concasse for one of the dishes. The chef showed me how to do it and I repeated it after him. "Good" said the Head Chef, and proceeded to give me a bucket of tomatoes to turn into concasse.  So I started to make the concasse - I took the first tomato, chopped it in two, scooped out the seeds, pressed it flat, chopped the middle out and pressed it flat then diced the tomato. Half an hour later I felt the burning eye of the chef looking at my paltry pile of tomato concasse. "NO, NO, NO!" he said and proceeded to show me the error of my ways. "First chop all the tomatoes, then scoop out all the seeds, then press them all flat, then dice them ALL!"

I didn't realise it at the time but this was my first real-life lesson in the benefits of process. As I did each step in turn I found myself speeding up dramatically. The first few I did were slow as I got my technique right, but after that I was flying, and in no time I was finished my bucket of tomatoes and was feeling very pleased with myself (until I was given a bucket of potatoes!)

What I had replicated was the concept of functional design - the same concept that was the basis of the industrial revolution. If I had, for example, a tomato concasse factory I would probably have a team that would put the tomatoes into buckets, another team to chop the tomatoes, another team to flatten the tomatoes, etc. When we split tasks into functions we break them down into simpler more easily understood parts. As they are simpler to understand the learning curve is shorter; workers can learn to do each task quickly and become very fast at doing the tasks whilst maintaining quality. Conversely if we have multiple tasks performed by one person the complexity of learning becomes greater and it is slower to complete the overall process - we introduce multiple learning curves within the process. I would also argue that when each learning curve is repeated simultaneously there is greater memory retention than when multiple learning curves exist.

Back in 1776 a very canny Scotsman, Adam Smith talked about this exact phenomenon in his famous book, "The Wealth of Nations". He talked about what he defined as the "Division of Labour" - what we call functions today - and he used the example of the making of metal pins to demonstrate the benefits of the division of labour:

"Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day"

Adam Smith was right and it became the basis of how we do work today - functions designed to complete specific tasks. But as companies, products and marketplaces became more complex and segmented, so became the need to have more complex and specialised functions within organisations.  As process people we are now all acutely aware of the challenges that this brings for organisations to manage the flow of work across these functional specialities.

The division of labour and the specialisation of work functions provided a totally new way of working and had a major role in the industrial revolution - but it has now become both a blessing and a curse for organisations. Now and into the future the ability to manage processes across increasingly complex organisations will become imperative.

Cheers,

TPN

Comments

[Craig Willis]

I like any process story that contains tomatoes! :)
While Adam Smith described the Pin Factory in 1776 it wasn't until the 20th century that Henry Ford really transformed the work place with this way of thinking. However, also in the 20th century, many manufacturers have discovered that division of labour into too many component parts eventually becomes detrimental to the overall efficiency of the process.

I believe it was Volvo, but could be wrong, that first started giving workers larger and more diverse segments of work to complete. While this appeared to have a negative impact on the length of time to complete an end-to-end process, by making it longer, it was actually better. It resulted in better worker engagement which in turn led to lower absence and lower staff attrition. The overall cost of operations went down and quality improved. From a purely process point of view this was not obvious.

What your concasse story shows is the transfer of best practice knowledge from expert to new starter. Even though a process is defined what you learned here was a better way to do it. This in turn would be fed into the next improvement cycle for the next new starter.

[The Process Ninja]

This is a great point Craig - good process is about quality, not just speed - and achieveing quality is about engaging employees in meaningful ways.

[diploma of community services work]

That seems pretty basic, but that’s where a lot of people stop. Well, it was a great info. This draft looks very good. I’ve been looking for something like this for a while now. Thanks!