Give Your Team Better Lines
how guidelines produce better work than assembly lines
Photo by Benjamin Faust on Unsplash
Did you know that Henry Ford didn’t invent the assembly line? He actually improved upon an existing assembly line being used by another manufacturer.
The concept of treating workers like cogs in a machine has been around longer than many of us actively recognize — going back as far as 1776 via Adam Smith, who popularized the idea that workers only work for money.
In response, we divided up work into small, easily repeated tasks. These tasks were also essentially meaningless, making the work meaningless for the person doing it.
And while it’s tempting to brush this approach off as something relegated to producing things like cars, the assembly line pervades most businesses by way of micromanagement, rigid scripting, and presenteeism.
When you treat people like cogs, you make the false belief — that people only work for money — true. Why else would they do meaningless tasks over and over?
And if it wasn’t clear, this approach doesn’t produce excellent results because it doesn’t enable humans to do their best work.
Good news: as a purpose-driven business, you can start to ditch the assembly line by embracing guidelines instead.
Think of it like bowling with the bumpers up:
The pins sit at the end of the lane as the target — they’re what you need to achieve.
The bumpers stand on either side of the lane. They prevent utter catastrophe, which in the case of bowling is a gutter ball.
They also increase the likelihood of success by keeping you focused on the right things.
The pins are your goals, your mission is the lane, and the guidelines you create through your systems are the bumpers. You know what results you need to deliver, and the guidelines increase your chances of success while simultaneously limiting distracting noise and serious missteps.
With the bumpers up, your team has the freedom to get their ball down the lane in a variety of ways. Maybe they’re a zen bowler and roll with their eyes closed. Maybe they like to put some spin on it.
In the case of your business, what matters is that they, your team members, have the autonomy to choose their tactics and get work done in the way that best enables them to deliver results.
Guidelines empower your people. By implementing them, you’ve produced support that sets them up for success while giving them the freedom to use their creativity, talents, and skills — as well as test, fail, and improve — all without ending up in another lane.
The key difference between guidelines and the assembly line is simple: Trust.
Have you done your part to set the pins and put up the bumpers?
If so, trust the rockstars you hired to knock the pins down.
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