Getting "Organizationalized"

The other day my son Pete and I went for a little ride. We're partners in two supposedly for-profit businesses that have been steadily losing money and these rides give us a chance to complain to each other about our failures. Pete also remembers when I used to be a consultant that helped businesses solve exactly the same problems we're struggling with. (Yes, I do seem to have lost my touch. Good thing I'm in PhD school to learn a thing or two.)
"Mom, I can't get the employees to solve their own problems. They either do the wrong thing or wait for me to come find a fix."
"Maybe we need to invest more time in training." (Reoccurring mom answer for everything.)
Fortunately before we got too far down that road, both literally and metaphorically, I remembered that I have been diligently reading my Humanistic Foundations text, Productive Workplaces Revisited. I would have thought of it sooner, but I am still in Part 1 reading about this person Taylor, who despite my being known as the-book-of-the-month manager, I had somehow failed to study earlier in my career. Taylor, according to the author, is the father of all these management ideas from which we consultants have been making a living. (He also the first known workplace consultant and from what I've read, experienced the same positive results/negative reviews I've had a few times. People always seemed happier to pay my fees when my work didn't actually do anything--the negative results/positive reviews effect.)
While I was mulling over what Taylor might have done if he ran a car dealership, we passed a car purchased from my nearest competitor with the bumper sticker, "Change is good. You go first." At least he wasn't an employee, but he obviously hadn't been moved to take his business across the street by my unchanging but ever revolving team members. Back to the book.
Taylor applied his creative genius in the early part of the last century at places like Bethlehem Steel with astonishing increases in productivity and profitability. His idea was to have the flexibility to put the people who were best at something to work in that job and move those who weren't so great somewhere where they could be. He believed that managers weren't there to be the boss but there to support workers to higher productivity. It was a big change for industry at that time just as it probably would be if we did it at my business today. Despite his track record, few people went for it and some of those reverted back because change, as we all know, is both unpleasant and easily sabotaged. Hence, the bumper stick.
A hundred and twenty years later, most of us are still waiting for somebody else to do it first. And despite my also never-changing mantra, I am beginning to understand that training is not the answer. It doesn't hurt, but if that were all it took, my granddaughter would now be a straight A student and my husband could use the microwave.
What is the answer? Apparently not Taylorism, God rest his soul. He died at fifty-nine feeling pretty discouraged about people's ability to understand what he meant and why it worked. His ideas got bastardized and he was vilified as the kind of guy that worked his people to death and never paid fairly for the increase in productivity. (Another thing I can relate to.)
Pete says he just wants everybody to care about the customer. This may be one place where Taylor's ideas could apply. He knew that people operated more out of self-interest than altruism. I'll have to read the next four chapters to enlighten you further on how that works and why it doesn't seem to be solving any problems for Pete and I, either. As I am only behind about six hundred pages, my next blog should be a real eye-opener.