I Also Talk About The Dark Side Of Business (ePub)

they only do one task at any one time. The sand shoveler Taylor studied did not simultaneously put coal into the furnace. The women who soldered wires in the wire room that Mayo observed did not simultaneously inspect the finished phones at the factory. Iowa corn farmers don't leave their plowed furrows to go to meetings. The same goes for knowledge and service work, which require focus. Surgeons do not take phone calls in the operating room, or lawyers do not take phone calls while consulting with clients.

But in organizations that primarily consist of knowledge and service work, the focus is fragmented[53]is increasingly becoming the norm. High-level characters can occasionally center themselves (though few of them try it). But the majority is made up of engineers, teachers, salespeople, secretaries, and middle managers, and they are all taking on an ever-increasing amount of busy work, contribute little, if any, value and the activities have nothing to do with the expertise they were trained and paid to do.

The worst case is probably the nurses in American hospitals. We hear a lot about the shortage of nurses. But how did that happen? Because for many years the number of graduates pursuing higher education has been steadily increasing, and at the same time, the number of hospital beds has recently decreased rapidly. The answer to this paradox is: today's nurses only spend about half of their time doing what they were trained for and paid for - nursing. The remaining half of their time is filled with activities that do not require the skills or knowledge for which they are trained, activities that do not contribute to health care or add any economic value, or has little to do with the patient's health or recovery process. Nurses are primarily busy with piles of Medicare paperwork, Medicaid[55], insurance companies, hospital billing offices, and prevent lawsuits due to medical malpractice.