Idea Ripper // ArchiveCards: 1555 [Live] | Updated: 2026-10-14
Card #c1115IR // #c1115Synthesis

"…since they were paid by the hour, the faster they went the less money they got, and finally telling him that if he went too fast the other boys would give him a licking."

— In our words · Source: The Principles of Scientific Management (Frederick Winslow Taylor)

[Use when]

You are setting up pay for work where you can't easily see the pace.

[Why it matters]

A twelve-year-old had worked out the incentive and the enforcement on his own. Hourly pay rewarded slowness, and the group policed anyone who went faster.

Filed under situations:When the team is looking to you to lead

More from The Principles of Scientific Management

#c1113"The greater part of the systematic soldiering, however, is done by the men with the deliberate object of keeping their employers ignorant…Your team's estimates never get shorter no matter how familiar the work becomes. #c1114"…after a workman has had the price per piece of the work he is doing lowered two or three times as a result of his having worked harder…You are tempted to raise a quota because someone beat it. #c1116"…there are many different ways in common use for doing the same thing, perhaps forty, fifty, or a hundred ways of doing each act in each…Every person on the team does the same recurring task differently.

Same situation, different book

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