Idea Ripper // ArchiveCards: 1555 [Live] | Updated: 2026-10-14
Card #c1132IR // #c1132Synthesis

"Mr. Thompson soon recognized that the quality most needed for bicycle ball inspectors was a low personal coefficient." "…this involved laying off many of the most intelligent, hardest working, and most trustworthy girls merely because they did not possess the quality of quick perception followed by quick action."

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

[Use when]

You are hiring on general merit for a job that depends on one measurable ability.

[Why it matters]

Reaction time, measured as in a psychology lab, decided who stayed. Taylor admits the cost plainly: good workers lost the job over a trait unrelated to effort or honesty.

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. #c1115"…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…You are setting up pay for work where you can't easily see the pace.

Same situation, different book

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