The theory –Division of Labor – is more than 200 years old. It was developed by Adam Smith, who is seen as one of the inventors of management. (Peter F. Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities Practices, 1973) Simply stated, Division of Labor says different kinds of work should be done by different people, and perhaps even, different kinds of people.

Division of Labor. “This idea relates primarily to the specialization of the labor force, essentially the breaking down of large jobs into many tiny components. Under this regime each worker becomes an expert in one isolated area of production, thus increasing his efficiency.” … “Surprisingly, Smith recognized the potential problems of this development. He pointed out that forcing individuals to perform mundane and repetitious tasks would lead to an ignorant, dissatisfied work force. For this reason he advanced the revolutionary belief that governments had an obligation to provide education to workers.” (Yousuf Dhamee, http://landow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/economics/division.html)

In spite of our complaining about the education system, many countries now have the best-educated workforces in the history of the world. But, as managers, we still practice Division of Labor as though the theory is in our bones. And, the more we divide jobs into smaller and smaller parts, the more managers and supervisors we need to coordinate our splintered organizations and reintegrate the parts we have created. Control becomes a bigger and bigger issue.

In America, the number of managers is still growing. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the proportion grew by over 36% in the past 15 years (from 11% to 14% of the workforce). The occupational group we hear so much about – those knowledge workers, the professional specialists – grew only half as fast (from 13% to 15%) in the same period. These categories of employment – at 14% and 15%, nearly a third of the entire workforce – represent the largest two groups tracked by the US Department of Labor.

Division of Labor created astounding efficiencies 250 years ago. Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, 1776) found that pin makers working in a factory setting – each doing just part of the job – were able to produce 2,400 times more pins per worker per day than those doing the whole job. But over time, we’ve squandered those productivity gains by adding layers of supervisors, managers and staff positions that make no pins at all!

The Information Age brought with it a new sensitivity to – and value for – the paying customer. Dividing the work of making a pin into eighteen parts separated pin makers from their product and their customers. Instead of selling pins to users, they came to realize that they were selling labor to factory managers. Even pin makers no longer made pins, just part of a pin.

It’s time to discover the next 1000+ per-cent performance increase by bringing people together.