“We should end the intensive human farming”

Tijn Touber | November 2005 issue
UH… DON’T YOU MEAN INTENSIVE FARMING OF LIVESTOCK?
“Oh no. Have you ever seen how people in call centers are packed in together? Exactly— just like penned calves! The calves wear a sort of headset too, that keeps them connected to a computer that calculates how much feed they need. Farmers go into the shed less and less often; instead, they watch their animals grow on spreadsheets. Managers run their organizations in the same way as they do in the modern agricultural industry.”
YOU’RE COMPARING EMPLOYEES TO LIVESTOCK?
“Yes. Sorry. Employees are milked dry and then discarded. Companies want to control everything. They’d rather use novices who properly follow procedures and protocols than professionals who can think for themselves. Everything is put into formats, procedures, rules and competence models, people included.”
FOR EXAMPLE?
“There’s not a single professional working at McDonald’s, not one cook, who knows anything about food. The central question for the managers is: How do I completely eliminate chance? Everything has to be predictable, efficient, calculable and controllable.”
THAT HAS ITS ADVANTAGES, DOESN’T IT?
“Where professionalism is lacking, it becomes increasingly important to be able to measure everything and express it numerically. The saying ‘To measure is to know’ has been erroneously replaced by ‘To know is to measure.’ That’s a shame, because knowledge consists of more than just measurable things.
SO IT’S ALL GOING TO GET EVEN WORSE?
“Well, every organization is part of a larger, more complex system. Most people find things too complicated and prefer to divide everything up into smaller pieces. So you get experts in specialized areas. But you can’t just divide up an organization, or society, like that. It makes us lose our sense of coherence. It’s not making things better overall, but it’s keeping us terribly busy.”
Jaap Peters is a partner at Overmars Organisatie, a Dutch consulting firm.