A machinist and mechanical engineer by trade, Frederick Winslow Taylor led a professional crusade against waste and inefficiency, becoming one of the first management consultants in the process. At the heart of the waste, in Taylor’s mind, was the wide variation in how work was performed from one worker to the next. It would be much better, he reasoned, for everyone to be taught the one right way, and then for workers to follow that way without deviation; any other approach must necessarily be less efficient. And who determined the one right way? Professional managers and consultants such as
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