I am wondering to search those companies, production units, offices and factories where people are working under traditional or industrial mind approach. Generations have leg
behind The Agricultural Age and The Hunter/Gatherer Age long time ago. However, Industrial age mindset is still influenced to the global workforce.

Let me define you quickly what is Industrial age mindset is:

Industrial mindset is a formal working system to run working people and machines together under rules, efficiency & controlling trigger hold by an authority called Boss/Director/Manager.

It gives you vision to use people instead of machines and manage machines instead of people. Workers can be considered as your machines to take orders to have production or give services. Employees should not have courage to comment on any mechanism on the procedures and layout of the department. Everything is fixed. They are not allowed to use their own methods to get desired results. They do what they are told, not to participate in any development and policy matter.

This chronic problem under industrial system is to make The Boss always happy. Every worker has to get Boss blessings to go head in their everyday job responsibilities or career growth. Such Boss or leader can fire any employee anytime and that leader does make all decisions because he knows best of all. Best performance of worker or employee is calculated based on Manager’s personal likeness, not with any assessment criteria.

I am Boss

Production or service delivery capacity is not customer oriented under such environment. Today, where business market is extremely customer oriented, under industrial mind policy structure, it is not primarily or even secondarily priority of the company. Sales or Service provider staff and marketing departments are full of incompetent people with very casual and traditional approach. Customers are their greedy focus for selling products and earn money just, not for serving people and the society with mission or contribution.

One of greatest tragedy of industrial working system that you will not have any access to the resources to know more, in fact there is not space of any resources in the system. Information is blocked here, sorry. You do not need to know anything else except you are told or you observe here. If it is really necessary to find new solution or way, just butter to Boss and try to flatter him until he permit to allow you to say what feel. If this new productive idea increase Boss’s power over the system, it is okay to discuss, otherwise absolutely NOT.

Low Trust is the fundamental spirit of this system because of egoistic or authoritative environment. Since, everybody is not working to strengthen the system rather to say YES BOSS, communication within worker is not trustable. Employees, either, will backbite to each other because they are not raised as team members. Employees seek to know weaknesses of other to exploit them. This low-trust does lie all the time because everything is secretive and everyone does work under No-Shared-Vision or No-Shared-Values. Their conscience is dead or at least sleeping. Everybody is victim as they pull each other legs. Political games and hidden agendas are in practice.

Organisational structurewise such companies have no or weak Human Resource policies & procedures, In fact there is no such organised HR department or section, can not be imagined. Employees in their clerical and administrative offices are recruited not based on qualification, backgrounds and talents but on references and without merit. Yes, such companies, in huge proportion, exit, everywhere, even in this age of media freedom, skills & talent and informational world.

Like machines, people are considered to produce or work more with high-efficiency because they will be following unchangeable bunch of rules set by Boss. They control people like machines. Psychological approach of this Boss is to fulfill very basic need of employee and ignore other needs such as emotional or social, mental and spiritual. Controlling people is their clever art and they are proud of it. They consider institutions and companies like their personal possession. In this situation, there is no concept of formal office meetings because everything is pre-prescribed and already decided. No meeting is needed.

Only motivation for employees to do their jobs is to get their weekly or monthly wages and nothing, more important is that they are on the job, at least for them and their family survival as they can see high percentage of unemployment in the city. This system plays with needs of survival and financial security of the workers and their families. Hence, neither they leave system not system leave them. On other way tricky BOSS or MANAGER  has firmly believe on JACK-ASS THEORY under which you adopt policy of “Carrot and Stick”, you give carrot and then stick to work , carrot and then stick to work and it goes on.

This misaligned system at workplace leads to inter-departmenal rivalry due to ambiguous vision of job position or about goals of the roles. BOSS  or MANAGER  does not acknowledge your talent or skills. That Manager does seem bad Coach and she disempowers employees. Manager has set fix rules and work procedures and you have to follow these rule if you want to sustain in this system. Employees become bore from their jobs and now they want to escape because they are angry and have a lot of fears. Any emerging people working under this system does lose their focus and confidence on their professional goals and become part of miserable life. Resign is the only hope to way out.

Because this system is based on straitjacket potential, it is developed with managing machines and using minds, there will be big gaps between operational procedures within departments. All are misaligned. One set rule will be contradicted with other in similar situations. You can see clear hypocrisies within people because they are codependent, workers know weak points of other.

Directors and Managers with narrow minds do not believe on trainings and professional development. They never convinced to invest money to provide training to develop employees for competencies, increasing productivity and learning new things. They have misconception that human mind cannot change. They think that they do not need to waste money and time to empower staff and workers. They see the world as They see themselves i.e. unchangeable.

It is misconception of such industrial Leaders that by controlling machines and people at workplace they would design a system where you can generate a lot of production and wealth that increase financial profits. In real, it is not for power or discipline of the system but for higher management who make monies and their personal bank accounts. If we visit most of production houses, factories and such companies, we can see the huge difference between personal social status of the final decision makers and workers. In contrast with economic and social conditions of those employees who work even 10-12 hours per day like machines without entertainment and freedom. In England, in 2013, there is minimum wage of £6.31 per hour for adult over 21 or above. HR and Customs revenues website shows that workers are also entitled to the minimum wage if they are:

•     part-time
•     casual labourers, eg someone hired for 1 day
•     agency workers
•     workers and home workers paid by the number of items they make
•     apprentices
•     trainees, workers on probation
•     disabled workers
•     agricultural workers
•     foreign workers
•     seafarers
•     offshore workers

Government has implement policies but many Directors of thousands of companies deceive the government and auditors secretly. They do not allocate any residential, travel or holiday allowances for their employees. They do bad at their best.

Boss empire

Psychological and physical state of these workers and employes are lethargic, anti-social and aggressive. Their personal and family life also get disturbed and in traumas. They need to way-out to their situations and workplaces. They want to contribute for their personal, professional, organisational and societal life. They need new mindset working with different and updated minds and culture. There is good news! Informational or Knowledge age has brought many blessings to the offices and the world itself, given greater contentment and job satisfaction, rich and diverse culture. God has broadened the vision of world Business leaders and human mind to form an Informational or knowledge based worker economy that is growing fastly and being adopted by many emerging organisations. Leadership development for organisations and whole-person paradigm is the subject of today’s world. Hundreds of authors, business gurus, experts and organisations are contributing to fixing wounds of industrial age. Actually, Information or knowledge worker age is opposite of Industrial Age. Industrial age has been broken down on its knee and should not part of this global economy and people lives. We need to make lot of struggle by raising voice and awareness. New system is providing path by empower needs of body, mind, heart and spirit of an individual and also as organisational level.

If you want to share your story where you are working or have experienced this mindset and system, you can share with me on Maratib@MaratibAliShad.com

Arthur W. Jones put it in this way:

All organisations are perfectly aligned to get the results they get.