Mark: 0:00

So the, the roles, and I can never remember all of these, but you had borers. cutters and gummers. Gummers are definitely my favorite of all of

Andrew: 0:08

What did, what did Gummers do?

Mark: 0:10

um, I, I was hoping you wouldn't ask that In the research that we've been doing, one of the things that I've been, become absolutely fascinated by is where the word'team' got this special power, there is a witchcraft to, to the word team that differentiates it from a group or a gang or something, something different, and, so I, I started pulling that thread of where, where is it that this word has started to gain this particular significance in, in the literature and the research. And if you just go online, if you start scratching the surface, lots of people suggest that it was, uh, Frederick Winslow Taylor that started talking about teams. Um, and I'm happy to report it wasn't him, um, or at least it wasn't him in the literature that he, he produced, so the first place that I went, so following the Google threads, was, uh, to go and re read, uh, the Principles of Scientific Management, F. W. Taylor's book. He doesn't mention the word team once in the book, I think what has happened is people, people have started saying there is work that is done on the productivity of groups of people. And so F. W. Taylor is the, the person that started this,

Andrew: 1:31

He's the, he's productivity guy.

Mark: 1:33

and he, he absolutely brought a really significant improvement to productivity. But in his book he talks about gangs, and these gangs of people were quite big. These were people working in iron foundries, factories, that were often up to 80, 80 people. And he was much more, he, he was very, very focused on productivity, but one of the things that F. W. Taylor really focused on was breaking this down to the work of the individual. So he was, how do I maxes, how do I maximize or optimize this work that an individual is doing? So After I realized that it really, this thing around teams, specifically, the magic of the word, and it's not the magic of people being productive, but the magic of the word, um, I needed to dig a little bit deeper and I came across a lot of pointers towards research from the Tavistock Institute, which I then started pulling on. And this research, I think outside of organizational psychology, isn't really very well known. It's not really something that I had ever come across. Lots of people might have heard of the Tavistock Institute and not really know what they do.

Andrew: 2:37

mean, it'll be in contemporary media terms. It's got, it has a different, um, association currently with gender identity and things, but that is, it's the same organization, right, originally.

Mark: 2:50

Yeah, created around the time of the Second World War, primarily around health, so it was, it was really, you know, physical health, but it moved into, into mental health. And so there were lots of these pointers pointing towards some of the luminaries from the Tavistock Institute talking about teams. So I started researching that more and more, really, to go and find out where this, this word teams come from. But it really was in and around here. There is no, what I can't find is any aha moment where it, becomes teams. But as you, as you look at the work of the Tavistock Institute, some of the key researchers that, that worked at the Tavistock, you can see the evolution of them talking about groups. So working groups to then starting to intersperse the word team more heavily through their research. So that, that was really interesting. I wouldn't say that I've got completely to the bottom of it, but what it led me to was some absolutely incredible work that the Tavistock Institute did around the coal mining industry in Britain to a point where, yeah, I was, I, I absolutely fell down that hole because what I was seeing was probably a movement of the same significance as the Toyota production system was to lean and agile, but it was in Britain, actually in, in and around North Yorkshire in the 1950s. And to have to have that realization that this is this contemporaneous, um, Explosion of understanding of how to create high performance teams in this very different context was really interesting. So today I thought, as we've discussed, I thought it'd be interesting to talk people through that, that research and give them a quick journey through the work and to do that, we have to explain a little bit about why coal mining was so important to Britain.

Andrew: 4:37

we're definitely in an era now where Coal mining is such an, such an anachronistic concept that it feels odd to be attaching something that's very contemporary and important to contemporary work, like teamwork, to something that feels like it's definitely history now, you know, coal mining. Um, but we're talking about a time when coal mining was the literal power source for society, right?

Mark: 5:10

Not the only source of power, but, and I'm actually talking about all kinds of power, both energy generating power and economic and colonial power, imperial power that Britain had. So, from around the mid 18th century, from around the 1750s through the Industrial Revolution, coal became the source of energy for Britain. and and through Britain, it was first a source of energy for homes, heating, heating for homes, but it came to be a source of energy for, um, for transport. So for, for locomotion. So as, as we see steam power developed, coal was the, the motivational force behind ships and trains. One of the things that I think people now growing up in Britain wouldn't, wouldn't necessarily understand was Britain was a major coal producing nation. So at its, at its peak, as it got to around 1913, Britain was producing nearly 300 million tonnes of coal every year. And a significant amount of that was exported from Britain, and so there was an enormous industry across Britain of extracting all of, all of this coal. By 1920, we had about a million people. So about a 20th of the entire working population. So a million people in the UK working directly in, in the mines. And you can imagine that that expanded outside of, of that base. It wasn't just the people employed in the mines and mining was a, Yeah, a relatively unusual industry at this, this time where factories were starting to centralize in some of the industrial heartlands of Britain, mining was dotted around because you have to mine where the coal is. And so often what was happening was there were small villages, very small towns, these very remote communities that were growing up around, around the coal mines. we were actually producing around 200 million tons of coal all the way through to the, to the 50s and then into the 60s. And that's kind of where, where our story takes us to. Britain had been producing a really, really significant amount of coal, but obviously every piece of coal that you remove, it makes it a little bit harder to get the next thing. We have a, an exhaustible resource of, of coal. Mining was very dangerous. So for, there were both short term and long term risks for, for the miners. They were, when they went into the coal mines, there was every risk that they would be crushed, potentially, um, they would suffer from explosions, from mine floodings. And sometimes the flooding was intentional. So this was a point, this was really cutthroat industry where it was entirely privatized through up until, until the 1940s. But Mine owners were competing with other mine owners, so they might be on one seam, you have two different mine owners. There is evidence that they would actually flood each other's mines.

Andrew: 7:56

With, with miners still in there potentially.

Mark: 7:59

I couldn't find evidence that it, that it was done, but there is a law from around the 18th century that makes it illegal to flood each other's mines. So you have to imagine

Andrew: 8:07

if they have to make a law for it, people are probably

Mark: 8:09

yeah, there was, there was probably sufficient, impact from, from this sort of aggressive behavior between mine owners that they, they had to legislate against it. So, um, Through into the, into the 20th century, through the 1930s and 1940s, it was getting harder and harder to extract the, the, the coal, but we were still producing a really significant amount. But what was happening was people were finding other industries. So at this point, uh, the growth of industry in the UK. So they were. there were cleaner, still not necessarily much more attractive industries, but cleaner industries, factories, manufacturing. This was post, coming up to just the end, towards the end of the Second World War, and the safety issues, so very very serious, both short term safety issues, so being injured in the mine, and then long term health issues like, Pulmonary diseases, um, black lung disease, arthritis, all of these long term, long term, um, chronic illnesses that people were sustaining from mining, meant that the government was pressured into taking a stand. And so, uh, In 1947, really leaning into the, um, the message that they were doing this for the benefit of the miners to protect the, the health of the miners, protect the mining communities, but probably much more driven by the protection of the natural resource of actually producing the mines, um, Britain nationalized the coal industry. So they bought all of, all of the mines and centralised it on the 1st of January 1947, and there was a massive push at that point to drive much higher productivity from the mines. Because this was now, it was, it was getting harder to get the coal out. We needed to protect our, our sovereign wealth, um, to, to protect the, the diminishing empire. And so we really needed to focus on, the government really wanted to focus on safety, on retention, because we were seeing lots of people, families leaving the mines, getting through to the point where, um, we also needed to mechanize, industrialize the process of extraction of coal

Andrew: 10:17

This thing about safety, there's a dual thing going on there, isn't there? Because that sounds very political or sounds very politician speak to say, oh, we want to maximize safety, we want to improve safety. So we're introducing this thing. But like you say, there's a, there's an agenda around about protecting international influence and economic interests, and because it came along with this more industrialized approach that looked to increase productivity.

Mark: 10:50

the cynic in me would say it's all very nice talking about, about safety and the long term health of the workers, but, uh, it was probably done for economic and sovereign power.

Andrew: 11:01

The long term health of the workers was convenient collateral for much bigger interests.

Mark: 11:06

this leads directly into the work that, um, that then the Tavistock Institute did, was the, um, the, the National Coal Board effectively inherited, uh, uh, an industry that was in serious decline. And I think at this point it's probably important to understand a little bit of the work that that was going into the, uh, into the act of extracting coal. These coal mining communities, generally the people doing the work, that was being done to extract the coal were almost these entrepreneurial teams. So inside these mining communities, you would have a pair of workers. There's a hewer, who is the main worker, and a marra. Um, and I'm told from some of my, my friends from up in Yorkshire, that marra is actually a dialectical term that just means mate. So effectively, it was a hewer and and a mate. And they were typically at a very, very equivalent level in a hierarchy. So it was these two workers, and they could do every job that was needed to extract coal. Normally, the hewer would own the relationship, and they were paid on how much how much coal they'd extract. So it was, that, that contract was owned by the hewer, the marra, his mate would, and it, so it was only men working in the mines, effectively by, by law. So if I, if I talk about men, it's because the entire working population of the mines at this point were all men. But the, um, the hewer would own the contract with the mine owner, they would deliver a certain amount of coal, they would get paid for the amount of coal. The hewer and his mate would. be able to do any job they would, any job that was required of them. They would look after the upkeep of their, their tools. They would go through the life cycles of extracting the coal. In British mines, British mines are quite different, certainly to US mines that they, they have some particular physical characteristics. The, the, the coal seams can be anywhere from a couple of centimeters thick to a, maybe a maximum about three or four meters, but typically one, 1.2 meters, or that's three ish feet, something like that. Just over three feet. So these are very na So they might be long, but they're very narrow, and so in British mines, they do something called room and pillar extraction, so they would effectively dig in and they would leave pillars of coal. So it's quite wasteful.

Andrew: 13:19

Okay, so the pillar is the bit of coal, so they construct a room using the coal and they work around the pillar. we leave it structurally intact using that pillar and move on.

Mark: 13:32

Totally. That's, that's my understanding. Leave, leave a comment if, if you, if, if you've worked in a mine and know any

Andrew: 13:38

yeah, this is not, this is not a technical tutorial on mining.

Mark: 13:42

Yeah, definitely don't follow our advice on mining. But yeah, my understanding is that as they were going through the seams, they would, they would dig out the rooms and each of these pairs. And there's actually three people. So you would have the hewer, the mate, and effectively an apprentice, as we would think about it now, called a trammer, and the trammer's job, um, was to literally push the buckets on trams on tram lines into and out of the, the, the coal, but they weren't specifically contributing. They were learning their trade and they were doing the lowest value job, which was running the, um, the, the buckets in and out of the, um, the room and pillar system. These pairs, these or triads of workers were often familialy related, you know, they often had a family bond, a kinship bond. So because these are very small communities, it was often a man and his brother, his cousin, um, yeah, maybe, maybe somebody related by marriage, but they were very close bonds. These very tight bonds were actually quite interesting in dealing with friction that happened between, between the pair, because they had to have a long term relationship. So any fallout, because they were so that kinship related, if they had an argument, they had to solve it because they, they were often living and working in the same community would see each other regularly. So these, these workers. were very autonomous. There were managers in the mine, but the manager had no particular hierarchical role over them. They were really there. The supervisors were there to sign off the contracts, to take the coal, to check how much they'd done. They didn't have authority over the workers. The workers were almost like a small entrepreneurial band. They could figure out how to extract mine, extract the coal from the mine. They would deliver it and then they would get paid. And you learned the job and you learned everything to do the job as you were doing it.

Andrew: 15:31

what you're describing the, the character of mining up until that point. And probably a little bit after it was, it's like an ecosystem where the mines are privately owned and they're essentially. contracting out to skilled micro businesses, right? got your, um, your hewer, who's got the contract, who's, if you're thinking of it in an entrepreneurial ecosystem, perspective that here has their reputation to protect as a reliable extractor of coal. They've got their, their, uh, Mara that they work with who might well be their cousin or their brother or their brother in law or something like this. Um, and it's in their interest to bring someone up in their little team. And, you know, it's, it kind of reminds me of like fishing boats. know, like someone's got a boat in, in fishing, they own the boat, they've got their little crew and they get the fish and they've got a relationship with someone who they know is going to buy their catch. Um, and it's, it's. all organized around these small, small groups that are, that are themselves quite self organizing and can, they possess all of the requisite skills within a small amount of people to get the job done.

Mark: 16:53

that's yeah, absolutely spot on. And I think that's a great analogy. You know, it's very, very similar that it was micro businesses, you know, and obviously they worked in the mine, but they didn't own the mine, but they were effectively selling output. So they weren't selling hours. And the reason that it's worth pausing on that and, the physical characteristics of the mine is because when the National Coal Board came in So it was vesting day. That was the 1st of January 1947 vesting day when, when the mines were, were, were bought. The, this move to make the mines more productive took a an absolutely typical. Um, path, the kind of thing that we could absolutely foresee coming, which is somebody thought what we'll do is we will design a new system, and we will implement the system, and then everybody is just going to have to work in a new system. And that's really critical to understand that, um, very much in the model of, uh, of Taylorism. What happened was a group of engineers designed a new type of production system, something called longwall mining, and I'll talk a little bit more about what longwall mining is in a moment, but this new system was designed, and then the mines as a whole started to change to implement longwall mining, and it was that change, Which led to a really, really significant change of the relationships between the people working in, in the mines. So, just reflecting a little bit on the longwall mining, obviously I'm now an expert, total expert in all these different, uh, methods of mining. But, because of the structure of the physical characteristics of the British coal face, what, what happened is we had to work what they called optimally long. rather than optimally deep. So since we couldn't push a shaft through, we actually would work across the length of mine. And these, these faces, these coal faces, were anything up to, so we said they're quite, quite narrow, as in they're only a couple of, a couple of centimeters and up to maybe a meter wide, but they're quite long. They were anything up to about 150, 180 meters wide. And so when somebody looked at, at this, and obviously looking at those pillars being left with lots of coal being left behind at a time where there was less availability of coal because we had mined a lot of it already, they came up with this new system called longwall mining which was very mechanized and effectively it was to set up An entire face, so about 150 meters of working, where the face would just be progressed further and further into the seam, and it would keep cutting through and keep cutting through. And there was a huge amount of mechanization at this, this stage, and very much in the vein of Taylorism, when they designed the system, they thought about breaking down the roles into very specific, Uh, individual tasks and the new, the new method of long wall mining actually broke the teams down. So those small artisanal teams, these micro businesses of, of a hewer and his mate and the, um, the trammer and said, you're now going to work in a shift. And the shifts would progress the, the coalface, uh, there were, there were three shifts of seven hours each, so an entire, an entire shift rotation could happen in one day, and effectively what happened is all of the equipment was set up at the coalface, and then, um, That was in one shift, so all of the setup, and then there was, and that was done by a set of individual roles and each individual role had one particular job that they did. So each of these shifts had specific roles in them. Um, and I will go back and try and explain this in a second. Then you would have a second shift. And the second shift were the ones that, that was really where the old job of the hewer came from, so the person that would actually then take the, the, take the coal from the face. And then a third shift would come in and they would make good on, on everything that, they'd actually let the walls collapse behind it so that they were, they were doing the, the cleanup. There were, there was a lot, so in the mechanization, there were a lot of things that were added into. into the production of the coal mine. So it was no longer just manual picks, they were starting to use pneumatic air tools, pneumatic picks, um, and, uh, conveyors, so powered conveyor belts. And so, part of the process of looking at this new longwall production method was, you would have, uh, the first team would go in, They would effectively prepare the coal face, but they would also build the belt, what they call them. So you would have the belt, um, the belt builders would be in the first shift, and they would prepare all the conveyor belts ready so that they could shift the coal away from the front. And then, um, when that first shift had done all the setup, you would then have the next shift. Um, the next group come in called the Rippers and the Rippers would, would go in, take the coal

Andrew: 21:46

great names aren't

Mark: 21:47

Great names. So, so there are three shifts, seven distinct roles and effectively the roles were split between the shifts. So the, the roles, and I can never remember all of these, but you had borers. cutters and gummers. Gummers are definitely my favorite of all of

Andrew: 22:01

What did, what did Gummers do?

Mark: 22:04

um, I, I was hoping you wouldn't ask that. I think that the gummers put in the structural elements. So I think that they, they were establishing, now again, put it in the comments if I'm wrong, but I think what the gummers did is they, they put the structures that would hold up parts of the, of the, the face around the, uh, up to the the coalface. And the reason I think that is because you have the borers and the cutters which are effectively maybe preparing the explosives, um, and then you have the belt builders come in to build up the conveyor belts which would be in a long line behind the coalface. Then you would also have, so then you had the rippers that were in the second shift and the rippers would be pulling the coalface, and then in the final shift you would have the belt breakers and the fillers. So the belt breakers would be breaking down the conveyor belts and preparing them to be moved, and then you'd have the fillers that actually allowed the roof to collapse and cleaned up after you were done in the area.

Andrew: 23:01

So there's two things going on. There's, there's the general industrialization of the technical process, which is now involving more advanced machinery and equipment. Um, and there's the industrialization of the, of the actual process. Process of the work itself, um, because the things that the original three person teams did, that was, they were doing multiple roles, where they would do all, you know, we could probably say. from a certain level of, of, of thinking about it. Basically, all those things you've just described, albeit some of it was now using more advanced kit. Those, those three guys used to do all of those things.

Mark: 23:47

Yeah,

Andrew: 23:48

exactly do all of that set up in one shift. And now it had been both broken down in terms of shifts, and each role was contained to one person doing one specialized thing.

Mark: 24:01

That's exactly it. And what's really interesting is, you know, you can intellectually try to decompose work. into how do I make this so that this this role is hyper specialized and put it into a shift. But there is a deep psychological impact of those things and so that was that was exactly what happened. The the longwall method of mining started taking hold in a lot of British mines and suddenly we started seeing morale absolutely plummet, the psychological impact of this was, was huge, and this was actually, Even though this had been a carefully designed technical system, architectural system, designed by engineers to break down the component parts, and was using much more advanced technology, what happened was the people started to break down under the strain. And this is the introduction of the Tavistock Institute.

Andrew: 24:55

It is interesting to me because when you're describing the industrials, the process of longwall mining, I'm like, sounds really good. That's really sensible. Intuitively it sounds like, okay, I can see why they've done that, but it wasn't working.

Mark: 25:17

is one of those things that sort of started working at the beginning, but it's the long term, the longitudinal impacts of these things that really took a while to become known. So we started seeing those human metrics started suffering, and things like absenteeism were huge. There was 20 percent absenteeism by the time that the Tavistock Institute was called. And what was happening? And this is why it was the Tavistock Institute, because this was seen as, you know, It was early days for mental health, but this was seen as a health crisis. Because what happened is you were breaking those teams up. So we had these small micro businesses as you described them. We were breaking those teams up and saying now you're part of a, these shifts were 10 to 20 people. So the first shift, and I think the first shift and the second shift were 10 people, the last shift was 20 people, I think. But it was either 10 or 20 people in a shift so you were now taken from your small group of highly, uh, you know, highly skilled laborers that could do any job that was required in the mine, and you were told now you're doing a particular job. And what, and, and, you know, in retrospect, in retrospect, we could see why this would be the case, but there started to be real hierarchical differences between the roles that you were doing. So gummers, the people that are out in the front that were sort of creating this, this, the structure to work with them. were seen as the lowest stature of all of the workers. The rippers, the people taking out the mine, they were closest to the hewers before, the hewers and the marrers. They were

Andrew: 26:44

They're the, they're fighter pilots coal mine. Yeah.

Mark: 26:47

they, they were the ones. And, and the other, a really significant part of this is you were no longer paid for the amount of coal that you extracted from the mine, you were paid for the job that you did. And there were, the manager, the supervisor was now in charge of you. So the manager had a hierarchical relationship with you. They were your boss and they were, they were known as stick men. They were seen as, um, they didn't understand the work. They'd never done it before. They were just bureaucrats. And so there was a real pushback against this new hierarchical bureaucratic administrative role of the supervisors in the mine. And You start to seeing some really vindictive behavior between the shifts as well. So because the shifts had different statures. One of the things that would happen is, if quality suffered, a quality issue could be passed through those shifts. So if somebody didn't bore or cut or gum correctly, the next shift had to deal with it. And generally what would happen is that would fall all the way back to the last shift, who would then be held up because there were problems all the way through, so everything would pile up to the third shift. And interestingly, the first shift, the one with the belt builders and the gummers on it, would never see the third shift. They'd never overlap. And so they became scapegoated Oh, can you believe what the gummers have done? So it was very, very easy to have this antagonistic relationship between the workers where blame for low quality started being passed around before when you had a small team. We own everything. If there's a quality issue, it's ours. But where you had the shifts, it'd be like, can you look at the terrible job that they've done? So not only would there potentially be fights cause these people impacted the, the pub had been the center of the, their universe before when these were these small micro businesses and now those family relationships and everything was breaking down because of the, the technical architecture of this system and the reports that were coming in was of fights in the mine, people just losing their temper with the wall and just, you know, furiously hacking away at it there were people sitting in silence, staring at the wall. So all of these, these, very, very characteristic, steep psychological problems were manifesting themselves in the workers in the mine. So it was the work in the job, the, the, the social structures of the job, even bleeding out into their, their non work environments. This well intentioned productivity change to design a technical system didn't take into account the impact on the workers, and everything started breaking down. It was really designed with the workers as a component part of the system. So you're a cog, you are cheaper than a machine to use, and so we're going to use people to do these things. And so, yes, the Tayloristic thing of break down the roles into individual tasks and then give the tasks to the people best suited to do them. But they didn't take into account the holistic impact of those things.

Andrew: 29:49

It started off prior to this as like you described a really. tightly related dynamic between the communities and the social fabric and the mines themselves. So, what it sounded like and I don't know why I latch onto fishing but you know, it's just that analogy of the, you know, you earn the money from the catch that you got, which is similar to the coal that you extracted. And the social structures that were present in the way that the mining was done were replicated in the communities. And they're so integral over a couple of centuries to society and the economy that that was really baked in to the communities or the mining communities. And then you flip from a social community system to a really sudden change to a highly technical system. And I think you can see the, just the, the extent and the drastic nature of that change. You can see how that would have, um, destabilized the communities themselves, not, Only the work, but that is really what leads me to ask about the, the Tavistock stuff. Presumably they were brought in because there were all these problems. So what did they do and what did they find?

Mark: 31:15

So the Tavistock were asked to come and investigate what was happening. Obviously, the, the, the understanding of, um, this kind of psychological trauma, the impact of, of work was not really understood, but they could see that productivity was, was poor and that there were issues within the groups in the mine, but they didn't really understand why. Within the Tavistock, one of the originators of the Tavistock, Eric Trist was brought in to study this, the situation in the coal mines. As luck would have it, there was a coal miner who had effectively worked in the mines for 18 years proceeded up to a relatively senior managerial role, who happened to be starting to undertake some academic studies, to train as an academic with the Tavistock Institute. And so this guy Bamforth, Ken Bamforth into the, um, into that research group, gave them a real grounding to do that research with the people. So rather than it just being some academics from London that turned up, Ken Bamforth had actually worked in the mines and knew a lot of the miners that were there, knew the

Andrew: 32:19

Yeah, credibility.

Mark: 32:21

a lot of credibility. So they, they started doing the research into, and the research here is absolutely fantastic. It started in, I think, the first book, the first research was published in 1951. I don't think they're in print anymore, so I've had to buy, um, I've had to get these, these old out of print copies. Um, editions, like second, secondhand editions, but the books started, books and papers started being published in around 1950 and went all the way through into the 60s and the Tavistock, this group of researchers at the Tavistock continued that research. Effectively, what they found was that a lot of the problems were being created by the introduction of the long wall system. In the first piece of work, they discovered that these social issues. Exactly. As you say, had been really created by the enforcement of the technical system, which was broken down into shifts and the high specialization. And actually that first piece of research from Trist and Banforth talks about how did this used to look and what was the transition from the old way of working with the Hewer and the Marra to the new way of working where, where it was broken down in shifts. And there's a lot of detail in exactly what that looked like and what the impact on productivity and on, on the people were. But this led to a further piece of research where they started looking for a highly productive high morale mine. And as luck would have it, Ken Banforth, so this ex miner who's a member of the research team, happened to know that there was a mine that he used to work in, The Haighmoor, in South Yorkshire, which demonstrated some of these characteristics. There was a team, wasn't deeply unhappy. And the Highmoor was relatively mature, maybe getting close to being shut down, but it was still productive. A lot of, A lot of the mine was being worked in the longwall method, but there were a few pockets where they were still carrying out, these were maybe less accessible areas or areas that weren't suitable for longwall mining, there were certain areas that were being mined in a more traditional way, but still with all the technology. And what they discovered, and this is really the key to this whole thing, is when you just looked at longwall mining, you saw all of these deeply negative impacts of, as you say, this combination of the technical aspects and the social aspects. What Trist and Banforth discovered is that there were teams that were able to work. They were larger teams than before. They weren't just a Hewer and a marra. They were what they called composite teams, which is a name that I really like, which are effectively not just two people working together in that sort of micro organization, but a team of people that were paid much more on output, much more traditionally, so where there were maybe up to 10 people that were taking ownership of the room and pillar, a larger group than before in that more traditional artisanal method, so they're using air drills, pneumatic drills. They were using some of the conveyors. They were using automation, but they had gone back to that method of working where everybody in the team was effectively trained to do every job. What they discovered when they looked at this was not only were some of the observable metrics better, these were, these groups that were working as composite teams, they were working away from the long wall, they were self organizing, they were relatively autonomous, they they were finding that these were among the best paid workers in the entire mine, because they were producing more coal than the other workers, and they were sharing it equally among themselves. So they were distributing the, you know, the spoils equally among them. And it wasn't just that there were these Um, quantitative metrics on the productivity of these composite teams. There were also other things that effectively what they were seeing was that not only were the workers happier, but the work environment was better, that it was better maintained. And there was actually a quote. Um, so when this was, this was Eric Trist in, um, in his book. So this is from"The Evolution of Socio-technical Systems". There's a quote directly from him when he's talking about observing these groups. And this is This is amazing observational work. You know, these studies were conducted over years. Trist says."Cooperation between these task groups, composite groups, was everywhere in evidence. Personal commitment was obvious. Absenteeism was low. Accidents infrequent. Productivity was high. The contrast was large between the atmosphere and arrangements on these faces and those in the conventional areas of the pit, where the negative features characteristic of the industry were glaringly apparent". This is so beautifully written and so beautifully studied, but effectively what they were seeing was these workers were Um, unified in their purpose. They were, um, able to share tasks. They would, focus their work if there was a particular impediment to the work that they were doing. So they would, um, if they were blocked by something specific, they would all stop the job that they were doing and go and work on it to remove the impediment. Um, they could refocus effort so they could, they could move people between roles. to, to focus on particular tasks at different times. And then in, in the work area, they were seeing that the hygiene factors of the mining area were better. The tools were, were better kept. And there's also evidence as well, when they were observing them, that even though they didn't have to, the, when they were taking lunch breaks, they would take care to improve the work environment. So even when they weren't being externally motivated to do something, somebody wasn't telling them, you know, you have to, you have to clear up. So all of these, uh, all of these characteristics of the work area were better. This was a really big part of the Tavistock Institute findings. They, they effectively discovered that these composite teams bore almost all of the positive characteristics of the longwall mining. They were very, very productive. They were using modern technology. They, they were really addressing the issues that the longwall mining had originally been intended to do, but it was designed by the workers, there hadn't been any external influences saying, this is exactly how you're going to work. They had decided that these slightly large groups of about 10 people, the use of modern technology could speed them up. And so they took responsibility for improving their own processes, which had a massively. important impact on the health, the positivity, the productiveness of the workers inside that system. When the workers were left alone to design their improvement and given some freedom to do so, they did a better job than an externally influenced design change.

Andrew: 38:43

Although it wasn't intentionally done like that, it's, it is a case study and because you can see from the composite teams that they. They didn't get rid of some of the technology and the, um, advances that they now had access to, to do the work, but they did amend the way that they used it and organize themselves around a different way of working that, that, um, that made it better for, for them in terms of well being and satisfaction and, uh, the care and attention that they gave to the, to the, the, the work environment that they created for themselves. There is something about that sense of self organizing and team autonomy and climate of accountability that, they seem to find the sweet spot somewhere along the way.

Mark: 39:35

Yeah, definitely. In the original research, the English Coal Board banned the Tavistock Institute from talking about these composite groups that they'd found because they were really worried that they didn't want people to turn their back on longwall mining that they had just spent so much money trying to implement. So they, in the first published research, the, the, in the early fifties, they actually squashed the, um, the, any, any mention of these composite teams. And there's only later in, in the work that was done, um, by P. G. Herbst in the 60s and some later work by Trist that actually really talked about the importance of these, these, um, composite teams. So, you know, this is obviously very, very circuitous, but this really talked about the construction of the teams that we would recognize as teams today. So these were not, you know, two people. They were not 20 people on a shift. These were teams of five to nine people that had autonomy, that had, um, that had, uh, authority over their own, their own destiny, that could design their own processes, um, that shared in the outcomes. So they had a shared outcome to extract the coal, but the way that they were paid and distributed the, the, the wealth that came back from doing the work was much fairer than it had been when it was, um, when it was delivered onto them. And so really, what happened from this work of the Tavistock Institute was something we've been skirting around for this entire episode, which was the creation of, um, philosophy or a school of thinking called Socio-technical Design, which is so appropriate today. And I think what is fascinating reading the work that Trist and then Herbst did later was just how much they emphasize the importance of people in that design system. And what I found really fascinating is it's almost exactly the philosophy that you see through the Toyota production system that what is happening in Toyota at this time, um, with Taichi Ohno in, in Japan. Is very, very similar and very related and almost diametrically opposed to what Taylorism was trying to do, which is break things down into atomic levels and optimize the individual thing.

Andrew: 41:45

And, and if you want to take a critical view on it, dehumanizing the, the human components of the system, which I think is what you can see in the long wall system design. When, when it was introduced to the miners that clearly the miners themselves had been treated as. simply component parts to a system and their humanity, their lived working experience, um, the wellbeing that you need. in order to fulfill the role effectively. None of that has really been very closely considered. Uh, so no wonder they didn't take to it that well. Um, and the, the, so that's the socio bit of socio technical design, right? It's the, it's the human element. And, um, I think, like you say, there probably aren't many contemporary organizational contexts that you could. come up with really don't function around socio technical systems at their core.

Mark: 42:53

Yeah, absolutely right. And so I, I've been so motivated by this. I've tried to reclaim and recapture that, that term because it's so appropriate. So now when I, when I talk to people in the work that I do around the design of their systems, and you can see this now in very, very modern approaches. Um, So a lot of the work that people are doing in high tech systems design is now starting to reference things like the work of Melvin Conway and Conway's Law that talks about the fact that architectures mimic the communication structures in an organization. This is all related. And so actually, it's almost to an extent, We should be thinking in terms of socio technical design whenever we are thinking about teams these days, at least try and identify if you use technology. And if you do, whether it's a kitchen or a, or a mine or a fishing vessel, or a, uh, a startup that is trying to deliver an AI application, we need to think about what the role of technology is.

Andrew: 43:52

The experience of the mines is that example of where, right, first of all, you design a system, the people are not using the system, they are the system. And at the same time you have to treat them as humans within the system, which is why sociotechnical design is such a powerful term because yes, you can a) get it wrong by kind of going. I've got this system. And yeah, of course. There are subsystems within a system that human people will, will use and will implement. So they are using the system, but at the same time they're, they're also part of a system itself. They, they create the system, they embody it, that they're human elements of it. They're not technical components. And most importantly. The reality is, as the mining demonstrated, there probably is a beneficial outcome to introducing advances and new technology and innovation into what was an old fashioned artisanal system. But you need to do it in a way that's iterative, that involves the socio part of the socio technical system in, in, in understanding how it's going to use it.

Mark: 45:09

Yeah, you're, you're absolutely right. And there's a wonderful quote, which I'm still looking for, because I read it and didn't take down exactly where the reference was. There's a quote from Trist, where he's talking specifically about socio technical design. And the advice that he gives is, You shouldn't try and design the system, you should try and design the, the environment and the culture that enables the workers to design an emergent system themselves. And yeah, that is really the, the job that, that you should be doing. And actually on, on that note, and really just to wrap up the episode, there were, when when Trist was writing, he wrote down a number of things that he really sees as being the, design characteristics of a good socio technical system. And so I thought I would just finish with this, this very short list of, of points, because I think it's great to reflect on. What Trist says when he talks about the emergence of this new paradigm of, of work,"the work system, That is, all of the activities which make up the whole is the basic unit to be designed for, not all of the different jobs that it is possible to break down the whole into". So saying, the first thing is, think about how all of the activities work together, don't try and break each activity down into an atomic part. He follows that up with,"the work group, not the individual performing a single role, is central to design of the work". So don't try and design around a specific individual. They're not a cog in a machine. It is how are the humans as a team working inside the system."Internal regulation by the members of the group themselves, rather than external supervisors, was not only possible, but preferable". So try and allow the team autonomy for the, for themselves."The group should be designed to have a redundancy of functions. In other words, members of the group should be trained and encouraged to perform different roles to increase the capability of the group to respond to different challenges". So the more that you train people, the more flexible that group is."Discretionary parts of roles should be valued, not just the prescribed parts." Taking a lunch break to, to clean the tools or the work area. They are valuable. They are additional adjacent things to be done."The additional work should be treated as complementary to the machine, rather than as part of it." So, uh, The, all of those discretionary parts, that's, that's all part of your big system. And finally,"the system should encourage the worker and the organization to embrace variety rather than preferring over-specialization". So I think he's left us and it's a really nice, nice place to, to bring this episode to a close that he's left us with some guidance of how we might go about thinking about our own system design and how we might allow teams to design their, their own systems rather than designing it for them.

Andrew: 47:51

And I can, I can think of so many examples where you see industries and, uh, you know, disciplines becoming, you know, Sub specialized and sub sub specialized to the extent that an individual operator knows a huge amount about something incredibly narrow, but they don't necessarily have the fluency or the understanding of how it connects. And it kind of goes back to, feels like a rudimentary example when you're talking about maybe like, medicine, because medicine's a really good example of a. of a, an area where, um, as the complexity of understanding evolves, our understanding of disease evolves clinical operators and research, uh, doctor, medical researchers, for example, become more and more subspecialized. Like the shifts in the mine, the first bit doesn't talk to the second bit. So the, when you get confronted with a real problem, sometimes they don't have the ability to connect with each other because they don't have enough of that overlap and complementary understanding between their roles that, um, actually their, their, their narrow specialism becomes, uh, less useful. So much to take away from that. And those, those lessons he, he lists are like, you're like, yep, yep, yep, yep.

Mark: 49:19

That, that was the power for me. It was reading this research from the 1950s and 60s and saying every single part of that is relevant today without, without a single change. Um, and so many people are designing these same types of answers from scratch, but they happen to have existed since the 50s and 60s.

Andrew: 49:38

It's interesting that you even in that deep dive you saw. A slight little evolution of the use of words and the word team by the end was something that was being used commonly and at the start, in the earlier work was not really a seen as a distinctive term.

Mark: 49:58

It definitely progressed over the sort of 10 years or so of the Tavistock looking at this particular area. It went from being group to team. And you can, yeah, it's not one moment. It's not one special, defining, pivotal, um, moment in time, but definitely the evolution of that thinking of, um, the, how these composite teams have a particular strength came out, um, from this research.

Andrew: 50:24

There might not be a specific ground zero, it will be a confluence of many different things. But I think you've definitely pinpointed where. as you say, a contributing, uh, seam of, uh, of, of research originated. That was great. Thanks, Mark.

Mark: 50:43

You're Welcome. Welcome.