Our whole way of thinking about leadership is a century out of date

Think about how we commonly seek to motivate human performance in our workplaces: Employees are treated as costs to be minimized rather than people to be invested in. Performance is managed through fear of consequences. Supervisors closely monitor daily tasks, requiring frequent check-ins or reports. Being available at all hours is treated as evidence of commitment. Directives flow one way—downward. Feedback is delivered as judgment rather than support. In practice, if not in intention, we still manage people more like machines than human beings. How did we get here—and, more importantly, why have we never left? Most of what we call “modern management” isn’t modern at all. It was born on factory floors over a century ago, in an era when work was often dehumanizing: repetitive, physical and performed by people who needed a paycheck and had little choice but to show up. It was Frederick Winslow Taylor—the father of scientific management—who gave it shape. He believed wo