Why Do We Still Work This Way? What if the way your organisation runs today, team structures, daily rhythms, and performance systems were never designed for your world at all? We set out to trace the roots of the modern world of work on the Sooner Safer Happier 1st Industrial Revolution Tour. We visited the sites where it all began: the first factory system, the first production line, the first shift work, the first time human labour was treated as a repeatable input rather t

Are your metrics enabling Better Value Sooner Safer Happier? Why do we need to talk about metrics now? Most organisations have various...

Myth : Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations (1776) was the first to write about division of labour. There's just one problem: Adam Smith never set foot in a pin factory. In fact we need to go back 3 steps to Jean-Rodolphe Perronet in the 1740s, the only person in this story to have actually visited a pin factory!  Image of a pin factory, Diderot's Encyclopédie (1755) (1) Adam Smith (1776): The Economist Smith's description of a pin factory in The Wealth of Nations (1776) intr