Performance Management in the First Tech Campus: Lessons on Motivation, Control, and Culture from the 1800s

Kate Mulligan
7 days ago
4 min read

Belper Mills and Industrial Community Building

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 than a creative force.

The parallels with today’s world? Chilling.

These “firsts” laid the foundations of the systems we still operate within. And for many leaders, understanding this origin story is the key to building something better.

Here’s what we saw and what it taught us about delivering Better Value Sooner Safer Happier (BVSSH) today.

When I say “firsts,” it refers to corporate innovations that shaped modern work. Similar structures existed in the military, but here, the significance is on their role in mass production and industrial enterprise.

On the second stop, we visited Belper Mills, founded by Jedediah Strutt in partnership with Arkwright just five years after Cromford. His son, William Strutt, later designed the world’s first fireproof mill, the origin of both the modern skyscraper and workplace environment.

What we found here was striking.

Similar to Cromford Mills, a large part of Belper’s success came from continuous technical and organisational innovation. Belper Mills introduced groundbreaking advancements that shaped industrial manufacturing. Most notably, William Strutt designed the world’s first fireproof iron-framed mill in 1804, replacing timber with cast iron columns and beams, dramatically improving safety and durability.

This design was a pioneering step toward modern industrial architecture and skyscrapers.

Additionally, Belper implemented advanced water-powered machinery and early mechanisation techniques, boosting productivity and setting new standards for factory engineering during the Industrial Revolution.

Belper was one of the first planned industrial communities. The Strutts reinvested profits to build homes, schools, chapels and even public parks. Workers were paid to participate in community activities like company orchestras. They took company-funded trips to London for performances and received paid leave to attend festivals.

This was one of the first examples of employer-driven social infrastructure designed not just to house workers, but to attract and retain talent long before the term existed. Thriving off technical innovation and community Belper may well have been one of the first tech campuses, 200 years ahead of its time.

But familiar work structures remained:

Performance monitoring was systemic, with overseers watching every move
Control replaced autonomy, with meaning drained from the task
Discipline and compliance were embedded into the fabric of the factory

It was progressive for its time and still showed how early leaders wrestled with the tension between scale and humanity.

Fines: The Shift from Physical Punishment to Early Bonus Culture

At Belper Mills, the system of fines marked a clear shift away from physical punishment toward a new way of motivating workers, extrinsic motivation through financial penalties. Workers had a fixed weekly wage, but to prevent slacking off and keep productivity high, fines were strictly enforced. Fines were systematic, the sixth day’s pay was held back every week, and any fines were deducted at month's end with anything remaining paid back. Overseers watched every move, making sure no one sat down too long or opened a window unnecessarily. This wasn’t about rewarding extra effort with bonuses, instead, workers essentially earned their full wage by avoiding fines. Back then, this system used negative reinforcement to keep productivity high and risk low for the employer, relying on extrinsic motivation to drive compliance over engagement.

Today's bonus culture shows how motivation has changed over time, but the challenge of balancing fairness, performance, and morale is something we’re still figuring out.

Early Experiments in Organisational Culture

Understanding the origins gives us clarity. But it also gives us agency. We can choose differently. And some of the “firsts” we saw still hold surprising inspiration for today:

- The first integrated communities remind us that belonging matters. We can build modern “Communities of Practice” rooted in shared purpose and learning. Arkwright’s obsessive focus on bottlenecks shows the power of flow optimisation, but today, we must apply it with empathy and systems thinking.

- The Strutts’ investment in education and leisure shows that valuing employees beyond their work pays off.

And perhaps most importantly: the early industrialists innovated, adapted, and invented entirely new ways of working.

That’s the spirit we need now.

Let’s build systems that enable Better Value Sooner Safer Happier because people are not machines. And we were never meant to be.

Curious to see the roots of modern work and explore how these lessons can improve your organisation? Join our next Beyond the Blueprint Industrial Revolution Tour.” - express interest here