APPENDIX A
The Ascent of Process
People have been defining and improving work processes forever. To my knowledge, the first to make a scientific study of work processes was Frederick Taylor, with his famous time and motion studies. Taylor focused on individual work processes as simple as unloading a boxcar and consistently showed how to make enormous improvements.1 The impact of Taylor’s work was and is far ranging, with implications from pay scales to management attitude. In terms of my spectrum from little-p to big-P, Taylor’s primary focus was on the little-p processes. This is extremely important—few can successfully concentrate on the big-P when constituent little-p’s do not perform at least tolerably well.
Two of the first big-P insights ...
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