This piece originally appeared at State Capacitance.
Some people claim that hard times make strong men. Perhaps it is true. In any event, World War II was a hard time that made organizations stronger, where the war demanded peak efficiency from agencies such as the Social Social Security Board (now the Social Security Administration).
The war not only made the Social Security Board a strong organization, it made it a lean organization, too. The Board invented, and practiced, ideas about continuous improvement decades before businesses adopted them as part of the lean manufacturing movement. Its management was not only ahead of its time, but it was more modern than ideas pushed by later government reformers—and far more modern than federal management even today.
The Board crafted this management style—adapted from factory management training—due to wartime necessities. It needed to dramatically streamline its operations due to shortages and turnover, and pursued two initiatives to do so. First, it aimed for immediate improvements with its “why survey.” Second, the Board ambitiously pursued a new mindset of constant improvement through its permanent work simplification. These initiatives not only dealt with the issue at hand, but even anticipated the management style today known as lean manufacturing.
