Speakers argue that the conventional division of labor—extreme specialization and task delegation—turns employees into automatons performing "dead-end tasks" disconnected from value creation, while concentrating thinking and rewards at the top. They propose replacing this with a "division of essence": organizing work around the shared purpose of creating value and wealth and tapping every employee's creativity (even custodial staff) as small entrepreneurs. The speaker cites his own publishing business and prior experience as examples and frames this shift as both humane and productivity-enhancing.
Chapters
The division of labor was meant for our manufacturing, for labor intensive jobs. The division of labor was really never meant for our business. And here's why. Business is a mind intensive is mind intensive business, companies.
Creating value, increasing value to increase wealth. That requires the mind. But most businesses are broken down by the division of labor. And here's how it happens on a couple different levels. One is it's just easy. You start building, growing a business and you have these physical tasks, you know, you delegate it. You say here, you do those, I don't want to do those. Right. And so you just keep delegating. And what happens is as the business grows, it goes into these departments or these jobs that are very specialized. You're specialized on just doing these tasks, but that were delegated to you. So those are what I call dead end tasks. They're very specialized. They're not integrated at all with building the value of the company or building the wealth of the company. They're just a to do list that you do when you come in every day. And businesses are broken down largely by this type of division. Delegate, delegate. We have departments, we have all these specialized jobs. Just do your job. And then you have upper management that does any of the thinking and so on.
So it's over specialization and essentially creating robots out of human beings.
A good way of putting it. You have automatons there working for you. They're not thinking. And what a waste of the human life that is. Because what makes us special and unique is that we all have minds that can be creative. Now if you were really a smart owner of a company, wouldn't you want to tap the greatest asset that every person in your company can provide and that is their minds, Right? But big companies, they don't do that. You're pigeonholed into these specialized jobs. Just shut up and do your work and pay your taxes. Right. Cookie cutter jobs, that's what most big companies are broken down by.
It's just do your 10 tasks, turn them in at the end of the week, and if you do that, good, then you do the same thing next week.
Sure, you pay your taxes and on with you. Now, the elite few, what I call, you know, the leaders, right, the leaders at the top, they benefit from everything. But.
What a loss to the company by not tapping everyone's creative mind. So I recognized this early on in our business, in our publishing business, and I was determined to bring out the great creativity in every person who worked for me, even at the so called lowest levels. Let's just go down to the cleaning, you know, custodians, right? Set them up as little entrepreneurs so they can get creative and be productive and be a better value creator contributing to your company. Now, every company can be broken down by not the division of labor, but what I call the division of essence. The essence of business is to build value and wealth. That's the essence. Essence can be brought to every single job, but it's a very different breakdown of a company, very unique. And as I said, any entrepreneurs or people who have a business, this will be gold to you because you will increase your productivity and more importantly, the creativity in your company by bringing essence to everyone who works for you. So you get their creative minds contributing to your company, to your business.
Right. And so just to break that down a little bit further is the essence of business is to build value in wealth. And the essence of man is to create. And so the human mind has the most powerful mind in the known universe. And yet so many businesses are not taking advantage of that creativity to build the wealth and value for the company rather than just maintain it through routine tasks.
That's right. And what a beautiful relationship human beings and business have. Right. Like you said, business, it thrives on creativity because creativity builds values and wealth. Human beings, the essence of human beings is creating value. We're the only thing that can create value in the known universe. So you have the essence of human beings and the essence of business. Just marrying right up there in a beautiful marriage, a beautiful relationship. So what my works do, is it break? It shows you how to break business down by the division of essence. The division of essence. Not the division of labor, but the division of essence. The essence of the business is building, creating value and wealth. And the essence of a human being is create values. So what an amazing relationship you can have. I've done that with, with my business. I did that with the business prior to my business, when I worked for my father. Then when I started my own company, I applied that, and we've had tremendous success as a result of that.
