Coal Miners, productivity and socio-technical teams
summary
Postwar Yorkshire mine redesigns work so miners do preparation, filling and shifting in the same crew, move managers to inter-shift coordination, and miners invent joint optimisation that raises output from 3.3 tons vs 5.5 tons per person per shift — roughly two thirds more — while improving morale. Researchers call this a socio‑technical system and map directly to Agile ideas like self‑organising teams and face‑to‑face work, demonstrated here with an equilateral triangle exercise showing spontaneous coordination.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Introduction
- 2:54ZX81 to mining heritage
- 6:05Post-war productivity challenges
- 8:33Tavistock Institute research
- 11:44Social-technical systems in Elsick Colliery
- 13:34Traditional vs self-organizing mines
- 15:42Empowerment and joint optimization
- 18:36Power control and resistance
- 21:51Hierarchy vs self-organization
- 23:23Agile Manifesto roots
- 26:14Trust metaphor
- 27:58Six reference points
- 30:50Live self-organization experiment
- 35:07Q&A
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