Freedom, Inc_ - Brian M. Carney [106]
What’s more, the union locals said that they were ready to change the work rules in the existing plants to match those envisioned in the new plant, but—using the famous “yes, but” negotiation strategy—asked management to agree not to build the new plant after all. Instead, the efficiency gains from the changed work structure would be used to expand capacity at the existing facilities. After giving this proposal a hearing, management agreed to scale back, but not eliminate, the plans for the new plant. A team of three people—one manager and two union representatives—set out to search for a new site. And in every place they visited, city officials were ready to roll out their sales pitch to woo corporations. Harley’s team was bemused to see how, upon learning that two out of the three visitors were from the unions, the city fathers would skip hurriedly over the slides intended to show how good the local environment was for management.
After all these trips, the team came back with a ranking of the top three locations, with Kansas City, Missouri, where the plant was finally built, topping the list. But it was the number two choice that flabbergasted Rich Teerlink when he saw it. This three-member group, two of whom were union representatives, listed as their runner-up a city in a right-to-work state in which the unions could never hope to organize the workforce.
This collaborative spirit remains intact today. Steven Sleigh, the director of strategic resources for the International Association of Machinists—one of Harley’s two main unions—recently said:
[Douglas] McGregor’s seminal work spurred managers and union leaders alike to rethink the command and control work environment. Now, a full generation and a half later, my own union has dedicated substantial resources to fostering high-performance work systems rooted in McGregor’s view that workers can think, plan, and be creative. In this information age, this view should be dominant, rather than unusual, as it remains today.11
11
THE ANTI-MAD MEN
One Man’s Quest for Peace and Liberty
in Advertising
IF MAKING CALL-CENTER operators’ jobs fun seems tough, Stan Richards may have had it even tougher—he wanted to build an ad agency that was free from the dysfunction so common in his business. Richards, in other words, was an ad man who hated the advertising business. And that drove him to exasperation that, eventually, brought liberation to his business. He quit his firm after one year to set up the freelance shop that eventually became the Richards Group. His goal was to show that “the way it’s always been done” wasn’t a good enough reason to keep doing it that way.1
When his agency grew close to 150 people—a danger zone, he says, echoing Bill Gore’s concerns about that number—Richards became particularly fearful of the emergence of the rivalry between the different departments typical of any ad agency: the accounts people disrespecting the “creatives,” and the creatives scorning accounts as empty suits. What he wanted was, in his phrase, to create “The Peaceable Kingdom,” the title of the book he’d later write about his journey.2 Even if lions weren’t going to lie down with lambs in his Dallas office, accounts and creatives were going to get along and work together.
This was personally important to Richards, but there was a business rationale for it, too—employees who didn’t spend their time suspecting or undercutting their fellow workers would be able to direct more of their energy and attention to keeping the clients happy. Consequently, they would contribute to the company’s healthy growth instead of creating a toxic and ultimately unsuccessful business environment.
Still, you can’t just sit down with your accounts people and your creatives and implore them, “Can’t we all just get along?” Well, you could. But it would do about as much good as Rodney King’s plea did during the L.A. riots. Everyone would