Freedom, Inc_ - Brian M. Carney [138]
Not all the companies in this book have gone as far as W. L. Gore & Associates in this regard, although the distaste for documents such as org charts is a recurring theme at liberated companies, for good reason. But Gore’s track record and growth performance show that it is not inevitable that a company’s structure will harden too much over time if it is diligent about staying fluid. In Gore’s particular case, the very language its associates employ serves as a form of institutional continuity.
FREEDOM STRENGTHENS “WEAK SIGNALS”
None of which is to say that there can’t be drift in the wrong direction—or even a catastrophic collapse of a relatively free culture, as seems to have happened at Radica Games after Bob Davids’s departure. One long-serving employee of USAA, since retired, lamented privately to us that some things had changed for the worse since Robert McDermott retired in the early 1990s. It is still one of the great customer-service companies in the world, and it has the results to show for it. But he noted specifically that it had fallen out of the ranks of the hundred best companies to work for in recent years, and he feared that some of McDermott’s hard-fought gains were not completely understood by his successors at the top. USAA, perhaps in part because of its military heritage, never abandoned many of the privileges of rank, and its executive suite is both opulent and fortresslike. The overwhelming evidence is that the culture McDermott built at USAA remains largely healthy forty years after he came to the company and seventeen years after he left it. You have only to pick up the phone and speak to a representative or to speak informally with its people to appreciate what he accomplished. But whether those who succeeded him fully appreciate why he did everything he did is an open question. And sitting in their mahogany–lined redoubt on a company visit, it seemed easy to forget just how important those voices on the other end of the phone are to the company’s success.
But even if USAA’s culture were to collapse completely—which is unlikely—a forty-year run would be nothing to look down one’s nose at. USAA has gone through several CEOs since McDermott’s retirement, while maintaining a freedom-based culture that McDermott himself would still recognize. The same can be said in 2009 of Gore at 51, Sun Hydraulics at 38, Chaparral and Quad/Graphics at 36, Harley at 33, and IDEO at 31—all having undergone at least one change of CEO since the original liberation campaign. To ask for more would be to risk tilting the playing field too far in favor of “how” companies.18 At best, that method of organization offers an illusion of stability across generations and personalities. It is not without reason that Wall Street perpetually frets over succession questions even at their most beloved companies—perhaps especially so. All too often, the business press lauds the “system” put in place by a successful corporate leader, declaring it the model of the future—only to see it crumble when a successor is named or circumstances change. The “system” inside a successful company almost invariably gets more credit than it deserves, while the contributions of good fortune and great employees get overlooked.
Looked at in this light, freedom-based companies are actually more robust than their “how”-focused competitors.