Freedom, Inc_ - Brian M. Carney [142]
The leaders in this book all shared common qualities: They all had a drive to build world-class businesses. But moreover, they all possessed a deep and sincere belief in the value of treating all their people as intrinsically equal, in helping them grow and self-direct. They were not seeking to embrace the latest management fad, though they used many management techniques—Total Quality Management and others—when those were compatible with their beliefs. This genuine commitment to satisfying people’s needs is what convinced employees to join in. Employees, like children—an appropriate comparison in this instance—can smell a fraud a mile off. And nobody looking to sell their employees on “Freedom, Inc.” just because it might add a point or two to company margins will win many converts. Human nature being what it is, some will try, but they will fail.
Freedom works because it embraces what Douglas McGregor called in 1957 “the human side of enterprise.”21 It engages people more fully in what they are doing, and so produces self-motivated employees in a way that no mere paycheck can. To succeed in engaging people more fully in their work, a liberating leader must, first, eliminate corporate signals that some employees are more equal than others. If you tell someone, directly or indirectly—say, by asking him to punch the time clock—that they are there only to be a pair of hands, one of two things will happen: They will comply, or they will leave. Either way, you lose the benefit of his brainpower, which could be solving problems invisible to you or finding opportunities—also invisible to you—for your business.
There is wisdom, as Socrates said, in knowing what you do not know. Of all the obstacles to casting aside the traditional corporate structures, Jean-François Zobrist’s exhortation to do as little as possible may be the greatest in practical terms. The type of personality that “wants the keys” to the business is not often naturally disposed to adopt Zobrist’s Zenlike, Taoist attitude. They worry, in fact, that only frantic activity can justify their position—and their pay.
To this point, Bob Koski said he was never the highest-paid person at Sun Hydraulics “because I never deserved to be.” The impulse to appear to earn one’s paycheck by frenetic activity is a natural one. But just as great manufacturers preach economy of motion, great leaders need to overcome the urge to act for action’s sake. Action and decisiveness are needed to liberate a company, especially one established along traditional, top-down lines. Leadership is needed to ensure that employees share the company’s vision, understand their “charge,” and know that they are free to act with those things in mind. To this end, employers must also be equipped with the information and tools they deem necessary to act. But, by definition, a company that frees its people to act on their own initiative will leave less for the person at the top to do.
This need not make a would-be liberator too nervous, however. Judged by their financial performance, every CEO in this book is a standout. And judged by their ability to create and maintain an environment that makes their people both happy and highly productive, their record is even more impressive. All the evidence suggests that the latter—maintenance—task is harder, especially over years or even decades, than turning in good growth for a period of time.
The relationship between employee freedom and company performance is not merely a coincidence. Freedom works because we don’t know what we do not know, and because some of what we think we know is wrong—or soon will be. There are no cures for those mental ills except help from our fellow man. If only we can harness the additional knowledge of more of our peers, we can even, pace Weber, move much faster than the bureaucracy can. And because the world around us and around our businesses is changing much faster than in Weber’s time, the only way to harness that knowledge is to allow those who