Freedom, Inc_ - Brian M. Carney [32]
The fundamental lesson for hierarchical “how” companies is simple: Change has to start from the top. The leaders must radically relax their ways so that the “subordinate” members—now treated as equals—become relaxed too. And interestingly, once they are treated as equals, primates relax exactly the same way that humans do. Researchers traced how the change in the Forest Troop’s social habits influenced members’ stress and health. And their findings were strikingly familiar.
Anubis baboons are typically known as a highly stressed species. Indeed, the chronic psychosocial stress of subordination and aggression leads to the continuous secretion of adrenals, accompanied by high blood pressure and elevated heart rate—the “bad three” pattern we see in humans—leading to such health problems as adult diabetes and impaired growth, slowed tissue repair, and infertility. But in the new Forest Troop, with its relaxed ways, subordinate males didn’t show any increased level of adrenals, nor its poor health consequences. The same good health consequences are observed when stress decreases in humans—one more reason to consider carefully the lesson that primate studies provide.
The good news is that people are not monkeys. It took an outside intervention to change the behavior of the baboons and the macaques—in one case, disease, in the other, manipulation by researchers. But people can decide to change on their own. We don’t recommend poisoning middle management, but a liberating leader must, nevertheless, free her people from the oppressive culture of the “how” company. Once she does, she’ll notice that the behavior of the rest of the “troop” starts to change, too—from complacent to free and proactive.
4
FREEDOM IS NOT
ANARCHY
A Liberated Company Must Have a
Shared Vision
I’m gone for eight months…. If you feel that it’s critical to contact me, that I get involved in your problem, what I want you to do is to lie down. When that feeling goes away, I want you to get up, solve the problem, and then send me an e-mail with the solution.
—BOB DAVIDS1
WE ARE IN the Bahamas—at least, Bob Davids is.2 Davids is the owner of Sea Smoke Cellars, a young 350-acre vineyard in the gorgeous Santa Ynez Valley of central California. But he spends eleven months of the year elsewhere, whether that’s in Reno, Nevada; Bali; or fishing in the Bahamas. His goal is nothing less than to produce “the best Pinot Noir humanly possible” from his vineyard. He says he scoured the world to find just the right spot for it, and having found it, he stays away from it as much as he can.
His quest to build a world-class winery began in earnest in December 1997, when Davids, founder and CEO of Radica Games—then the world’s third most profitable toy maker—announced to the board that he wished to resign so that he could make wine. The reactions were, well, mixed.
The first to react was Robert Townsend, whom Davids had considered a mentor since they first met in 1981 and whom he convinced to join the board after Radica went public in 1994.
“You cannot leave the company. You are the company,” Townsend told him.
“But your book,” Davids retorted, referring to Townsend’s best-selling Up the Organization, “says that the board’s job is to replace the CEO every five years and I have been here seven years already.”
“Not if the CEO is doing a good job,” Townsend shot back.
“Well, that last part is not in your book,” Davids sniffed.
Then, board chairman Jon Bengtson offered his own, Townsend-like, reaction.
“Do you know the best way to make a small fortune?” he asked Davids. Davids shrugged. “Invest a big one in a winery,” Bengston offered. Davids let that one go. He wasn’t getting into the wine business to lose money, however. One of his credos is, “If you have 1 percent