Freedom, Inc_ - Brian M. Carney [35]
Months passed and on one of his occasional visits, Davids entered the winery and saw Kennison rolling out a row of used barrels. “Katie, where are those barrels going?” he asked, surprised.
“We’re doing the Chardonnay,” Kennison answered.
“I thought we were using one hundred percent new barrels,” Davids asked.
“No, we’re putting it in used ones this year,” Kennison explained. Davids asked Curran, the chief winemaker, to step outside.
“Kris, I thought we’d always been using new oak?” he asks.
“No,” Curran explained. “I’m not going to use new oak on a giveaway wine. If it was my pocket, I’d even use stainless,” Curran replied, referring to a cheaper way of aging wine: stainless steel tanks.
“Did I ever ask you to save me money?” Davids asked.
“No,” Curran admitted.
“What barrels will make the best quality Chardonnay? You choose,” Davids said.
Curran went back to the cellar and told Kennison, “We’re going to use one hundred percent new oak.”
This didn’t make the assistant winemaker very happy. “Oh, dang it,” Kennison said. “I already washed all these barrels.”
You may object here that Davids didn’t really stop telling Curran how to do her job. He simply chose to tell her indirectly, making his wishes known without giving an order in so many words, as so many bosses are wont to do. “Do what you like,” such a boss might say. “But if I were you, I’d do this leaving the listener in little doubt about what was necessary. This brings us again to the issue of freedom and anarchy.
Freedom begins by not telling people “how” to do their jobs. According to Davids’s principles, Curran was free to decide how to make the Chardonnay. At no point did Davids tell her directly or indirectly how to produce it. Nor did he insist on vetting her decisions on it. It is true that his persistent questioning of the decision to use old oak might well have been interpreted, in a traditional company, as a tacit order to change course. But that was not Davids’s intention. He freely admits that he doesn’t know how to make Sea Smoke’s wine—that is why he hires a winemaker. What he did want to ascertain, however, was whether the decision to save on the barrels was being made for the right reasons—for reasons, in other words, consistent with Sea Smoke’s vision.
Freedom and trust can’t be given out piecemeal. If they are, people will immediately see the strings attached and reject the offer as a sham. But this does not mean that the owner—or any colleague, for that matter—has to turn a blind eye when he notes by chance that some action is not in the best interests of the company’s vision. That is the road to anarchy, not to freedom.
In fact, sharing and communicating the company’s vision is a key role for a liberating leader and the second building block of freedom. This is especially true when faced with evidence, as Davids was, of a failure to fully understand and own the vision. If the leader doesn’t fulfill this role, some people will likely fall back on what they believe is best based on their experience—of highly controlled “how” environments. And one experience that we all have is that saving a buck is always a good thing, especially in a downturn. There is nothing wrong, of course, with avoiding needless expenses in any company. A liberated company in particular will be attuned to the perils of hidden costs and false economies,