Freedom, Inc_ - Brian M. Carney [80]
“When Avis finally broke into the black for the first time,”
Townsend recounted, “our management developed a severe case of ‘us’ versus ‘them’—‘us’ being the geniuses at headquarters and ‘them’ being the people in the field in the red jackets who were renting cars and paying our salaries and doing an enormous amount of hard work.”1 That didn’t sit well with Townsend’s “agricultural” approach—which, to begin with, treats people as intrinsically equal. So he made his first move to build a liberated environment.
At one Monday meeting, he casually made the following announcement: “By the way, we’re all going through the Avis school for rental agents at O’Hare Field.”
“There were great screams of rage from these busy executive geniuses,” Townsend recalled, to which he said, “Listen, it’s not necessary. I’m not ordering you to do it. All I’m telling you is, until you go through it with a passing grade, you’re not in the incentive compensation plan.”2 And to prove how important he felt this was, he added, “I’m going through it next week.”
It wasn’t easy. The executives lived in a motel, studied in the afternoon, were tested every evening, did their homework at night, and rented cars to real customers, wearing their “I’m a trainee” buttons all morning. Townsend recalls:
One morning, I was renting a car at O’Hare and this customer came to the counter. I was taking a long time getting the keys right, processing the car control card, checking the credit card, smiling at the other people in line so they wouldn’t drift over to our competitor. And he said, “Will you please hurry up? I’m in a hurry.”
And I said, “Give me a break, I’m a trainee.”
“Would you tell me how on earth a training program could pass somebody as clumsy and as ignorant as you seem to be?” he said.
And I said, “Well if you want to hear something really sick, I’m the president of the company.”
Whereupon he forgave me completely, and said, “Hey, at least you’re out here figuring out what’s going on. My president never leaves his office.”3
This—not entirely voluntary—training program for executives transformed the corporate environment. “When we got through that course,” explained Townsend, “we were wearing red jackets at headquarters. The ‘us’ and ‘them’ thing was history.”4 Forcing his executives a bit to go through the course—with the threat of withholding tangible rewards—was necessary for Townsend. If he wanted to build a free environment, he had to transform the executives’ arrogant attitude toward Avis’s front-line people: It wasn’t optional.
You might doubt that simply training executives to do others’ jobs would transform their attitudes and, with it, the corporate environment. And you’d be right to be skeptical. Building an environment of equality requires the elimination of all of the symbols and practices of “us” versus “them”—reserved parking spaces included. But at the same time, treating people as intrinsically equal is not enough to get them to self-motivate and embrace their freedom and responsibility. Other parts of the environment—its many work practices—have to be transformed, too, so that they nourish people’s needs for growth and self-direction. At Avis, this work-practice transformation was jump-started by the training program.
While in training, Townsend and the other executives realized that they were asking rental agents “to do an impossible job.” Filling in rental agreements by hand was cumbersome and stressful—especially with long lines of clients waiting for their cars (this was in the 1960s). The agreements could not be eliminated—they were an essential component of the car-rental business. But, just as rowing gave