Freedom, Inc_ - Brian M. Carney [82]
That’s right. A seminar. Yes, we’ve all been to some pointless seminar or “off-site” at which we had to catch one another falling backward to build trust and talk about feelings while secretly thinking a thought that we’d previously believed impossible: “I wish I was back at my desk.” Or, as they say in France: “If seminars changed something in everyday practices, it would have been known loooong ago.” You’d be fully justified to think the same about the GSI seminars, too—if it was not for all the little ways that they were different.
For starters, Raiman hadn’t simply agreed to let Tillard facilitate the seminars at GSI: Raiman, the chairman, also agreed to do his best to help out at each one of them himself. He didn’t assist at all of them—just about half, but people expected and were bracing for his presence every time. And the number of those he assisted in—in France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, and two U.S. states—amounted to 150. That, multiplied by two days, is equal to more than a full year of the company chairman’s work time—travel excluded. So there was not much talk in GSI about the chairman who doesn’t care about the “pointless” seminars. And when Raiman could not assist at a seminar, either the CEO, Jacques Bentz, or the head of a relevant division went in his place. Plus, there was always a head of the local business unit present. This was the second important difference in GSI’s seminars: They were never imposed from on high. Seminars were only organized when the head of the business unit asked for it and committed to participate himself. The third special feature is even more impressive. Altogether, during a fifteen-year period, GSI put on three hundred seminars dedicated to changing managers’ practices in its different business units and departments.
That last feature shows that Raiman and Tillard did not expect that they could change management practices instantly or even quickly. People’s habits don’t change overnight, and they never change if people don’t want them to. As Rich Teerlink put it, “People don’t resist change; they resist being changed.”6 GSI’s two-day seminars always ended with the participating managers choosing for themselves what practices they would commit to change. They were not forced to commit to any, but if they did it was made public and followed up on later at another seminar—again with the presence of the head of the business unit and, usually, Raiman or his CEO—to assess the progress. Though some managers chose not to change their ways—and some heads of the business units declined as well—most transformed their “how” habits that were depriving people’s needs into leadership practices that nourished them. It wasn’t simply the seminars that accomplished this; it was also the extraordinary dedication of the chairman and the CEO—in actions, not in words. It was also the choice given to the heads of the business units to initiate them, the choice given to managers to decide whether to change their practices, and the outstanding scale—in quantity, time, and geography—of these seminars in the company. Raiman retired in 1995 when the company was acquired by ADP, the leading American payroll and human-resources outsourcing firm. But the seminars are still running at ADP-GSI for new managers and employees.
Harley-Davidson used different sorts of seminars to modify its “how” culture, ones facilitated by consultants who taught top managers to stop pretending to listen, stop being manipulative in debates, and so on. In both companies, the format was dictated by their size and their preexisting organizational structure. At smaller companies, managers can be educated directly by their superiors—even over dinner—to adopt nourishing habits. That’s what Bill Gore did in the early days of his company.
DEVELOPING NOURISHING