Freedom, Inc_ - Brian M. Carney [99]
It turns out Walbert is a reserve lieutenant colonel in an Army paratrooper unit. This is how she describes her other job: “It’s where you take a helicopter into a combat zone, and you’re inserted expeditiously via rope from it. That’s why I consider things in terms of, How do ninjas think about this?” Indeed, ninjas are free not to worry too much about corporate rules. At this point, we thought she could have been a character in a James Bond movie, a thought a colleague confirmed by adding, “And she likes champagne, too.”
But our USAA sales-rep-lieutenant-colonel-ninja deadpanned, “I don’t think I look that good in a swimsuit.”
That, too, was a vital part of USAA’s freedom culture: the freedom of a frontline employee to crack jokes with visitors just out of a private meeting with the company’s CEO and in the presence of the head of public relations. “Know our customer, understand their current issues, and then provide solutions that may or may not involve USAA products.”
“Do whatever you can” indeed.
IT’S ALL ABOUT DOING A GREAT JOB
Now, to some, this talk of treating people well, helping them grow, and letting them self-direct may sound hopelessly touchy-feely in the face of the imperative to “run the trains on time”—especially in tough economic times. Stéphane Magnan tells his own story about the importance to the workforce of a nourishing environment. In 1982, at the age of thirty-one, Magnan was given charge of the five-plant aluminum foundry Montupet, owned by Pechiney, then Europe’s leading aluminum producer. But Montupet was no FAVI. In fact, the executives at Pechiney had recalled Magnan from his executive job in their U.S. division into Montupet not to improve its performance but to shut it down for good at the minimum cost to Pechiney and with as little labor unrest as possible. France’s first-ever Socialist president, François Mitterrand, had nationalized large chunks of the economy, and Pechiney’s leadership thought that it would be easier to use the supposedly ruthless Magnan, “l’américain,” to shut down the plants.
But that wasn’t at all his state of mind. Magnan quickly realized what an appalling, festering relationship the former management team had built with the plant employees: “People would look down at their feet when I would walk by them!”3 Magnan was dismayed, but he also saw opportunity: The company had real potential—if the relationship with the workforce could be fixed. So after a month of observation, he offered Pechiney a different plan—to turn the plant around. Montupet wasn’t worth much in its present state anyway, so Pechiney agreed to let him try—as long as it wouldn’t cost anything—and Magnan started his liberation campaign, adopting many of the devices we’ve seen at Harley, FAVI, USAA, GSI, and elsewhere. In fact, Yves Tillard, the same consultant who helped Jacques Raiman liberate GSI, helped Magnan. In this case it was a foreman who, once he understood Magnan’s vision for the company, suggested that his CEO contact Tillard. In two months all the managers—this foreman included—went through quick Tillard-led seminars to learn the kind of change the company was looking for. Then, to improve their own managerial practices, managers and their teams attended two-day team seminars, similar to those Tillard conducted at GSI. Again, they weren’t just some “pointless” seminars—Magnan, like Jacques Raiman, assisted in each one of them. And as in other liberated companies, people started to perform miracles.
When asked how he recognized that the liberation campaign had turned the corner and overcame people’s distrust, Magnan didn’t have to think long: “The people began looking me straight in the eyes, saying hello, smiling.” Then he quickly added, “Also, I had the numbers. The scrap went down dramatically. And the strike days, too… When I came to the company, the relations with unions were so conflict-ridden that the