Alan Deutschman, Change or die : the three keys to change at work and in life, 2007
In fact, the odds are nine to one that, when faced with the dire need to change, we won't.
pp.111-115
p.111
Gore-Tex
In the late 1950s one of Douglas MacGregor's speeches about Theory Y had a strong influence on a man named Wilbert L. Gore, who went by “Bill”.
Gore was an unlikely revolutionary. Forty-five years old, he was a somewhat nerdy, quiet, humble man who lived in a small house in Newark, Delaware.
He had worked for 17 years as a chemical engineer at DuPont, but he was frustrated by the “authoritarian” nature of large companies, which he felt smothered creativity.
p.112
He realized that the car pool was the only place where people talked to one another freely without regard for the chain of command. He also observed that when there was a crisis, the company created a task force and threw out the rules. It was the only time when organizations took risks and made actual breakthroughs.
Why, he wondered, should you have to wait for a crisis?
Why not just throw out the rules anyway?
And why not do away with hierarchy and ranks and titles while you're at it?
Why not create an organization where everyone could speak freely with anyone else?
p.112
Bill and his wife, Genevieve, who was known as “Vieve”, decided to start their own company. Many of their friends thought they were foolish.
They had five children to support, including two who were in college, and Bill was up for a big promotion to DuPont.
But they were motivated by creativity and achievement, not by security.
On January 1, 1958 ── their 23rd wedding anniversary ── they had dinner at home, and then Vieve said, “well, let's clear up the dishes and get to work.”
And that's how W. L. Gore & Associates was founded.
They mortgaged their house, withdrew four thousand dollars out of their saving, and raised extra capital from their bridge club.
Their first few coworkers lived in their basement, accepting room and board instead of salaries.
It's a classic story of an entrepreneurial venture in every way except one: Even as W. L. Gore grew tremendously over the years, and even as it created one of the best-known brand names in America ── “Gore-Tex”, a plastic coating that makes clothing waterproof and windproof ── and even as it hired thousands of new workers and earned billions of dollars in annual sales, the company still has no bosses.
p.113
Bill Gore organized the company as though it were a bunch of car pools or task forces. He made sure each of the manufacturing plants and office buildings had 150 people at most, which kept things small enough so that everyone could get to know one another, learn what everyone else was working on, and discover who had the skills and knowledge to get something accomplished, whether they were trying to solve a problem or create a new product.
When I tell people that W. L. Gore has no bosses, they usually don't believe me, because the fact doesn't fit into their frames. Our thinking is still dominated by Theory X and the idea that large companies can operate only on the military command-and-control model. When people go to work at Gore, they're told how the place works, but it takes them a long time to grasp the reality.
That's what happened to Diane Davidson. Nothing in her 15 years of experience as a sales executive in the apparel industry prepared her for life in a company where there are no bosses or pyramids.
p.113
“When I arrived at Gore, I didn't know who did what”, she said. “I wondered how anything got done here. It was driving me crazy.” Like all new hires, Davidson was brought into the company by a “sponsor” who would serve as her mentor, not as her boss. The sponor would be there whenever she asked for advice but would never evaluate her performance or make decisions about her pay or give her assignments or orders. But she simply didn't know how to work without someone telling her what to do.
“Who's my boss?” she kept asking.
“Stop using the B-word”, her sponsor replied.
As an experienced executive, Davidson assumed that Gore's talk was typical corporate euphemism rather than actual practice.
p.114
“Secretly, there are bosses, right?” she asked.
There weren't. She eventually figured it out: “Your team is your boss, because you don't want to let them down. Everyone's your boss, and no one's yr boss.”
What's more, Davidson saw that people didn't fit into standardized job descriptions. They had all made different sets of “commitments” to their teams, often combining roles that remained segregated in different fiefdoms at conventional companies, such as sales, marketing, and product design. It took months for Davidson to get to know all her teammakes and what they did ── and for them to get to know her and offer her responsibilities. The “associates” at Gore all get to decide for themselves what new commitments they want to take on. Individuals could design their roles to fit their own interests and strengths. Everyone is supposed to be like an “amoeba” and take on a unique shape.
They aren't forced into preconceived boxes or standardized niches. At the end of the year a committee forms and reviews each associate's contribution and decides on salaries and bonuses, the same way it works at law firms.
p.114
Davidson's experience is typical at Gore. “You join a team and you're an idiot”, says John Morgan, who has switched new teams five times throughout a 25-year tenure. “It takes 18 months to build credibility. Early on, it's really frustrating. In hindsight, it makes sense. As a sponsor, I tell new hires, ‘Your job for the first six months is to get to know the team,’ but they have trouble believing it.”
Gore is the only major American company that has put Theory Y into full effect, and its results have been extraordinary.
pp.114-115
When Fortune publishes its ranking of the “best places to work in America”, Gore is always at the top of the list or very close to it.
“”─“”‘’•─“”
pp.210-211
The “stages” model is very helpful and has been highly influential among professionals in the field of psychology and health. As set forth in Changing for Good, the 1994 book by Drs. James O. Prochaska, John C. Norcross, and Carlo C. DiClemente, it proposes a “trans-theoretical” approach ── that is, it looks to all the major schools of psychotherapy for techniques and finds seven that are particularly effective, including “helping relationships” and “emotional arousal”. Then it describes the best times to apply each of these techniques during the “six stages of change”, from “precontemplation” (a hopeful euphemism for the time when people don't believe that they can change) to “termination” (when the change has become complete and permanent).
The “stages” model has created a clear framework for understanding change that's proven easy to grasp and remember. It has also helped spread many of the most useful insights of psychology to countless people and done incalculable good. I have one very important gripe with it, though. Change or Die is focused on the predicament of those “pre-contemplators”, whom the stages authors identify as people who are demoralized or who are shielding themselves through psychological self-defense mechanisms such as denial, projection, and rationalization. But it's hard to figure out why the first strategy that the stages authors recommend is “consciousness-raising”.
They write: “The first step in fostering intentional change is to become conscious of the self-defeating defenses that get in our way. Knowledge is power. Freud was the first to recognize that to overcome our compulsions we must begin by analyzing our resistance to change. We must acknowledge our defenses before we can defeat or circumvent them.”
I disgree strongly with this prescription. It rarely does any good to tell someone, “Dude, you're in denial”. The facts won't set them free. Knowledge isn't power when the facts are too much to bear. Then knowledge is anxiety. “Pre-contemplators” don't need someone to tell them the truth.
They can't handle the truth.
That's why they're in denial.
Or, as Dr. Jennifer Melfi, the fictional psychiatrist on television's The Sopranos, says about her clients: “They lie to me, they lie to themselves.”
The point of Change or Die is to show how people can change when the facts and fear haven't motivated them. The real key is to give people hope, not facts.
“”─“”‘’•─“”
Alan Deutschman, Change or die : the three keys to change at work and in life, 2007
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