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February 26, 1989 BUSINESS FORUM: FORGET CHARISMA

BUSINESS FORUM: FORGET CHARISMA; Focus on Teamwork, Vision and Values By ALLAN COX; Allan Cox is a management consultant. His fifth book, ''The Achiever's Profile,'' has just been published.

Charisma is our elixir. We swallow it as a cure­all for what ails us. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our companies. It shows up even in the way we use language. We say we want leaders for our corporations, not mere managers.

The word ''leaders,'' in this case, is spoken with lilting voice and bright eyes, conveying that these are especially winsome creatures with endowments not quite of this world.

This is all nonsense. A rich mixture of judgment and timing contributes more to effective leadership than a captivating, swashbuckling presence.

We have been through a decade of gross hucksterism in which executives have been admonished to undergo assertiveness training, spruce up their images and even forgo wearing brown suits to the office.

Just a few weeks ago, when beginning a teambuilding project for a chief executive and his staff, I was taken aside by two staff members and told, ''He (the chief executive) needs to work on the charisma factor.''

But when it comes to enhancing their leadership qualities, executives have better places than charisma to direct their attention and yearnings. I suggest three alternatives:

First, executives will be better leaders by giving their energies to the evaluation and management of corporate values.

When executives behold the corporation as the social institution it is ­ an interpersonal network committed to some mission in the service of customers, employees, shareholders and the public ­ it is not surprising that they think the management of values may be the ultimate description of their jobs.

Some chief executives become spokespersons on this point, while others, not as vocal, have just as energetically put such conviction into play in their companies.

Perhaps the most important example of a chief executive who is concerned with values is James Burke, the genuine, but uncharismatic chief executive of Johnson & Johnson Inc. Mr. Burke, you will recall, has received much praise for managing Johnson & Johnson's response to the Tylenol poisonings. Yet, as deserving of high praise as these actions were, they are not what is most remarkable about him.

Rather, it is simply his day­by­day, year­by­year, layer­by­layer involvement in recognizing, evaluating, prioritizing and articulating Johnson & Johnson's ethical values.

A gimlet­eyed friend of mine who has worked with Mr. Burke said: ''What's typical today is for the C.E.O. to send out a staff­drafted two­paragraph ethics statement to his managers. The managers are asked to read and sign it. They do this perfunctorily, and that's it. A guy like Burke knows that's ridiculous, that it's not enough, that there's no reinforcement without the C.E.O.'s involvement. By spending the time that he does on values, Burke signals their importance to his people.''

This people­sensitive, customer­responsive, long­range thinking chief executive makes us forget about charisma while he gives ethics and values a good name. But this would not be the case if Johnson & Johnson's financial performance were not also impressive ­ which it is. Mr. Burke says companies that follow ethical credos generate superior financial performance.

An executive's second alternative to charisma is the exercise of vision. Ironically, there is a need to distinguish vision from charisma. This is because popular business thought, in error, rolls up charisma and vision into a tight little ball.

A common notion is that vision is the province of a charismatic, almost clairvoyant corporate leader. Vision is routinely taken to mean (1) gazing at a crystal ball rather than (2) understanding where a corporation finds itself at present and where it's headed.

In its simplicity, option No. 2 is the wiser course. Consider this little gem of Chinese wisdom: ''Unless we change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.'' Despite low scores on the ''excitement'' test, executives who are able to take this earthy wisdom to heart ­ to develop a sense of their corporation's purpose and trajectory ­ will be leaders of distinction.

What all effective leaders do is labor with their associates to gain an understanding of place and direction. And that is a special way of seeing circumstances that we are correct to call vision. Leaders like Mr. Burke, who win lasting admiration and work to insure their companies' futures, are the ones poised to blow the bugle in front of new and needed initiatives ­ or blow the whistle to stop their companies dead in their tracks when they think the course is wrong. The truth for them is that a desirable tomorrow is dependent on the decisions they make today.

A superior leader's third alternative to charisma is collaboration. He is committed to collaboration because he knows first­hand that it produces management team effectiveness and assures improved corporate performance. It does so by re­enlivening and tapping into the souls and minds of a company's executives who may have gone stale. And it makes them see themselves as valued

contributors once more. Collaboration is the way to generate the best ideas and options for running a business. And these times demand it. Corporations that do not ''think'' teamwork, will not prosper.

The spirit of complex organizational life these days is increasingly collaborative. In our finest companies, much gets done daily without dazzle or hype by teams of people pulling together. Words like ''we'' and ''our'' replace ''I'' and ''my.'' The team ­ not the leader ­ becomes the star, while the latter serves primarily as the articulator and sponsor of the vision that emerges out of the team's collaboration. Two or more heads are better than one. What better explanation than team involvement can account for the achievements of a Johnson & Johnson and the rock­solid, management style of Mr. Burke? But the management technology of real teamwork is not in the typical executive's repertoire even though that technology is not complicated and can be learned without difficulty.

There is no more appropriate quest for a manager than to build team involvement. That, after all, is the prize of effective leadership.

Drawing

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Principles of Scientific Management, Frederick Winslow Taylor (1911)

Introduction

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT, in his address to the Governors at the White House,

prophetically remarked that “The conservation of our national resources is only preliminary to

the larger question of national efficiency.”

The whole country at once recognized the importance of conserving our material

resources and a large movement has been started which will be effective in accomplishing this

object. As yet, however, we have but vaguely appreciated the importance of “the larger question

of increasing our national efficiency.”

We can see our forests vanishing, our water-powers going to waste, our soil being carried

by floods into the sea; and the end of our coal and our iron is in sight. But our larger wastes of

human effort, which go on every day through such of our acts as are blundering, ill-directed; or

inefficient, and which Mr. Roosevelt refers to as a lack of “national efficiency,” are less visible,

less tangible, and are but vaguely appreciated.

We can see and feel the waste of material things. Awkward, inefficient, or ill-directed

movements of men, however, leave nothing visible or tangible behind them. Their appreciation

calls for an act of memory, an effort of the imagination. And for this reason, even though our

daily loss from this source is greater than from our waste of material things, the one has stirred

us deeply, while the other has moved us but little.

As yet there has been no public agitation for “greater national efficiency,” no meetings

have been called to consider how this is to be brought about. And still there are signs that the

need for greater efficiency is widely felt.

The search for better, for more competent men, from the presidents of our great

companies down to our household servants, was never more vigorous than it is now. And more

than ever before is the demand for competent men in excess of the supply.

What we are all looking for, however, is the readymade, competent man; the man whom

some one else has trained. It is only when we fully realize that our duty, as well as our

opportunity, lies in systematically cooperating to train and to make this competent man, instead

of in hunting for a man whom some one else has trained, that we shall be on the road to national

efficiency.

In the past the prevailing idea has been well expressed in the saying that “Captains of

industry are born, not made”; and the theory has been that if one could get the right man,

methods could be safely left to him. In the future it will be appreciated that our leaders must be

trained right as well as born right, and that no great man can (with the old system of personal

management) hope to compete with a number of ordinary men who have been properly

organized so as efficiently to cooperate.

In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first. This in no sense,

however, implies that great men are not needed. On the contrary, the first object of any good

system must be that of developing first-class men; and under systematic management the best

man rises to the top more certainly and more rapidly than ever before.

This paper has been written:

First. To point out, through a series of simple illustrations, the great loss which the whole

country is suffering through inefficiency in almost all of our daily acts.

Second. To try to convince the reader that the remedy for this inefficiency lies in

systematic management, rather than in searching for some unusual or extraordinary man.

Third. To prove that the best management is a true science, resting upon clearly defined

laws, rules, and principles, as a foundation. And further to show that the fundamental principles

of scientific management are applicable to all kinds of human activities, from our simplest

individual acts to the work of our great corporations, which call for the most elaborate

cooperation. And, briefly, through a series of illustrations, to convince the reader that whenever

these principles are correctly applied, results must follow which are truly astounding.

This paper was originally prepared for presentation to The American Society of

Mechanical Engineers. The illustrations chosen are such as, it is believed, will especially appeal

to engineers and to managers of industrial and manufacturing establishments, and also quite as

much to all of the men who are working in these establishments. It is hoped, however, that it will

be clear to other readers that the same principles can be applied with equal force to all social

activities: to the management of our homes; the management of our farms; the management of

the business of our tradesmen, large and small; of our churches, our philanthropic institutions,

our universities, and our governmental departments.

Chapter One

The principal object of management should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the

employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employee.

The words “maximum prosperity” are used, in their broad sense, to mean not only large

dividends for the company or owner, but the development of every branch of the business to its

highest state of excellence, so that the prosperity may be permanent.

In the same way maximum prosperity for each employee means not only higher wages

than are usually received by men of his class, but, of more importance still, it also means the

development of each man to his state of maximum efficiency, so that he may be able to do,

generally speaking, the highest grade of work for which his natural abilities fit him, and it further

means giving him, when possible, this class of work to do.

It would seem to be so self-evident that maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled

with maximum prosperity for the employee, ought to be the two leading objects of management,

that even to state this fact should be unnecessary. And yet there is no question that, throughout

the industrial world, a large part of the organization of employers, as well as employeee, is for

war rather than for peace, and that perhaps the majority on either side do not believe that it is

possible so to arrange their mutual relations that their interests become identical.

The majority of these men believe that the fundamental interests of employeee and

employers are necessarily antagonistic. Scientific management, on the contrary, has for its very

foundation the firm conviction that the true interests of the two are one and the same; that

prosperity for the employer cannot exist through a long term of years unless it is accompanied by

prosperity for the employee, and vice versa; and that it is possible to give the workman what he

most wants–high wages–and the employer what he wants–a low labor cost–for his

manufactures.

It is hoped that some at least of those who do not sympathize with each of these objects

may be led to modify their views; that some employers, whose attitude toward their workmen

has been that of trying to get the largest amount of work out of them for the smallest possible

wages, may be led to see that a more liberal policy toward their men will pay them better; and

that some of those workmen who begrudge a fair and even a large profit to their employers, and

who feel that all of the fruits of their labor should belong to them, and that those for whom they

work and the capital invested in the business are entitled to little or nothing, may be led to

modify these views.

No one can be found who will deny that in the case of any single individual the greatest

prosperity can exist only when that individual has reached his highest state of efficiency; that is,

when he is turning out his largest daily output.

The truth of this fact is also perfectly clear in the case of two men working together. To

illustrate: if you and your workman have become so skilful that you and he together are making

two pairs of shoes in a day, while your competitor and his workman are making only one pair, it

is clear that after selling your two pairs of shoes you can pay your workman much higher wages

than your competitor who produces only one pair of shoes is able to pay his man, and that there

will still be enough money left over for you to have a larger profit than your competitor.

In the case of a more complicated manufacturing establishment, it should also be

perfectly clear that the greatest permanent prosperity for the workman, coupled with the greatest

prosperity for the employer, can be brought about only when the work of the establishment is

done with the smallest combined expenditure of human effort, plus nature’s resources, plus the

cost for the use of capital in the shape of machines, buildings, etc. Or, to state the same thing in a

different way: that the greatest prosperity can exist only as the result of the greatest possible

productivity of the men and machines of the establishment–that is, when each man and each

machine are turning out the largest possible output; because unless your men and your machines

are daily turning out more work than others around you, it is clear that competition will prevent

your paying higher wages to your workmen than are paid to those of your competitor. And what

is true as to the possibility of paying high wages in the case of two companies competing close

beside one another is also true as to whole districts of the country and even as to nations which

are in competition. In a word, that maximum prosperity can exist only as the result of maximum

productivity. Later in this paper illustrations will be given of several companies which are

earning large dividends and at the same time paying from 30 per cent. to 100 per cent. higher

wages to their men than are paid to similar ,men immediately around them, and with whose

employers they are in competition. These illustrations will cover different types of work, from

the most elementary to the most complicated.

If the above reasoning is correct, it follows that the most important object of both the

workmen and the management should be the training and development of each individual in the

establishment, so that he can do (at his fastest pace and with the maximum of efficiency) the

highest class of work for which his natural abilities fit him.

These principles appear to be so self-evident that many men may think it almost childish

to state them. Let us, however, turn to the facts, as they actually exist in this country and in

England. The English and American peoples are the greatest sportsmen in the world. Whenever

an American workman plays baseball, or an English workman plays cricket, it is safe to say that

he strains every nerve to secure victory for his side. He does his very best to make the largest

possible number of runs. The universal sentiment is so strong that any man who fails to give out

all there is in him in sport is branded as a “quitter,” and treated with contempt by those who are

around him.

When the same workman returns to work on the following day, instead of using every

effort to turn out the largest possible amount of work, in a majority of the cases this man

deliberately plans to do as little as he safely can–to turn out far less work than he is well able to

do–in many instances to do not more than one-third to one-half of a proper day’s work. And in

fact if he were to do his best to turn out his largest possible day’s work, he would be abused by

his fellow-workers for so doing, even more than if he had proved himself a “quitter” in sport.

Underworking, that is, deliberately working slowly so as to avoid doing a full day’s work,

“soldiering,” as it is called in this country, “hanging it out,” as it is called in England, “ca canae,”

as it is called in Scotland, is almost universal in industrial establishments, and prevails also to a

large extent in the building trades; and the writer asserts without fear of contradiction that this

constitutes the greatest evil with which the working-people of both England and America are

now afflicted.

It will be shown later in this paper that doing away with slow working and “soldiering” in

all its forms and so arranging the relations between employer and employee that each workman

will work to his very best advantage and at his best speed, accompanied by the intimate

cooperation with the management and the help (which the workman should receive) from the

management, would result on the average in nearly doubling the output of each man and each

machine. What other reforms, among those which are being discussed by these two nations,

could do as much toward promoting prosperity, toward the diminution of poverty, and the

alleviation of suffering? America and England have been recently agitated over such subjects as

the tariff, the control of the large corporations on the one hand, and of hereditary power on the

other hand, and over various more or less socialistic proposals for taxation, etc. On these subjec