Bottom-up Management

INC. 500 CEO George Labovitz runs a small company that helps large companies manage their people more effectively. At a time when productivity is the most important issue facing American managers, Labovitz talks about what they should be going -- and why they aren't doing it.

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Airplanes," George Labovitz is fond of saying, "want to fly. It's people who crash airplanes. Student pilots. And 9 times out of 10, it's because they over-control."

Labovitz should know. Before he became a psychologist, he was an Air Force pilot, and he still does a lot of flying, mostly in other people's airplanes. "Oh, maybe 40%, 50% of the time he's on the road," says Joan Fallon, his secretary at Organizational Dynamics Inc., the Burlington, Mass.-based consulting firm he founded in 1970, which has twice (in 1982 and 1983) made the INC. 500 ranking of America's fastest-growing private companies. ODI currently has offices in Chicago; San Francisco; Washington, D.C.; Pittsburgh; Minneapolis; Dallas; Spartanburg, S.C.; Paris; Brussels; and Oxford, England. Geographically, his clients are equally far-flung, although economically they tend to cluster among the major corporations of our time -- TRW, Motorola, Union Camp, Marriott, Florida Power & Light, the United States Air Force, Hospital Corp. of America, and Massachusetts General Hospital, to name a few.

Does he overcontrol? Back at ODI headquarters along Massachusetts Route 128, a growth zone studded with new office buildings but still shuddering with the groans of bulldozers, his 50 employees say, No, he doesn't overcontrol. Rather he trims -- sets directions and tone, sparks enthusiasm and ideas. In the old days, "Contact!" was the last word pilots would hear from the ground crews before takeoff.It could be Labovitz's rallying cry, too, both as a manager and as an adviser to managers. Make contact. Get out there among your people. Listen. Learn. Trim. Then let them fly.

Born and reared in Lynn, Mass., a suburb of Boston, Labovitz, 45 years old, went to Boston University, got his MBA from Boston College, then ventured out to Ohio State University for his PhD in organizational psychology. He started up ODI in 1970. At first it was a solo operation, more or less, with Labovitz inventing, selling, and delivering his own consulting services, occasionally sending out an ad hoc collaborator. In 1976, he began hiring his first full-time employees. Often they were his graduate students at Boston University School of Management, where he has been professor of organizational behavior and management since 1968. (He still manages to teach two courses a semester when he is not on sabbatical, as he is this year.)

Since then, ODI has grown apace on the strength of a series of video- and text-based management courses, supplemented with personal consulting. In the past five years, business has been especially brisk. Revenues have climbed from $1.2 million in 1980 to $2.3 million in 1982 to $5.1 million in 1985; employees from 6 to 15 to 50; office space from 1,200 square feet to 2,200 to 8,000. Labovitz admits that such growth has occasionally put some strain on his philosophy of management, but his employees insist that the strain never shows.

Well, almost never. "He's a jogger," says Victor Rosansky, vice-president for training and development. "Apparently, he gets his best ideas while running, and we can tell. He comes in here after a run, and pretty soon the place is swirling. There are days when we pray for bad weather."

In public, too, Labovitz is a whirlwind of ideas, stories, and aphorisms, and he is as popular on campus as in corporate offices. So popular that, in 1979, he received Boston University's highest teaching award, the Metcalf Cup and Prize, which is presented each year to the outstanding teacher from among the 2,500-member faculty.

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