At Quad/Graphics, the employees run the show.
It is managerial hooky, known at Quad/Graphics Inc. as Spring Fling Each May, for just one day, the entire management team of the Pewaukee, Wis., printing company gets up and walks out -- leaving the rank-and-file to run the plant. Workers take the controls of 11 presses, each of which is worth more than $3 million. They supervise the binding and the shipping. They handle the paperwork and deal with the customers -- among them, Newsweek, Harper's, U.S. News & World Report, Playboy, The National Football League, and The Jacques Cousteau Society. For 24 hours, the employees have nobody to solve their problems for them; nobody to second-guess their decisions
The tradition began in 1974, when founder and president Harry V. Quadracci was looking for a way to get his managers out of the plant for a day of strategizing and socializing. The plan was to shut down production for the day, he says, "but then some [printing] work came in, and rather than cancel Spring Fling, we decided to let the hourly employees run the presses." Just like that? "Just like that."
Quadracci enjoys comparing Spring Fling to what is known in some high schools as "senior-class sneak-out" -- a day when the seniors are allowed to skip their classes in order to give the juniors a taste of life without upperclassmen. But this is much more than a sanctioned prank. Leaving 570 of his 700 employees unsupervised for a full day is, Quadracci concedes nothing short of a high-stakes business risk. Ask him what could go wrong and he hurriedly ticks off a list of potential glitches, as if dwelling on them would be a jinx.
In a state-of-the-art printing plant such as Quad/Graphics, where presses transform rolls of paper into magazine pages at a rate approaching 1,600 feet per minute, any slipup that goes undetected for long can ruin a considerable amount of the day's production and perhaps leave the printer with a six-digit loss. Just the "make-good" for an ad inadvertently run in the wrong edition of a magazine can cost up to $15,000. Then, of course, there is the immeasurable cost of the damage done to a printer's reputation if the blunder somehow embarrasses a customer. Quad/Graphics's mistakes have been relatively small ones, Quadracci says, but even the minor errors that no printer can escape are too expensive to shrug off. Something as simple as correcting a typographical error is often a $1,500 proposition.
Yet, year after year, Quadracci's gamble pays off. The managers meet, the presses run, and the problems are few. What is more, employee morale always seems to be better for the experience, because, although it wasn't planned that way, Spring Fling is something of a symbol for the kind of work environment Quadracci has fostered at Quad/Graphics.
"We operate on the concept of individual initiative and responsibility," Quadracci explains, "and Spring Fling gives many of our people their first chance to take the initiative -- to get involved, and see what responsibility feels like. By putting the employees in charge, even for a day, we show them that we mean what we say -- that we trust them and that we're willing to give them the freedom to make mistakes." Laughing, he adds, "Just so long as they're little mistakes."
With an estimated 1983 sales volume of $75 million, 11-year-old Quad/Graphics is the wunderkind of its industry. Statistics on the industry are sketchy at best, but Quadracci believes the company ranks among the 10 largest magazine-printing companies in the nation, and its growth is outpacing that of most competitors. While the growth rate of most magazine-printing companies in the $4.7-billion publication-printing industry is well under 10% per year, Quad/Graphics's sales volume maintains a compound annual growth rate of 30% to 40%.
Success of such speed and magnitude is rare for a rookie in this league -- actually, for a newcomer taking a swing at the technologically advanced, capital-intensive magazine-printing business, success of any kind is a departure from the norm. Many plants -- old and new -- die of undercapitalization, and start-ups are so scant that industry observers are hard pressed to name even five during the past decade without mentioning subsidiaries or expansions of existing companies and plants. No question about it, those in the know say, Quad/Graphics is an exception to the rule. And that makes Harry V. Quadracci a man to keep an eye on.
"If I want to get the attention of another printer real fast," says Angelo Rivello, Newsweek magazine's vice-president for manufacturing and distribution, "all I have to say is, 'Well, I understand that Harry's thinking about . . ." He whistles through his teeth. "Boy, you can see their backs go up and their hair bristle a little bit. Harry is formidable, and his organization is very formidable. That's because he's innovative -- not only in terms of printing technology, but in how he treats his people."
Competitors and customers alike comment on Quadracci's trend-setting three-day, 36-hour workweek, in which employees put in three, 12-hour shifts and then get three or four days off -- depending on whether it is their turn to pull a Sunday shift. Productivity rose 20% when the schedule was installed, and it falls by that much on the infrequent occasions when the work load warrants a switch back to a five-day schedule, Quadracci says. Some rival printers are starting to copy the system, recognizing the merit of running presses around the clock without working employees to a frazzle or paying staggering amounts of overtime.
Quad/Graphics is also known for its employee stock ownership plan and profit-sharing program, its extensive list of benefits and perquisites, its burgeoning employee-education and training program, and its unusually luxurious facilities. How many other printers, for example, can boast of letting their employees work toward college degrees on-site? Or building a $3-million employee sports center? Or of decorating with original art -- even in the men's locker room?
But all of this is just the physical manifestation of a good management philosophy, implemented by a man who is a natural manager, Rivello says. "Harry has the ability to make his employees feel that the jobs they do -- whether at the lowest level or the highest level -- are very important to the operation. That's the magic. That's why, while other printing plants are closing up, Quad/Graphics is still moving forward."
