Three Companies In Search Of An Author

Tom Peters' book on excellence has managers and employees alike changing the way they do business.

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Ed Gaffney is the kind of manager who admits that if he doesn't say anything to an employee about how he is working, the employee is supposed to take the silence as a sign of approval. "When I give someone a job, I expect him to do it well," he says with a smile that takes the edge off the gruffness. "When I don't say anything, that's a compliment."

This is the same Ed Gaffney who, over the past year, has introduced discussion groups among employees at all levels in his company, Ortho-Kinetics Inc., in Wauksha, Wis., and whose enthusiasm has sparked similar companywide discussions and action groups in at least two neighboring Wisconsin enterprises. The catalyst behind the discussion is In Search of Excellence, a best-selling book that captured the mood and affirmed the behavior of managers like Gaffney throughout the country.

In the nearly two years since the book first appeared, 1,301,000 hardcover copies have been sold (as of May 1984) in the United States alone, making it the second-fastest-selling nonfiction book since the publishing industry has been tracking such things. (The first was Alex Haley's Roots.) It has been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese; printed in Finland, Sweden, Germany, Holland, Australia, Italy, the Philippines, Denmark, Norway, Israel, Indonesia, Greece, China; reprinted in the English in India; published in paperback in the United States; excerpted by more than 20 magazines and newspapers; and packaged as a cassette tape that busy executives may play in their automobiles, and as a multiday training program.

The conclusions of Excellence -- that in the best-run companies people are important, value systems are powerful, product quality and customer service are closer to the heart of long-term success than attention to return on investment, and that management is the key factor in a company's performance -- appeal to American business's self-confidence, its optimism, and its sense of how things really work.

Although one chief executive officer in Virginia restructured his entire company to be closer to his customers -- one of the eight attributes of excellence described by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. in their book -- not all managers have bought the ideas wholesale. (The other seven attributes are a bias for action; autonomy and entrepreneurship; belief in productivity through people; a hands-on, value-driven operation; a tendency to stick to the knitting; a simple form and a lean staff; and, finally, simultaneous, loose-tight properties -- autonomy at the shop-floor level combined with fanatic adherence to certain ideals.) Some think the idea of "Management By Wandering Around" (MBWA) is a waste of time. Others find the basic concepts so obvious that they don't understand what all the excitement is about. ("I think I could have written that book," said a secretary at one company. "Don't you think you could have?") Still others aren't sure how advice like "sticking to the knitting" is going to help an Ohio machine-tools manufacturer that had been dependent on the auto industry. But most have discovered that, whatever its flaws, the book makes people think. And that was its appeal to Ed Gaffney. "It looked like it might be a good vehicle for getting a better dialogue going with our employees," he says.

Gaffney, a mechanical engineer, had wanted his own company as far back as he could remember. After graduating from Michigan Technological University and serving in the Navy, he worked for Allis-Chalmers Corp. for a while before starting an engineering service firm. Around the same time, he developed a "lift" chair which, at the press of a button, would tilt forward so his arthritic mother could get out of it more easily. He built another for one of her friends, then a couple more before he realized he had come upon the product he was looking for to launch a manufacturing company. Ortho-Kinetics now employs 120 to 130 people, and produces lift chairs and a line of "mobility" vehicles for the handicapped that resemble golf carts. Sales for the year ended March 1984, the company's 20th, were $18 million. Gaffney says he gets up every morning at 5:30, makes a list of things to do for the day, reads the paper, sets his goals for the day, and comes to work and wanders around. Gaffney is not a manager who generally gets excited about management books or new theories, although he did buy five or six copies of The One-Minute Manager, which is chock-full of how-to suggestions, to pass around to members of his management team. Shortly after that, he saw his sales manager reading In Search of Excellence, and heard a business acquaintance talking about it.

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