* * *
INC.: For example?
STAYER: Shipments. Lost orders. Salespeople taking orders and then not letting the factory know. The salesperson doesn't feel responsible for getting the shipment out, so he doesn't bother to think who else needs to know about it to make sure it happens. We could build systems for 100,000 years and we would never have enough to make people be responsible.
* * *
INC.: And Lee Thayer helped you make your employees be more responsible?
STAYER: No, he didn't. He said, "It depends on you. What are you willing to do? Are you willing to say that you have to change? Are you willing to understand that you're the problem?" We talked about what I was doing and what I wasn't doing. I had no idea that what I did was to create what I had. But I had made the decisions. By gosh, if you made a decision, that was fine, as long as you made it the way I would have made it.
* * *
INC.: So it was a Socratic dialogue?
STAYER: Absolutely. I'd ask questions, and Thayer would turn them back. I'd always ask about this problem or that problem, and he'd ask me, Whose problem is that? Whose problem should that be? Ideally, what would you want to have happen in this situation? Ideally, where do you want the business to be three years from now? You have to start with the best of all worlds, given realistic constraints. What would you like to create? If you don't know where you're going, you don't know when you get there, and all roads are fine. Specifically,who do we want to be responsible for what? How do we want people to feel about things? How do we want them to be working together?
Thayer always had me form pictures, asking me what a great performance would look like. He said, "Do you want to be playing the trumpet or directing the orchestra?" I usually played the drums very loud!
* * *
INC.: It's one thing to decide you want everyone playing together like the Philharmonic. It's much harder to get employees to take that on.
STAYER: You get people to take it on because it solves their problems and frustrations. The real key to leadership is being able to combine the best interests of the group with the best interests of the individuals, to make sure they're all working with a common purpose. It's a process of finding opportunities to help people understand that by getting rid of their own frustrations, they're also making the business better.
(continued)
INC.: That's fine in the abstract, but with what specifics do you start?
STAYER: It's not fixing any specific problem. There are no recipes. We want to fix the real problem, which is having people understand they ought to be responsible for their own workplace. Take boom boxes. People were coming to me and complaining that the music was too loud and they didn't want radios here. Well, how am I going to solve that problem? I can't.
* * *
INC.: Of course you can. You can say that boom boxes are banned from Johnsonville.
STAYER: So the few people who complained are happy and the rest, who like the music, are mad? Solomon couldn't solve that one. But I can say, "That's your workplace, you guys decide. You solve this any way you want." They start solving boom-box problems, pretty soon they start looking at other stuff that frustrates them about how the place operates.
* * *
INC.: Like what?
STAYER: One of the biggest frustrations was that new people coming in weren't trained properly, so they had to work with people who did a lousy job. They said, "We gotta fix it." And I said, "You're absolutely right, and you guys know what these people need to know when they come in. The HR department doesn't know, so you guys can build a much better program. Train them." Another frustration is that they didn't like some of the people they had to work with, so they took over the hiring and firing -- they know better than I do what they need. So what's left for HR? With people taking over more and more of the responsibility to deal with their own frustrations, what do you need a supervisor for? People are supervising themselves.
* * *
INC.: How did you divide the company up into the appropriate teams?
STAYER: I didn't. Why is that my problem? They divided it up.
* * *
INC.: That sounds like a prescription for chaos. It's fine to push authority down to the employees, but you can't change a company that dramatically overnight.
STAYER: You change opportunistically; the important thing is having a picture of what you'd like the company to look like down the road. I want the decisions made. I want each person to know exactly what he or she needs to know to do a good job. I would like this place to run with as few layers as possible. I want each person to say, "My job is to make and keep customers, and here's how I do it." That's my vision. So when someone comes to me with a problem, I don't see that problem; I see an opportunity. How can we use that to get from here to there, so the right people own the problem? The people who are responsible should make the decisions. You don't have to be responsible if someone else is making your decisions for you.
* * *
INC.: So you draw up committees to talk about frustrations. How do you convince them you are giving them the authority to make decisions that matter?
STAYER: It starts with little things and adds up. Like vending machines -- they didn't like the vending machine company. I said, "I don't even eat at the vending machines, get whatever company you want." There was a lot of fear then; we had to help them interview the different companies and such the first couple of times. But you don't make the decision. Your job is to transfer the ownership of the problem to where it belongs.
* * *
INC.: It sounds easy enough with something like vending machines. But what happens with bigger issues like quality?
