INC.: How did people get assigned to the different positions?
ADIZES: The president said, "All right, guys, I'm going to decide who goes where, but first I want to hear what you have to say." Then they talked about each person, one by one. The person would leave the room while the others were talking about him. At the end the president made the decisions, and everyone accepted. Nobody resigned. It would never have happened a couple months before.
INC.: You make it sound easy.
ADIZES: It's not easy, and it's not painless, but it's not all that difficult for us either, not at this point. You see, the methodology is very structured. It requires discipline. I believe there is no mutual respect without discipline. I spent a tremendous amount of time observing what retards and what encourages respect and trust, and I created rules -- about how to diagnose a problem correctly, for example, or how to conduct a meeting. When do you show up? Who talks? What do you talk about? Which words can be used and which cannot? It is a methodology of how to advance jointly, step-by-step, and people have to play by the rules. If you break a rule, you pay a buck. It's like poker. The reason you can play poker is because you follow the rules. I am really teaching people how to be colleagues. I am creating a learning environment. There is no colleague relationship and no learning environment unless they are respectful.
INC.: Do you use the same rules in every company?
ADIZES: I vary them a little bit. In a go-go company, four-letter words are forbidden, because that's the way people talk all the time and it promotes disrespect. In an aristocratic company, one that is past its prime, I encourage them to use four-letter words, because they are too closed. They cut each other to pieces very elegantly. And I make them take off their coats and ties. At one company they took their belts off -- I wanted them to feel vulnerable. In a go-go company, I would like them to wear a tie.
INC.: Isn't there a contradiction here? You're setting all these rules, and yet you say that you want to empower people.
ADIZES: You have to remember that these companies have no intention to empower. Empowerment is the solution, not the goal. They have an autocratic president who's deep in the founder's trap, or they're losing market share because they can't innovate. They've got big, life-threatening problems, and my job is to take them to prime. I am very strict with the methodology in the early stages because we have to develop some mutual respect and show people it's possible to change. As we go along, I relax more and more. By the time we get to the reward system, they can do whatever they like. If they want to send flowers as a reward, it's fine with me. Empowerment grows with experience.
INC.: So how does your methodology differ from other approaches to empowerment and participatory management?
ADIZES: It's the sequence again. Those programs start at the wrong place. They look at a company as a pyramid, with the line employees on the bottom and the managers on the top. It's not true. Only the people below think managers are on top. As you move up the company pyramid, you realize you are at the bottom of another pyramid, called the external environment, which includes all the people who are pressuring you from above -- bankers, regulators, competitors, suppliers, upper management, your own family. If a so-called empowerment program works, all you've done is increase the pressure from below. That's why middle management winds up killing those programs, because they're based on empowering employees and disempowering supervisors and managers. I want to empower everybody. To do that, you have to start at the top and work down.
INC.: You're saying that you empower people in spite of themselves.
ADIZES: I'm saying that my methodology harnesses the political energy of a company to make its own changes. It gives people the tools. You do not need any education to use my methodology.
As a matter of fact, I've found that the less educated you are, the better you understand it. I have the hardest time with people who have advanced management degrees. They fight every step of the way. They've been programmed with solutions that don't work, to problems that don't exist. When people are not educated in management, they are open-minded. They understand common sense very easily. What is common sense? In old English, common means everybody. Common ground means everybody can walk on it. Common law means everybody accepts it. Common sense means everybody believes it. If it makes sense to everybody, then it's common sense. What I have developed is a way to create a climate for people to find common sense through mutual trust and respect.
