To be sure, some of the terminology Web has adopted is hokey -- it's a little curious to hear adults talk about the significance of "zapping" people with energy rather than "sapping" them of enthusiasm (the key message of the light novel Zapp!). But while employees concede that the book-promoted language is corny, they take completely seriously the opportunity it provides for raising difficult issues. At one managers' meeting, for instance, people were asked to tell about a time someone at the company zapped them and a time someone sapped them. Texas production manager Todd Pihl turned to Romine and said, "You sapped me two weeks ago."
"I'd visited the plant and really made him feel bad about something," says Romine. "Everyone can remember being demoralized once by his or her manager, feeling put down. So at this meeting we carried on a rather active argument about whether he was too sensitive or I was too tough. Either way, it had adversely affected the way we were working, because we were stuck on how we were mishandling each other."
However silly, "the words become a means of entry into those sorts of conversations," says Ott. "We don't normally engage in sensitivity discussions, but Zapp! gave us a prop." As have the other books Web has mined (see "Web's Key Books," next page). Their common theme? "The value of people," says Mike Holt, general manager at the Cedar Hill facility. When Web turns its managerial attention to profits or quality, books relevant to those subjects will be read.
For now, though, the logic of Web's booklist is clear. "We realized when reading De Pree -- whose company we kind of model ours after -- that although we've always thought of ourselves as being fairly participative, we were really pretty hierarchical," says Edmunson. "The boss called the shots, and things sort of flowed down. We needed to change."
Visible elements of the participative system are falling into place -- employees hire the people they'll be working next to, run committees on improving customer service, visit customer plants, and receive regular and fully explained updates on all the company's finances and the status of their shares and bonuses.
In Cedar Hill it was Todd Pihl, the production manager, who took the reading program to its logical participative extension by sharing the books with line workers. "I came back from a meeting and decided if I'm the only one around here who's learning this stuff, it's not going to help much. If everybody's thinking about these things, we'll be that much more intelligent." Last fall the 14 workers read Zapp! first in sections at home, and after that failed miserably, by taking about 45 minutes between shifts once a week to read a section aloud. Other Web plants have dabbled with reading groups, although none to the same extent. While Fulton concedes that some books might not make it to everyone in the company -- even general managers are having a tough time slogging through The Fifth Discipline -- he avers that over time excerpts probably will.
The payoffs? Since workers in the Cedar Hill plant began reading books together, last August, productivity has improved by as much as 40%, and the facility, though still relatively new, is creeping into profitability. "Some of that is people getting more experience on the equipment," says Pihl, "but some of it is people taking more responsibility and understanding a little more where we're at as a company." Maintenance worker Mark Cox concurs: "That zapping book, it helped us realize some things about handling anger. It really hits home. Before, if we saw someone overworked on a machine, we might have said, 'Gee, he's having a tough time.' But now -- you watch -- people will pitch in pretty quick." De Pree's book, he says, has reinforced what it means to own not just a portion of the company but the company's reputation: "We feel responsible for the whole job," he says, "not just the part we work on."
"We've talked about W. Edwards Deming's 14 points of management," says Cedar Hill general manager Mike Holt, "which said that most problems at work aren't the fault of the guy doing it but of the guy who explained how it's done." Self-awareness -- spurred by books -- can be the first step toward breaking that pattern. Says Bob Fulton: "Books can help encourage change because books can be nonthreatening. It's not like a new program that we want everybody to buy into; if you just start spreading the books around so people have something to talk about, those books can change how we perceive things and how we do things."
WEB'S KEY BOOKS
Zapp! The Lightning of Empowerment by William C. Byham with Jeff Cox (Harmony Books, 1988)
Moments of Truth by Jan Carlzon (Harper & Row, 1989)
Seven Habits of Highly Effective Managers by Stephen R. Covey (Simon & Schuster, 1989)
The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge (Doubleday, 1990)
Leadership Is an Art by Max De Pree (Doubleday, 1989)
Organizational Culture and Leadership by Edgar H. Schein (Jossey-Bass, 1985) n
