Holt's presence turned out to be a source of conflict as well. Crowe saw her as "dictatorial" and attempted to convey to her that employees should have more control in solving problems. "We even sent her to North Carolina for a very sophisticated supervisory training program," says Crowe, "but she was just too high-control. She couldn't work with empowered people." Employees, however, loved their boss, couldn't have cared less about being empowered, and were quite happy to "ask Jane" whenever they needed help. More than one muttered under her breath, "This is a small company; they can't run it like Motorola." But few dared to speak up. "People were terrified of telling us anything," recalls Crowe. "That first year, we had meeting after meeting, and I was the only one who was talking."
And there was plenty to talk about. The company was struggling with back orders, often taking up to four weeks to send out kits. Components weren't ordered from vendors in a timely manner. Orders were taken over the phone but were never sent to the shipping department. And customer service was a virtual battlefield, where customers complaining about kits were simply told, "No, that's the way it's supposed to be." Moreover, employees were suspicious and resistant to change. Crowe and Hammer had altered the rules of the game, and their ideas flew directly in the face of the implicit local employment contract: do what the boss says -- nothing more, nothing less -- and you'll keep your job.
Hammer and Crowe, who plowed another $87,000 into the business that first year, were slowly beginning to realize that BlueJacket was a long way from running on automatic pilot -- the cell phone and their 38-foot cutter rig would have to wait.
* * *
By the time Hammer arrived on the scene, in January 1993, things had settled down a bit. Employees who were particularly at odds with the couple's ideas of how BlueJacket ought to operate, including Holt, had left. And Crowe had made incremental progress in getting employees to tell her about their jobs and how they could be made easier. There were new hand tools in the casting room, and Macintosh computers had replaced the old manual method of order entry and inventory control. Employees, accustomed to doing their jobs with little regard for how their coworkers performed their tasks, were beginning to coordinate their work and to develop some understanding of how things were connected. But Crowe had also learned when to back down. For instance, she had thrown herself into creating an extremely detailed inventory system for kit components, only to discover that it was unnecessary and impossible to maintain.
With Hammer comfortably settled in Maine, the couple began to establish themselves in the community. Hammer, easygoing and affable, soon became a regular at chamber of commerce meetings, and he was quick to involve BlueJacket in local charitable events; Crowe tentatively attended a Rotary Club meeting. They had bought a farmhouse and a black Labrador retriever, whom they christened BJ (for BlueJacket). And as they fell into the predictable pattern of life in Maine, their ownership of BlueJacket seemed, to employees, more permanent.
There was just one problem. Accustomed to taking direction from Crowe, employees were confused by Hammer's presence and were unsure of each partner's role. Ditto for Hammer and Crowe. Comfortable with managing large staffs of their own, they suddenly found themselves sharing turf. "You had two powerful gunners from large corporations, and we had nobody to gun but each other," says Crowe. Even the issue of ownership had been tricky. "We each wanted to have president on our business cards," recalls Hammer. In the end, the pair decided that Crowe would be president of the holding company and Hammer would be president of all the divisions, which included, by then, a small retail operation and a newly purchased lower-end model-ship-kit company called Laughing Whale. But as they went about managing the company, their styles often clashed. Hammer, always as accommodating as possible, would promise a vendor immediate payment; Crowe would insist on a 30-day payment schedule. Crowe wanted to continue advertising in traditional vehicles; Hammer preferred to branch out. Hammer wanted to buy mailing lists; Crowe wasn't convinced the investment would pay off. In BlueJacket's tiny offices, the tension was impossible to conceal. "People would look at us and wonder, 'Who do we take orders from?" recalls Hammer. "When we realized we were stumbling over each other, we decided to divide the areas according to our strengths and interests." Hammer commandeered marketing, new-product development, and a new retail venture, while Crowe tackled finance, production, and office systems. They agreed to disagree but to defer to the other partner in his or her area of expertise.
* * *
More than a year into their ownership of BlueJacket, Hammer and Crowe were still dreaming of the day they might take a day or two to go sailing, confident that they were leaving the company in capable hands. Hammer, who had worked directly with former Motorola chairmen Bob Galvin and George Fisher when that company first shifted to team-based management, believed that empowered teams at BlueJacket were the couple's ticket to a more leisurely lifestyle. "Shortly after I arrived, employees began telling us that they weren't happy with the production schedule because they didn't think it met the needs of customers," he recalls. "Our reaction was, 'OK, then you do the scheduling." He put together a team of four employees, which was charged with analyzing kit sales by quarter for the past two years and comparing that number with inventory. Production -- which consists of ordering materials and making and bagging kit components -- would be planned according to anticipated customer demand. It was a vast departure from "the old days," says Sandy Whitney. Under the new system, she does the wood ordering herself, based on information that comes from the production team, of which she is a member. "Our cycle time, which had been three to four weeks, became one to three days," says Hammer. "The production team really had a big impact."
