Diversity…a better way. A brief video addressing the recent pushback on DEI.
Posted in Diversity, Gilmore Crosby, Lewin
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Lewinian OD is simple, and is what the world needs now
I wrote this in response to a colleague.
Something close to Lewin’s original change work inside and outside of organizations definitely still exists. We operate with small groups of consultants, if that is what your question meant, sometimes alone, sometimes as a team usually consisting of my brother Chris and myself. We often have people from the organization learning to facilitate the process we use. We work with the existing groups throughout an organization…in our most recent intervention, that includes every group based on the literal reporting relationships, all the way to the frontline workforce. We make small adjustments and improvements but we do not need “new models and tools,” nor do we need a diagnostic period beyond our initial conversation with the top leader. Each group, starting with the lead team, does their own analysis of what is in the way of getting the work done and each group comes up with their own solutions. Hourly workers lead many of the actions. We help the organization organize and sustain the effort until the majority of actions are implemented and can be evaluated by the people who came up with them. The process, because it works, becomes informal, continuous, and for the most part independent of the need for further consultation, although we do strengthen the culture with our T-group methods. Throughout my 40 year history any place that does this type of work has quick results in terms of their own performance metrics and in terms of morale (discretionary effort, etc.).
The unfreezing of over-reliance of management and consultants to do all the thinking instantly elevates the system to a new level of performance which is easily frozen into place because the results are fast and undeniable and the actions make sense to the people in the system (for example, the current plant is discontinuing the use of new gloves which were inferior in preventing finger injuries…their main safety issue…and going back to better gloves which were already on site collecting dust in storage…the type of practical action that hourly workers want to see, and that managers are often too overwhelmed to listen to). Actions like that weren’t force fed from above or outside the system. Indeed, nobody about or outside would have any clue as to that possibility.
The current location had a significant bump in their metrics within a week or two of our initial work, which was a T-group based workshop with their leadership team. Those results were enough to make the plant manager, who was new to us and thus making a leap of faith based on what he had heard from a respected peer (whose plant was consistently getting the best performance in their system after years of using us) enough of a believer to commit to deep work with the entire location.
I’ve written plenty about this, including my upcoming book, “Leadership and the frontline workforce,” which includes before and after interviews with hourly workers who have been there during our interventions in their system. It also is a “how to” book. Let me know if you want more information, such as my recent OD Review article, “A scientific method of change,” or listen to my podcasts at https://ascienceofchange.libsyn.com/.
Happy New Year 2025!
Gil
Posted in Change Management, Culture Change, Leadership, Lewin, Organization Development, T-Groups
Tagged Lewin, OD, Organization Development
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View from a Target – An electrician and union steward meets applied behavioral science!
This post is the second of several that consist of transcripts of conversations with frontline workers, inspired by the audio histories complied by the late Studs Terkel. My intention here is to let the workers speak for themselves. You can listen to it as a podcast below!
https://five.libsyn.com/show/episodes/view/32401137
Crosby
All right. Greetings. It’s Gil Crosby with you again. And this is yet another in a series of podcasts based on my upcoming book, View from a target, which is about the experience of hourly workers and the possibilities that happen when leaders start to listen to them and allow them to experiment, to try to make things work better. So that’s the type of work that I’ve been involved in all my life and I am determined to talk to as many hourly workers as I can that I’ve ever run into as part of this book and get their voices in here. To that end I have today a special guest, Mr. Mark Horswood. How are you doing?
Horswood
I’m doing good. Gil. How about yourself?
Crosby
I’m doing great. Yeah, especially just in this moment. Having this chance to talk to you. Now I believe you were an electrician. Still are at heart, no doubt. At Warwick for years before Dad ever showed up there, or any OD work was done. And I’m telling that basically right, aren’t I?
Horswood
Yes, yes. I spent my last 20 years as an electrician. First 10 years of labor on the railroad.
Crosby
That’s right. You’ve told me about that. A bit. Thirty years, you were at Warrick?
Horswood
Thirty years. And you know, I say I spent my last 20 as an electrician. You know, really more accurately is my last seven I was more like an internal consultant.
Crosby
You were doing the OD work that Dad had taught and you were actually working with me a bunch, I think.
Horswood
Yeah, with you and with Tom and Aldus. Yeah, you know, just traveling around with you guys most days and you know I was an electrician but the guys on my crew, whenever I didn’t have something, some OD work, because I traveled around quite a bit too. They called me “part time,” said I need to be retrained because I wasn’t an electrician.
Crosby
Anymore.
Horswood
I wasn’t doing electrician work that much. I’ve was still officially titled as one.
Crosby
Sure. And you were a union steward. So at least part of what I want, I’m hoping you’ll talk some about what was your work experience like before Dad ever showed up there? I think he was the first person to walk in that does our type of OD stuff. And Cotton. Mears. You know, Cotton. He described Warrick, his life there, well, at least emotionally. He said, there were only two emotions. Pissed off or not pissed off.
Horswood
Right, right.
Crosby
So just whatever you want to say about what it was like for you before.
Horswood
Yeah, well, it was such a contentious place. I mean, just in general. The relationship between the company and the union was just, I mean, it was like warfare, really. I mean, everything was fought for and you know every new change the company tried to come up with, just because of the relationship, I mean, the union was against it. When I was union steward, I remember a guy in HR telling me years later they just had a standing order. First step of grievance, deny every one of them. (Crosby laughs) Yeah, I mean there was just a rubber stamp kind of thing. I really don’t know what the strategy hoped to gain by it. But he said, “Yeah, they just had a standing order. Denying first step.”
Crosby
Now did the union kind of have an opposite approach, like grieve everything?
Horswood
Yes. Yeah, I mean things that just could be and were later, you know, just could be worked out. Talked out. You know, some sort of compromise or some sort of agreement. So we kind of fell into the pattern too. It’s like everything that they suggested or tried or tried to implement, we just said, “No, no, no, no, no.”
Crosby
Yeah. You were with me at the bauxite refinery down there in Texas when we did a T-group workshop…
Horswood
Yeah. Corpus Christi.
Crosby
With the union leadership and the management and right away, the first hour or so the HR guy for the plant said something and one of the union leaders stood up and said, “I don’t know what he said, but whatever it was, I’m against it!”
Horswood
Exactly! I literally thought he was kidding.
Crosby
(Laughs) Yeah, it was a beautiful moment of honesty, actually.
Horswood
(Laughs) Yeah, I remember that.
Crosby
Yeah. So anyway, so that’s sort of where Warwick was at. I don’t know if there’s anything else. Did you think that you were listened to?
Horswood
No, I didn’t feel like we were listened to at all. I mean, it’s hard to imagine. That place evolved so far from where it was when I first started there. But no, you know when it wasn’t expected to be listened to. I mean, it just it just didn’t have a relationship like that where it was communicated. Well, I mean, it seemed like any change or any policy was just handed down. You know, it weren’t co-created or worked together with the concerns of both sides. Just like edicts were just handed down. No conversation.
Crosby
Well, that’s very similar to the experience of Pat Roberson. The last guy interviewed. And so then it started to shift. What’s your first memories of the first time you were aware that maybe something was changing?
Horswood
You know, I think I went to tough stuff first. And I think just my ability to see what was changing. I think the biggest impact on me that that allowed me to start seeing the change was when I went through Tough Stuff. I remember one of the first things that we covered was whether you’re a victim or whether you’re a creator. It just kind of opened my eyes in the way, I was like looking around and thinking who, we need somebody to step up who’s like leading this thing and where is it? Where are our leaders at? And it just gave me a new perspective going through the Tough Stuff. Hearing that theory about whether you allow yourself to be a victim or be a creator, and I think the very first thing was just an awareness of how I am living and working like a victim. I’m not accessing, just not having an awareness of what sort of personal power or influence that you may have. And how each person could change their, at least change their dance in the pattern and not just fall into the same predictable negative interactions.
Crosby
Makes sense. Starting with yourself instead of looking for others to somehow fix things.
Horswood
I really do believe things really started to change when your Dad and his staff showed up and did a Tough Stuff. Actually he had been doing Tough Stuffs. The company was sending their managers and supervisors through it. Maybe for a couple of years. And I can’t remember exactly what the timeline was, the sequence, but they had been doing it for a while and then they offered, between Jess, our business agent…
Crosby
He became a great advocate for…
Horswood
He was great. Yeah. I think because of his leadership and just being coached by your Dad. We did a tough stuff for the Union guys, you know? It was like either you were a union steward, a committeeman….
Crosby
All right, so we had a little technical difficulty there, lost the podcasting website for a few moments. And so here we go again. And you were talking about Jess, the Union Leader, you were just starting to say some things about the change. How you’ve gone through so many union leaders prior to him and so on, but and then we can just go wherever we want to go again, Mark, even though we talked for a while and we didn’t record it. And I’m crying about losing the last twenty minutes or so that we had (laughs).
Horswood
OK, OK. I’ll start talking and if I miss anything that we had in there before, just prompt me on it and we’ll get it.
Crosby
I’ll try to remember (laughs).
Horswood
Because I’m going to talk about when I first started noticing things changing. We were talking about in our work together about how things started changing at the Warwick plant that I worked at and I think one big moment of change was, they the company offered Tough Stuff training to a group of union leaders, and they asked our business agent just to supply, you know group of…
Crosby
Participants.
Horswood
Participants. Yes, that’s what I’m looking for. So anyway, you know, I remember it was a week long training, 8 hours a day and they asked me to go. I was a union steward. It wasn’t that wasn’t a big deal for me, but I was on the insurance committee, which was pretty big deal, like worth fighting for. And that’s what it was, fighting for benefits, medical benefits. So I was part of that first group and it was a big group. And I remember your Dad and LIOS (the Leadership Institute of Seattle T-group based graduate program that Dad started) was brought down. At least six facilitators, and we had breakout rooms, you know, going everywhere. But I remember my first day. Well, the only reason I even went, I thought, “Well, this will get me out of the pot rooms, you know, for a week. Nice and easy. Had some good meals. I thought that’d be good (Crosby laughs).” So I remember my first day. I came in there and I sat in the back of the class. It was a large class. It might have been 60 some people in there and the first day and I started listening, then it was really fascinating. And the biggest fascination was one of the very first theories they talked about was whether you see yourself as a leader or a victim. And you know, I was really surprised to learn, I’ve been looking around for somebody to take the lead on this and not really even looking in the mirror and thinking I had anything, any influence to offer. So it was the biggest eye opener. You do have a voice and you know you can make a difference, and you can just one person at a time change that relationship just by the way you interact. Or do you fall into the same pattern? And the pattern, it was so contentious in that company, in that union that it was just like warfare.
Crosby
It was a true us and them and them atmosphere.
Horswood
Absolutely.
Crosby
Yes.
Horswood
So you know when your Dad showed up to give the first class of Tough stuff to the union guys, you know, I was. I was mildly interested. I showed up. But I was sitting in the back and it was it was probably my pattern, you know, just sit back there and see how things are going. I was so fascinated by that very first theory about, whether you’re a victim or do you really exercise leadership you have. Having an awareness, you’ve got leadership. And so day two I was sitting in the middle of that group, you know, I was kind of drawn in. I remember day three I was sitting right up front. I mean, I’m totally fascinated by the whole idea and so much of it seemed so, so new to me. I mean, ideas I hadn’t considered before. So I remember sitting right up front. And I remember halfway through the morning, I remember the presenter was up there. I think he was talking about the interpersonal gap, about communication process, and how to improve it and increase understanding. And I just remember sitting there, I thought, “I don’t know what it takes, what kind of degree you got to have to have do this or what kind of certification you need. But I’m going to do it. I mean, it was so impactful to me.
Crosby
And you did. And you do.
Horswood
How to pursue it.
Crosby
You did. And you do it well.
Horswood
Thank you, Sir. You know, the first some of the first inklings I had that it was showing up. This was before I I went to Tough Stuff. It was a an engineer telling me about an occurrence that happened to him. He was part of a group of engineers that were trying to speed up the roll speed on the rolled up coils of aluminum. And they worked on it for eight months. And they put all kind of technology in it. I mean, they kind of threw money at it. And they were trying different high tech processes. And for eight months they had an operator sat in. They’d tell him to do a certain movement on the mill, and he’d do it. But you know, they never asked him what he thought about it, what ideas he had. And this guy had been running that mill for 20 years. And I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but those guys that ran those mills, they were highly sophisticated machines and sophisticated controls and speed variables on it. Those operators were so in tune after working on it for 20 years. You could be talking to them outside the lunchroom They could be 100 feet away from their machine, and there might be two of them there standing there. And both of them, they’d cock their head at the same time and they go, “You just hear that. #2 bridal roll just gave out. I mean, they could tell by the vibration of it, the sound of it. I mean they just were so in tune with it.
Crosby
They were craftsmen.
Horswood
Craftsmen! And really just had such a holistic view of their machine and the process. Well, this one engineer guy, he came from Texas. I know he was a Texan, but he was at Warwick. He had gone to Tough Stuff and he credits Tough Stuff, just with, I mean, it wasn’t even thought of that you asked the hourly.
Crosby
Mmm hmm.
Horswood
You know about what their input was. We used to always laugh. We call it, you know, “This thing was designed from the Ivy Tower. They just, like, get an idea of what they wanted to do and didn’t ever, well, I don’t know if I can say ever.
Crosby
It was rare.
Horswood
It wasn’t a practice that they come down and ask the hourly, “What do you need? How does this work for you? What if you had this? And so this one engineer from Texas that went through Tough Stuff, he finally asked, “What do you think, Carl? What do you think we could do?” And he always imitates him. He’s done it a couple times for me. That guy that he’s talking about, Carl always had a cigar butt in his mouth. He took that out. He said, “I’ll tell you all you need to do is this. Thread that spool up while it’s running.” And all those engineers looked at him and it was just, like, a beautifully simplistic solution. It didn’t take any new technology or anything. And he just said, you know, he felt something like being ashamed or embarrassed, that here was a guy that spent 20 years on it and it never even occurred to the engineers to ask what his input about it was.
Crosby
You know, it’s the kind of knowledge that you wouldn’t notice looking at like a drawing. You’d have to really run the thing for…
Horswood
Exactly. Exactly. You know, we used to compare it to a pit crew for race car drivers. They know exactly where they need that tire to be when they take off that first one, they know exactly what side, what hand they want their impact wrench to be on. I mean only the person doing it can tell you exactly what they need and they know the best way how to do it. They’ve been doing it for a long time and they’re the expert That’s probably one of the great things that your Dad got across to managers and supervisors. Hey, the people doing the work got the most expertise on it.
Crosby
That’s it.
Horswood
Yeah.
Crosby
That’s it. I mean, there’s other experts that have their own expertise, but nobody has the same knowledge as people that are doing the work every day.
Horswood
Yeah. That was a huge change and you know, the more people did it, the more people got engaged. The more the operators, the more union guys got engaged. And you know, it wasn’t an easy transition for them also because, we always said, at that stage of the game with the company, it was like they wanted you to just, “Hey, just check your brain at the gate. We just need your back. We’ll tell you how to do it.” And actually, it was uncomfortable for some operators. They would say if it came to a decision, they’d say, “Ok, that bearings going out on that mill. It’s an expensive piece of equipment. We can hear it’s failing. Do we finish out this run? And then repair it with an outage? Or do we shut it down right now? And really the operator, nine times out of 10 had the best feel for that answer. I heard some of them say to me, they didn’t like being in that position to make the call. They said, “I’ve worked here for 20 years and I’m batting 1000. I never made a bad mistake or decision because I never had to make one.” They would just say to the supervisor, “That bearing is running kind of rough” and just leave it up to them. And it took them a while to get more comfortable taking kinda ownership for their own machine and just being comfortable enough to make a call, thinking, “Hey, you know, if we keep running this, this is going to do some serious damage to this mill. I think we need to shut it down now.” They were never asked to be in that position by the company. And so once they had it that this decision is going to be yours, it took a while for them to get ownership of their own machine. It was just a new place to be.
Crosby
Sure, probably the supervisors were nervous too, about that change.
Horswood
Yes.
Crosby
It’s not. It’s not easy to change in general.
Horswood
It’s not easy to change, and not easy to give up authority.
Crosby
Right.
Horswood
You know, it seems like after I got doing OD work, I’d just get in some candid conversations with some of the supervisors. And you know, they would tell me things like, your Dad was big at employees having influence, and self-managed teams. And, I’ve had supervisors tell me that when they first came out with this self-managed teams upper management was wanting them to train their crews more in administrative stuff. Ordering parts, you know, priority, that kind of thing. Teach their crews how to do it. Well, it just was not handled very well early on because the guys that got their crews to be self-autonomous, they got let go, cause they didn’t need them any longer.
Crosby
The supervisors.
Horswood
The supervisors. And you know the supervisors that stayed, one of them just flat out told me, “There’s no way I’m teaching my guys how to do what I do because what are they going to with me?”
Crosby
(Laughs) that’s interesting.
Horswood
And really, it’s just exactly how it happened.
Crosby
It makes sense though.
Horswood
I mean, he was reading the handwriting on the wall. He said, “You know, so and so, they got their crew self-autonomous, got them doing their things. He’s gone. It was like five or six of them were gone. He said, “I’m not letting go of mine, you know. I’m still working. They’re off.”
Crosby
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. But, I just want to say that Dad actually was involved in putting supervisors back in, in the first plant he worked at with Don Simonic, which was Addy. They had tried self-managed teams before Dad and Simonic got there and like 80% of the teams were not productive. And so when this subject comes up, he wants places to do what works and what generally work clearest is to actually have a supervisor.
Horswood
Yeah, have a supervisor. That particular effort with self-managed seems that they went after, they fairly quickly got it down like, hey, people are getting less willing to develop their crews if they knew their job was in jeopardy. And it came to change where, “Hey, look, if you can do that with your crew, there’s going to be a place for you in this organization.”
Crosby
Well, that’s important. And then they probably had decisions to make about what decisions the crews make and what decisions whoever they are reporting to makes. Because even if there’s no supervisor, they are still working in a department. There’re people above them.
Anyway, what I’m curious about, unless you have something else to say about that, though. You then were the person that was the coordinator, we call it the SPA, single point accountable, for the big planning session at Warrick back in 2000, which was a way to quickly engage lots of workers in with their expertise in coming up with solutions. In your case, to make the paint line, it was the bottleneck in the plant. So it was to get more material through the paint line with of course quality standards and all that. So you mind talking some about that Mark? Or do you have something else to say about the last thing?
Horswood
No, I can’t think of anything else to add to the last thing. That Turnaround Intensive Planning Intervention (TIPI) that you just were speaking of, actually that was probably just, I mean, such a landmark and milestone achievement in that plant, and such a huge step of progress. Because that really embodied all the things that your Dad was teaching and coaching people on. What it was, I just remember your Dad’s, first book, Walking the Empowerment Tightrope.
Crosby
Good book.
Horswood
I remember he used to say, somebody would say, “Well, what, what things does the supervisor manage?” and I just remember your Dad saying, “Well, they managed the things that the crew doesn’t manage.”
Crosby
(Laughs) That’s simple.
Horswood
And it’s not the same. It’s not the same for every group.
Crosby
Right.
Horswood
But anyway, that TIPI was such a milestone and a huge event in cooperation and contribution and influence. They picked one spot, a coating line that they wanted to, was not doing very well in productivity. They wanted to make a change at. So they invited, you know, your Dad coaching the sponsor there. That was Jeff Jost, to, you know, invite as many people as you can that work in that department that have an interest in in changing it.
Crosby
Yeah. And Brian Bauerback, I think was…
Horswood
Yeah, Brian Bauerback started out and then you know, it was really an odd thing. I don’t know the whole story behind it, but I mean right in the middle, that was the three-day event, on day two, we heard Brian got promoted and Jeff Jost, he was his direct report, took over.
Crosby
Right.
Horswood
And a lot of people thought, well, how’s this going to go on. Because, you know, there was quite a few people there. We did it at the clubhouse where we could get quite a few people in there and it was mostly union workers.
Crosby
Yep.
Horswood
I’m sorry. I can’t remember the numbers, but it could have been as many as 60 union workers and 20 or 30 engineers and management people. And you know, it was a big deal. Jess, our business agent who was one of the most progressive leaders that I’ve come across, he came and advocated it. He sponsored it. And he told the union people, “I know you haven’t been involved with this and you know, some of you may be skeptical and have reluctance.” But he said, “I’m telling you, this is an opportunity we’ve been fighting 40 years to have some say so in our work, in our shifts and how we do it and how we can do it better.” And he was just a powerful leader and he got a lot of people involved in that.
Crosby
Yeah, it was really one of the only OD interventions I’ve ever been involved in where the union leadership supported it stronger than the plant leadership.
Horswood
Exactly.
Crosby
Although Jeff supported it and Brian, but the people above them really…
Horswood
Yeah. The person who really needed to be in there was the plant manager. I can’t speak for him, why he didn’t, but I just don’t think he was bold enough.
Crosby
Whatever it was, he was absent.
Horswood
He was absent, yeah.
Crosby
And Jess filled that void remarkably. I recall this too, Mark, this is a different story. I don’t know when Jess said this, but at one point he introduced Dad. Maybe it was at the TIPI. He introduced him as a union brother.
Horswood
Yeah (laughs).
Crosby
Gave him a T-shirt (Horswood laughs). United Steel Workers, I guess. Yeah.
Horswood
Yeah.
Crosby
Yeah.
That was such a great relationship because, I hesitate to say, but I don’t think Jess trusted a lot of company people.
Crosby
Sure. Or consultants probably.
Horswood
Yeah. Or consultants.
Crosby
For good reason (laughs).
Horswood
Yeah. Your Dad and Jess really hit it off. And another indicator that things were changing was, that was the first time they ever had a union person, that they asked me to be the, what’s the term, the facilitator for that TIPI.
Crosby
Yep, especially for the follow up, of it.
Horswood
Yeah, exactly. I mean that was the first time a union worker was ever in a position like that. And frankly, I was nervous about it, I thought, “How are my guys gonna see me?” You know, like I jumped ship. I was afraid of it. I remember your Dad and Jeff Jost took me to lunch, and just tried to encourage me to do it. It was new territory for me too.
Crosby
Yeah, yeah. Probably most of the people in the room were afraid.
Horswood
Yeah, and skeptical, to say the least.
Crosby
Sure. So, I realize now based on the dates that you and I first met in 99 in Jamaica. And so we had run a couple of Tough Stuffs together before this TIPI. So we knew each other by then.
Horswood
Right, right. Yeah.
Crosby
So the TIPI itself, then as you know, is the process where people identify what’s in the way. In this case they were broken into theme groups. Like different parts of the process. That they helped identify the themes at the beginning. And so then they identify what’s in the way, and then they boil that down, and then they come up with what can we do about it. And there were a number of solutions, and a lot of the solutions came from hourly workers who were then going to lead the effort to implement the solution with management support. So just go on and fill in anything else you have to say about that. I guess the last thing I’ll add is it was a big success.
Horswood
Yeah, it was a big success. And what I think a big part of that was that anytime, and this was progress, any time that they would get the input from the union, which was the kind of gradual change, started out like that. They’d get a bunch of ideas and they’d just come in and dump them on the process engineers desk and say, “Here’s some new things for you to do.”
Crosby
That was before us.
Horswood
Yeah, before us (Crosby laughs).
Horswood
And so the process engineer’s like, “Man, I already only have like, you know, 5 minutes of extra time during my day. Now I just got 12 new action items to do.” And the union people that suggested them just went back to their job. Went on their way.
Crosby
Right. And the engineers probably had no idea what half of the stuff meant, too. Jusr notes.
Horswood
Wouldn’t understand it well and just be resentful like, “Here I’ve already got a full plate.”
Crosby
Yep.
And didn’t have enough involvement where I have a leader saying, “Hey, look, I know Gary this is what’s on your plate. Here’s what’s the priority. Here’s what’s not.” Wasn’t even getting that.
Crosby
Yep. It’s how a lot of. employee involvement stuff has been done over the decades and so on, like quality circles. Sort of a similar thing. If they’re run poorly, then it’s just you dump a bunch of ideas on management and say, “Good luck” (laughs).
Horswood
(Laughs) yeah, I think it just makes things worse.
Crosby
Yeah. Well, then when nothing gets done, it certainly makes things worse.
Horswood
And it was such a change. Well, for a couple of reasons. You know, one was, the people that had the passion for their particular issue. And the reason they had the passion was because they had the knowledge. They were saying that this could be done a lot better, a lot faster, a lot more efficient, a lot less labor intensive.
Crosby
In this part of the paint line process, we’re back to the planning session.
Horswood
Yeah, I mean that’s what made all the difference. Because you know your Dad was a big advocate. It’s like, “Hey, the person that has the issue has got the most passion for it. They’d be a great one to lead that.”
Crosby
Yep.
And so, you know, we had so many of the action items that we came up with. I think we had six different theme groups, 5 or 6. Different theme groups, one was engineering, one was scheduling, one was new parts, and there was two groups of people issues. But it was a whole new ball game and it took some time. I know it was like the first month things didn’t go so well. We had something like 11 action items and I really do think it was union people being in a position they never were in before. And that was like, they’ve never been in a position where they would send out an invitation for a meeting to company people and have them show up at a conference room.
Crosby
Right.
Horswood
They never did that before. They never ordered their own parts before. And it was just a whole new culture change.
Crosby
They never led their own improvement initiative before.
Horswood
Right.
Crosby
Period.
Horswood
Yeah, it totally came from them. One of the big faults the union would point out before is they’d ask for our input, we’d give them, say, 10 things and they’d cherry pick two of them and implement them and say, well, this came from you guys. And actually the whole package came from us, not just those two pieces you picked out. So it took a little while. I remember the first month, the first six weeks out of 11 action items that were due only two of them got done. And so we made some adjustments about people getting freed up and giving the authority to meet with others involved in that action item or that issue.
Crosby
Yeah, you mentioned Dad coaching you some on this thing like a month into it.
Horswood
Yeah, he was. You know, I remember just being frustrated myself.
Crosby
Sure.
Horswood
And you know, I just remember your dad (laughs), he said, “Mark, the way you’re talking about this, it’s like you’re the boss. I think that’s your approach to it. You know, trying to be authoritarian.” And he goes, “This is Jeff’s project. You’re a change agent. Any authority you need, you know, needs to either come from Jeff or get dialed down through Jeff.”
Crosby
Love it! Jeff was a sponsor. You’re the agent.
Horswood
And when I forgot that for a while or when I didn’t, you know, realize that for a while, it made things difficult. Trying to persuade people to do things or talk them into that or if I could only get them to see, you know, the light of doing this thing. And it’s just like trying to climb a slippery slope.
Crosby
All the responsibilities that really belong with their own bosses.
Horswood
Yeah, the bosses. The boss dials in the what and the change agent, me or somebody in my position, would help develop the how by getting information from the people involved in that job.
Crosby
Yep. So it was. So that’s was a great intervention. It’s good that you listen to Dad.
Horswood
(Laughs) yeah, I really needed to (Crosby laughs). Yeah, it changed everything, changed it. I got Jeff more involved day-to-day, and we’d walk around. I really just happened to be in a position where I had my finger directly on the pulse of what was going on in the plant. We used to walk around and I used to say, “Look, we need you to shine some sunshine of sponsorship on some of these people.” And so people that completed an action item, he’d go there and personally thank them. It was so well received. We just walked around to different people that were getting things accomplished and reinforced it. And we also had what we called “two week out meetings” for anybody that had an action item that was due in the next two weeks. He would just kind of get with them down their home stretch. “Are you getting the resources? Are you getting the time? Are you getting the authority? Getting the cooperation?” Check with them. And if they had feedback that was in need, I mean Jeff would get all over it. And I really do think one of the biggest things about that process, that intensive turnaround, was we had the big timeline in the middle of the apartment where everybody could see it, walk by, 3 feet tall, 12 feet long and we had I think in that time period, it was a three month time period, we had something like 71 action items at the time. And so Jeff and I, we would start every day in front of that board and he’d be asking questions and pointing at certain action items and turning to me. And then sometimes we’d get somebody, an operator up there too. And I think it made such a difference when people see, you know, “He really is interested. He’s checking on it every single day.”
Crosby
Yep.
Horswood
And it was reinforcing to the people that had the action item that he’d come around and make a personal connection and acknowledgement of their effort. And I think that there were so many people, the majority of the people, that were still what I would call the judges were still out whether this thing was, you know, going to be the same old dog and pony show or something new like they promised. I think after the first month, there was a lot of people that saw things getting done that hadn’t been done for years, that they were emboldened to start offering their own. Because we added on. We were just going to have a three month timeline but we just added on six more months on top of that because people were starting to come out of the woodwork, you know, with really good ideas.
Crosby
So he just kept adding new ideas and it seems like morale started to change.
Horswood
You know, big time. Big time. I think the general feeling was that, “Hey, you know what? Actually they are listening to us and you know they did that action item and they didn’t even change a thing. It was how we suggested it and that’s how they implemented it.” And people I think were just really encouraged. And frankly I know it happened to me. It was one of the best experiences I’ve had in my career, being the facilitator for that. I think it made a difference to them that it was union people that were helping run that program too. It’s encouraging.
Crosby
You know, I’ve got results here. Warrick TIPI. It says the goal was to increase production by 2,000,000 pounds per month because you were subcontracting demand outside the plant. The market was there and you guys weren’t able to do it. You hit that and the result was a $4 million gain per year in revenue.
Horswood
Yeah, it was amazing! It was amazing!
Crosby
That’s serious!
Horswood
Yeah, you know, it was so rewarding and fulfilling at the time. And it seemed so obviously to help things. But just to have the numbers show that at the end is like, hey, we did this thing and then for the first time in the history of that plant, I mean, we came up with this kind of numbers. That was just so encouraging, and that’s why I think more people jumped on there with some real significant issues that we just continued to improve.
Crosby
Of course. When you’re succeeding, you’d be pretty silly to stop (Horswood laughs).
OK, you know I found the timeline in my laptop here. And it’s having trouble opening. It’s a pretty damned old thing. So I was thinking I could open it up and look at a couple of the actions but it ain’t working that way. So anyway, that was you being in the middle of an amazing change in that plant, and meanwhile you were doing things like running off to the islands and working with me, doing Tough Stuffs and so on.
Horswood
Yeah, traveling around with, you know, Aldis, Gordon and Tom McCombs.
Crosby
Too fine…
Horswood
They were two LIOS graduates and they were the main administrators of the Tough Stuffs throughout the ALCOA system. So I’ve traveled around, Cotton and I both for two years, it was such a great opportunity. It was kind of like having a two year internship.
Crosby
Yeah. You also went through the corporate program, which was, you know, the Alcoa corporate leadership program (founded by Dad and administered by the Leadership Institute of Seattle), probably the only program in the history of the world where hourly workers were mixed in with management people getting leadership skills. I mean I think that’s pretty rare and you were in there with Cotton. You know I. Think we’ve sort of said enough about everything else. I’d love to hear about maybe how you met Cotton and early experiences, and whatever else you want to say.
Horswood
(Laughs) You know, it’s funny. Actually Cotton and I became best friends. Forever. He’s gone. I just remember we both got in the corporate leadership program. It was the first time I met him and the union guys that were involved in it, we had a meeting, and they were kind of telling us how it goes. And I remember seeing Cotton for the first time (laughs) and I kidded him later, I said, “You know, first time I saw you, you look like a player in a ZZ Top video. (Crosby laughs). Yeah, a beard down to his stomach and then long hair.
Crosby
Yep.
Horswood
And I thought, “Man, who is this dude?”
Crosby
I’m going to include a picture of him in this book of the in his tux. It’s like a white tux and he’s got everything else you just said.
Horswood
Yeah, he was so great. And you know that was kind of a not formal meeting, but it’s more informative. Where people were telling you, people that have been, Billy McDaniel, Ed Butch, they were telling us how, when, and what to expect and what to do. That kind of thing. And then the very first class we went to, I remember Cotton, there was a break in the class, where we had been working on emotional intelligence. You know, your Dad teaching, and Patricia, and Denny and Brenda. And there was a break. And Cotton and I went, it was at resort or a lodge in Gatlinburg. And I remember both of us happened to be right underneath the hotel in the parking garage, smoking a cigarette. And he had his sunglasses on, and I was talking to him. I said, “Hey man. You know, I liked what you said in there.” And. I mean, this gets me choked up, even just thinking about it. I remember sitting there saying, “I liked what you said in there when you said this,” and I can’t remember what it was, but I remember watching a tear come running down.
Crosby
Hmm.
Horswood
And, oh, you know, my only other experience with him before is, he used to be coming to work when I’d be leaving work. He’s coming down the road on a big old Harley, that beard and hair blowing in the wind. And you know, when I said that to him at the parking garage, I said, “I like what you said there.” This tear came running down his cheek. And I thought, “Wow!” I thought, “That is really amazing to me.” You know what I told him? I said, “You know what I said to you? I meant that as a compliment.” He said, “Yeah, I took it as a compliment.” And uh, I just uh…
Crosby
You got me tearing up now, Mark.
Horswood
Well, I remembered on that, I thought, “That’s something I really lost the capacity to do.” And I thought, “Man, if this guy can cry, I sure can.” And you know, I don’t know if this is off the subject, but it just changed. You know, I had lost a son years before and it just opened up some awareness in me. That first meeting, I realized, you know, I lost a lot of my capacity to feel sadness, or pain, or cry even.
Crosby
Sure. Cotton was pretty genuine and that…
Horswood
I thought if this guy could cry.
Crosby
Yep.
Horswood
I mean (laughs) he just seemed like a caricature of a tough guy, but if he can cry, I can cry. And you know, I had lost a son a few years before, and when I regained some of that capacity back to feel pain, I actually grieved my son more three or four years after he was gone than I did right after he was gone.
Crosby
I bet that was important for you.
Horswood
(Long pause) it was.
Crosby
And I’m sorry for your loss even now, Mark.
Horswood
Yeah. Well, you know, I don’t look at it as a bad thing anymore. But it does … actually, it’s just such a just a huge gift to get back.
Crosby
Mm-hmm. Nice.
Horswood
Anyway, so Cotton and I quickly became friends, mostly because (laughs) we smoked together during (laughs) outside taking breaks. But we just grew closer and closer, and he had an affinity for it. And you know, I certainly had an interest. And, next thing you know, Aldus and Tom were asking if we wanna co-train with them, and we start traveling around. We had our opportunity to do a, like I said, a two-year internship. Just watch and contribute and they just slowly took us around. The first thing that I ever did with Cotton that actually is the first LIOS type work, OD work, where we facilitated a survey feedback for his pot room supervisor. He just wanted to improve relationships with his crew, which there was about 20 of them. So, you know, Cotton got it together. We entered the room and the very first thing the supervisor came out and said, you know, what did he hope to get. Better cooperation. More input from the crew. He made that kind of sponsor’s statement and then left the room for us to, for Cotton and I to get some input from his people and help them give clean feedback.
Crosby
Help them get organized to talk to the supervisor.
Horswood
Right, right. Put it in a way that is palatable and understandable. And without any, I don’t know what you call it, sarcasm.
Crosby
Judgments.
Horswood
Judgments. Yeah. And so I remember that the supervisor left the room. And both of us stood up in front of the group, and we were saying “Hey, what kind of issues you got?” And I mean it was like a blast from a furnace door (laughed). I mean, it almost reminds me of that commercial, where the stereo is so loud that the guy in the chair, his hair is blowing backwards (Crosby laughs). That’s what it felt like. The onslaught. That’s how I would describe it. It came from that group. I mean, voicing all at once, and I remember looking at Cotton. I’m thinking, “Man, what did we get ourselves into?” (Crosby laughs) But you know, it was really interesting because it was a great lesson for me forever after. After that is like sometimes people just need to get rid of some of that energy, before they can start talking.
Crosby
Yeah, especially if it’s been built up for years.
Horswood
Yes, and they’re finally getting the opportunity, and here’s the person that asked, and here’s somebody I can unload on.
Crosby
Yep. And they it’s not like they were taught to be polished or something.
Horswood
Right, exactly.
Crosby
So you do have to be patient (laughs).
Horswood
Yeah. You have to be patient. And I don’t know if it’s Danny Minno that said this (laughs), but I heard somebody from LIOS faculty. They said, the old saying is … it may have been your Dad. “If you don’t give them two minutes, it may take two years.”
Crosby
Mm-hmm.
Horswood
And really, I just became aware of my own inclination, when conflict comes spewing out like that, is to help tamp it out or shut it down. And I found the best way is just, hey, give it a little time it’s energy, needs to be dissipated.
Crosby
Makes sense. And we don’t speak for people. So then you helped them once they calmed down a little, get really clear about, what do they want to have be different…
Horswood
Exactly. Absolutely.
Crosby
And what they want to say to the boss and all that, and then they did it themselves after that with you there to help.
Horswood
Yeah. Help to surface it.
Crosby
Yeah, yeah.
Horswood
And I think there’s this like built up frustration and resentment that as soon as it gets an opening to express itself, it’s going to come pouring out.
Crosby
Makes sense so. So you and Cotton, it’s like bonding in the midst of crisis (laughs).
Horswood
Yeah, that particular, we did. That particular intervention, we had a couple follow-ups. You know Cotton and I would often comment on the change in that group because the first time, people came in and you could just tell by their body language they were ready to fight. You know, tense. But by the third meeting with that, and the supervisor making changes that he heard came up in that meeting and that they were able to give to him, you know, in a really clean way. We just remarked every once in a while on the last session, people just having a foot up on the table and just leaning back (Crosby laughs). And the one thing in particular, the supervisor, Lee was his first name. Lee, he goes, “Well. I need to get this better.” And the crew would say, “Well, that’s not your fault, Lee (laughs).” And you know, no words like that were ever spoken the first time.
Crosby
Yeah, yeah. Ande ever before that, right? Like when they were dealing with each other in the plant.
Horswood
Yeah. Before that, everything was his fault (Crosby laughs). And you know, they were trying to take up for him. They’d go, “Well, that’s not your fault, Lee. You can’t help that.” It was amazing.
Crosby
That is an amazing shift. And what a relief.
Horswood
Oh my gosh. You know, and I thought, it just wasn’t that complicated.
Crosby
Yeah, yeah. But people get stuck in it. They get stuck in, “Well, it’s their fault” and “nothing’s gonna change unless they change.” You know, it’s just easy to stay stuck like that.
Horswood
Yeah, it taught me an important lesson. I know a lot of times I tell stories to make a point. But I remember one time after Christmas, I threw my Christmas tree out in the yard (laughs). By the garden. It dried up and come spring I thought, “Well, I’ll just burn this thing up.” Well I lit that thing up and I thought, “Oh my God. What did I unleash?” (Crosby laughs) It was blazing, you know, like an oil fire, that we need to get in there and put that out. And I thought, “Well, just give it a minute.” And you know, really, when a Christmas tree is that dried out, it took about 15 seconds. And I thought, oh, ok, then I can take care of it. And it just reminded me of that first vent session is like, ok, ok, I know it looks kind of dangerous, but just give it a minute. Take it easy. Keep breathing. Keep listening. And it would dissipate. But if you shut it down, it forevermore is going to remain there.
Crosby
Makes sense. So then you and Cotton, probably even in that moment, were part of what Dad always called a cadre. Which was people within the plant learning how to do OD work the way we do it and learning how to run meetings and help people resolve conflict. Right?
Horswood
Yeah, those were such great days because you know, our cadre was made-up, if not entirely by hourly workers, the huge majority of them. And I think there was only eight of us. So it just got to the point where by that time they had given me an office and you know, a laptop and I just traveled around or did work in the plant. People called me directly and sometimes it would be on the smelting side. We had cadre workers over there that would run a meeting or facilitate or do third party conflict management. They just really opened things up and I think it all started with Don Simonic being a strong advocate for it and knowing how to, you know, plug in that sponsorship all the way down the organization.
Crosby
Yeah, that’s important. That’s important. Well, look, man, I think I think we’ve covered it and I really, Mark, I appreciate you. And I appreciate this conversation.
Horswood
Yes, I’ve enjoyed it too. It’s been cool looking back on the experience and, I know going through LIOS was two of the best years of my life. And you know afterwards it just opened a whole new line of work. You and I traveling around doing it and you know, just watching it make a difference in places.
Crosby
We did quite a bit and quite a few places together. Is there any other? This book is, in a sense, a tribute to Cotton. I mean, it’s about the hourly voice and it’s about many things, but it’s also a tribute to Cotton. Anything else? Any other story?
Horswood
Well, one thing, just given the focus of this book, View from a target. Cotton and I have talked about it many times. Just the idea of it. We thought it was helpful, this sponsor, agent, target. You got a boss that wants to change things, and then he enlists the help of like, experts, that can bring about that change. And then you got the targets, who are the people that kind of the change lands on. Or effects. And we thought just in coaching leaders, we thought we could be a real service to them saying, “Look. You know what? I know you got the best intentions.” I believe 99.9% of the leaders I’ve coached, they do have good intentions.
Crosby
Yep.
Horswood
But I think they’re so removed. Just like I talked about engineers making a design change, all from the ivory tower. They wouldn’t come down on the floor and see how that change really manifests itself physically. They didn’t get that connection. And from the view from the target, we thought it would be helpful to leaders saying, “Look, I know you meant well with this, but I want you to know this particular change, by the time it got to the floor level, this is the shape it took. And this is the impact on the people. And I really don’t think that’s what you intended. But as it gone through there, through sustaining sponsorship or lack of it, when it got to the bottom? It wasn’t that.
Crosby
It’s a little like playing telephone.
Horswood
Yeah, the farther away you get from the message and the more channels it passes through, the more it twists itself.
Crosby
Including the feedback back up. People on the floor are saying, “Well, this is crap.” And by the time it gets up all through the layers the CEO is hearing that, “Well, everything’s fine.”
Horswood
You know, actually that’s a beautiful part of it, because I think the old response would have been only “This is crap.” Where I saw things change, saying, “Ok this is crap. And here’s why. And here’s what.” Because there was another change, I do think going through Tough Stuff made a difference on. Whereas we had always in the past as a union had this pattern of, “Wherever the company suggests, we were against it.” It’s like that guy you talked about in Corpus Christi.
Crosby
Yeah.
Horswood
Well, we just would say, “No, no, no.” And then the change was more like, “Look, we can’t go along with this, but look here. Here’s an alternative that has a mixture of what you’re talking about, but a way that we think this could work.” It was not just saying no, but just offering your own constructive input.
Crosby
Yep, and even that planning process, Mark, that you were involved in takes it even further and says, “Well, what do you guys think’s in the way? And what do you what do you think we should do about it? And what can you do about it?” You know, it just reverses, instead of management trying to do all the thinking.
Horswood
Oh it made all the difference in the world. You know just like not saying, “Check your brain at the gate.” And I think it was so reflected in that operator where he’d operated that mill for 20 years and nobody asked him.
Crosby
Yep.
Horswood
And you know what? He wasn’t inclined to offer.
Crosby
Yep. “They aren’t asking me. Just let them go do what they’re going to do and we’ll see what happens!”
Horswood
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, the totally accepted pattern at that time was, mills down, and he might know exactly what’s wrong with it (laughs), but he’d walk away to the break room until he they got it fixed.
Crosby
Yep. All predictable behaviors and attitudes that will come from running a place in such a way that people think they aren’t respected or heard or valued. Anyway, that’s what you’re going to get. And it’s possible to turn the ship.
Horswood
You know, it’s so possible and that’s what I would just love to reinforce or just let leaders know out there. I mean one of the surprising things I saw in my later years working at Warwick and everywhere, I would find that in spite of a bad relationship with management the vast majority of workers just want to do their job and do it well.
Crosby
Yep, Yep.
Horswood
And sadly, many times, in spite of management.
Crosby
Every place I’ve ever been.
Horswood
Yeah, not in cooperation with management, but in spite of. And I always was impressed, with very little encouragement these guys continue to come to work day after day and try to do their job right. So the reason I say that is like, hey, with just a little bit of encouragement and cooperation and support, it can make some huge changes.
Crosby
Makes sense. You’re a sensible guy, Mark.
Horswood
(Laughs) you are too my friend.
Crosby
OK. Well, look, I think that’s. Probably a good place to stop unless you got anything else that you want to say.
Horswood
You know what? I don’t have anything to add to this, but you know, I think you getting out the heart of Cotten’s work. You know he made such an impact.
Crosby
Yes, he did.
Horswood
Everywhere he went. Just helping things, with people. It wasn’t rocket science that he promoted. Just listening and really hearing. Not listening enough to become defensive and seeing how you’re going to fend off that comment. Just really listening. And inquiring. “What do you need? What can I do?”
Crosby
Yep. He was a master at that.
Horswood
He was great at it, you know. Great.
Crosby
Alright, man. Well, I am gonna call this a wrap. And so, thank you, Mark.
Horswood
It’s my pleasure, Gil. It’s always good.
Posted in Change, Culture Change, Leadership, Lewin, Organization Development
Tagged Culture Change, OD, Organization Development
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View from a target: Before and After – A Union VP meets Applied Behavioral Science
This post is the first of several that consist of transcripts of conversations with frontline workers, inspired by the audio histories complied by the late Studs Terkel. My intention here is to let the workers speak for themselves. You can listen to it as a podcast below!
All right, Gil Crosby back with you. Pleased to be back with you. This is the start of a series of podcasts on my upcoming book, View from a target, which is a book about the experience of being a frontline worker in an organization. In manufacturing organizations, that’s the hourly workforce. Could be that you are a frontline worker in a social service agency, but it’s the same kind of experience and it’s the most important voice in really developing an organization, is to engage people at every layer and not have management trying to do all the thinking, which is when they try to impose solutions on the workforce. That generally doesn’t work out. And so I’m really pleased today to have my friend and a guy I worked with in Texarkana, Texas, at an Alcoa Rolling mill. He was the Vice President there, Pat Roberson. So Pat, it’s just great to have you here.
Roberson
Thank you, Gil. It’s great to be here.
Crosby
So how are you?
Roberson
I always love to hear from you.
Crosby
Well, it’s great to hear your voice too. So just go ahead and talk about your experience as an hourly worker. Let’s start with, what was life like in the organization for you before we ever showed up?
Roberson
Well, it was a small plant. We had about 300 hourly workers and about 200 company people that worked in offices in human resources and shipping and all that. And we didn’t have a union yet when I first went to work there. It wasn’t a union shop. And I had been an old union guy but I wasn’t really responsible for bringing the Union in, but when I saw it was coming I got involved in trying to help. But the atmosphere was us against them. Controversial. Everything had to be a fight. Everything was a 10. It was just all a big emotional mess. And then nobody was getting anything they really wanted. And I think it made people … I think it’s human nature just to kind of idle when you’re dissatisfied with a situation that you don’t feel like you can change in any way.
Crosby
Sure, that makes sense. It’s pretty demoralizing and of course that could happen with a union or without, that people are demoralized.
Roberson
(Laughs) I was fixing to say that’s exactly what happened. We voted the union in, we still had the issues. I was one of the union stewards at the time and we just … oh man … it was it was just a fight. Everything was a fight. And they loved sending me down there because they knew I was gonna chew on somebody. Me and my counterpart Sean Matthews. He was a good man that we lost unfortunately to Covid.
Crosby
Yeah, he was a great guy. He became the union president. He was an emergency responder when Covid hit. A terrible loss.
Roberson
Oh yes and he was … Shaun forgot more about diplomacy than I ever knew, and we would do the good cop bad cop thing (laughs). You know, he would be the good cop. I’d be the bad cop. But we really wouldn’t get these things done. I mean, you know, everything was a fight. Every, every, every inch of the way it was. And, something you said rang a bell with me. Hourly employees wanted to do the company peoples job. Tell them how to do that job and the company people they wanted to tell hourly people how to do their job. So they both had their place. And they both were better at their specific realms of influence. But they were both trying to tell the others what they were doing wrong.
Crosby
Yeah, they were stuck in a lot of blame.
Roberson
Blame. It was just all blame, you know. So you know, I wouldn’t have any idea how to do the human resource job that the people that are human resources people. I know it had to be miserable for them because I was miserable (laughs), and I hated going to work. I really hated it because I knew soon as I walked in that gate, I was fixing to start getting hammered. “So and so did this.” “I need you to do this” and “file a grievance on this.” Some of them wanted to file grievances against each other and it was just … it was horrible (laughs).
Crosby
Well, you know, it reminds me of our mutual friend who passed away in 2019, who really came up with the title of this book, Cotton Mears, what he said about his experience at Warrick. Before we ever showed up, he said that there were only two emotions. One was we were either pissed off or we weren’t pissed off, and that was it. That was the whole range of emotion.
Roberson
That was it. And that’s a darn good description of what we were.
Crosby
And probably pissed off more often than not.
Roberson
All the time. And speaking of Cotton, I was sad to hear that he had passed. I really enjoyed meeting Cotton and he was such a neat guy. Such a sincere man. He really believed in the in the mission. The workshop that we went through, he was there when I went through it. And your dad came down one time. It was just a great experience. But we’ll get into that. But he was such a good guy. You know, it changed his life. And it changed my life. And that’s, I’m probably at that end of the spectrum. I’m sure there’s people who go, “Yeah, it worked, but, you know.” All of a sudden, I started having an ability to have a say in how we were working. So, yeah, I liked it. And for me, it was life changing because I applied it to my everyday life.
Crosby
Well, that’s one of the things I love about it is, people, if they start working on taking responsibility for their own reactions, that transfers right outside of work, right to your home life, how you relate to family and so on.
Roberson
That’s right. Everything’s not a 10, and it’s easy to attach emotion to everything. And I think it, you know, in some ways it’s a human thing that we just, you know, kind of our first reaction is to be stand offish. At least some of us. You know, it’s a kind of a mechanism of protection I guess. It can turn into something much worse. And that’s what had happened in our facility.
Crosby
Yeah, and once people feel like they’re not being respected or heard, if people get pushed, they push back. Including management people. They get pushed, they push back and the whole thing becomes personal.
Roberson
It really does. And you know, we had another experience. We had a really good manager, plant manager, that worked with you on everything. The next guy comes in, everything’s a process problem. We’re doing everything wrong. And, well, he approached it in a way that, “I’m telling you this is what’s gonna happen, and you’re gonna do it or you’re gonna hit the gate,” you know. And actually that’s when the union got voted in, was when that guy was plant manager. I won’t mention any names because it wouldn’t be nice to do that. And he went on and had a good career somewhere else, but he really, really, really turned the tide on that particular facility going union.
Crosby
Well, you know, he was probably right. Everything probably was being done wrong to some extent (laughs). But he went about it by trying to force solutions on you and the other workers.
Roberson
Yes. You know I hate to say this but people in the south are stubborn. And they don’t like being told they’re ignorant or being made to feel like they’re ignorant, when they may be ignorant of something. Ignorant has kinda gotten a bad rap. You tell somebody they’re ignorant, (laughs) boy they get mad at you. But it just means you don’t have the knowledge of something.
Crosby
Sure. And calling them ignorant is ignorant.
Roberson
It’s ignorant (laughs).
Crosby
(Laughs) it doesn’t help any.
Roberson
It doesn’t help anything (laughs). In fact, it makes it much worse. Well, you start building those walls and man, they start getting reinforced and reinforced. And before long, you just got two big walls up against each other.
Crosby
Where everything’s just another battle, basically.
Roberson
Another brick in the wall, to quote a great song I love.
Crosby
Yeah. Yeah.
Roberson
It’s just another brick. Well, we are going to stick this up there, too, and it’s gonna be another stubborn thing. And if they try to bring this up, I’m bringing this up and, you know, it never ends. It’s poison for the facility. It’s poison for the workforce.
Crosby
It is. It’s poison for everybody. It’s poison for productivity too.
Roberson
Absolutely. And safety.
Crosby
Yes. And safety. So you were in Alcoa and there they had been an emphasis on safety. But when you were all pissed off at each other. That probably wasn’t helping much.
Roberson
No. It was horrible. And everything changed. It didn’t just change overnight. It wasn’t like it was just you flipped the switch and everything’s alright. But what it did was it gave everybody, and I’m talking about the workshops. It gave everybody the tools to proceed in a manner that would be productive and would be, not conciliatory, but would be a way for both sides to understand the other side’s issues and continue to process the metal and get things done better.
Crosby
Yep, makes sense. So you’re talking about the T-groups. We call that “Tough Stuff.” And just a couple things about that. One is, as you know, it was an hourly worker that first said that phrase. He was sitting in the back, you know, being pissed off for a couple days in the workshop (Roberson laughs), and then at some point it just hit him. And he said this, he said, “You know, this isn’t soft stuff. These aren’t soft skills. This is tough stuff.”
Roberson
Yes!
Crosby
And that’s what we stuck with after that. I just want to say one more thing we do that’s different, because we believe in it. We mix people together when we’re training people, we want the Union President, the Union people of course, in the workshop, we want the plant manager, we want all layers of management mixed in with the hourly people so they can work on skills while they talk about work issues.
Roberson
Well, and that’s exactly what happened. We had the workshops and we did that. But we also started people going into the offices, people coming out of the offices, going into the shop and experiencing just the atmosphere around the machines. It’s loud. It’s hot. You smell … and everything. You know, it’s a shop. So these things are clanging away. And I actually had people say “I had no idea this is what it was like.” And I said “Yes, it’s loud, but you become numb to it after a while. You get used to it.” If you wear your ear protection, if you wear your proper PPE, it’s not gonna hurt you. But (laughs) it’s scary to someone who’s never been there.
Crosby
Yeah, and it’s a hard enough job without, you know, having people being pissed off at you and saying that you aren’t doing your job.
Roberson
Well yeah. If everybody’s mad in that situation (laughs), it’s miserable.
Crosby
Yep, and that’s how it is in a lot of places, unfortunately.
Roberson
Well, I hear it all the time and I have suggested … of course I have little or no power over anybody … (laughs) but I have suggested to union friends that still work in shops or union shops that they might try to contact y’all because of how much it helped. And you know, some think I’m selling out. And some listen and think, you know, I know this guy didn’t sell out. He’s not a sell out. But it was just such a good thing for me. And it’s such a good thing for our facility. Man, it was great.
Crosby
Well, I wanted just to go back again to Cotton. So when you talk about transformation there he was in the pot rooms and he was a union steward, and he says he got elected because he would fight about anything (Roberson laughs). Didn’t matter what it was. Didn’t matter who was right or wrong or anything like that. Anybody would come to him and say, “Hey, the management’s doing this!” He was the attack dog. He’d just go and fight. And he realized at some point with, you know, my father’s help in particular, that, it was bad for him. It was bad for the place. It was bad for the workers.
Roberson
It was bad for everybody.
Crosby
You had a role like that too. I think you said you had nicknames, right?
Roberson
Yeah. They called Sean “Little Johnny Cochran” and they call me “Mr. T” (laughs). Or yard dogs. Some of them called me yard dog. That’s an old southern thing. Mean as a yard dog. I did the same thing. I’d fight over anything. I piled grievances up. I flooded them with paperwork. And they resented it because some of it was so petty that it could have been resolved with a phone call.
Crosby
Sure. Or a conversation.
Roberson
Yes, but we were smoking them (laughs). We were smoking them. The desk of their HR department was a stack of grievances. And just everything, like I said, everything was a fight. It wasn’t any, we were trying to work with them. No, it was, “We aren’t working with them on that because they didn’t work with us on so and so.” And it just piles up, piles up, piles up. And, you know, sooner or later it’s going to fall over. And unfortunately, that’s when they shut plants down. And they become so unprofitable that just, you know, no use in running them. And the bottom line is the bottom line. People forget that. And they call it a lot of things, but companies are in this to make money.
Crosby
Yep.
Roberson
And if they can’t make money, you’re not gonna be in business. And in fact, a good example of this happened before y’all came. Our production had gotten down low. We were having problems with shipping. We’re having problems with quality. People weren’t showing up. They were late all the time. And you know, I saved so many guys jobs that should have been fired. They should have been taken out back and shot (laughs). But they were union folks … gonna be union folks … this was actually before the Union came in. But I was still like, the voice of the of the workforce. And Sean and I, we’d have meetings and we’d talked for people, and be told more or less, “Well, we will take into consideration what you said,” but nevermind. But we’d got down to the point where people were coming in. There wasn’t any metal to run, there wasn’t anything packed up. So we started painting floors (laughs).
Crosby
I’m sure you were all enthusiastic about doing that.
Roberson
Oh it was horrible. And so we would come in and paint the motor room floor. And then the next night would come in and paint the machine floor. And the next night we come in and put another coat of paint on the motor room floor. And we did this every other night for a month. I mean, it had to have a layer of about an inch of paint on it (Crosby laughs). It was busy work, you know, and everybody’s going, “Well, I like this.” And I said, “Well, this is not good guys.” I said “Nothing going out the door. Nothing coming in the door. The doors are fixing to close.” And boy, they started having layoffs and finally the market kind of rebounded and we started running. They were looking at shutting us down I believe then. But it was between US and a plant in Warrick, I believe. But it never came to that.
Crosby
They had fabrication and a paint line and all that kind of stuff at Warrick.
Roberson
Right. So, you know, it was competitive and some of the market had gone overseas. We had lost the can stock, which was a huge, huge market.
Crosby
Right. Well, so that was all like “before.” And you mentioned grievances and so on. So what was it like after we had done some work with you?
Roberson
Well, it changed everything. For one thing, like you talked about, in the group we mixed people together, from the company side and from the union side. We’d already gone union by the time y’all came in.
Crosby
Right.
Roberson
Some of those people I had seen and never spoke to in the five years I’ve been there. It was that kind of separation, you know. You didn’t really wanna be seen talking to those people. Because they were those people. They were the company. So here we all are and we’re in a circle with those people (laughs), and we’re all talking about how we feel about it. And, to me, that changed me to where I thought, you know, these are just humans just like me, everybody the same. I’m putting too much capital in emotion when I should be putting capital into productive conversations that might lead to an outcome that’s everyone can live with. And it’s better for the company so. That made a big difference that changed my life in a lot of ways. Controlling where I invested emotional capital because, like I said, everything’s not a ten. So, things started changing. One of the one of the gripes was channel locks. This is a funny thing. To me it is. I think Pete Velotas was the plant manager when all this was going on, wasn’t he?
Crosby
Yeah, he was. He was there when we arrived.
Roberson
Yeah. So (laughs) one of the gripes … everything to do with aluminum head, cutting head, you need channel locks to do a lot of it. So there’s a need for channel locks on every head setting station. Well, they would get stolen, they would get lost, they would get torn up. He’s having to check him out every shift, and it’s just a nightmare (laughs). People were using it as an excuse to start later, you know, it was just an excuse.
Crosby
And when people are demoralized, they’re more likely to walk off with stuff like that.
Roberson
Right. Yeah. And so. With your advice, I don’t know if you remember it or not.
Crosby
I do.
Roberson
You said, “How much does a pair of channel locks cost? I remember Pete saying, “Well, you know, they’re not much.” At the time. 5 dollars, $6, whatever, it was, $10. “And how much does downtime cost?” Everybody kind of looked at each other like, you know, it’s so obvious. And Pete said, “I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna buy one for every every machine out there, and we’re gonna buy an extra and put it in the stock room in case that one gets broke.” And one of the millwright Superintendents said, “Well, they’ll just walk off with them.” And Pete said (laughs), “Well, eventually everybody will have one and they’ll stay on the machine and we won’t have downtime because of a pair of channel locks (laughs). And so, lo and behold, they put them out there. After that happened, I don’t think one pair got stolen, because it was like, “Hey, they were good enough to do this. We need to take care of this.”
Crosby
It was a small thing that mattered.
Roberson
It gave them a little pride in that simple thing. A pair of channel locks. And. I remember thinking, “Why did I ever let that become an issue? And why did they ever let that become an issue?”
Crosby
Yeah, it was a symptom of bigger mistrust and frustration.
Roberson
Absolutely. It was a symptom of a disease, and the disease was, “We’re not working with each other no matter what.” But this, everybody saw this, and everybody thought, “Huh? Well, maybe Pat and them are not selling us out, you know?” And then all of a sudden, we start talking about one of the other things. We never could get our change house stocked. It was filthy. Nobody really wanted to go in there.
Crosby
The locker rooms.
Roberson
Yes. Our locker room. Cause when they built them it was a really nice locker room. I mean I’ve been in older plants, and their locker rooms were clean, but they were ancient. They were dated. This one had shower stalls and changing stalls in front of the showers. It was a nice change house and the ladies was nice too. We had two different change houses right side beside each other. They were identical, they were just separate. So Pete said, “Look, we’re going to take care of that.” We had, they didn’t call it janitorial, it was something maintenance. But they had a guy that was supposedly stocking all this, making sure they were cleaned and everything. We had a cleaning service, but they wouldn’t let them do that for some reason. Supposedly it fell on maintenance. Maintenance didn’t like it. They didn’t wanna do it. But anyways, he fixed that, had them cleaned up, had them all repainted, changed all of the shower heads. Everything. Had the lockers painted. The lighting was dim in some places. Had all that fixed, and people started using them. People started saying, “Hhey, you know, this is really nice.” And they started taking care it. They didn’t throw paper towels down. They didn’t track grease across the floor and not mop it up. That was something else. They had a little like a little closet that they put all the cleaning stuff in. They said if you have an accident if you don’t mind either report it or clean it up. Well, nobody ever reported one. They just cleaned it up. So that changed. That’s an attitude that prior to y’all’s arrival would have never happened. If I would have asked somebody to clean up the change house, I would have been laughed off the floor.
Crosby
Well, it’s easy for, you know, management to, especially in a hostile environment, to overlook something like that. They’ve got so many problems that seem bigger for production and so on that they just overlook some of the small things and don’t realize what it’s like, what kind of a message it sends every day when you walk into a broken place. Basically says that to the workers, “They don’t really give a crap about us.”
Roberson
Right. And you know little things, and on the other side of that coin, people would check out a box of grease. Now this grease they used in grease guns to grease heads and the machines and stuff like that.
Crosby
It’s important.
Roberson
It’s a heavy industrial grease. Well, you couldn’t check out a tube. You had to check out a box. And what you ended up having is one tube of grease used out of a box, and that box spilled and tubes of grease laying around everywhere and they didn’t all get used. And sometimes they’d just throw them away. So, when we were looking at budget items. Our company, they didn’t just open up the books to us, but they more or less said, “Look, this is the cost list for everyday items. Gloves, grease, cutting knives, head spacers. Anything that was on everyday use thing. Gloves, mops, buckets. You realize it doesn’t take long before you have $10 or $15k stuff in your trash can that never got used.
Crosby
On a recurring basis.
Roberson
Everybody said, “Look, break it down. Don’t make people take a bundle of gloves. They’re gonna lose half of them. Give them a pair of gloves. In fact, unless they have a use for it, don’t give them two pair of gloves. Give them a pair of gloves. If they come every day and need a pair of gloves, give them a pair of gloves.” And, that changed everything. People started keeping up with their gloves. They started only getting a couple of tubes of grease. Those operators knew how much grease it was gonna take for to run that machine for a week.
Crosby
Of course.
Roberson
And they knew it wasn’t going to take a whole box (laughs). And they knew that they could wear a pair of gloves … now, working on a working on a sheet metal line, you wear out gloves pretty quickly. But we had these Kevlar gloves that had leather palms and they were made where you couldn’t slice your finger off. And they started instead of going every day and getting a new pair, you know, they started using them until they started getting a little frayed. If it looked like they weren’t going to be effective to keep you protected, they they’d take them back, return them and get another pair.
Crosby
Nice.
Roberson
And that way you didn’t have gloves laying everywhere, thrown down. You had to take that old pair back to get your new pair. It’s just simple things. I know all that sounds petty and small. (Pause) but it made a huge difference. It made a huge difference in production. It made a huge difference in the cleanliness of the facility. It made a huge difference in safety. When people on the lines were asked to be part of safety programs, they listened to them. They listened to what they said. And when they were doing the fencing around the machines … used to be all the machines were just open. If you were to stumble and fall and get caught between that sheet and one of those rollers that would … that would have been a sad day for your family.
Crosby
Yep.
Roberson
And it was possible, especially for new hires. I’ve watched new hires go up and get, you know, we’d have to scold them. “Don’t do that. When this machines running, this thing’s running wide open, it’s running 1500 foot a minute. Let’s just stay away from that. Because it can go horribly wrong quick.
Then they came up with the idea, let’s all get together, talk about what we need, talk about what we need guard, talk about what we need removable guards on so we can work on things. And they started building them. Well, at first they bad overbuilt it (laughs). They just made it where you literally couldn’t run the line. We ran it for like a month and then they regrouped and they said, “Alright, what do we need to do?” And everybody had pretty much the same ideas that worked on those lines. “We need to get in here. We need a gate. We need a removable gate or an opening gate here so when the machines running we can lock it out and get in there and work on it.” And so that that made a huge difference.
Crosby
And those kinds of conversations happened after we started working with you.
Roberson
Oh yeah, they never would have happened before (laughs). It would have been a fistfight before (laughs). No, they never would have happened till we went through the workshops and Tough Stuff and just learning how to talk to each other and work with each other just made all the difference in the world Gil. The people were happier. The people looked forward to coming to work. People’s attendance started getting better. People’s attitudes changed. Everybody, it was more competitive then. It was more like, hey, we’re gonna, you know … I remember my crew one night ran like, oh, I don’t know. An outrageous amount of metal. And the next crew came on, they said, “Aw man, we’re going to beat that.” And so it was high quality, great production, the company was happy, the people were happy. The nights flew by. It was a panacea compared to what we had (laughs).
Crosby
What you were going through, yeah.
Roberson
That was horrible. Horrible.
Crosby
Again, for management and labor.
Roberson
Yes! And it made the difference. That’s something else. You started to see people come out. There would be groups. There would be just regular office girls and guys that work in offices, that you never even knew worked there some of them. And they came into the plant, one of the shop hourly employees, union hands would be waiting on them, to give them a tour and keep them in the safe spots. Because there is inherent danger in any in any mill. So if you follow procedures and you follow your SOPs, you’re not gonna get hurt. But someone who doesn’t know the procedures can wander off and they might get hurt. So we would lead them through the plant and we’d show them each individual machine, introduce them to whoever was working on that machine. They got faces. They got to know faces and names. We still had to file some grievances, but very few, because 90% of what we did after that was negotiated out without having to even start the grievance process. Because the truth is, nobody likes that. It throws everything six months out.
Crosby
Yep, and. And when you say negotiate it out, you mean like just people started talking to each other and resolving small issues.
Roberson
Right. The people that were making the company decisions talked to the people on the floor that were making the production decisions. Those processes have to be important for a plant to work. You can’t, you know, people would say before y’all’s program, “Well, those people down there don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know anything about aluminum. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And I always thought, even then I thought, “Yeah, but could you go down and do their job? You know, because they got a job (laughs),” you know? And so it just opened up all sorts of alleys, for them to come out and see us, for us to go in and see them. They start opening their doors. If you wanted to walk down there and go into the HR department or anywhere in the in the office. You want to see somebody. You walk in there. You talk to the little lady at the front desk. That’s Gwen. And she’d say,”Llet me see if they’re in, Pat,” or anybody “Let me see if they’re in and if they’re in and they’re not busy and you go right back and talk to them.” And so it started helping with people that were actually working with customers talking to people that were producing that customers metal. Now, you would think that would be something they’d do anyway. But I’m telling you, it was so cloudy, nobody could see through it before.
Crosby
Yeah, you mentioned that the customers actually started coming out to the floor also.
Roberson
Yes, that was something else that was so great. We are started having companies come that were using the products we’re creating for the final disposition of the metal, whatever it was. If they making it cans, if they were making radiators or heater coils or whatever they were making. Cans. Truck parts, whatever. And they’d come and they’d say, “Hey, is there any way…” And this was something else that was funny to me. It was a surprise to us and to the people that were working for the company when they bring these questions up. It was like, why haven’t they already communicated this? But what they were doing was bringing people that were actually on the floor in these other places. In management positions, but were actually in the process departments of their particular industries. And they were, they’d say, “Is there any way you can make the edges a little sharper? Is there any way you can get this crossbow out of that?” Nobody don’t know what that is, but people that work on them (laughs). But anyway, everybody would go, “Well yeah, we can lighten up on roller three. We do this and do this.” And we’d run a little bit and they’d go, “Yes, yes, that! Just that flat.” And that would be the procedure from then on. The customer was elated. We were happy because we weren’t getting something sent back. And, you know, it was a mark on you if you got something sent back.
Crosby
Sure, it costs money too. I mean, that’s just waste.
Roberson
It costs money! And it wasn’t like it was a mark from the company on you. It was a mark to everybody. Everybody would go, “Man, you let that get out. Why did you let that (laughs) get out?” If you were playing football, if I missed the block everybody would kind of go, “Man, why did you miss that block? What’s wrong with you?” Well, it’s the same thing. You’re on the team there and everybody’s going, “Man, now they’re going to think everything from Texarkana, Alcoa is trash (laughs).” But it changed all that! People took a lot more pride. We hardly had any returns. We hardly had any complaints. And we changed the way we warehouse things. I ended up getting in the warehouse end of things. Shipping. We came up with this segregation system, to separate the metal where it was easier to pull. And when you got ready to ship it. All that all that was because of the T- group, Tough Stuff, the programs we went through. Those communication skills we learned. All that happened because of that. There is nothing else I can attribute it to.
Crosby
You said that before that the management, the last thing they wanted was for any customers to meet any of the hourly workers.
Roberson
Oh no. They would never, they never bring anybody in. I’ll never forget. I don’t know whether you remember Don Davies or not. Now Don Davies was the union president when y’all first came down there. I remember one time. Oh, I can’t remember his name. He was the CEO of Alcoa. I think he was from Rio de Janeiro.
Crosby
Uh-huh. Yeah, Belda maybe?
Roberson
He came through and he was talking. And of course they brought him over to meet us. And this was before y’all come in, we’d gone union. And the guy says, “Well, you know. You know why y’all’s insurance is going up and it costs so much?” And Don said, “Yeah, corporate greed (laughs!” And we were, you know, we were like, we didn’t care. This guy was so important and we were like ants on a basketball (laughs). But we were on the guy, you know, and he kind of looked at us like, “Oh, my God, these guys are nuts,” you know (laughs). “How is this ever gonna work (laughs?” But I remember, that was the attitude. They bring somebody in here, we’re gonna attack them. Of course they didn’t want to bring anybody in there. (Crosby laughs). I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t have brought anybody in there either. You wouldn’t be caught dead walking into that office by yourself back then either. That’s something else that goes back to what I was saying about what changed. They opened the doors and we could walk in and talk to people and learn things and it was acceptable to do so from the union standpoint and from the company’s standpoint.
Crosby
That’s great.
Roberson
And that was, you know, if you’d have done that before Gil, you would have been ostracized. It would have been, “Hey, these guys are no good. They’re sellouts. They’re going down there and making deals behind your back (laughs).”.
Crosby
Yeah, that peer pressure is hard to buck.
Roberson
It’s hard to buck. And there’s a there’s an ego thing. When you’re pumped up enough, that people have told you enough, that “You’re great! You tear them up! Don’t let them talk to you down! You do this!” You build that up in yourself and say, “Well, that’s what I’m expected to do. I’m gonna do that!”
Crosby
Yep.
Roberson
And after that I thought, you know what I really need to do is resolve their gripes. I need to figure out a way to resolve their gripe where everybody can live with it. And that just changed the way everything happened. We still filed some grievances. Occasionally there would be something. But nobody got mad about it. Nobody took it personally. It was like, “Hey, you know, File the grievance. I understand. We’ll let it go to arbitration and see what happens.” And a lot of times after that, it never went to arbitration. I don’t think we went to arbitration, after y’alls workshops, I think we probably didn’t go to arbitration 10 to 15 times where we were going 10 to 15 times a month before.
Crosby
Wow, what a mess.
Roberson
It was horrible.
Crosby
Well, look, I just want to go backwards a little bit here because I do remember that channel locks conversation. And part of what we did there, we called it a TIPI. It was a a big planning session. And this was after doing some of those other workshops. Kind of get the mood changed a little bit and the way people were relating. But we had a planning session where a whole bunch of hourly workers were mixed in with the management and you guys just looked together at, “What’s really in the way here?” And, “What can we do about it?” And I think some of that stuff about like the locker room got raised in those conversations.
Roberson
They did. All of the pettiness from… That’s kind of an aggressive word. I don’t mean to paint it like that.
Crosby
(Laughs). Well, that’s quite accurate. Petty.
Roberson
I don’t mean people were acting petty to each other in this circle (the T-groups). But what I’m saying is all of the little things that were irking people on both sides of the fence were brought to a head there.
Crosby
Yeah, yeah.
Roberson
“This is what we don’t like. Well, this is what we don’t like. This is what we don’t like.” And then finally after everybody got it off their chest, somebody said, I can’t remember the guys name, but he was a company man, and he said, “Well, I can resolve this right now.” And then one of the union guys said, “Well, we can fix that issue she was talking about. We can fix that. That’s just the process. It works just as good one way as it does the other.” That was the crack that split that division thing. Actually, it was the weld that welded the crack back it together (laughs). It started bringing people together. It started bringing people saying, “Hey. If we can resolve that, we can resolve this.”
Crosby
Makes sense.
Roberson
And we got rid of all of the little things first. And that’s why I say we hardly ever filed a grievance after that because we found out what was keeping us apart was really kind of little things. It wasn’t as big as we thought it was. And it took an outside entity to come in and tell us that because it was so poisoned in the facility, there’s no way that was ever going to be resolved from within. It just wasn’t gonna happen.
Crosby
Well, or at least it took, us helping you guys actually just start listening to each other.
Roberson
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I don’t think we would have ever done that had y’all not come in. I just don’t think it would have happened. I think the plant would have eventually been shut down. Now that facility was eventually shut down. But we were doing great right up to the end. But the market fell out. And there was nothing, it wasn’t anybody’s fault. I mean, Alcoa had to scramble and to shut some plants down, and they kept us going for about a year and a half there when I I think they probably should have gone ahead and shut us down. But they brought in this guy, I can’t remember his name now, but he was the new plan manager and they brought him in to shut us down we found out later. I know that that had nothing to do with rancor between company and union. It was just that the market fell out there wasn’t nothing to do about it. It was right after 911. Everybody was scared. Everybody was slowing up. Withdrawing. So it didn’t have anything to do with anything else. Because right up until that man, we were rolling wide open and breaking records, and we were beating bigger plants.
Crosby
Eventually it reopened, right?
Roberson
Oh yes. It’s three times a bigger footprint than it was when I worked there. It’s huge now.
Crosby
Well, I’m glad for that, because I mean…
Roberson
I’m glad too, because it’s got a lot of jobs.
Crosby
Good jobs!
Roberson
It’s a good. We have a relatively poor area around here. So good jobs are important.
Crosby
Yep.
Roberson
And especially from the county. I mean, Cass County is a pretty poor county in Texas. And so that’s not far for us to go. You gotta go out of county to get a job like that, unless you go to the paper mill up at Domino.
Crosby
Means a lot to people.
Roberson
It means a lot to people and you know. It means a lot to everybody and not just the people that go to work there, but the people that they support, the little shops. The stores, filling stations, the clothing stores out there. Everything’s tied together.
Crosby
Well, I’d like to think that the way you guys were operating after we worked with you was part of the reason why it was attractive to whoever, you know, is now running it.
Roberson
Well it is. And I’ll tell you why. They look at the numbers and they looked at this little engine that could and like I say, we were really a tiny facility. There was, there’s probably 600 people in the whole plant, company and the hourly workforce. You got some plants have 5 or 6000 people in them. Well, we were just smoking hot, so they looked at this and they go, “Hey, look at this. This little plant was spitting out this much product with this many people. Why? Why build a new facility where we can just drop in here? Crank this one up and get that workforce. Obviously, there’s a good workforce in the area.” And a lot of people went back and they took those ideas with them, I assure you.
Crosby
That’s great. That’s just great. That’s good news for everybody. Hey, so I’m just thinking about again the before and after and one of the things I I remember there was that there were an attempt by the company to help improve things and engage people. They were using kaizens. And the workers were pissed off when I got there, they were pissed off about at least one of the kaizens. They were saying, “We ended up doing this kaizen on this stuff that doesn’t even matter. And, you know, we really ought to be, if we’re going to do problem solving, we ought to be doing it on this stuff hat does matter. That was just again, one of the changes that can happen if you’re actually listening to your workers and the workers are wanting to help and really, I think most people want to help, they just get so tired of being kicked around that, you know, they stop. They stop helping.
Roberson
And they get a herd mentality, you know, it’s this group’s a herd, this group’s herd, and we’re all gonna think the same. But yeah, the kaizens I’m not a big fan of, at least the way it was done in our plant.
Crosby
Sure.
Roberson
Because what they did was they come out and they said. “Alright, this is what we’re gonna do.” And this was actually said to me. “We think we’re wasting a lot of time on the floor. We’re gonna start timing how long it takes you to cut a core. How long it takes you to put a core on the mantle. How long it takes to run that piece of metal. How long it takes to pull it off. Take it to shipping. Put it in the segregation. We’re gonna time everything you do, and then we’re gonna come up with a number of what you should be producing.”
Crosby
So that’s just sort of like, when everybody’s pisssed off, now you’re gonna come in and police us on how long it takes.
Roberson
Absolutely! It’s like you’re being, we call it bird doged. You know, it’s like somebodys just sitting there just pointing at you all the time. And man, that went over like a lead balloon.
Crosby
Yeah, yeah (laughs).
Roberson
I remember. I was livid about it. Because when they first presented it to us, they brought us down, and they brought Davies. Sean was vice president then. I was one of the head grievance officers. The political officer. We all went down to meet with them to talk to him about this concept process. And the guy that described it, that was the Gil (laughs) of the kaizen people. He described it in a way that I thought, “This may help.” Because he was talking about doing things that are in our way and us doing things that are in their way. And he talked a good game.
Crosby
Yeah, well, it can work that way, if you got the right conditions.
Roberson
And I’m sure it can if you have the right people administering. But if you give that over to somebody that was one of the biggest adversaries of the people on the floor. And they wanna put the bulldog on. You know, they want to put old yard dog out there. You’re gonna meet with, see how they handle you. And man, it did not go well (laughs0. It was, I remember going into office and chewing a guy out man and I ended up apologizing years later. We ended up being good friends, but he was a company guy and I chewed him up one side and down the other, you know, and he just had his head down at his desk. Wouldn’t even look up at me and. I walked out. I slammed the door. Needless to say kaizen didn’t work in that facility.
Crosby
Yeah. Well, you did say that after we did the work with you, whether you’re a fan of them or not, because of that history, that at least they started to do kaizens on stuff that made sense to, well, also that the workers were saying, “Let’s do it on this.” And they were getting listened to.
Roberson
Yeah, they started to. It was still divided. It was still, it was was still divided. They were some people it seemed like were getting stuff done, and some people that couldn’t get stuff done.
Crosby
Ok.
Roberson
It just, there was a conversation going on, but people were still snippy at each other.
Crosby
Well, that’s what happens when you try to force something in.
Roberson
Right. And it was, it was done like a hammer.
Crosby
Right.
Roberson
It wasn’t, “Hey, six months out, we’re gonna start kaizens and here’s some literature. Read up about it and learn a little bit about it.” It was, “Hey, next Monday, we’re gonna start kaizens. We’re gonna have a guy come and explain to you what it is, and then we’re gonna proceed with it.” And it was like, “Oh crap. What is this? Here’s another, you know, we’re gonna try to get more out of you. You’re not, you’re the reason everything’s failing.” You know, people had that kind of chip on their shoulder.
Crosby
Sure, sure, and understandably.
Roberson
And I will say this. I had a friend that worked in a paper mill. He’s retired now. He was a bearing specialist. He took little tools around him, stethoscopes and stuff. He was a millwright. A genius guy. And he would listen to bearings and he could tell you what was wrong with him and he’d put calipers on them and learn things. Just a neat guy. And they did a kaixen. And it really helped them in one of their departments. So I’m not saying that the system’s flawed. I’m saying it came into a flawed system and didn’t work.
Crosby
Yeah. And maybe got pushed as one more thing, you know, being pushed on the workforce, so…
Roberson
Right. Yeah. And that’s that’s what they felt like. “Oh, here comes something else.” You know, this is gonna be, one time they came out, and this was another petty thing. They come out and said, “You can’t take coffee out on the machine floor.” Well, that just made people stay in the break room more (Crosby laughs). I mean, you know, it was silly because nobody would take coffee up near the metal because it would stain it. Nobody would take water closer to the metal because it would water spot it. So they kept it in the cubbies around the machines. If you need a drink, you walk over and get it and go back to work. But it was just a bad call, you know.
Crosby
It was a solution being imposed by people who weren’t actually doing the work.
Roberson
Right, people that weren’t up all night and slept an hour the day before.
Crosby
Yeah, yeah.
Roberson
A cup of coffee is pretty important (laughs).
Crosby
No doubt, no doubt, and just being treated with respect is important and that probably felt like another example of not being treated with respect.
Roberson
Well, and you know something else that happened after y’all, after the workshops with y’all (laughs). And this, this has to do with coffee again (laughs). As you tell, I like coffee.
Crosby
Me too.
Roberson
You know, I find the older I get. It’s my drug of choice. Somebody was joking with me the other day, said, “You want a beer?” No, but I’ll take a cup of coffee if you got one and I’ll drink a beer, too. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a prude about it. So they they started having negotiations with the companies that were supplying the sodas, the candy machines, all that stuff. That was a pretty big contract in that plant. So somebody outside was getting that contract. Well, they were also selling coffee. And you’re supposed to put a donation in the box to keep the coffee coming. Well, Sean got on the negotiation thing with the hiring of the contractors that were bringing this stuff in and got talking to them and the guy said, “Hey, we make nothing on coffee anyway. They give it to us as part of a program to promote this this machine. Tell you what we’ll do. We got boxes of these machines. We’ll put a machine in every break room and we’ll just supply the coffee. Coffee won’t cost you anything. We’ll raise the price on our Cokes a dime or whatever it was, and we’ll make up for it there.” And everybody says, “Great.” You know, nobody needs to be drinking that many Cokes anyway (laughs). But nobody ever noticed it went up. Nobody cared. They got free coffee.
Crosby
That sounds like a good thing. Simple.
Roberson
It’s simple. And you know what? All took was asking. Nobody was even asking the vendor to do this.
Crosby
Nice.
Roberson
And the subject had been broached before that we should do this. It’s just little things like that and that led to big things being resolved. And, oh man, at one time we were just spitting metal out of that thing (laughs).
Crosby
Yeah, you got your processes running smooth because people started to…
Roberson
I remember coming to work at night. I worked straight nights for the last years I was in that plant because we needed a strong union guy on nights. And I preferred night because my daughter was in volleyball at the time in high school and I could sleep in the mornings and then get up about 5:00, go to her volleyball games before work and it was just better for me.
Crosby
Nice.
Roberson
Family wise, I spent more time with my family that way.
Roberson
And. I remember coming to work at night and there would be trucks back down that road that ran in front of the plant all the way to Hwy. 67 (laughs). Because we were loading them out just left and right and they’d be coming out the gate and I know they’d be backing in when I walked in. And I’d go relieve my guy. I’d always try to relieve him 15 to 20 minutes early, and once you’re relieved there, you can go. And most of them would go to go to the change house, change and buff up. Leave that way. But it made a difference in the production. It made a difference in the safety. It made a difference in the general cleanliness. It made a difference in the everyone’s attitudes.
Crosby
The quality of the product.
Roberson
The quality of the product. The maintenance. Everything. Everything got better because people bought into it and people were listened to. I remember in the cast house, they were having problems with this alloy, and one of the guys who was not a metal guy or anything. He was a guy that had a high school education. But he’d been making aluminum for 25 years.
Crosby
Mm-hmm.
Roberson
And he said, “Well, you know, I’ve told them that they need to add more whatever it was, magnesium or something. It was some additive you put into the aluminum. And he said, “If they do that, I think it’ll drop this other problem.” And I remember, the metallurgist saying, “You know that might work.” He said, “That might work. Let’s try it.” And it solved this huge problem they were having with this particular metal and fatigue.
Crosby
I think I remember that too. Maybe. I mean, it might have been somewhat related to the planning meeting we led.
Roberson
Yeah. It was because of you and your team that happened. Because before he might have looked at somebody else, and said, “Maybe just put some magnesium in that to solve that problem, but I ain’t telling them. They got a metallurgist up there.” I might be mispronouncing that, but “They got a guy that’s schooled to know what to mix in the metal and he’s telling us what to do. Let him do it.”
Crosby
Right. Right.
Roberson
That’s all well and good. But when you have a guy that’s trained in that who can admit to a guy who’s got a high school education, “Hey, he may know more about this particular issue than I do, I know what the bottom line says you’re supposed to do, but maybe that’s not working with the quality of materials we’re working with. You may be right. Let’s try it.”
Crosby
Yeah, that’s golden.
Roberson
And it’s gold, man. The atmosphere wasn’t poisoned. I didn’t get inundated with gripes when I walked in the door. I’m not saying everything was just hunky dory and perfect. But prior to us having those workshops and working through Tough Stuff and doing all the things it took to learn how to communicate to each other, prior to that, when I walked in that gate, there would be people waiting on me wanting me to file grievances (Crosby laughs). I mean, they would be waiting on me. And before I could, I had a thing I’d say, “Follow me to the break room. Let me get a cup of coffee and smoke a cigarette and we’ll talk.” And I I just had to get in that mode. And man, it would just fill up. Finally a foreman would walk in there and say, “Hey, guys. Y’all gonna run anything tonight?” It was just (laughs), it was a poisoned, poisoned atmosphere. And afterwards it was like, your walking in here and people were going, “Hey, man, what’s going on? You know, what are y’all running tonight? Well, we’re running this.” You know, nobody talked about that before. “Yeah, I found out if you let Rick raise that third roller up, it runs a little smoother. Oh yeah, I’ll try that tonight.” The communication between the workforce and the communication between the company people and the company people changed.
Crosby
That’s great, Pat.
Roberson
So it’s a huge thing. I think any … I wish the world, like I I’ve always said, I wish the world could go through Tough Stuff. I wish they could have that experience and who knows where we’d be. But I’m telling you it’s that important. It was that important in my life. It was that important to that facility. And I’m sure there’s other testimonials out there about this. Take your workshop and the book. I still have the book right here beside me in my bedroom, in my boudoir (laughs).
Crosby
Which book was that? Fight, Flight, Freeze?
Roberson
Tough Stuff.
Crosby
Oh, the manual for the Tough Stuff.
Roberson
I love that thing (laughs).
Crosby
Nice. Hey. This is great. I really appreciate this time. And this is just the kind of thing I’m hoping to have these conversations with others too. But you mentioned Don Simonic at one point last time we talked.
Roberson
Oh, I ended up loving that guy, man. He was, I’m not sure what position Don held in the. Company. What was he?
Crosby
Well, he used to be in charge of Warrick and Tennessee simultaneously and before that he worked with Dad at a plant called Addy, a magnesium plant. And they did the same kind of stuff. But down there, I think he was like just an advisor, to Pete.
Roberson
Yeah, he was. And that’s exactly what he did here. But I met him because I was the liaison between the union and the program if you remember. And he would meet with me just as much as he’d meet with Pete and he’d meet with us together. Talk to us. And he called me down one time and he said, “Hey, you wanna go have lunch? I’ll pay for it. That’s on me.” And I said, “Well, I’ll pay for my own” because that’s a union thing, you know (laughs). Don’t ever let anybody buy you lunch (laughs) or Coke. But we met and we talked and we laughed, and I said, you know, “I think it’s just the basic thing I’ve gotten out of it more than anything. It’s just the common basic common sense.” And he looked at me and he smiled, and he said “Common sense. Not many people have that anymore. Do they (laughs).” And I said, “No. I think we all have it, but it may be in a shell that hasn’t been penetrated. It doesn’t have the ability to get out.” He was such a great guy and he was kind of a mentor in that to me. I kind of looked up to him really. I looked up to him and the way he talked to me was even though we weren’t equals he talked to me as an equal. If that makes any sense.
Crosby
It makes sense. I mean, that’s…
Roberson
This guy was far beyond me in life, what I achieved, but he was a good grounded person and those kind of people I love. You know, if I see people that kind of crumble under pressure, it makes me nervous, you know? I get antsy about people like that. But when I see people kind of take a deep breath and give it thought, be thoughtful about what comes out of their mouth next, that means a lot to me. And I think that’s one of the things that I took from meeting you, and learning the process of communication in a way that has been proven to be successful. I learned two things. I learned not to attach emotion to everything. And I learned sometimes the answer is no, and that’s ok. You just go through the procedure and you work it and work it and work it and it will resolve. But you can’t just, you know, to a hammer, everything looks like nail. And that’s the way we were. We were just striking at everything. And then we found out, hey, if I just go up there and ask this question without venom in my breath, maybe I’ll get something done. And I did. And Sean did. Don did. It changed everything. It changed the way we talked to everybody. It changed the way we talk to people. Like I said, they wouldn’t want to bring anybody in out on the floor before. But they were eager to bring people out on the floor afterwards. Now, like I say, this didn’t happen like somebody turning on a light switch. You have to work it. You can’t just go, “Yeah, I heard what they said.” You gotta try it. You gotta work it.
Crosby
Yeah. It probably, you know, only took a few months really for…
Roberson
It didn’t! Really! This is the honest to God truth. It didn’t take a month before things started steamrolling moving ahead. Processes started going quicker. Little gripes for fixed instantly. I mean, not every little petty thing. Some things, you know, I’d just tell guys, “Hey, man, come on. You know, you really want me go down there with that?” (Laughs). And they’d go, “Oh yeah, maybe not. But if I could just get this, you know.”
Crosby
Even that was a change, though, not just going and fighting about everything.
Roberson
Oh man, it was huge. It was a huge difference. Like I said we didn’t file many grievances after that. We’d have a meeting with someone and like I said before, that was something never would have happened before, but now we had the ability to be heard. We had the ability to hear. And if you don’t have communication, it’s a house divided and that just doesn’t work. It never has worked and it never will work. It will never have its full potential, if people don’t learn how to communicate.
Crosby
Well, Pat, I just really appreciate you being willing to tell this story to the world.
Roberson
Well, there’s one other thing I want to say.
Crosby
OK, cool.
Roberson
I don’t know if it effects everyone this way or not. I know it effected Cotton this way and I know it affected me this way. This was life changing for me. It made me a happier person. Because it bled over into my family. I remember my sister said, “You sound like you’ve been brainwashed.” (We both laughed). I laughed and said, “You know, that’s funny you should say that cause Cotton said, ‘Now don’t go out there and start talking to your family and friends about this, like they already understand it, because they’re gonna think you’ve been brainwashed (laughs)’.” And we laughed about it. And my sisters are both educators and lovely women and they smiled and they said, “You sound like you’ve been brainwashed, but I like this Pat (laughs).” I’ve started, you know, kind of dialing it back. Because when you first come out of the program, or at least me, when I first came out of the workshop, I was like, “Oh man. I’ve been waiting to hear this and it’s such a simple thing and man, why couldn’t I have figured this out on my own?” You know, I really felt like, “God, this has just help me figure out so many things. And it did. It helped me in my community. It helped me in my volunteerism, in my community. It bled over into my everyday life and it made it better. And it will make everybody’s life better if they will, if they will just learn these few little tools it takes to fix problems that seem like you will never fix. Everything can be fixed.
Crosby
Well, you know, I think maybe that’s a great note to end on. And again, it was a pleasure working with you at Texarkana.
Roberson
Well, you too, Gil, and I would highly advise any company, of any size, that has the means, to have y’all come in and work with them, with the people in that company. And if it doesn’t, change you for the better, I’ll buy you a coke.
Crosby
(Laughs). Or how about a cup of coffee?
Roberson
Or a cup of coffee (laughs).
Crosby
That’s great. OK, well, I don’t know, man. I think that’s pretty much a rap. Anything else you want to tell the world?
Roberson
Well. Love your country. Love your fellow Americans. Let’s all work together and make it a better place.
Crosby
Love it. Those are wise words from a wise man.
Roberson
Have a wonderful day, Gil.
Crosby
OK. You too. And so I’m just going to say to the audience the same thing to the audience. Have a wonderful day. Thank you for listening and take care.
Roberson
Take care buddy.
A T-group participant’s experience in their own words
Posted in Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Lewin, T-Groups
Tagged #LEWIN, OD, Organization Development, T-Groups
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Trouble…Right Here in OD City!
Oh we’ve got trouble!
Right here in OD city!
With a capital T,
that rhymes with C,
that stands for complexity!
Oh we’ve got trouble!
We’ve got terrible terrible trouble!
We’ve got to find a way to make OD relevant despite VUCA!
I’m talking about VUCA, don’t you understand?
That’s Volatility , Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (Oh my!)
Today’s problem’s are different don’t you know
You can’t rely on the OD methods of the past
There’s AI
Generations X, Y and Z
And above all else, complexity!
Friend, either you’re closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster Indicated by the presence of VUCA in the problems faced by contemporary OD
Well, ya got trouble my friend
Right here I say, trouble right in OD City
Why sure, I’m a Lewinian Certainly, mighty proud I say, I’m always mighty proud to say it I consider that the hours I spent studying Lewin and the other founders of OD were golden… Helped you cultivate horse sense and a cool head and a keen eye
Did you ever break and try to create a new cultural homeostasis
By involving the people who do the work and are facing the problems?
But just as I say it takes judgement, brains and maturity to acknowledge VUCA
As the dangerous threat that it is
I say that any fool
Can grab a flipchart and ask a work team to analyze their own problems and come up with their own solutions
And I call that reckless
The first big step on the road to disaster
I say, first, catching fish with help, and then catching their own fish, with out recognizing the tsunami they are in
… And the next thing you know your customers are trying to do their own thinking
And solve their own intergroup problems
Without understanding the desperate situation that VUCA represents
And that is why we need new models
So we can save them from themselves
And teach the next generation of OD professionals
And get that sales boost and thrill that comes with new
Lewin was fine in his day and age and all that but…
Like to see some cocky worker implementing their own solutions? Make your blood boil
Well I should say
Now friends, let me tell you what I mean
You got V, U, C, A,
Four different ways that the sky is falling
All packaged together and operating in one big scary acronym!
Ways that mark the difference between an expert and a rube With a capital “R” and that almost rhymes with “C” and that stands for complexity!
Now listen folks
I know you are the right kind of OD professionals
The kind that doesn’t make waves with the current direction of the field
If we don’t come up with new OD and new interpretations of the old
Here’s what’s gonna happen
All week long your OD City professionals will be fritterin’ away I say, your professionals will be fritterin’
Fritterin’ away their noontime, suppertime, choretime too
Doing Lewinian stuff such as
Working on the customer’s goals, involving the people who are facing the problems, and transferring skills
Never mind gettin’ expert analysis done
Never mind changing the structure
Never mind flattening the organization, getting rid of supervisors or changing their names
…because as everyone knows hierarchy is out of style old-fashioned trouble (trouble, trouble, trouble)
Never mind taking a survey and being the expert that tells everyone what it means and what to do
Or talking to management for the employees instead of helping them talk directly to each other
Or starting change wherever it emerges without alignment in the system
Never mind many of the trends of “new” OD
And that’s trouble
You got trouble, folks, right here in OD City,
trouble with a capital “T” And that rhymes with “C” and that stands for complexity!
… Trouble (oh, we got trouble) Right here in OD City (right here in OD City) With a capital “T” and that rhymes with “C” and that stands for complexity (that stands for complexity) We’ve surely got trouble (we’ve surely got trouble) Right here in OD City (right here) Gotta figure out a way to keep the young OD professionals enraptured after school (We gonna have trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble)… OD professionals, heed this warning before it’s too late Watch for the tell-tale signs of complexity Do you live in an age with new technology?
Did your customers go through a pandemic?
Are they trying to figure out hybrid work?
Are some of their employees from generation Z (trouble, trouble, trouble)
Do they meet on-line and from remote locations?
Is their workforce diverse?
Are certain words creeping into their conversation Words like, like “sus”? (Trouble, trouble, trouble) And “resonates’? (Trouble, trouble, trouble)
And “agency”? (Trouble, trouble, trouble)
… Well if so, my friends, you got trouble (oh we got trouble) Right here in OD City (right here in OD City) With a capital “T” and that rhymes with “C” and that stands for complexity (that stands for complexity) We’ve surely got trouble (we’ve surely got trouble) Right here in OD City (right here) Remember Volatility , Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity! (We’re gonna have trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble)… Oh, we got trouble, we’re in terrible, terrible trouble Addressing contemporary problems with old solutions is the devil’s tool (devil’s tool)
To believe Lewin’s old methods apply today you must be a fool! Oh, yes we got trouble, trouble, trouble (Oh yes we got trouble here, we got big, big trouble) With a “T” (with a capital “T”) Gotta rhyme it with “C” (gotta rhyme with “C”) And that stands for complexity (that stands for complexity)!
Adapted with great respect from “Ya Got Trouble” by Meredith Willson, a song from the Music Man, in case you don’t know. Disclaimer: My blog posts mostly explore leadership, change, and topics relevant to the general population. This one is satire directed at a tendency in the OD profession to hypothesis (without any real research) that the world is significantly different “today” for many reasons, “complexity” being a favorite claim, and thus solutions must be new fangled as well. I don’t buy it. If you know me you know I apply Kurt Lewin’s social science (even though it is new…less than a century old lol) for the practical reason that it is the most universally reliable method of individual, organizational, and social change that I am aware of, and I have explored many approaches, integrating some into my methods, and discarding others (even if they are popular). I am in conflict with much of the OD profession regarding these matters, and that is disappointing but ok.The Group is the Thing…in Leadership Coaching and Development.
Coaching has become an enormous industry. Almost all coaching occurs in one on one conversations. Out hypothesis, based on more than a combined century of work, is that development of leadership skills and habits best occurs in the context of the leader’s systemic relationships. Coaching that only occurs separate from actual work relationships are more prone to people who need help the most gaming the development system. Our process includes coaching the participant while they interact with their direct reports, the application of learning by the participate to a real work case study, facilitated one on ones between the student and their immediate supervisor, lots of T-group based experiential learning, and live feedback between the student and their peers throughout the course. If you only see a student privately and/or in a traditional class room setting they may be good talking the talk but weak at walking the walk back in the work system, which is where it really matters.
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Kids These Days – Retaining Generation Z
I wrote this in response to a post on LinkedIn about a 25 page report explaining how to retain young people. While times of course are changing I cant help but notice during my 64 years on this planet that adults throughout my lifetime have been lamenting the declining work ethic and morals of each next generation. This lament has been turned to a quasi-science in recent years, with experts studying and consulting on how to manage generation Z.
The answer my friend is blowing in the leadership model of Kurt Lewin (and the wind). The leader must provide enough structure (“Here’s what we are trying to accomplish,” “Here’s what I am looking for from you,”) and enough freedom (“What do you think we need to do?” “How would you do it?”). The right balance of freedom and structure will vary with each person and each situation. The leader and the employee might differ some on the right blend, and honest dialogue is the only way to work through the discomfort that is inevitable in a reporting relationship. For example, if I am mentoring you in doing OD, I may think you need more direct oversight than you think you need. That doesn’t mean that the tension is automatically bad and too be avoided. It’s inherent in any authority relationship. Both leader and employee would be wise to also do family of origin exploration of their reactions to and beliefs about authority. Since the reporting relationship in many ways recreates a parent-child relationship, it would be wise to do that work together. The less unconsciously reactive we are the more we can make reporting structures work. There are many ways to learn about conflict and reactivity, and to get better at owning one’s own reactions and more calmly working out differences. These are skills essential in any job and at any age.
Back to my response to the LinkedIn post: Too much leadership/structure stifles employees, too little creates chaos. The same is true (in reverse) of freedom. Too much freedom creates chaos, too little stifles employees. Find the right balance with each person and you will foster higher productivity and morale regardless of age. This requires thinking out loud with each other, and establishing mutual respect. You do that effectively and most people of any generation will respond to your leadership.
Posted in Generation Gap, Gilmore Crosby, Lewin
Tagged Authority, generationz, Leadership
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The 12 ODs of Christmas
12 podcasts casting, 11 fields unfreezing, 10 groups brainstorming, 9 Lewinians leaping, 8 groups a forming, 7 groups a storming, 6 groups a norming, 5 groups performing, 4 measurable goals, 3 OD professionals screwing in a lightbulb, 2 leaders self-differentiating, and an increase in morale and productivity! Happy Holidays!
Podcast #12! https://ascienceofchange.libsyn.com/a-conversation-with-kurt-lewins-grandson-michael-papanek
Posted in Lewin, Organization Development
Tagged Gil Crosby, Organization Development
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Lewin in a Nutshell: A Scientific Method of Change
My latest podcast! Everything you need to know about change! https://ascienceofchange.libsyn.com/lewin-in-a-nutshell-a-scientific-method-of-change
Posted in Change, Leadership, Lewin, Organization Development
Tagged Leadership, OD, Organization Development
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