Corrections or additions?
This article by Bart Jackson was prepared for the October 24, 2001
edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
When Pyramids Fall
Pyramids are impressive. But they house only the dead.
Despite timeless popularity, the corporate pyramid hierarchy, with
all its mazy passageways and ladders, stifles business communication
like a tomb. And the real marvel of the monument: all those folks
pulling hard in chorus on the same rope somehow petrifies into
formality
and routine.
For business leaders seeking to restimulate corporate arteries, the
Princeton Chamber is offering a seminar, “The Simpler Way:
Enhancing
Executive Skills” on Friday, October 26, at 8:30 a.m. at the
Nassau
Club. Stephen Barkley, executive vice president of Performance
Learning Systems in New Hope, speaks on innovative management
techniques
based on his quarter century of experience in business and educational
restructuring. Cost: $50. Call 609-520-1776. This event is one of
the Princeton Chamber’s bi-annual Leadership Seminars.
“Take a look at nature,” suggests Barkley. “Animals —
man included — respond to a crisis with energy, with teamwork,
and without hierarchy. When the flood waters gush through the levy,
everybody rallies, everybody fills sandbags, people naturally sort
themselves out according to abilities and resources. Nobody just
stands
on the bank and directs. What business has to do is bring that crisis
direction into the daily workplace.”
Exactly how leaders can engineer this less-than-simple change has
been a lifelong work for Barkley. Following a boyhood in Allentown,
Pennsylvania, Barkley earned a teaching degree at East Stroudsburg
University and moved to Hampton, New Jersey, where he taught
elementary
school. After 10 years of teaching, he learned the difficulty of
molding
children to what he considered to be petrified programs. In l980 he
joined New Hope’s infant Performance Learning Systems as its first
employee. The consulting firm began by redirecting the views of
educators,
and now also consults to businesses.
The company found that pace of technological change caused paralysis
in the old pyramidal pathways. The process of running ideas and needs
up to the top, and then waiting for a decision, just left many
companies
foundering as the pace of change accelerated.
Detroit offers a landmark example. One of the major auto parts plants
desperately needed a product change. By the time that need filtered
up to the top and the decision was mulled over, and trickled down;
by the time the employees were retrained and the new production line
installed, the product had become obsolete. Definitely, thought
Barclay,
it’s time for a change. Still, Barkley maintains his motto: “you
can not manage change.” Change happens on its own. You can fight
it, or better yet, create it. Exactly how business leaders may
manipulate
change for swifter communications is a thorough and ongoing task that
will shatter not only old walls, but old attitudes.
Information. Information has been and always will bepower.But using information to form a power base within a business provescounterproductive in the extreme. Nothing should be on a need-to-knowbasis. Barkley suggests rather that firms create an intranet structurewhere information flows continuously across department lines.Computersshould literally link the folks in sales with “those oddpeople”over in design. Maintenance and administration should read eachother’smissives and thus be connected for instant input. And it becomes theleaders’ job to ever seek out that instant input.Relationships. Relationships, insists Barkley, must befostered that initially involve everyone in the decision-makingprocess,then secondly spread the word, making each employee aware of thecompany’sfocus. This involves some sledge hammering of old and cherishedchannels.”Meetings should mix and match people from, say engineering andsales,” says Barkley. “Find out what changes are requiredto make the product more salable.” By the same token, heencouragesthe technical people, when giving a seminar on the latest in-plantsoftware to instruct in interspersed groups, blending production,financial, and sales — rather than one department at a time.Sharp leaders aim to bond their employees beyond the workplace. Ahost of both engineered and informal methods can unite workers, butthe very best, Barkley says, is outside training. “The next timethe technical boys head off to some outside workshop, find a fewinterestedfolks from production or administration to accompany them,” headvises. “Later they will naturally unite within theworkplace.”Vision. All of this interworking within your own corporatehive ideally leads to a vision — an agreed upon, pervasive ideaof what one’s own firm is striving to achieve. “Here we goagain,”Those who wake up and make this maxim a reality in their own shopmay find some very solid benefits. The maintenance man faced witha decision no longer stops work and runs it up the flag pole. Instead,he makes his own decision based on his firm’s focus. The entireattitudeof “It’s not my job”also disappears.This whole Barkley communication method entails a democraticmotivationsystem. Employees are rewarded as they become further involved withthe overall goal. This change evolves as the company’s hierarchyflattensand success becomes redefined. Since decisions are no longer madeby the few from above, but by every employee, at every level, howhigh you climb up the ladder, how many new promotions into ever moreairy and elite ranks will become irrelevant. The individual takespride in his job, not in his standing. Motivation swells from theproduct, rather than competitive reward.After a massive survey, USA Today in its May 10 issue announced thatall the traditional reward systems have proved useless. “It’seasy to understand,” explains Barkley. “If you want to giveyour top two salesmen a trip to Hawaii as a perk, fine. But don’tdelude yourself into thinking they became the top two salesmen becauseyou dangled the trip as a carrot. Odds are those two would be yourtop salespeople no matter what you did.”When Performance Learning System began spreading to educators itsgospel of continuing, integrated decision-making 30 years ago, itwas probably new. To be honest, it seems a little shopworn now.However,the business community has for decades been absorbing this messagelike a lead sponge. Some gospels take time to catch on. No, the creedis a good one. It is merely falling on ears clogged with the soundof ancient routine.— Bart JacksonNext StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
