Out of the Crisis.Org

[Louis Altazan]

In a previous post I stated that I started my Deming transformation with point one. My thought was, without a long-term focus, nothing else was likely to work. I think point eight, work to remove fear, is as important.

I believe there is fear in every organization and that it has a heavy cost. I don’t believe that anyone sets out to build fear into their organization. It tends to creep in as a result of the methods used. Once in place, it is often [mistakenly] seen as authority by management. For instance, the ability to hire and fire people at will. Management may see this as a sacred right.

I felt my authority depended on hiring and firing. Implied, if not expressed was, “If you don’t perform, I’ll get someone that will!” The employees were all too aware of this. They realized, their job depended on making the boss happy, or at least not making me unhappy. The job of the employee should have been helping the company meet its aim, by helping the client. Instead, it was placating the boss. This was particularly a problem as I didn’t have a clue what the aim of the company was.

Instead I would waste most of my time pouring over figures. Compare one client to another, one employee to another, counting daily sales. When I ran low on figures I would start comparing myself to my competitors and the rest of the trade. This too was fear. I didn’t know what I was doing and was scared others might realize this. I had to give the illusion of staying busy. I could ask the employees what to do, except the employees were too scared to tell me.

Fear did not disappear because I realized it existed.

1. Changing the conditions that brought it on helped.
   
2. Eliminating senseless reviews and comparisons helped.
   
3. Eliminating conditional pay schemes helped.
   
4. Not blaming others [who were to afraid to tell me better] for my lack of skill helped.
   
5. With such a boss, truly good employees do not stay long.
   
6. After considering the kind of boss I had been, I realized an apology was in order. I called everyone in and sincerely apologized for my ignorance. I also committed to change and invited everyone to hold me to that commitment.

Changing myself was perhaps the toughest part. Studying SPC helped a great deal. I started to see, employees were not creating the problems, they were delivering the problems. Problems largely created by me. It was foolish to fly into a rage at the messenger. Doing so also quite effectively prevented me from hearing about problems. Sort of a double whammy.

• In order to constantly improve an organization must cooperate.
  
• With fear there will be no true cooperation.
  
• With people’s income dependent on conditional schemes, there will be fear.
  
• Where there is fear there will be faked figures.
  
• Rating and ranking people does not help them.
  
• A true leader works to allow everyone to be the best they can be.

Fear in management is often insecurity, brought on by a lack of knowledge. Unfortunately, those that might provide the knowledge are scared to do so. Fear is best defeated with knowledge. Courage is not a lack of fear, it is taking needed action in spite of fear.

_________________
Louis Altazan
Owner/Manager AGCO Automotive Corporation
Baton Rouge, LA