Chapter 5
All for One and One for All
Many hands, and hearts, and minds generally contribute to anyone’s notable achievements.23
Walt Disney
He was renowned for his creativity and superior crafting ability and was successful beyond compare, yet even the great Walt Disney did not presume to be able to accomplish his goals without the contributions of a well-coordinated group working alongside him. “I don’t propose to be an authority on anything at all,” he once explained. “I follow the opinions of ordinary people I meet, and I take pride in the close-knit teamwork of my organization.”24
That Walt Disney so readily acknowledged the value of collaboration is a measure of his greatness—or perhaps a cause of it. In any event, his belief in the team concept was such that he promoted it both in his films and throughout his company. In fact, teamwork is a crucial element underpinning the Disney “be our guest” philosophy. To wit, exceeding guests’ expectations requires a well-rehearsed cast, with every member playing a significant role.
In the area of feature animation, The Walt Disney Company has traditionally tapped the collective power of its workforce by using a long-standing process for determining the value of various concepts for production. As a first step, the senior leaders discuss ideas from several sources to decide which to pursue.
As the project moves along, directors, art directors, and the head of background production all join in the give-and-take of planning. The dialogue eventually produces a consensus, and company insiders insist that no one ever asserts an attitude of possessiveness. The teamwork continues throughout the long process of animation, camera work, adding sound, and editing until, at last, the film is ready for release.
References to teamwork also are sprinkled throughout Disney films, but none better illustrates Walt’s belief in the value of collaboration than Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. For many of us, those seven distinctive little fellows—Happy, Sleepy, Doc, Bashful, Sneezy (originally named Jumpy), Grumpy, and Dopey—are childhood friends. Each was carefully drawn with his own distinguishing characteristics, yet we remember them first and foremost as a team, always going off to work each morning whistling a happy tune. Walt purposely made the notion of cooperative endeavor an integral part of that script, with the dwarfs illustrating how different talents and personalities can be brought together to accomplish shared goals.
Many of the companies we work with have become convinced, like Walt Disney, that it takes a multifunctional team to produce the best possible show. They are using teams in their everyday operations and deriving benefits—such as enhanced problem solving—that help to ensure long-term success. Look to these examples to guide your organization in tapping the latent power of its collective wisdom.
The Signals of a Good Leader
In our seminars, we can’t seem to stress enough how critical leadership is in producing a healthy corporate culture where teams can flourish.
The kind of leadership required in the best of cultures has been put in a nutshell by the late Edward R. Murrow, one of the world’s most credible broadcasters, whose story was dramatized in the movie Good Night, and Good Luck, which was nominated for six Academy Awards. He said, “To be persuasive, we must be believable. To be believable we must be credible. And to be credible we must be truthful.” Leaders have to earn their credibility through action and through example. The only effective communication—the only reality—is performance. And leaders must perform in order to earn trust, and before a sense of common team purpose can emerge.
Great leaders such as Isadore Sharp of Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts demonstrate through their actions how maintaining a competitive edge in business can only be accomplished by generating wealth through human resources, not through physical assets.
In the 1990s, Isadore sought an opportunity to break into the Atlanta hotel market. Finally, in March of 1997 he got his wish and took over management of the Ritz Carlton in midtown, a 40-year old hotel with a well-known history of changing ownership, contract employees, and perpetual difficulties.
During the week prior to the legal agreement’s becoming effective, Isadore brought in an experienced general manager from another Four Seasons property to help brainstorm ideas for creating a smooth transition for the hotel’s existing employees. The GM knew that in his hands lay the responsibility for establishing credibility with these employees who were fearful of how the change of management would affect them in the long term. The agreement became effective at midnight, and Four Seasons management was on board for a mere six hours prior to the 6 a.m. arrival of first-shift employees. The GM and his leadership team had decided they had only one chance to set a tone of believability in the value of the team. Their goal was to treat their new team members as though they were coming home to a place that was safe and secure. They needed to paint the picture of a new culture before the employees entered the building that morning. And paint they did. At 12:01 a.m., a painting contractor began to transform the “back of the house” (employee break rooms and locker rooms, or the “heart” of the house in Four Seasons terms) from a drab off-stage area that guests never see, to a bright freshly painted employee lounge rivaling the on-stage guest areas. The transformation was more than just a fresh coat of paint, however. New uniforms awaited the arriving employees, as well as steak and eggs cooked by the hotel chefs. Senior staff served breakfast, and then the GM welcomed them to their new home at Four Seasons.
Nurturing the staff is Golden Rule leadership in action. The leaders of Four Seasons, from Isadore to the GM to the management team, believe that at the end of every day, it is the staff that will either make or break them. “Issy said the front doorman contributes as much as the GM in any hotel—maybe more,” remarked Doug Ludwig, former CFO and executive vice president, during our interview with him at Four Seasons corporate office in Toronto.25
Such humility and attitude of service are rarely more evident than in the leadership style of the management team of Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts. In the beginning, it’s all about the signals a leader sends. It’s the actions of the leader that team members see and learn to trust or distrust, the very same actions that cause employees to learn to either love or hate their jobs. Four Seasons leadership is the paramount model for creating healthy teams who achieve great success.
A Common Focus Is Essential
For many of us, the word team conjures up images of a football field or memories of the Little League games we played during our school years. In sports, teams have always aroused emotions of intense loyalty and enthusiastic support. By adopting the team concept, we can transport this loyalty, enthusiasm, and commitment associated with the playing field to the business arena. What’s more, companies find that when management successfully brings together a diverse, multitalented group of employees to work together in a complementary fashion, the team members both challenge and support one another in a winning synergy that constantly improves the organization.
But to back up a bit, it’s important to lay the preliminary groundwork for successful teaming—namely, to instill in the team a shared sense of purpose and commitment.
At Disney, team commitment is fostered in many ways, including the storytelling technique described in Chapter 2. And on movie projects, where teamwork is essential, Disney deviates from the norm in that collaboration is not just a one-time thing, with the participants gathered for one particular film. Many of the teammates are staff members who have worked together before. This is especially true when it comes to animated films, which demand special, well-honed skills. Most important, all the participants have been trained in Disney traditions. Knowing exactly what is expected of them and what the company stands for further strengthens the team spirit.
Besides in-house training, another way to develop a common focus is through a mission statement. A written statement of a team’s mission and goals is a necessity to communicate the direction to all team members.
Teams can be crippled by the corporate policy manual, which often distracts them from accomplishing their mission. Any new employee—and many well-seasoned ones—would have trouble absorbing all the policy regulations that these weighty tomes contain. Moreover, burying any kind of mission statement inside what is bound to be a deadly dull recitation of rules and regulations virtually guarantees that it will be overlooked or quickly forgotten.
Not long ago, we were chatting about policy manuals with a well-known business leader who told us the following story. Years ago, as a new, young department head, he was approached by an old-timer who offered to get him a copy of the company’s newly prepared, 150-page policy manual. The young man thanked him, weighed the policy statement book in his right hand, and then sat down at his typewriter and came up with a new version. It read: “Work hard, be clever, have fun, use good judgment.” In effect, this insightful new employee reduced 150 pages of ponderous prose to a mere nine words that said pretty much the same thing.
We recommend that our clients follow his lead and keep brevity and clarity in mind when setting policy. Your goal should be to enable the kind of creative environment in which problems are solved, productivity is increased, and teams are empowered. Teams that are burdened by excessive rules and procedures are likely to spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with internal functional issues and not solving customer problems. Creativity will most certainly be stifled.
Bringing the Mission to Life
The best way to give a mission statement meaning is to establish multifunctional teams to carry out the organizational values. Many teams manage to craft mission statements that sound wonderful, but as we mentioned in the preceding chapter, they are often little more than an exercise with no real substance. When we begin working with teams, we point out that the statements are only as good as their execution.
Once a team’s mission is developed, and all members have confirmed their buy-in, the team can solve problems more quickly and institute changes more effectively than can a handful of loners working on their own. As we have witnessed with our clients, bringing people together in cross-functional teams often sparks a flurry of new ideas that, in turn, produce solutions to problems. Because such teams constantly draw on the diverse experiences and opinions of a number of people from across the organization, they are better able to look at the company as a whole and suggest integrated product, service, and process improvements. In short, multifunctional teams are much better suited to rethinking the old and leading the way to the new.
In general, an organization’s top management must formally lay the groundwork and provide the impetus for a team-based structure, although we have run across teams that seem to form spontaneously. Such an example drew our attention recently at an East Coast utility.
We have done consulting work for many utility companies, usually auditing on a management level. In the process, we look at the cost of materials and how trucks are purchased. Used sometimes in maintenance work, sometimes in an emergency, utility trucks are a familiar sight on suburban streets and country roads. They constitute a major investment for utility companies. Traditionally, whether the buying is done by a group in the corporate structure or, as sometimes happens, by a special purchasing group, the responsibility has always rested in the hands of white-collar executive personnel. The work crews that operate from the trucks and the people who drive and maintain them have nothing to do with acquiring them.
At our East Coast client, the vice president in charge of materials was new on the job, having spent many years as a purchasing manager for an airline company. When we asked him how he went about buying needed supplies, his honesty and candor were both refreshing and instructive. He readily admitted that he didn’t know anything about utility trucks, even though he was charged with buying hundreds of them. So what did he do?
“I got a group of line workers together,” he said, “the people who were using the trucks, plus people from purchasing and an accountant, and I said to them, ‘Go into a room and don’t come out until you can give me the specs for a truck.’ And you know what? We saved a ton of money, and for the first time ever, the line workers were really pleased with equipment we got for them.”
Contrast that story with one we heard from a group of line workers at another utility. The purchasing department bought trucks without any consultation with line workers, who were forced to come up with their own solution: “When we get a new truck in,” they told us, “we cut things off of it and weld things onto it. In two or three weeks, we have that truck the way we want it.”
Innovative? Absolutely. Efficient? No way! But this is exactly the kind of thing that happens when management is wedded to the oft-heard principle, “That’s the way we’ve always done things here.” Through either hubris or inertia, outmoded and costly methods of operation remain in place year after year, leader after leader.
But this need not be so. Any manager can imitate the innovative vice president at the first utility who organized a multifunctional group of people to work together to find the best possible solution to a problem. Rather than following an inefficient and imprudent practice, however “standard,” and ordering a fleet of expensive trucks or some other high-priced item, a manager can take the initiative to change any wrongheaded procedure. But taking that initiative often means bringing the front-line people into the process, people who know what is needed, as in the case of the utility that acquired trucks that met workers’ needs. At the same time, this team saved the company a lot of money, planning well in advance of the purchase and coming in well under budget.
When properly structured, teams can improve everything from the bottom line to employee satisfaction with the job. In fact, much of the research we see suggests that in a tight market for the top-notch recruits in technology, production, and other fields that demand both high intelligence and high levels of skills, people are attracted to jobs with the most expansive descriptions and opportunities for advancement. Salary is important, to be sure, but it is often not the first criterion that the best people have in mind when they begin evaluating job possibilities or offers. As R. S. Dreyer stated in an article for Supervision magazine, people work not only for the salary, but also “for the satisfaction they derive from accomplishment. They work to be part of a team … [and] for the feeling of pride they get out of being employed by a fine organization.”
In our work with the Mead Johnson Nutritional Division of Bristol-Myers Squibb, for example, we found confirmation of the greater sense of pride people derive from working as members of a successful team. One line attendant, a production line employee whose job it is to make sure that the line doesn’t jam up, told us her story about working at a plant that produces infant formula. This employee was responsible for picking up overturned bottles. It’s a bit like being a traffic cop, except that watching the line all day can be monotonous and boring. When she was put on a team, however, her whole attitude about the job changed.
Here’s how she explained it: “Before I joined the team, I was always proud to say that I worked for Bristol-Myers, but when asked what my specific job was, I usually changed the subject. The truth was that I was embarrassed to say I was a line attendant. Now it’s different; I tell anyone who asks that I’m a member of a team that is responsible for making the best quality product at the most affordable cost for mothers and babies throughout the world.”
No longer just a lone worker in a monotonous job, this woman became part of a multifunctional team that met with management in an effort to improve quality and productivity. Having been made to feel that her work and her opinions mattered, she was able to take pride in her new role and to exhibit striking enthusiasm, loyalty, and commitment to the team.
Toppling Hierarchical Barriers
Although no organization can function without a certain degree of hierarchy (someone must be in charge), every company should look at how well its hierarchy performs and periodically question its purpose. Some stratification is vital to the smooth functioning of any business, but too much can, and probably will, kill initiative, smother innovation, and lead to a deadening of the spirit throughout the organization.
Consider organizing teams around processes. If visitors were to have visited EPCOT’s METLife exhibit several years ago, they would have come in contact with many different departments: merchandising, food service, attractions, maintenance, and horticulture. To the guest, the barriers to providing service were invisible. But cast members recognized problems in delivering the great service we have come to expect. For example, whose job was it to clean up the Body Wars attraction if someone got sick? Was it maintenance or attractions? So they decided to organize around the process. Everyone associated with the attraction now is a member of one team. Their job is to make sure the guest has a pleasant and memorable experience. The whole team is focused on the guest experience and not on who is responsible for what.
Restructuring an organization’s operations around teams goes a long way toward breaking down rigid managerial barriers. What results is a win-win situation. Lower-level employees feel empowered when they are encouraged to voice opinions and make suggestions in a group that includes a manager. In turn, the organization derives the enormous benefit of being able to draw from a valuable source of new ideas and knowledge. The hierarchy remains, but the distance between managers and employees is diminished.
The Walt Disney Company well understands that worthwhile suggestions can be lost because employees will hesitate to make them in a normal hierarchical business atmosphere. That’s why the Gong Show exists. But in addition to giving employees specific venues for making suggestions, top Disney executives go out of their way to solicit advice from staff members, those front-line people who hear guests’ comments and see their reactions.
In 1994, for example, Michael Eisner was walking through an EPCOT computer technology exhibit called “Innoventions.” It was anything but innovative. There was nothing particularly imaginative or inspiring about the technology displays, and the CEO was not pleased with it. So he stopped and asked some of the greeters at the exhibit if they had any ideas about how to liven it up. Told that another cast member by the name of Mike Goames talked a lot about what needed to be done to brighten up the place, the CEO approached him to ask for some ideas. Impressed by what Goames had to say, Eisner asked him to detail his suggestions in a memo. (Goames suggested that the exhibit should look more like a technical trade fair, showcasing new technologies and experimental things like wrist telephones.)
We recently told this story about Eisner and Goames at a public seminar where two employees of the local Disney retail store were in attendance. After the seminar, they approached us and one of them, the store manager, remarked, “Michael Eisner has never been in our store. But if he ever does visit, I really believe that he would want to hear our ideas. That’s just the culture at Disney. The company respects the ideas from all cast members, regardless of their level in the organization.” By most accounts, Michael Eisner once believed in the power of soliciting input from all levels of the organization.
Few companies seem willing or able to trust and empower employees to quite the extent we have witnessed at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. The Disney approach stems, we believe, from a long history of teamwork and cooperation between management and employees that dates back to the way Walt managed the company in the early days. In fact, the Goames incident is reminiscent of the story recounted in the opening chapter in which Walt added fireflies to his Disneyland Pirates of the Caribbean attraction in response to the suggestion of a construction worker at the park.
An astonishing indication of the depth of employee trust and empowerment at Disney is the fact that its customer service representatives, the people who take the tickets at the theme park entrances, have $500,000 in tickets and cash at their disposal to give out to guests who lose or forget their tickets, run out of money with which to get home, or encounter any other problem that merits attention. That’s an extraordinary sum of money to place at the discretion of employees, but Disney obviously trusts these empowered cast members to use sound judgment.
What’s more, it’s noteworthy because of what it says about how Disney has eliminated turf barriers. How many accounting departments would allow a front-line worker to have such power and latitude? The point is that at The Walt Disney Company, no single department calls the shots for any other.
In most organizations, people are often so hung up on the rules and regulations in their policy manuals that they naturally feel unempowered. This is certainly not true in the ranks of Disney or Nordstrom’s. In fact, the entire contents of Nordstrom’s Department Stores policy manual reads, “Use your own best judgment at all times.” Your company can’t be focused on the Believe principle if you are plowing through reams of policy prose. Less policy—as long as it’s good policy—brings good results. As we stated in our book Leading at the Speed of Change: Using New Economy Rules to Invigorate Old Economy Companies, “policy wonks finish last.”
Factors in Successful Team Building
Not every team experience is going to be a success, of course. There are those who complain that when they introduced the team concept in their companies, it didn’t work. But when the team approach fails, there is usually a good reason for it.
To begin with, setting up teams is not always easy. Much depends on the selection of a leader, who will play a pivotal role in determining the results. This individual has an enormous responsibility to set the tone for the team, both through personal attributes and through the choice of individual team members. He or she must be capable of exercising firm and fair leadership that respects each member’s personal values and understands the role each individual plays. A successful leader will establish and manage a climate that encourages creativity while keeping team members on track to accomplish assigned goals. Finding such a person takes thoughtful consideration, but we’ve yet to encounter a company without qualified candidates.
The composition of the rest of the team is a major factor in its success or failure as well. You must first determine all the stakeholders on a particular project, then move to find the best representative of each of the needed skill sets. And as basic as it sounds, we always urge our clients to consider the personalities of potential members. Inveterate pessimists should be avoided. Management must also make sure to include detail-oriented people as well as big-picture thinkers. You don’t want to end up with a group in which everyone looks at the end result but no one is paying attention to all the little things that will make it happen. Diversity is important, but in the end, it’s all about synergy, balance, and raising the bar for one another.
How does a leader create an environment in which team members can thrive? First of all, he or she must encourage the free flow of ideas by letting team members know that no idea is too ridiculous. It stands to reason that when innovation is the goal, radical premises are to be encouraged, not squelched. Group discussion and analysis can often transform a seemingly off-the-wall notion into a sensible and usable tool.
Group discussion can also turn an entire team around if it’s heading off in a wrong direction, especially if the team leader loses touch with the team and its problems. Such is the case of a person we’ll call John, one of 24 team leaders at a manufacturing company we worked with. John’s team always came in last among the other 23 teams, and its members could never hit performance targets quite so well as their counterparts. At one no-holds-barred session we attended, one woman broke down in tears when she addressed John: “You and Steve (the plant’s general manager) are forcing us to be a team, and we don’t want to be.”
We had seen enough of these kinds of sessions to know that seldom do the members of a group collectively decide that they don’t want to be a team, even if they are aware that it takes a long time and effort to develop that synergy. No, there were other issues here that needed to be surfaced.
As both the team leader and an individual, John demonstrated tremendous courage in his willingness to listen to complaints and suggestions in such a public forum as this session presented. Encouraged to speak their minds, team members expressed their anger about John’s lack of support and direction and his absence in spirit when the team hit a wall and needed a boost to overcome a problem. John sat quietly, taking notes and listening intently.
After months of open communication and repairing some team damage, positive results emerged. The team, with John on board, decided to meet twice a week to discuss issues and to solve problems that were plaguing their internal customers. Gradually the gloom that hung over the entire team began to lift as their positive energy increased. Still the leader, John had become a respected leader in the eyes of his fellow team members.
Over the next two years, this team grew both emotionally and professionally. Completing their next round of self-observations, they found that they had indeed become a team rather than a collection of individuals wearing the same logos on their shirts. From top management to shop floor employees, everyone saw the difference both in attitude and in performance. As for John, his new leadership style received kudos from people inside and outside the plant, and within one year he was promoted to the corporate office—not bad for a guy who just a year or so earlier had reduced some of his team members to tears. Now those same team members were singing a different song, praising not only John’s success but also their own for the progress they had made as a team.
When we help to bring together members for a new team, we stress the importance of the individuals functioning as a cohesive unit from the outset. They must not think of themselves as a committee, with one person representing marketing, another there to protect the interests of the purchasing department, and so on. Instead of someone saying, “Well, I’ve done my design piece,” or “I’ve given my financial statement,” and then sitting back to wait for someone else to produce the deliverable, the entire team must ask, “How can we all do this together?”
To foster the necessary cooperative attitude and to increase productivity, we emphasize the necessity of bringing teams together to work in a central location, a process known as co-locating. Walt Disney often referred to these locations as “planning centers,” and his company has found that its people are much more efficient and willing to take the initiative when they can discuss a problem or ask questions of someone sitting nearby. Brainstorming sessions have a way of happening spontaneously under co-located conditions.
Back in the 1970s, MIT Sloan professor Thomas J. Allen, Jr., who taught managerial psychology for nearly four decades, conducted research on the relationship between distance and frequency of communication in the workplace. For six months, Allen examined the communication patterns among 512 employees in seven organizations. He found that at a distance of 30 feet or less, the quality of communication is five times better than it is at a distance of 100 feet. Allen’s research also showed that beyond 100 feet, distance is immaterial because communication is simply ineffective—period. In other words, ease of communication is largely dependent on physical location.26
Even before we saw this scientific study, we had reached a similar conclusion from our own experience. When questions need to be asked or issues discussed, proximity enables interaction. It was with the idea of bringing people together to facilitate communication and improve production that Chrysler began in 1990 a five-year plan to redesign its engineering facilities at a cost of $1 billion. Bringing together all major engineering functions into one facility, this physical reorganization contributed substantially to the revival of the company.27
But a word of warning: We have seen many companies move their people into open workspaces on the mistaken assumption that they have then created a team. When nothing constructive emerges from this arrangement, they disband the so-called team and label it a failure. They have misunderstood the purpose of co-locating. The open workspace does not, in itself, create a team. It is merely a tool that is used to reinforce the team concept. To be successful, a team must also have a mission and goal and be dedicated to fostering the progress of that goal. As on the playing field, the team in a manufacturing plant, an office, or corporate headquarters has to work as a unit, not a collection of individual efforts, no matter what stars you recruit for the key positions. The greatest third baseman, running back, or point guard in the world cannot make a group of people into a “team.” That comes only with leadership and commitment to a goal that everyone agrees is worth pursuing,
It almost goes without saying that some type of reward system should be in place to recognize superior performance. However, most managers we encounter feel that a little bit of healthy individual competition is as important, if not more important, than teamwork. They really believe competition is good for the organization and will even boost productivity. Most of us have been encouraged since we were very young to compete with one another in school, as well as in sports. People rationalize that a competitive spirit is a simple fact of human nature.
Alfie Kohn, author of No Contest: The Case Against Competition, has spent more than a decade reviewing the effects of competition and cooperation in hundreds of organizations. His conclusion is quite clear: “Superior performance not only does not require competition; it seems to require its absence.”28 David and Roger Johnson of the University of Minnesota report the following results from an educational environment study: 173 studies found that cooperation promotes higher achievement than competition or independent efforts, whereas 13 studies found that competition promotes higher achievement. Another 78 studies found no significant statistical difference.29
Red Auerbach, the indefatigable coach of the Boston Celtics, who won 16 NBA championships under his direction, never kept individual statistics on his players. Hubie Brown, the basketball commentator and former coach, remembers the Celtic style that Auerbach helped create: “Red knew how to push the right button on each guy to get him to be subservient to the team. … The Celtics understood the maxim, ‘There is no I in team.’”30
The benefits of a team reward system as opposed to a competitive one are so compelling that even in a competitive society we must notice. Everyone benefits from feeling appreciated, and team rewards are an excellent way to encourage the hoped-for sense of community and cohesiveness among team members.
In our work with the global team at Whirlpool, we challenged the organization to weight the reward system more heavily toward team performance instead of individual performance. We believe that when teams achieve exceptional results, appropriate bonuses and pay raises should go to the entire team, not just to certain people that the organization judges to be key contributors. Anything else undermines the entire structure of effective teamwork. If everyone is truly working together toward a common goal, then everyone should be rewarded equally.
In the case of Whirlpool, the global team leader was forced to go to bat for the team to ensure equal recognition. He argued that the combined efforts of each and every team member made his group one of the top-rated performers in the entire company. Furthermore, he insisted on equality, and he offered to give up his own personal bonus to get it.
This leader exhibited exceptional integrity and commitment in his battle to secure the proper recognition for his team mates, but it’s not always necessary to go to such great lengths to reward team members. In fact, rewards don’t have to be in the form of money and prizes. A reward can be something as simple as a pizza party over the lunch hour. In some cases, we’ve worked with executives who chose to host a barbecue, actually cooking the burgers and hot dogs and serving the team themselves. A personal effort is a particularly effective way of showing appreciation. As Dr. Bill Cross of Mead Johnson believed, “I think that [teamwork] is making the workplace more relaxed, and work ought to be fun, if you can use that term. And we are trying to make work fun and it is succeeding to a large extent.”31
We also encourage teams to develop their own celebrations. When management is comfortable encouraging this—and certainly not all management can do it—team members gain an added sense of empowerment. They can say, “This is really our team, so let’s decide together how we want to celebrate.” But whether it’s a function of management or of the team itself, the important thing is to plan at the beginning for some type of rewards as team members reach and exceed their goals.
George Zimmer learned the value of celebrations during his college fraternity years in the 1960s by attending coed weekend parties and playing ball on the lawn of Washington University in St. Louis. Adding comedic flavor to the whole experience was fraternity brother Harold Ramis, who cowrote the hilariously funny movie classic Animal House. Released in 1978 by National Lampoon, Animal House starred the late John Belushi, one of the brightest stars of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” and launched National Lampoon as the dynamo comedy machine of the 1970s. The movie’s outrageous story is laced with just about everything that flies in the face of conservative, traditional rules, from beer bashes to toga parties and blaring music.
From the very beginning, George’s goal for his own company was to incorporate fun (without the raunchy antics) into an annual event, now known as the notorious Men’s Wearhouse Christmas Party. Each year, from early November through the third week of December, in all three company divisions, employees don their finest apparel and head for the grand ballroom of a local hotel where a tuxedo-clad George Zimmer has staged one of the flashiest annual events in corporate history. Everything has been meticulously orchestrated for the elegant soireé, which costs the company nearly 2 million dollars a year. A company tractor-trailer travels across the United States delivering the sound and light systems and party favors to every single venue. There are approximately 50 parties in all, each thrown on only weekend nights. “It’s wild,” George Zimmer told us. “We even have our own company DJ who works full-time. I consider this to be the best party I go to all year.”32
Beyond the basic premise of rewarding employees for a year of enduring tough retail hours and delivering unparalleled service, the parties are in many respects a celebration of the multiracial, multicultural flavor of Men’s Wearhouse. “This melting pot of humanity on the dance floor gives you a sense that we could get it together on planet earth,” says George.
The much-anticipated Annual Awards celebration takes place at the end of the evening when individuals and teams are rewarded for their performance and may receive the coveted Aloha Award, a long-standing symbol of success at Men’s Wearhouse. Having traveled to Hawaii for years, George Zimmer knew that most of his employees could not afford to vacation in this American paradise, so every year he rewards employee performance with over 100 marvelous vacations. The rules are few. No one may win the Aloha Award more than once, and no one can win it during the first year of employment. The Aloha Award is based on a demonstrated commitment to making Men’s Wearhouse one’s career. It isn’t unusual for six people at each of these parties to nab the award, which brings a fabulous vacation for two to Hawaii or, nowadays, even Europe or the Caribbean.
“It all comes down to being able to get spirit and enthusiasm from people,” remarks George. “It’s impossible to measure, so it’s been overlooked in business. Enjoying life and celebrating are needed to be enthusiastic about what you are doing 40 hours a week.”
Concrete Results
Teams have a variety of roles and potential uses. We have set them up to examine customer complaints and determine their root causes. We have structured teams around process reengineering. We have asked outside suppliers to come and join in discussions about partnering possibilities in purchasing, engineering, and manufacturing functions. We have created steering teams whose role is to oversee the whole team process.
Teams can be set up for a specific, one-time goal, of course, but we always suggest that they continue to function on an ongoing basis after they have fulfilled their primary purpose. Even though the group will probably meet for only about an hour a week, the proper harnessing of this collective energy can produce worthwhile results.
At Lensing Wholesale, we helped set up teams that have functioned continuaously since 1993. The steering team, made up of the owners of the company, sponsors new teams as different needs arise. Some of the teams are issue- and process-oriented, but most are natural work teams that follow organizational lines and take care of specific work problems.
The adoption of the team system has made a concrete difference at Lensing, in its relations not only with suppliers and customers but also with employees, who now feel empowered to voice their opinions when they believe that a process can be changed for the better.
One of the managers, Donnie Montgomery, started his career at Lensing by working as a handler for one of the company’s products, Pella Windows. Recognizing this warehouse worker’s potential, his supervisor, Mike O’Donohue, proposed him for the manager’s job when the previous manager left. Mike initially had a difficult time persuading the company president that Donnie was up to the task. It was, after all, a big jump from handler to manager. But Mike’s foresight proved to be absolutely on target.
We met Donnie when the company sent him to us for training as a team leader. It seems that not only had he performed superbly on a day-to-day basis, but also working in a team setting had encouraged him to develop an innovative new trucking schedule. It was this initiative that had so impressed management.
Illinois Power, another of our clients that adopted a team-based structure, also has witnessed results worth noting. After the utility executives decided to introduce total quality management, we helped to set up some 475 teams that brought more than 80 percent of the workforce into the decision-making process. The ideas that emerged from these teams played a significant part in the changed management effort. The teams submitted more than 2,500 suggestions to save money or increase revenue, which, when implemented, produced net savings of more than $18 million per year! Teams also came up with nearly 3,000 ideas for improving the work process or customer service.
Teams have taken on very specific functions at the Mead Johnson Nutritional Division of Bristol-Myers Squibb. Initially, 55 teams were organized, of which 7 were process teams, 10 dealt with issues, 32 were natural work groups, 5 were set up as steering teams, and 1 was to be a catchall for any special issues that came up.
At the start, the unit known as the Track Team established its purpose and its goals: “Our mission is to improve the cycle time involved with tracing and expediting, to increase the quality of the response, and to assure our customers that Mead Johnson provides a reliable service.”
Tracing and expediting were handled by different departments, so the team began its work by making flow charts of the process used in dealing with customers’ orders. The team discovered that the company had received 2,267 requests to trace an order in the previous year, and that each request had taken more than a half-hour to complete. In the same year, 3,117 orders had to be expedited.
The team also surveyed customers to ascertain their expectations and problems and to hear their suggestions or criticisms. This information was then coordinated on a flow chart, which enabled the team to change the functions of various departments.
Participants recounted instances of needless bureaucratic paper shuffling stemming from the fact that the tracing and expediting system was managed by various departments. When a customer called to ask for information about the status of an order, for example, the request went from department to department, requiring that time be spent filling out multiple tracer forms and resulting in the frequent need to request information more than once.
The team remedied the system’s shortcomings by allowing the relevant departments to do their own tracing with private carriers, which saved the company thousands of dollars annually. After investigating true transit times of orders, the team further determined that expediting was unnecessary because regular carriers already offered customers the quickest possible transit time. The team decided that, except in the case of a special customer request, normal order-taking procedures would be substituted for formerly expedited shipments. The benefits accruing from this reform added up to about 1,140 hours and additional savings.
Deliveries that previously would have gone out on Saturdays by Federal Express were eliminated. The team also suggested that the paperwork on tracer forms be omitted since the information was now stored in a computer. All in all, the team’s recommendations saved the company thousands of dollars a year.
A summary at the close of the Track Team’s report underscored the advantages of implementing change through teamwork:
This experience has opened the eyes of some non-believers and has confirmed to others that this process and new environment is possible and will achieve success. With the proper guidance through training and experience, a new culture of team building closely associated with trust within the ranks will soon become the norm instead of the exception.33
Trust is at the core of the value system of any organization that expects to equip anyone on its payroll at any level and at any time to solve customer problems. Trust is the interpersonal principle that needs to be in alignment with the personal, managerial, and organizational levels in a progressive culture.
Trust cannot exist without people themselves being trustworthy. They must share the values and possess the skills needed to meet and exceed customer expectations. If you want your organization to be truly customer-driven, you must give your employees control in assisting each and every customer they serve. In most environments, however, only certain individuals are entrusted and empowered to this degree.
As Father Carl, former general manager of Abbey Press, put it,
We are definitely talking more about the customer here at Abbey Press. Our teams are more focused on how to work better together making the best use of their time to try to get something done. They also do a good job of taking assignments away from meetings and working independently or in smaller teams to expedite the process of improving the overall business processes. These are all real powerful benefits.
A Collective Effort or an Effort at Collecting?
Father Carl’s is a positive appraisal to be sure, and one that confirms our belief in the power of teams. Yet we would be remiss if we did not recognize that some companies have had mixed results with teams. The synergy just isn’t developed, or there may be a lack of energy and inspiration. In fact, some situations simply aren’t suited to the team concept at all. These drawbacks raise the danger that cynicism will creep in and overshadow the importance and potential value of teams.
Thus, it’s important to recognize that when teams work well, they are spectacularly successful in solving problems and delivering results quickly and cost-effectively. At their best—and we have seen many that rate that superlative description—teams are about harnessing the collective talents of a diverse group of employees. The sum is far greater than the parts, and that adds up to an important tool for companies that want to wind up on the winning side.
A company that has recognized the power of collective effort is primed for the next phase of the Believe principle: Go outside the corporate family to draw on the talents of suppliers and partners. In Chapter 6, we’ll look at what secure, long-term external alliances can mean for your organization.
Questions to Ask
Is the “not invented here” excuse used to block the development of teams?
Does the physical layout of offices and other work areas prohibit the easy sharing of ideas and the formation of teams?
Do your teams receive the recognition and rewards they deserve?
Do some employees have an undue sense of owning a product, an idea, or a process? Do you encourage cooperation rather than competition among employees?
Is team formation part of any job description or training program? Do you have both natural work teams and cross-functional teams in place?
Does the company provide the necessary tools, for example, a local area network (LAN), for encouraging people to share their knowledge and ideas?
Do your leaders demonstrate buy-in to a team culture?
Have your teams written mission statements or set goals (in writing) that are aligned with those of the organization as a whole?
Are your teams “co-located” for ease of communication and project management?
Do you encourage teams to enlist the help of qualified facilitators when necessary?
Actions to Take
Use multifunctional teams for all product-development or process-reengineering activities.
Be aware of shared resources; you need total commitment that is co-located.
Develop team rewards.
Hire team-creation specialists.
Study other companies with successful teams.
Increase organization-wide information sharing.
Hire and promote coworkers who demonstrate a cooperative style.
Examine the physical layout of the workplace and co-locate teams in a systematic fashion to make the best use of the space.
Provide well-trained facilitators upon whom team members can call as needed.
Celebrate and reward team accomplishments.
Periodically refocus and rebuild teams in a retreat setting.
Working as a Team
One of the problems that Jerry McColgin had faced in his previous team experience was the fact that the members were dispersed throughout company facilities. This time, he insisted, the entire team had to work within four walls. The company agreed and found four abandoned product-display rooms for the team’s use.
The company made a further commitment by underwriting the physical construction of the space. Walls were torn down, new lighting and new carpeting installed, and desks moved. An active noise system (ANS) was also introduced into the large open space. An ANS adds “pink noise,” a combination of frequencies that match the human voice to the environment. Noise was an issue. Some of the members were used to working in a private office, and the fact that the place was a modern-day Tower of Babel made it hard to tune out foreign voices. A year later, when the system was turned off as an experiment, everyone begged for it to be turned on again.
Everything was brand new for the team, which, as Jerry noted, “Right from the outset sent a signal that this was a unique project, something different, something that had never been done. Nobody had ever had us all sit together like this.”
Co-locating also sent a valuable message to the team itself. Clearly, the company was backing the project completely, which was a welcome signal that they had faith the team could get the job done.
To facilitate the work, the overall team was divided into subteams. These, however, remained cross-functional, so that people still intermingled. “I would walk through the room,” Jerry remembers, “and I’d see a manufacturing engineer and a design engineer poring over blueprints, each giving their input. Instead of waiting for a Monday morning meeting, the discussion was taking place there and then, when it was needed. One of the things the team prided itself on was the absolute lack of bureaucracy.”
No pieces of paper had to be pushed through the system to be initialed by a management hierarchy. As a matter of fact, as Jerry had promised at the outset, there was no hierarchy.
Our Featured Organization: John Robert’s Spa
BRING IN THE TEAM
John and Stacy DiJulius opened John Robert’s Spa over a decade ago on a wish and a prayer, with four chairs and a loan from Stacy’s grandmother. Today, the John Robert’s Spa Collection includes three salons in the Cleveland area that employ 140 people and generate nearly $5 million dollars in revenue a year. From the beginning, John and Stacy espoused a deep personal conviction to build a culture of empowered team members who would carry out their vision of delivering superior service, or in John’s words, “secret service.”
“John and Stacy inspire teaming throughout the organization,” says Eric Hammond, director of operations at John Robert’s. “We spend more time on our culture than just about anything else.” Eric describes their industry as one that attracts people who enjoy helping others to feel good and develop positive self-esteem. He believes the teaming culture of John Robert’s is based on this deeply held belief that service and caring for others is the most noble of causes.34
The community outreach program at John Robert’s allows team members to give of themselves above and beyond what their everyday jobs require. “We give our teams the opportunity to go to a hospital and interact with people who are not as fortunate as most of us,” Eric said. “Doing this helps them take their craft to a new level. It’s like, ‘if you think you feel good now, you’ll feel really good when you come away from that experience.’”
John and Stacy firmly believe in repaying the community for the good fortune bestowed on their company over the years. For over a decade, on one Thursday morning of each month, the entire Spa team donates their services to patients and families of Cleveland’s Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital.
For a young child, there are few scarier places than a hospital. A visit from the John Robert’s professionals means that the daily hospital routine of poking and prodding is replaced with hair braiding, manicures, messages, and makeup, bringing smiles and laughter rather than tears and moans. “You just start the day off better, and it makes you feel better,” said 17-year-old Ginny Little, a patient at Rainbow Babies.35
Jennifer Kinn of Rainbow Babies remarked, “You might mistake them (the John Robert’s team) for hospital staff until their ‘tools’ come out. They’re not medical, but definitely ‘medicinal.’ They are so dynamic and bring such energy to our patients, and sometimes, that’s just what they need.”36
The families of these young patients receive special attention from the John Robert’s team as well. “They go through so much—mentally, emotionally, and physically—they deserve a little pampering once in a while,” said Felisha Makris of John Robert’s.37
John and Stacy’s commitment to “giving back” is not limited to the Thursday morning hospital visits. Here are a few of their exciting ongoing projects:
Locks of Love and Wigs for Kids—John Robert’s supports Locks of Love and Wigs for Kids by providing complimentary hair cuts for anyone donating 10 inches or more of their hair to create wigs for children suffering from alopecia or undergoing chemotherapy treatments, and who otherwise would be unable to afford hair replacement.
Denim Days—You may be surprised to see members of the John Robert’s team dressed in jeans rather than in their customary attire on certain days. Any team member wishing to participate pledges a contribution to a charity of his or her choice.
Flashes of Hope—John Robert’s makeup artists donate their time once a month for the Flashes of Hope project. Flashes of Hope, a nonprofit organization, provides a complimentary portrait sitting to families of children receiving cancer treatment.
Prom Promise—John Robert’s partners with local high schools to promote the Prom Promise. Any high school student who signs the agreement not to drink and drive on prom night receives a complimentary haircut.
Giving back to the community not only provides innumerable intrinsic rewards, but it’s also good business. John and Stacy’s inspired leadership has produced team members who truly believe in the power and importance of stewardship as a way of life. As Eric told us, “We know that if people are happy and enjoy our culture of helping others, the results will take care of themselves.”