John R. Secor, CEO
YBP Library Services
Contoocook, New Hampshire

Preface

In The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, chapter 16, we read, "This word of the Lord came to me: 'O man, make Jerusalem see her abominable conduct.' " In chapter 37, Ezekiel writes, "... he carried me out ... and set me down in a plain that was full of bones. He made me pass among them in every direction. Countless in number and very dry, they covered the plain ... He said to me, 'O man, these bones are the whole people of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dry, our hope is gone, and we are cut off.' "

I've used "dry bones" as a metaphor to describe both the image that flashes through the minds of employees as their leaders restructure, reorganize, and reengineer them out of a job, and the frustration that effective leaders feel when they attempt to exercise leadership and are met by employee resistance.

There are two reasons why I chose this metaphor to describe the mindset that many leaders and employees bring to their workplace. One is that many people, for many reasons, have decided that self-interest is the key to success - and in their pursuit of success they have lost their vitality. Their bones are dry.

A second - perhaps more to the point - is that many leaders have let the rhetoric of change short-circuit their thinking and questioning processes, and many employees have let their desire for predictability blind them from seeing the need for change. Their bones are dry.

Dry Bones is a three-part paper. The focus of Part 1, the chapter we will discuss this afternoon, is on today's new management techniques from the perspective that these big company initiatives - particularly reengineering, today's hot buzzword - are producing mixed results at best and should be approached with keen caution by most organizations. Part 2 - a winter/spring writing project - will look at both the characteristics of the effective leader and how leadership differs from management. Part 3 - summer's project - will discuss a sequential approach to effectively managing an organization.

I've used the terms business, organization, and enterprise interchangeably. While private (for-profit) businesses and public (not-for-profit) organizations have different economic, political, and social pressures, each must be able to answer the question: "What business are we in?"

Part 1 is divided into six mini-chapters: Introduction; Doing What is Expedient; Doing the Right Thing; What's Important in Organizations, Renewal; and The Yoke of Change.

I. Introduction

There are dozens of current pop management books and hundreds of magazine and journal articles whose sole purpose seem to be to remind us that change in business is occurring at a rapid pace. Most are sluggish reads; a few are thoughtful; fewer still energize. I'm not going to talk about the need for change or the pace at which organizational transformation should take place. I leave these topics to those management gurus who are hell-bent on turning management into a convoluted science, and to those consultants who continue to concoct new prescriptive management techniques that promise to save organizations from their malaise.

The fact is that I've come to dislike the term "change" as it is being used in our work lives. Bob Filipczak, staff editor of Training Magazine, says, "Some may remember when change was a thing to be embraced and welcomed, a thing that promised excitement and economic prosperity in return for its challenges."*1 Today, the term conveys confusion and lost job security. Front-line workers have become cynical. Managers are stressed-out and burned-out.*2 And still, leaders cry for "More change initiatives." Whatever happened to a clear, focused, orderly approach to the attainment of goals?

I like the word "renewal" better than "change." I think we should be talking about constant renewal at both the personal and organizational levels - because what all people are really seeking, when all is said and done, is continuous progress along what leadership theorist Stephen Covey calls the "maturity continuum." I believe renewal is best achieved through sequential actions that are focused and continuous. The alternative is for individuals and organizations to continue their love affair with quick fixes - whether they deal with becoming younger looking or making the business more successful.

Our lives are governed by natural laws over which we have no control. Over time, the way we look will change. Over time, "the assumptions on which the organization has been built and is being run [will] no longer fit reality."*3 Peter Drucker refers to these "assumptions" as the "theory of business." More about this later.

II. Doing What is Expedient

Few things have changed as much in organizations in the past 10 years as management techniques. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Peter Drucker writes, "Not in a very long time - not, perhaps, since the late 1940s or early 1950s - have there been as many new major management techniques as there are today: downsizing, outsourcing, total quality management, economic value analysis, benchmarking, reengineering."*4

Today's class of management gurus, usually consultants with little practical business experience - few can claim to have started out as a worker and progressed through the ranks, and fewer still have the innate ability of a Peter Drucker - tell us that technology, increased competition at home and abroad, and the appearance of a knowledge-based economy have made the "old ways" of doing business obsolete. Yet, Frederick Crawford, who entered the work force in 1916 as a laborer and retired as TRW's chairman in 1958, voiced the following thought in a 1991 interview: "I don't think there's any difference between business when I was CEO and business today. It's still a matter of providing products and services that are superior to the competition's and providing them cheaper and more efficiently."*5

It's interesting to note that Mr. Crawford "... witnessed a steady parade of management transformations: the shift from craft-based production to mass production, the rise of the modern multidivisional corporation, the evolution of supplier-assembler relations, the emergence of big government and big labor, and the creation of corporate planning."*6

Today, it's hard to determine if the dimension and rate of change that is the topic of so much management prose are real or contrived. Is the dog wagging the tail or is the tail wagging the dog? Is all this urgency and are all these cries for "radical reinvention" justified - or are they self-serving rhetoric?

Over the past decade, we've heard lots of dire predictions about the future of American business. My feeling is that the worst is now behind us and we should stop talking about the beginning of the end and begin to think about the end of the beginning. Quality leader J.M. Juran says that the United States now has world-class role models that other companies can emulate. "Enough U.S. companies have gotten to world-class quality to prove that it can be done in this culture. In addition, companies have identified how the role models did it - what they did that was different from before. Companies have also learned from the numerous failures: why they failed and what not to do."*7

"... the biggest obstacle to world-class quality is the lack of upper management leadership."

Juran, like many other leadership theorists, feels that the biggest obstacle to world-class quality is the lack of upper management leadership. He notes that "Many, perhaps most, U.S. upper managers still don't understand the actions needed to achieve world-class quality. Neither do they understand their role in bringing it about - what are the nondelegable actions that upper managers must take, personally."*8

Juran is equally critical of buzzwords. He says, "To make matters worse, much of our society seems to be mesmerized by buzzwords, such as excellence or reengineering. Often these are merely attractive new labels for old, well-known concepts. Some upper managers, however, are not aware that these concepts are old and well-known. So there is a market for buzzwords, and the opportunists know this. The media amplify the effect. They are ever on the lookout for new hot topics. If they can't find a hot one, they warm up a cold one."*9

I should say from the get-go that I am a fan of total quality management (TQM). (More about TQM as a critical underpinning of sustainable organizational renewal in Part 3.) More than a decade ago, many businesses came to understand that world-class required a commitment to continuous quality improvement, and that this initiative also focused on getting both managers and front-line workers to think about what they do, and question how they do what they do. Those companies who truly embraced TQM also saw quality as a linchpin for effective strategic planning. Others, however, quickly tired of the actions needed to integrate TQM into the culture and - before the enormous benefits from becoming both process-oriented and customer-oriented were clearly understood - began to embrace initiatives that were billed as "revolutionary" or "radical."

"A stick of dynamite is not a substitute for focused thinking, astute questioning ..."

Michael Hammer and James Champy, of reengineering fame, says, "... reengineering [is not] the same as quality improvement, total quality management (TQM), or any other manifestation of the contemporary quality movement."*10 Baloney! Reengineering has its roots in the quality movement. The basic goal of both is organizational improvement. Only the action language is different. Quality speaks to incremental improvement - a sequential approach to progress through continuous renewal. Reengineering says incremental is too slow and that organizations need to focus on dramatic improvement which demands blowing up that which has been built and starting over. My experience says that incremental is not synonymous with slow and that breakthroughs in improvement come only when we stay the course. A stick of dynamite is not a substitute for focused thinking, astute questioning, and constant analysis.

Why this love affair with newness, with doing what is expedient rather than what is right? Well, part of the answer is found in the socializing forces that keep our core values and ethics in a constant state of redefinition: What was wrong yesterday can be justified and rationalized as right today. And part of the answer lies in the fact that people have become mentally lazy. We are a nation of non-readers and non-questioners. Far too many people, children and adults, take their information and learning through an intravenous tube called the television and, in the process, have lost the ability to renew their thinking skills through constant questioning and analysis. We've become a people with little patience - a people with a microwave oven-like mindset. Things have to be easy and quick. Shakespeare put it rather well in Othello when he has Iago say to Roderigo: "How poor are they that have not patience."

A character, a Buddhist monk, in Oliver Stone's recent movie, Heaven and Earth, says, "If you walk only on sunny days you never reach your destination." So it is with short-term answers to what are long-term challenges. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Nitin Nohria and James D. Berkley write, "... in the majority of cases, research shows, the management fads of the last 15 years rarely produced the promised results."*11

Robert Eccles and Nitin Nohria, authors of Beyond the Hype: Rediscovering the Essence of Management, say, "... the quest for new organizational practices - for new words, new structures, new designs, new systems, and new strategies - has become a rather frenzied pursuit. [And while] we certainly do believe that change and innovation are important ... our experience and research has also led us to the conclusion that a certain skepticism of newness is necessary - that the constant talk about 'new practices for a new age' is shortsighted and may lead us both to misunderstand the past and to ignore what is really important in organizations."*12

" ... many upper managers simply say 'do it' and walk away."

I am often asked why these new management practices, including TQM, are not meeting expectations. There are any number of reasons and each, generally, involve one or more of the following:

1. The organization's leadership does not have a clear and focused sense of purpose and, if they do, they have not effectively communicated it to their people.

2. A world-class athlete simply wouldn't think of competing until he/she was mentally and physically fit. Patience, time and energy are required both of the athlete and the coach. If it's a team sport, then personal and inter-personal relationship training is part of the conditioning.

However, in business many upper managers simply say "do it" and walk away. They either do not understand or want the mentoring role that is required to get each member of their team thinking positively, and the team committed to world-class service.

3. Senior managers are paid to lead their company in a forward-looking manner; sadly, many are simply not earning their pay. These yesterday and today-focused managers rarely see tomorrow's opportunities and, if they do, they usually fail to act in a decisive manner. Their firefighter approach to leading the business generally finds them adopting rather than adapting initiatives. And since they are usually mired in crisis after crisis, they flit from management technique to management technique.

4. Most organizations have not adequately funded their training needs. Skills training and personal and interpersonal effectiveness training are critical building blocks for personal and organizational renewal.

5. Most organizations lack a consistent communications system. One of the reasons why TQM is included in lists of failed fads is because senior management did not include front-line workers in the planning and implementation processes.

Some consultants and senior managers are making excuses for these failed techniques, saying, "Well, they were worthwhile efforts because they made workers see that change was imperative." Baloney! Research shows otherwise. Organizations lost years of potential growth and their leaders lost their credibility.

I find it mind-boggling that so many leaders have closed their minds to organizational renewal through continuous incremental progress. Their employees have to find a way to say "enough" when the next fad comes down the pike. I find it equally dismaying when employees, who have forward-looking leaders, erect brick walls after a carefully thought through initiative has been discussed with them - simply because self-renewal is required. Their leaders have to make it clear that a valued employee is one who is open-minded and committed.

A decisive variable between personal success and failure is the degree of open-mindedness of the individual. A decisive variable between organizational success and failure is the degree and quality of leadership provided by senior managers.

The only thing I enjoy about flying the friendly skies is the opportunity to meet and talk with my seatmates. On a recent flight to Los Angeles, I sat beside the president of a company that manufactures office furniture. I was reading a memo from my vice president of human resources that outlined eight initiatives to provide for the continuous improvement of YBP employees. My seatmate introduced himself as "Tom" and apologized for "reading over my shoulder." He pointed to the memo and initiative number 7: Librarian roundtable. I explained that we were planning a company-wide staff meeting which would include three university librarians who would both talk about the challenges their organizations were grappling with and answer questions.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because most of our employees don't have the opportunity to meet face-to-face with our customers and this is an effort to make our customers real to all our people."

"Guess that's a good idea," Tom mumbled. "I've just come from a retreat in Chicago where I met with my top 10 managers. Great to get out of LA once in a while."

"Productive meeting?" I asked.

"Great restaurants," he exclaimed. "And we decided to reengineer the company."

I took a deep breath. "I'm not a fan of reengineering. The term 'radical' scares the hell out of me. Have you thought about a quality initiative?"

"Yeah. We did it last year."

"And..."

"Disaster," Tom replied.

"Tom, when you decided to do quality did you meet with your people and work with them to set quality objectives and strategies to meet those objectives?"

Tom look confused. "I didn't. I think my senior managers did. Hey, what difference would my involvement have made anyway? The employees were mad. They thought we were saying their workmanship was inferior."

As the plane touched down, I asked, "Do your people have a clear understanding of what business they are in today, and where that business is heading tomorrow?"

"Yeah," he answered. "We make oak furniture. For offices."

"Organizational transformation doesn't happen overnight."

As we deplaned, I lost sight of Tom and thought: "There goes a leader with dry bones." I wish I had asked for a business card. I'd like to know how he fared. But then I'd be surprised to hear anything other than that he had reengineered his company out of business. David Osborne, former advisor to the Clinton administration, says, "Organizational transformation doesn't happen overnight. It takes companies six or eight years to plan and implement fundamental changes."*13 Particularly relevant to our discussion today is Mr. Osborne's feeling that "There are no off-the-shelf answers. You must keep to the basics of what you are trying to accomplish and be very wary of ideology."*14

Postscript: I recently purchased an oak desk, bookcase, and small conference table from one of Tom's competitors. They are in the business of designing furniture for businesses that is both comfortable and durable: a lifetime guarantee on work-manship. And, most importantly to me, a regional customer service representative. I think they know that customer satisfaction is really the business they are in.

If leaders continue to let themselves be caught up in managerial hype, and if they continue to think short-term rather than long-term, and if they fail to recognize that people are the organization's most important asset...then the present action void will continue to cripple their organization. If, however, leaders focus on doing the right thing - and I define this as: leading the way you would like to be led and managing the way you would like to be managed - then leaders will be able to mobilize their people to take action and the organization will begin to move toward achieving its goals.

III. Doing the Right Thing

Some people have allowed their energy to be consumed by their single-minded search for physical comfort. The quest for possessions, power, and status has become a powerful force in life. And while I believe that most people want to do the right thing - they believe in fairness, charity, honesty, and integrity - many people have conditioned themselves to do what is expedient rather than what is right, and they've learned to rationalize their wrong behavior as right conduct.

Our sense of priorities, values, and ethics are constantly being battered by socializing forces and this is causing great stress. So much frustration is being expressed. Life in the 90s seems to be filled with constant dilemmas and crises. We see the frustration while driving our highways. Drivers tailgating the car in front because that vehicle is only traveling 70 in a posted 65 miles an hour zone - and then there is the language and the accompanying obscene gestures. We see it in our schools. In our work place. People with little patience. People who want everything to be quick and easy.

Author Stephen Covey writes, "Every organization - and individual - struggles to gain and maintain alignment with core values, ethics, and principles. Whatever our professed personal and organizational beliefs, we all face restraining forces, opposition, and challenges, and these sometimes cause us to do things that are contrary to our stated missions, intentions, and resolutions."*15

Gandhi said, "Life is an indivisible whole." What he is saying, in effect, is that if we don't listen at home, then our relationships and interactions with those we work with will be contentious; if we don't continuously raise our personal performance bar, then we will not be able to meet the challenges at work; if we are close-minded in our personal lives, then we will fear whatever is new at work.

It's not easy to walk the talk, to follow what Stephen Covey calls your "moral compass." Yet, most individuals who achieve real personal success live their lives around such fundamental principles as integrity and honesty; and businesses that have learned how to sustain success have built corporate character and live their organizational lives around a principled culture.

IV. What's Important in Organizations

"Most businesses today say they serve customers. In reality, they serve themselves ..."

• People are important; they are an organization's most important asset. The organization's culture must be such that it encourages all employees - managers and front-line workers - to realize their full potential. This is best achieved by getting people more involved in how they plan and do their work. Jack Welch, General Electric's CEO, loves to say, "Get everyone in the game!"

  Leaders must provide leadership. Real leadership effectiveness comes from a careful intertwining of the power that is inherent in the act of leading with the greater power that comes from consensus building.

  A valid statement of purpose is important - what Peter Drucker refers to as "a theory of the business." He says "a valid theory that is clear, consistent, and focused is extraordinarily powerful" - that organizations stagnate and get in trouble because "the assumptions on which the organization has been built and is being run no longer fit reality. These are the assumptions," he says, "that shape any organization's behavior, dictate its decisions about what to do and what not to do, and define what the organization considers meaningful results."*16

  Think like the customer. Rosabeth Moss Kanter says, "Most businesses today say they serve customers. In reality, they serve themselves... To be customer-oriented, leaders need to spend more time worrying about what they do not yet see."*17

More about what is important in organizations in Parts 2 & 3.

V. Renewal

At a recent leadership conference in Boston, I sat beside the president of a company that designed and manufactured women's sportswear. Her name tag read Sidney but she said she preferred "Sid." Sid had recently purchased the company from the founder's widow, who had been running the organization for the past 10 years. When she bought the company, the books showed a negative net worth.

"I've spent the last six months trying to open up a dialogue with my employees and the union," she said. "I've asked the employees to agree to a one year wage freeze and let me implement a cross training program."

"And..."

"The union said no to both." She rubbed her eyes. "Damn, I'm tired. The employees think the cross training is just an excuse to downsize. And the union said if I was rich enough to buy the company, then I should be able to pay the wage increase out of my pocket."

"That's stupid," I whispered. Then I asked, "Is it?"

"Is it what?"

"Is cross training an excuse to cut staff?"

Sid laughed. "No. I'm already understaffed. That's why I need to cross train."

"Question," I said. "Do your people know the financial shape the company is in?"

"Yeah. They know I put all my savings into buying the company. They know the bank has me on a short leash. When I bought the company I distributed a copy of my business plan to everyone. I've spent months talking about objectives and trying to gain organizational commitment. We've got some great new designs and need to hang together until we ship."

"Why won't they meet and talk with you?" I asked.

"The founder and his wife were command-and-control types." She smiled. "Must have been an interesting marriage. Anyway, the employees are frightened of management. They've been conditioned to do exactly what they are told to do - quietly. They've come to like predictability and see me as someone who is going to change things."

"How about the union?"

"I don't know what their problem is. All they want to talk about is money."

"How long can you stay afloat?" I asked.

Sid wrinkled her brow. "Six months. Maybe nine. The fall orders are strong. We ship next month. I proposed a profit-sharing plan last week. We'll see."

As if on cue, the speaker tapped the microphone and placed his papers on the lectern. I looked at Sid and thought, "Your employees have dry bones. And you must continue to try to change their mindset."

Postscript: As far as I know, Sid's company is still alive. But then, only five months have passed since the conference.

VI. The Yoke of Change

[Leaders must] "... be able to steer through changing waters ..."

Ellen Hoffman, York University Libraries Director, has written a very fine review of change literature, entitled, "Management of Change," which will appear in Librarianship and Information Work Worldwide 1994. Anyone who is interested in the forces shaping library and information work will find her chapter both interesting and informative.

In her conclusion, Ms. Hoffman writes: "Smith ["The Greening of Librarianship: Toward a Human Resource Development Ecology," Journal of Library Administration, 17 (1), 37-53] offers a fascinating re-reading of Mark Twain's classic Life on the Mississippi as a testament to continuous learning. To be able to steer through changing waters, river pilots created a community of learning and accepted the necessity of relearning. They learned at the point of practice and sought to know the dynamics of the water, not the specifics. Twain observed that in order to be a pilot, one had to learn more than any one person ought to be allowed to know. What is more, one had to learn it all over again in a different way every twenty-four hours. Contemporary library managers of change need the attitudes of nineteenth-century river pilots."

We've allowed the cycle of cumulative learning to be clogged with dust - dust driven both by the incessant winds of change and our orientation toward doing what is expedient. One thing is clear. Challenges will continue to arise as we move through the 90s and into the twenty-first century. If we continue to view change as simply a parade of personal and organizational crises, then change will continue to be viewed as a burden that is to be shaken off in panic - without first thinking about what is the best way to slip from under its weight.

Those two words, "crises" and "panic," are what I find most troubling about the "new ways" to manage organizations - for they are sent to us on winds of hysteria. "Reorganize" or die. "Restructure" or die. "Reengineer" or die. These management techniques are long on promises and short on results. They are rarely fully understood by those who decide to implement them. They are not people-centered themes. They quickly get stuck.

Eccles and Nohria say: "Faced with the sober recognition that there is very little that is really new in the modern-day claim about the transition to a new management paradigm, we have to return to the original question: Is something really fundamental going on, or does today's craze for newness simply point to our willingness, perhaps even our need, to indulge in the excitement of imaginary revolutions?"*18

"The essential activity for keeping our [mindset] current is persistent questioning."

We can, if we choose, make change a positive experience by developing mindsets that center on physical and intellectual vigor and renewal. Author Richard Tanner Pascale says, "The essential activity for keeping our [mindset] current is persistent questioning."*19 I believe that we can achieve breakthroughs in both our personal and work lives if we make continuous learning part of our mental infrastructure. We can scale up if we commit to what W. Edwards Deming calls a "consistency of effort."

Editor's Note: Dry Bones, Part 1 was presented at The Charleston Conference on November 3, 1994 and at the Colorado Library Association Annual Conference on November 6, 1994.

NOTES

1. Bob Filipczak, "Weathering Change: Enough Already!" Training (September 1994): 24.

2. Lee Smith, "Burned-Out Bosses," Fortune (July 25, 1994): 44-52.

3. Peter F. Drucker, "The Theory of the Business," Harvard Business Review (September-October 1994): 95.

4. Ibid.

5. Davis Dyer, "A Voice of Experience: An Interview with TRW's Frederick C. Crawford," Harvard Business Review (November-December 1991): 116.

6. Ibid., 115.

7. J.M. Juran, "The Upcoming Century of Quality," Quality Progress (August 1994): 32.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Michael Hammer and James Champy, Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993), 49.

11. Nitin Nohria and James D. Berkley, "Whatever Happened to the Take-Charge Manager?" Harvard Business Review (January-February 1994): 129.

12. Robert G. Eccles and Nitin Nohria, Beyond the Hype: Rediscovering the Essence of Management (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1992), 4.

13. Bruce G. Posner and Lawrence R. Rothstein, "Reinventing the Business of Government: An Interview with Change Catalyst David Osborne," Harvard Business Review (May-June 1994): 135.

14. Ibid., 138.

15. Stephen R. Covey, Principle-Centered Leadership (New York: Summit Books, 1991), 48.

16. Drucker, 95-96.

17. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, "Think Like the Customer: The Global Business Logic," Harvard Business Review (July-August 1992): 9.

18. Eccles and Nohria, 26.

19. Richard Tanner Pascale, Managing on the Edge: How the Smartest Companies Use Conflict to Stay Ahead (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 14.

SIGNATURES: YBP Occasional Papers, no. 1 (1995)