Cultures often have origin myths. Such narratives existed in the two companies I worked, where consultants convinced managers they could eliminate self-destructive behavior. No single story was retold, refashioned into folk art, but shared history existed as a common font of experience that could be referred to with truncated parables and mottos.
In Detroit, one absorbs legendary names and motifs growing up. At the other place, the company retold its key story during its first attempt to address safety and security problems. Indeed during those early days of organization-wide video training, it was the only transmission that was slowed by too many viewers. By the time the culture consultants arrived, many had refreshed their memories, and some used the legend as a mantle to cloak their obstreperousness.
Creation myths do not exist everywhere. In most places I’ve work, people don’t even know the name of the founder, and the most typical narrative is bureaucratic gossip. In Detroit, the legends are recognized by their first names: Michael Moore filmed Roger and Me; Harry Bennett wrote We Never Called Him Henry, a furrier advertised with imagined conversations between Roger and Ross, then Roger and Roger. The caste organization used only last names.
Cultures are rarely homogenous. Most contain competing elements which may be channeled through social structures like clans who alternate power, like the summer people and winter people. Folk narratives often recall past incidents of conflict that disturbed the equilibrium before suggesting ideal solutions.
In Detroit, internal stresses are most clearly seen with Henry Ford. When he first succeeded, his investors criticized him because they believed automobiles would only exist as luxury vehicles. When Ford wouldn’t compromise, they changed to Henry Leland and formed Cadillac Automobile Company in 1902 with the belief the best way to operate was high profits on few sales. William Durant absorbed them into General Motors which he organized to sell different styles to different markets. When he proved too flamboyant, the banks took over.
Ford reorganized and introduced the Model T in 1908. After a few years, his partners, John and Horace Dodge, rebelled because they believed Ford sacrificed quality to quantity. When they died from prohibition alcohol, bankers absorbed their company into what became Chrysler.
Ford reorganized and avoided banks.
When Roger Smith became head of General Motors in 1980, it had a long organizational tradition of selecting the chairman from financial men, the president from production men. Lee Iacocca could never do more at Ford because the family held the top spot. His success at Chrysler violated this industry wide compromise between cost and quality, but was prompted by the only crisis financial men understand, bankruptcy.
Smith faced the same challenges and tried, at least with Saturn and Fiero, to shift the balance towards quality and inexpensive products. His greatest opposition came from those descended from Leland who believed the best strategy was expensive vehicles like Cadillacs and pick-up trucks with low production costs.
Smith’s replacement, like Iacocca, violated the stasis between the groups. Robert Stemple was the first man to rise to chairman from production. He was widely seen in the ranks as the last, best chance to turn things around. When he was forced out in 1992, the company pursued the low cost, high priced strategy with SUVs that haven’t survived market saturation, safety problems, and high operating costs anymore than American vehicles did during the oil embargo of the 1970s.
The collective history at my last employer evolved during a period of heightened national security. Most tales goes back to early conflicts between the military, seen as dampening parasites, and technocrats who saw themselves as creative overachievers.
The conflict between the moieties receded when national priorities changed. The subcontractor where I worked continued to hire retired military men, but they were ones who had learned the way to promotion was to do what was expected. They were seen as harmless tokens, since the customer was happy to pay us to relieve it of the need to hire them to appease a critical constituency.
The equipoise was disturbed when reporters made safety and security problems sound intractable. Suddenly the customer’s customer saw a military man as the only solution. It was a time when corporations were recruiting generals and admirals for top spots to exploit their contacts for contracts. By coincidence, our subcontract brought in a military refugee as our business manager.
Unlike previous military retirees, the new men were ones who believed their role was to give orders, and take action when they were disobeyed. Their first response was mass meetings where they could abuse us as a group, and make implied threats to shape up or ship out. Since any military man is available because he is not going to rise any higher in the Pentagon, the men were ones who knew how to give orders but not how to develop strategies to be obeyed.
Their actions awakened dormant emotions. In some cases, among children who had grown up in abusive environments, the response was instinctive. Among others, it recalled the cultural conflicts of the early years.
The military men couldn’t deal with civilians who simply did not share their institutional history. At out customers shop, it was the military man who was replaced, but not without more threats by our customer’s customer that it had to change or worse would come its way.
In our layer of their caste world, we were the ones delegated to act out their drama for them, and so our military manager is one of the few men brought in by the subcontractor who has survived. The contractor isn’t concerned that he has made mistakes; perhaps, to reinforce its superiority, he’s supposed to. It cares less that he has fired or forced so many out; as an organization we are its inferior, and anyone within our institution is, by definition, subordinate to the counterpart in the parent organization, and expendable to its function.
Indeed many were probably glad he removed so many. During the interregnum when no one was running parts of the subcontract, people who had talent and experience rose, and became counterparts to people at the customer’s who would never mix with the social groups they represented. They were as disruptive to the tribal structure as Lee Iacocca and Robert Stemple, and their removal reinstated the prelapsarian balance.
The result in both Detroit and where I last worked is a heightened sense that dualistic vertical organizations have bifurcated into the masses who know there are problems and leaders who have no idea how to solve them. Estrangement strains the institutions, but not the historically inherited analysis of the situations. The contours of the cultures are clear in the crises that won’t go away.
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