Setting the ‘True North’

During my time in the field several observations I made and incidents I encountered increasingly led me to question how different a company the TexCo of today actually is. This section, therefore, is dedicated to examining how the NOW Initiative came into being (as already introduced briefly in Vignette 1). The intention here is to unveil the curious role of one specific actor, Jack the CEO, that appeared to have been subtly pulling the strings in the background as the ‘architect of the scheme’, as he once referred to himself. Although the NOW Initiative was spearheaded by a team consisting of a cross-section of employees (from shop floor workers such as Keith to managers and technicians), it was nonetheless driven by a selected few (12) handpicked by Jack and Maria, a business manager that ended up on the team. These 12 people were then supposed to start “the fire across the organisation”, as Jack puts it. “Jack was trying to change the ethos of how things worked at TexCo”, said Phil in an interview. Jack was the one who “set the ball rolling”. He commented on his role during the NOW

I was the critical element in defining what the true north would be. That’s the direction we’re going. That’s…we’re going to be innovative, we’re going to go out, we’re going to be far more…In terms of the, this is what we’re going to be, our true north as a business, that was my role in this. In terms of the execution, everybody else did that. I was there to keep pushing along the way, but really, it is hiring the right people, and putting the troublemakers in the right place (Jack, CEO).

In other words, he says to have pulled the strings in the background as to what he deemed the best way forward – according to which his followers were then supposed to act. Putting troublemakers in ‘the right’ place he did indeed, such as Adrian in Vignette 3. A seemingly empowering staff-led initiative, the NOW team was essentially bringing Jack’s vision to life:

I think it was a lot of guys on the NOW team who were trying to put forward what our vision was or what Jack’s vision was as far as the NOW team was concerned (Phil, Product Technician).

The 12 NOW members then went on monthly retreats with an outside educational institution to develop new ways of practicing embracing the aspects outlined previously (collaboration, empowerment, flat hierarchies, conflicting opinions). For example, this was achieved through utilising creativity tools such as brainstorming, ‘dotocracy’, a technique in which decisions are made democratically as each participant can cast three votes, i.e. dots; or ‘six hat thinking’, whereby each participant is wearing a rather silly hat (e.g. a police officer’s or a fire fighter’s helmet) that constitutes a particular way of thinking such as overly positive or devil’s advocate (to name a few). Suddenly people found themselves working in a colourful office, enacting bizarre techniques and collaborating cross-functionally. It’s quite the change compared to the sentiment outlined in the foregoing vignette. Subsequent to developing these tools, it was the NOW team’s task to implement them into daily work practice.

We were given a remit to really, you know, go through it and get the thing rolled out into the company and start using it and start working with it. So we were kind of, it was kind of forced initially, and you were using tools that you were uncomfortable with and all the rest of it (Jacob, POD Manager).

Hence, the NOW Initiative can be seen as a subtle mechanism of power enforcing a new way of working via the cloak of a staff-led endeavour. Part of engendering a new

culture also was to encourage others to take initiative, like Keith in Vignette 2, rather than waiting for the boss to fix things (like Adrian, see Vignette 3). For instance, some machine operators were complaining to Jack about some colleagues acting unsafely on the shop floor. Since TexCo is now an employee owned business that embraces initiative-taking and commitment, Jack replied to them in an oddly empowering manner:

And my response was ‘I’m doing nothing about it. What are you doing about it?’ Uh, cause if you’ve seen somebody act unsafely, or if you’ve seen somebody not care, then why are you waiting for me to do something about it? It’s your company, you should do something about it. So we had that whole debate about ‘well it’s not my place’, and I’m like, ‘the fuck it’s not your place. Absolutely it’s your place!!!’ (Jack, CEO).

Here, Jack exercises power on two levels. On the one hand, by encouraging, even demanding, staff to address the issue themselves he empowers them. Thus if they were to ‘take the initiative’ it would be a perfectly legitimate and even desired thing to do. On the other hand, however, Jack is also making clear his expectations regarding how employees should act. By extension he is thus de-legitimising the old ethos, in which employees would refrain from taking action if not asked for it. At another incident I had the opportunity to glimpse into Jack establishing what is legitimate. I was observing the year-end employee presentation Jack gave to all employees:

Today Jack is holding the year-end presentation. There are two presentations, in fact. One is tailored towards managerial staff involving rather little people from the shop floor, and another one is ‘open’ to all employees. I’m not sure whether some folks are actually not allowed to attend the first one, or whether it is simply that the information provided there is not interesting to them. Anyway, we all gather in the cinema space towards the end of the office hall. It is actually like a cinema, although not as comfy and certainly less entertaining. Jack is standing in front of the blue seat rows going up as far as almost the ceiling. Behind him on the wall a Power Point presentation is displayed. He’s ready to go. I sit somewhere in the middle rows, to the left-hand side. Unfortunately the ‘seats’ are mere benches with no backrest, so I do hope we won’t be here forever. Jack begins his presentation and goes through his talking points. Financial statements, challenges ahead…the usual stuff.

During the presentation, he repeatedly announces that if people notice something going wrong they should by all means ‘call it’ – again stressing that it is their company. Employee ownership I sense is keenly used as rhetorical mechanism for empowerment.

some machines have been here before him. That’s indeed quite remarkable, given that he’s been at TexCo for 30 odd years. Back then he was absolutely bewildered, and others share his view. In response to Phil’s question, Jack explains that they (he and the board) are very happy to spend money on new machines, but only if there is a plan. A plan, that is, means for Jack that somebody has approached him with details as to why the machine needs to be replaced, why repairs or other fixtures won’t do it, how much the investment would be, where the money could be coming from, and what the gain would be. Put otherwise, he is reluctant to make investments on a hunch that a particular machine is ‘too old’. Unfortunately I cannot see Phil’s face from where I sit, but after Jack reiterated his point a couple of times, saying he is happy to spend if there is such a plan, Phil says nothing.

Vignette 5 – Legitimising concerns

Employee ownership is thus utilised as a rhetorical device that seemingly empowers workers, but concurrently invokes a sense of expected commitment. When employees act on Jack’s invitation to voice concerns, we witness who carries the burden of legitimising claims.

Jack, it turns out, was also critical in legitimising why the old ways were undesirable. Although the new ways of working under the banner of a ‘culture of innovation’ are considered a stark contrast to the old days, changing the ethos was allegedly rather unproblematic – a claim so baffling I addressed it with Jack. He explained: “The platform we stood on was burning. And if it’s burning, you jump no matter where to”. There was thus an acute awareness for the need for change, and, as others comment, Jack was instrumental in generating that awareness.

I think everybody recognised that it was going down, it’s just that we were powerless to do nothing about it. When Jack joined, he stated what a number of us already knew and felt. And at last we were able to do something about it. You know, rather than just keep propping up […] I think Jack, when he joined the company, was instrumental in demonstrating ‘look, you know, this is where the floor covering [business] is going. It’s heading downwards’ (Jacob, POD Manager).

Yet change might have not been brought about quite that smoothly after all. One night on the way home, Jack confessed to me that he has been relentless in trying to change the attitudes of people towards embracing change and innovation. I asked how he achieved this. He shrugged his shoulders and without taking his eyes of the road he dryly said, “we got rid of people. Just four or five though, those who were actively blocking change”. Some employees were simply put into different roles. I recall I had

talked to Abigail not long ago, who was then in charge of production and purchasing scheduling. “I’m literally the only one who can do this job, people are phoning me up when I’m off sick”, she had said to me.

As transpired, however, Abigail was fighting a losing battle. Apparently she was reluctant to change her scheduling practice that was still based on having to make four major products. Yet, as part of the NOW Initiative, TexCo introduced countless new products, rendering her way of doing scheduling rather antiquated – to the frustration of Jack and other POD managers, who were the customers of her service, so to speak. People suggest that Abigail is not a typical person that would embrace ambiguity and change. “She is a person who just wants to do what she does”, said Jack. He had changed her role slightly to get her to adapt to change, but “it didn’t work at all. So now she’s been assigned an entirely different role. We have taken all her toys and given her completely new ones.” In other words, Abigail has been moved to the laboratory, where she from then on was doing quality testing on product samples, whereas Lucy, a worker considered highly competent (by Jack and Maria in particular), was put in Abigail’s place.

4.1.3 Summary

This glimpse into how the NOW Initiative came into being concludes the section. In summary, these selected examples offer insights that extend both Vignette 1.2 and 1.3. In the first vignette, I have shown the way TexCo presents itself, and argued for treating notions of empowerment carefully. I proposed that, through exercising power via perpetuating normative expectations, empowerment is inherently bounded. Although the NOW Initiative is said to have introduced inclusive and empowered ways of practicing at TexCo, this foregoing discussion illuminates a different side to this story.

As the second vignette suggests, under the old regime work practices were characterised by disempowerment and exclusivity. Only specific members up the hierarchy were in a position to make decisions, and withheld information from ordinary employees. One would generally stick to one’s direct remit, and not get involved with things pertaining to somebody else’s responsibility. Only the selected few were in a

position to steer the direction into which the notion of what constitutes ‘good practice’ should unfold.

The NOW Initiative, meanwhile, was supposed to and has arguably changed the elitism of the past. Hence nowadays employees collaborate in cross-functional teams and are empowered to challenge others by vocalising concerns and opinions, as Keith’s vignette or other observations of mine attest (e.g. Madeleine, who suggested TexCo’s regular product launch practice to be ineffective and took it upon herself to develop a new process). Therefore, practice did change. Yet, even though employees might be empowered, they are only within the boundaries of newly enforced expectations. As the final vignette of this section demonstrates, the path forward was still laid out by the elite, especially Jack. Although the move to the POD structure and away from departments did strip away layers of hierarchy and authority, a different way of looking at this might involve that nowadays it is only a handful individuals – POD managers and board members (the former got ‘elected’ to the board while I was in the field) – that are in a hierarchical ‘position of power’. Therefore, has TexCo actually moved to ‘inclusive practice’, or is inclusivity merely dependent on the willingness of the elite?

Arguably, via the cloak of empowerment power is being exercised in disguise. The voices of those who did not comply with expectations – the ‘troublemakers’ as Jack puts it – were simply silenced, as the stories of Adrian or Abigail underline. In this way, in spite of embracing new ways of performing practices, I perceive power relations of the past to have been perpetuated in the present. Indeed, a common theme throughout this first findings section has been the interplay of old and new, past and present. While TexCo’s efforts to change at times may appear desperate to escape their own past, the section has offered numerous descriptions suggesting the escape has not been entirely successful. Admittedly, it was pointed out to me that the transition TexCo is undergoing is not yet complete. This first section, therefore, is testimony to change being a dialectal interplay in which practices of the past swing with ways of doing of the present. In the following three sections of this findings chapter, I will explore in more detail the paradoxes of The ‘Boundedness’ of Empowerment (Section 2), Inclusive Practice & Elitism (Section 3), and Leading & Being Led (Section 4).