America's Two Minute Warning. - book reviews

Washington Monthly, Feb, 1988 by Thomas J. Peters

In the form of agendas, Grayson and O'Dell present a series of proposals that can stem -- and reverse -- the slowdown in productivitiy. They believe that the problem is not so much antiquated equipment (although that's important) but the human factor, which is ingnored by managers and government officials alike. Their lists, while seemingly bland in the retelling -- employment stability, training and continuous learning, accounting, systems, symbols -- are nothing less than a management would turned upside down, as is the call for "structural changes in decision-making and control, pay, and job organization design that violates the old managerial control model learned in business schools or from former bosses."

In their plea for "redefining the organization" the authors decry the tendency of American business to confirm workers to "functional silos" where they neither the creativity to be happy with thier work nor the freedom to respond to crisis. Grayson's American Productivity Center has pointed to many companies that have seen their productivity shoot up by working to gether, not separately. In the book, they cite Goodyear's Lawton, Oklahoma plant, staffed by 164 teams of five to 27 members each called business centers, which are not only independent but have unusual responsibilities. the teams set their own goals for productivity, cost, waste, and most measures of business performance. They're overseen by four plant coordinating teams -- but their overrifing agenda is teamwork and flexibility. The result? Goodyear's chairman, Robert E. Mercer, boasts: "The Lawton-delivered tire cost will beat the cost of comparable tires from the lowest-cost foreign producers, meaning the 3Koreans who think the Japanese are lazy."

On the issue of pay, Grayson and O'Dell join the growing (but not yet successful) ranks of those urging much greater use of variable compensation: "Most American employees, blue-collar and white-collar, correctly believe there is little connection between their pay and producitivity or quality...A 1982 survey of Japanese workers found 93 percent believe they will benefit from improvement in their employers' performance. That is not the result of blind loyalty. consider that in 1986 less than 0.9 percent. of Americans' earnings were in the form of flexible bonuses; in Japan, it was 28 percent....Flexible compensation would give Americans a clear financial stake in productivity and quality improvement, but that is rearly the case in the United States now."

Perhaps the most compelling item on their agenda calls for American managers to put a greater emphasis on "training and continuous learning." At a time when the trade deficit is soaring, and U.S. companies are scrambling to find ways to outsmart their Asian competition, merican companies are devoting fewer resources to training. Grayson and O'Dell note that the number of employees trained and the number of hours of training in the United States in 1986 were down by more than 14 percent from 1985.