Trucks and Trust
"Preston was just like all the other trucking companies,"
Sales Vice-President Paul Sims told us. "Management knew
all the answers. If there was a question, management would
make the judgment. No matter that the manager had seven
years' experience, and the driver had 20. The feeling was,
'I am the manager. I have the title.' When a guy didn't
have the right attitude, I would give him workloads to
straighten him out."
Then in 1978, Will Potter arrived as CEO of Preston,
the Maryland-based company. Potter announced to management
- and the drivers - that management was the problem. Paul
Sims was then an assistant manager in the Canton, Ohio,
terminal. He admits he thought Potter "was nuts," but he
decided to hang around and give the new approach a try.
(A lot of other managers bailed out.)
After a seminar on "performance management," for example,
Sims bought an easel and started posting how productive
we were - posting revenues and load averages. He was
taken aback when drivers immediately started asking
questions. "I'd show them their productivity for the day,
and I'd draw a star or use a sticker when they did a good
job," he recalls. "I saw these grown guys getting excited
about this. If I got real busy in the morning and didn't
put the figures up, the guys would come over to me and say,
'Sims! Put those figures up!'" All the involvement nearly
wore Sims out. It got to the point where he was coming in
at four in the morning and leaving at six
at night, exhausted.
"So one day, I had three keys made to the terminal," he
continued. "The morning shift came in, and I put the keys
down on the table. 'What's that for?' they asked.
"So that you can unlock the door in the morning," I said.
"What? You aren't going to be here?"
I said, "No, I can't keep coming in at 4:00 a.m. You
guys work 4:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., but I have to stay
until six - and it's killing me." And they asked,
"What if we have a problem?"
"Solve it," I said.
"What if we can't?"
"I said, Here's my number at home; call and wake me
up."
"You trust us?"
"I wouldn't have made these keys if I didn't," I said.
"They couldn't believe it."
By Tom Peters |
