|
|
|
|
|
|
Sharp Shooter
Chris Turner once worked at Xerox Business Services (XBS), a 15,000-strong
service arm of the document company. Turner was first at regional offices, then
at headquarters. When she was at HQ, her initial job was executive assistant to
the president, then she moved to the XBS Quality group. As people who still remember
the Baldrige Award know, Xerox received it. It happened back in ’89. Turner moved
to the XBS Quality group in ’93. Which is to note that it was undoubtedly a comparatively
important area in which to have one’s desk. While there, she agitated, cajoled
and generally drove learning and change. She spent some four years in that role.
And then, perhaps because she “found jobs at Xerox consuming and frustrating,”
she left. One of the things she’s done since is written All Hat and No Cattle:
Tales of a Corporate Outlaw: Shaking Up the System & Making a Difference At Work
(Perseus Books; $25; 251 pp.). Yes, she’s from Texas, and she sometimes writes
with guns a-blazin’, as in, “Management teams too often are made up of people
who think, walk, and talk alike; who spend more time worrying about stock price
than the quality and depth of organizational thinking; and who spend little time
on personal learning, exploring new ideas, or expanding their worldviews. Ideas
that challenge the status quo are usually dismissed out of hand. The old, stale
thinking of these teams seeps into organizational systems, creating environments
that are, for the most part, sluggish, mediocre, and damn near unconscious.”
In some regards, this is a tell-all book about XBS: as Turner no longer works there,
spilling the beans about some of its foibles and failures doesn’t have the immediate
consequence that it might (but didn’t anyone tell her about the proverbial burning
of bridges?). Still, who can resist such things as her proclaiming, “But what
nobody at Xerox will ‘fess up to is the Dark Side of Quality,” and then her laying
it out. (E.g., “the big cheeses didn’t do quality . . . One corporate guy was
famous for reacting to bad news by pounding on the table and yelling, ‘Whose ass
can I fire for this?’”)
The real substance in the book is found in her spirited
emphasis on the importance of learning. So far as she is concerned, it is essential,
not optional, necessary, not just nice. Consider: “We must think of learning and
work in the same way that we think about breathing: Which is more valuable, breathing
in or breathing out? Obviously, you’ve got to have both. Learning is not an either/or
proposition.” How often have you thought, “Well, it would probably be good if
I read this book [or took that class or attended that conference or learned how
to operate that software package]” only to figure that you’ve been too busy with
the day-to-day demands so why bother to do it? Hold your breath for too long and
you kill brain cells. Stop exposing yourself to new learning opportunities and
you might as well hold your breath for too long.
At XBS Turner was what is now euphemistically called a “change agent.” In her case, a more accurate term might be “rabble rouser” if it didn’t have bad connotations for those being roused—but you know what I mean. She shares many stories about the things that she and her
co-conspirators did to push learning and consequent change, which are both amusing
and potentially helpful.
If there is one thing valuable to remember from this
write-up, it is this observation from Turner: “Change happens in the doing, not
in the talking.” If you don’t do it—whatever it may be to drive change in your
organization—don’t expect anyone else to.—GSV
|
|
 |
|
|
|
