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Speaker A So what we're going to do is get a little bit of their views.
Speaker B And how they see this and how they can.
Speaker A Joel, what about you? You've had some experience here and some.
Speaker B Interesting stories, I told. For 1990, Monsanto decided to sell the business unit which I was running. And so on Friday, June 6, june 3, 1991, I was still in the corporate womb of Monsanto running a business unit. And on Monday morning, June 6, I was in the corner office of a global company and owned by two Japanese companies with the Japanese board of directors, which wasn't a lot of help in helping to run a company with people scattered around in 25 countries around the world in an American based company. So I was much less concerned about the financial performance of the company because I've been running the business. I knew our advantage over competition, I knew the market. But I had a lot of concern about whether the chemical engineer in the corner office could go to great place to work. So I began to ask everyone I could find who was the CEO to tell me what was working for them. And a CEO friend of mine said, you need to go up and go to the Livingston Institute and meet Eric Livingson and a person by the name of Elliot Jackson. I think you'll like what they had to say. So I did. And I did. I went and I liked for an engineer, it was a science based model that Elliott had, based on laudable principles. And Nancy Lee, working with us, got Sir Robert Carnegie to come over and speak with me and my staff. We spent as much time in St. Louis as we needed and that solidified the credibility of the system. And to make it a bit more comprehensive, we expanded a bit the Manus T into a T, where we do a bit more measurement on the T area and give a little full weight to the T as a part of the knowledge and skills of values and the temperament part as well as the kite capacity. So we made it into a comprehensive management system for novice international. And I am here to testify that it worked in a small company, 500 million dollar company with people based in 25 countries around the world. It gave us a common language, it gave us a model. We were able to understand why we make the decisions that we did and then to test the validity of those decisions, the value of those decisions, using this management model as a base.
Speaker A Joe, what were you with the change of ownership?
Speaker B Well, the passion I had personally was to build a great place to work, place that was not only financially successful, but was just where people could find meaning in life through their work. I fundamentally believe we're not one person at home, another person working, another person in church on Sunday with the same person mess me up in one area, you mess me up in the other areas. And I was a passionate believer. About ten minutes after meeting Elliot Jacks, I was hooked. I could see the genius. So many of his principles just made common sense, but then he proved them over and over again from every angle you can look at them. The process I used to gain traction in the company and to get enthusiasm among my staff was, as I mentioned before, the credibility that Sir Roger Carnegie brought to us by coming and talking to us and sharing his experience with it. It was Nancy Lee doing teaching. And then as I began to think about it, I brought Ken Ryan in to help us delve a little bit deeper into temperaments. And then we used the talent pool analysis process to get all of this stuff out on the table and to bring it alive by talking about real people in a candid, safe environment of my staff and I. And so we could really step back and look at our judgment and then begin to see why we were making the judgments we were making. Was it a man of C? Was it that the role and the person didn't fit, was it this, was it that seldom was it values, never was it knowledge, skills and experience, really. It was always either the role in the person didn't fit or the temperament just didn't fit because of the role, because of dysfunctionality. And once we got that common language and we could begin to shine lights and why did we see things the way we did, it gained traction in the company as well, and then trickled down throughout the company.
Speaker A I'm sure people would like to know how you started this all off, Josh. Remember the first three or four weeks, couple of months? How did you play Joe, how did you start?
Speaker B Well, notice, I think from the beginning was what I call fairly requisite. And in fairly short order we became reasonably requisite by making some changes in structure, some changes in role, and mainly to help roles and capabilities fit. We took that into the staff selection process. Roles were vacated whether we were billing from inside, outside help, inside candidates, up against outside candidates, and we use that as a model for making the decisions we make for staffing. And things were just working a lot better with a high hanging fruit, if you will. For me, that was most frustrating to me because a CEO, namely I couldn't get my brain around dealing with those situations where a person had brought us to where we were, but couldn't take us to where we wanted to go. We were growing rapidly, and I always found that an overemployed situation because the role was growing so much faster than the person's capability. It always brings out the worst temperaments and we leave dead bodies. So that was the most frustrating part. But to get to where we really needed to get I had to get the CEO to have courage to deal with those situations.
Speaker A How did you have the staying powerful?
Speaker B I just began to see good things happen. We developed the vernacular, we could talk, we could communicate more clearly. We got efficiency. It just became a lot more said. As Brian said before, I wasn't getting nearly as much strap, I was getting attached from the organization. So it was fun to come to work on Monday.
Speaker A You went back and looked at that period.
Speaker B Would you know any different.
Speaker A Based on what you know today?
Speaker B I'm not sure I'd do a lot differently if I were putting it in practice myself. If I'm trying to interest someone else in seeing the light, we would enjoy would in addition to sharing with them my own experience if I had sent them a reprint of Catherine's wonderful article that she has written and say, wouldn't this be great? I bring in a person from a simulated industry who had put it into practice, someone like Ron who could give that credibility themselves and do all of that as high in the organization as I could before. I then send them to Elliot's books and to dig down into the theory. But I'd start them and wet their appetite with not only personal testimonies but Catherine's articles and things like that. One other thing I think we must emphasize it's a process, not an event. It's a journey. It's not going to happen overnight and it's two three year process before you really are going to get traction throughout your company. What do you think made Rob and.
Speaker C You guys different from many other guys having the same positions that have seen this theory really say this is the.
Speaker B Way it works, but still they don't.
Speaker C Go ahead and pull the implement and what is it that they don't have or you do have that is the book?
Speaker B Well, I think whether it's the CEO or the division head or the business unit head needs to come to grips with why do I want to do it? What is the big D? What is the dissatisfaction that I'm passionate about curing and am I committed to this thing? Because without the stick to it, as Ruth was saying, things will be worse rather than better. So you really want that fire, that passion and who's going to lead this thing? It seldom can happen in spite of that. If that dies out, it usually does not gain traction in my experience.
Speaker D I'm Jerry Greens. I'd like to make an observation and then ask a question. About six years ago when I was asked by the CEO of Ford whether this concept works for all companies or not and what was the differentiator around those companies I've worked with that have been successful and those not? I told them I'd have to think about it and the next day. I said I have five answers to add to your three. The first is the CEO has to value leadership. In the UK, they call it band management. If you don't value leadership. I think you've all been implying that I don't think it happens. Second is you said they have to be intellectually curious because this is not a walk in the park. The third is that they have to value all of the behaviors of leadership, of adding value, because if they don't model that, it's not seen. The fourth is that they have to be prepared to make the investment in the systems and the training and stick with it. And the fifth, which is often the hardest, is that they have to be prepared to hold their subordinate managers accountable for being effective managers. That's often the stickler, I find. Now, the question is, my belief is that you folks are in the vast minority. I believe there's probably no more than ten or 15% of senior executives that satisfy the criteria as you do. And it's my belief that it will not be until the Mark Van Cleefs of the world have demonstrated to the boards that this is the only way to ensure the ethical increasing of shareholder value, that it has to be the boards that will insist and require that the CEOs implement it. I don't think that the CEOs in general are the clients that we need to convince. I think it has to be the board. That's what I want to pose as a question.
Speaker B I'll take a step first, Jerry. I agree with you that for perpetuity it has to go with the boards. There has to be some stability with the board turnover. Rapid board turnover can undo it. Even then, it can stay through my tenure. And hopefully, if it promoted from within and so forth, it can go that way. But the way to assure that it stays perpetuity is with the forge.