Watching The Paradigm Shift

Have you begun to notice that since World War II the political and social institutions which western civilization spent the better part of 1100 years developing seem not to be able to cope with the exponential changes we are experiencing in technology, information, knowledge, demographics and population? The visitation of the global economy upon North America has seemingly emerged from the back pages of the newspaper business section to daily headlines almost overnight. And all of this while everyone is telling us how we ought to look in the future, but no one seems to be able to tell us how to get there.

Well, you've come to the right place! As many CFIER clients are discovering, the starting place is at the core of the enterprise, the seminal relationship as many have heard me call it, the relationship between employer and employee. Examine this relationship in virtually any enterprise and you will probably find its reflection throughout the organization. Change it and you will see the changes reverberate throughout. This seems evident to those of us who have been doing it. However, I mention it here yet again in order to set a frame of reference for some very good reading about what a successful combination of enlightened management philosophy and employer-employee relations methods look like.

As you examine what appears in periodicals and books about what the impact of the global economy (it's a competitive world, stupid) will probably look like in your corner of the world, you can indeed say to yourself "I know how to get there from here! My CFIER-introduced process offers the initial step." Being able to say that should give you deep comfort as you read a collection of articles in the official publication of the American Society for Quality Control, Quality Progress and a book entitled Negotiating the Future.

NEGOTIATING THE FUTURE

Negotiating the Future, by Barry and Irving Bluestone examines the history and response of both labor and management to social and economic challenges of the past, helping the reader to understand how people seem to define labor/management relations as adversarial "by nature." Their observations and urgings about surviving and thriving into the future draw heavily upon the approach of modern man agement thinking as reflected in such giants as Deming and Drucker. Focusing upon employee involvement the Bluestones paint a picture of the future workplace based on the actual success unions and managements have had to date in such places as the Saturn and NUMMI automotive plants.

Yet we know that strategic change, as opposed to "fresh paper" start-ups like Saturn or start-ups-from-the-totally-broken such as at NUMMI, comes reluctantly, if at all, without the ownership of the decision to change by those who are expected to effectuate it. From my perspective the explanation behind the lament of the "quality community" with regard to current assessments of stalled or failed efforts at "TQM" or"OD" lies in the absence of the legitimacy of the "quality initiatives" in the eyes of labor and middle management. The CFIER experience is showing us that the success of the ends is buried in the legitimacy of the means of getting there.

UNION PRESIDENTS SPEAK

So it is then that the articles by the union presidents of the Steelworkers, United Auto Workers, Communication Workers of America, and Amalgamated Clothing Workers (the Xerox Corporation union) and by researcher Sidney Rubenstein (all appearing in the September 1993 issue of Quality Progress) are focused upon the next iteration in the emergence of truly enlightened management philosophy: workplace democracy from the shop floor to the boardroom! Before you scoff, remember what people were saying about non-adversarial negotiations in collective bargaining, the ballpoint pen, and the "made in Japan" label before the paradigm began to shift? I think that in these articles we may very well be getting a good glimpse of the future.

The articles focus upon the successes that unions and management at the executive and workplace levels in these industries have had in the past few years as they have struggled to confront the challenge of the global economy. The one consistent ingredient found in each of their individual recipes is legitimacy or democracy. What is emerging as the modern workplace is a process of managing the enterprise by the unions and management that reflects the democratic values of our overall culture rather than attempting to sustain the values of autocracy where we work while practicing and believing antithetical values everywhere else.

Both the Bluestones' book and the article by Rubenstein introduce us to a defining concept: they distinguish the traditional and familiar collective bargaining agreement from the type of agreements which are emerging in the world of union and management cooperation. The former, focusing on immediate conditions, are termed workplace contracts.

The latter, encompassing the immediate as dependent upon the overall condition, are termed enterprise contracts.

While Bluestone and Bluestone call it the "enterprise compact" and Rubenstein calls it the "new employee contract" they are essentially introducing us to the same concept: union and management making a transcendent agreement lo manage the enterprise together, to abandon the autocratic remnants of the adversarial past and embrace the legitimate, participatory future. How this is done is well described in overview and descriptive terms. We are treated to solid, real world examples of the look of this future paradigm. The enterprise of the future looks more like community than otherwise; it is a learning environment, and it is not easily accomplished.

But the how? question lingers. What it looks like once you're there is the inspiring focus of these descriptive works. Yet what about the behaviors and emotions involved in getting there? From our experience with CFIER clients who are trying these descriptions, we hear "it takes time and commitment", "you mean we have to include them?", and "wow!, we didn't think about that solution on our own!" A process or recipe for legitimacy means building consensus, step by painstaking step.

The Bluestones, Rubenstein, Sheinkman of the Clothing Workers, Bahr of the CWA, Bieber of the UAW, and Williams of the Steelworkers inspire us to know that it can be done. The CFIER process is a big piece of the "how" puzzle.

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