Synopsis: Communication For Productivity
Letters written to some 7500 Workers / Managers /
Union Leaders, following a period of strike / Go slow / Murders (1979 -
1987), at Mumbai factory of Larsen & Toubro Ltd. This direct / open /
honest communication led to a remarkable atmosphere of trust between
Workers and Management, which, in turn, increased productivity at 3% per year
(ave).
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5 May 1986
To:
I WOULD LIKE TO ASK GINO
Participative Management
TRW is a big American Company. In
Lawrence City (Kansas) it has
a factory - Lawrence Cable Division (LCD).
It has only 130 employees - and no Union.TRW-LCD's
General Manager is Gino T.
Strippoli. Some day, I would like to visit Lawrence - for two reasons :
( i) I spent
2 years in Lawrence - some 30 years ago - doing my post-graduation in
engineering. I would like to see if the place has changed!
(ii) I would like to ask Gino,
How
have you managed to get
your employees to -"train new members, appraise their performance and recommend who should get raises
(increments)?"
If you
wish to find
out more about how hundreds of Ginos in
America are getting
their employees involved
in taking "managerial decisions" (and
freeing themselves to
take "entrepreneural decisions"), I recommend you read the book,
"Working Smarter".
The enclosed
chapter "When Workers Manage
Themselves" is meant to
arouse your curiosity!
And
although, we may not be
quite ready as yet to let the employees at L&T decide their
own annual bonus (- I mean 'ex-gratia') I do
not see much of
an option to employee
participation,
in hundreds of
day-to-day shop-floor (and office-floor) decisions.
On the
other hand, shall one practice employee-participation for lack of an
option? Or should it become an act-of-faith?
