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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23 Apr 1985
To:
Dear Colleague
I
enclose herewith copies of
two articles
taken from the April 1985 issue
of "International Management".
Both
articles deal with the matter of "change".
Ian
Christian generalises about
the resistance-to-change prevalent
in the British Industry and how Margaret Thatcher
is pushing for the idea of "Survival of the Fittest" under the conditions of free competition, In her
grim battle on the question of closing
of unprofitable coal-pits, she seems to have won the first round and established the principle.
But winning
battles is not the same thing as winning wars!
-especially "wars of
Ideology" - ways
of thinking and behaving which call
for change of attitudes - on
part of both the Victor and the Vanquished.
And the
first change in attitude
is that there are
no winners and no losers.! In a war
of ideology everyone must come out of a
winner !
And this is what Hirashi Shinto (President)
seems to be attempting at NTT - the giant
domestic telephone monopoly of Japan
which becomes "privatized"
this month. Very aptly, the article
calls it a "revolution in consciousness". And at one place the article says,
"In a Shinto-inspired
cleanup and paper-saving
drive, employees last year
destroyed 6,600 tons of
superfluous documents,
emptying 940 file cabinets
and lockers. They have also been
ordered to curtail their use of
paper and photocopies, which
last year came to
1.2 billion sheets. That's worth $ 60
million and would
reach almost 100 kilometres high if stacked".
Our own
success at destroying
50 tons of superflous documents at Powai last August, can at best be considered a "superficial"
comparison between what seems to be happening at NTT and what we are
attempting at Powai.
As I carefully read and
re-read the article,
I got an impression that
what NTT is engaged in is changing the very organization -
culture -and in the process involving all of its 3,30,000 employees!
Let us hope,
we too
can find ways to involve
all of our employees at Powai for whatever change of culture we badly seem to need to usher
us in the 21st century. And let us further hope
that those of us who do find
such "ways" will go out
and experiment, and not allow frustrations to
hamper their enthusiasm - because the worst bankrupt is the man who has lost his
enthusiasm.
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