The heavy gang

• Are there occasions when less management is more?
• Should managers sometimes leave well alone?
• Do self managing groups exist?

Re-reading Mary Parker Follett

I have recently been re-reading Mary Parker Follett, stimulated by Jim Stroup’s excellent series. I am sure that you know the feeling – once you have read something, examples of it keep appearing wherever you look. News items you would never have noticed start to jump out at you. For me, it has been the same with Mary Follett and her notion of self-managing groups.

Mary Parker Follett was primarily a management thinker. Sometimes what she says is rather intellectual and not easy to grasp - for example:

“Sovereignty is the power engendered by a complete interdependence becoming conscious of itself.”

However, the saying at the centre of what I want to discuss with you is:

“When there is identification with organizational goals, the members tend to perceive what the situation requires and to do it whether the boss exerts influence to have it done or not. In fact, he need not be present or even aware of the immediate circumstances.”

In other words, there are times when less management is more, specifically when the group or team (and the words are not synonymous) knows what to do, why it is important and is willing to work to get it done. I have been seeing self-managing groups all over the place – and I wish that more managers would see them too.

Earls Court

It was a while ago, probably sometime in the 1990’s, when I was working with Earls Court on customer service improvement that I came across a bunch of men, collectively known as the ‘heavy gang’. Their job was to clear up the vast amount of rubbish that building an exhibition causes, to keep the aisles clean during the show and then to clean up the halls once the exhibition had been ‘knocked down’, as the phrase is.

They did it very well - but what was even more important, they generated a great deal of good will from the exhibitors. They were assiduous in their cleaning but also friendly and helpful. The title ‘heavy gang’ was one worn with pride by its members and there appeared to be little management ‘control’ over them. They knew what to do, worked well together and delivered the goods. Management largely let them get on with it – to good effect.

In the end, it all fell apart – not from any reasons to do with the heavy gang itself but because an accountant felt that savings could be made. The gang was ‘privatised’, in the sense that the cleaning was contracted out to an external company, and the gang was transferred as part of this arrangement.

The external company felt that it had to get more ‘productivity’ to make a profit on its deal with Earls Court and thus started setting targets, telling the gang how to do their job more quickly, and reducing the time allocated for the tasks. The result? All the members of the gang left, new people were employed, customer service went through the floor and there were constant complaints of dirty aisles, rubbish left uncleared and the halls left in a poor state after exhibitions.

Earls Court had been dearly loved as a venue. Its main hall was old but revered. However, at that time the National Exhibition Centre opened in Birmingham and, shortly after that, Excel opened in London’s docklands. Whether Earls Court could have withstood such competition is open to debate and certainly the absence of the old heavy gang would have been only one part of its lack of competitiveness but people fell out of love with the place and it was sold.

I think that a large part of the reason for its decline was a lack of understanding on the part of the then management – who over managed and under-led – that less management can often be more and that, while costs always have to be watched, cutting the costs that drive the business is usually very wrong indeed. Exhibitions are immensely complicated affairs and anyone who tries to control every variable personally will fail. The business requires extreme forms of delegation, largely based on the saying, perhaps more common in the theatre world – ‘the show must go on.’

As Jim Stroup says, glossing Mary Parker Follett:

It is important, then, for managers to pay particular attention to the “group life.” The dynamic interrelationships of its members are its essence, by means of which members continuously refine and reinforce their group loyalty and their identification with group goals. It is also the vehicle for the instigation of specific instances of creativity within the group, and then the dissemination of them throughout it.

And this is true, even when you are talking about a gang of cleaners. I don’t know much about the new owners of Earls Court – or indeed about how they manage the place. Still, I have always hoped that it would re-emerge as competition for the newer (but fairly soulless) venues.

The re-cycling centre

What is your image of dustmen, garbage collectors and people who work in re-cycling centres - commonly known as the 'town dump'? Would you be surprised to be welcomed at a re-cycling centre, offered advice on where what goes, given a hand unloading uncle’s old wardrobe and have an ‘operative’ take the used paint tins away for you? Would you expect friendliness, courtesy, efficiency and expertise?

Well, whether you would or not, these are exactly what you get at the Havering Re-cycling Centre - the main, if not only, occupant of the poetically named Gerpins Lane.

The people there seem to enjoy their work, to be at ease with each other and ready to help the populace of the London Borough of Havering. So surprised have I been, that I actually asked one of them how it was that the place seemed to work so well. I asked him whether the management was good. “They are alright,” he said. “They don’t bother us and we don’t bother them.” How does it work so well? “Well,” he said, “We are a bit older than some and we work things out for ourselves. We have the occasional wrong’un but they do not stay long.” Is it a close knit community? “No. We rub along with each other. We don’t socialise out of work but we get on.”

It works – and I suspect it works because the management, in this case, is intelligent enough to recognise that less management is more; that people can be trusted; that they can work out how to do things and that if they are left alone to do it, everyone will be happy.

The Clean Team

You may think it laziness but I do not clean my car, or indeed my wife’s car. I take both to a hand car wash just up the road. To look at the queues, it seems that everyone else does as well.

There have been other car washes in the area – some automatic and some, like mine, not. All have failed. Why? The three rules of retailing are location, location and location, they say, and the Magic Car Wash is based on the roundabout (rotary) where several main roads come together. However, I am convinced that this is not the only answer.

OK, I guess that I am an idle so-and-so and my bad back does play up when I try to wash the wheels, but the main reason I go to this car wash is to watch the team in action.

The ‘Deanmobile’ – looking clean!

The team know exactly what they are doing and no ‘words of command’ are spoken. Members of the team do their bit on your car, help each other and then move on to the next car – wheels, glass, shampoo, rinse, shampoo again, wash over, dry, collect the money and then out on the road again. Take a hard right at one point and the team is all over the inside as they vacuum the carpets, polish the inside glass, dust the fascia and clean the upholstery. A bit more expensive and takes a bit longer but I often choose this option to watch the ‘car cleaning ballet’ in action.

I spoke to the manager there. By the way, he is as much a working part of the team as anyone else. He told me, “It took a fair bit of time to work out the system and get the right tools and fluids. We think we have it right now and the main thing is letting the team get on with it. I give a guiding hand now and again but my main management job is really restricted to training any new people who come aboard.”

Less management is more?

In all three cases, the essence of the success seems to be management in the background. OK, there is a system at Magic Car Wash – and a good one – and I am sure that there are some very clear rules at the Re-cycling Centre – if only on health and safety grounds. However, what is equally clear, in all three cases, is that they are self-managing teams. From what I can gather they:

• work out their own rota
• discuss how things are done
• initiate changes in work methods
• regulate membership of the team
• help each other
• … and cover for each other if someone needs an hour off.

In all three cases, staff attrition seems to be very low. Absenteeism is not only virtually zero but is also managed by the team. (If you are absent when needed, the team itself will soon let you know that you are not wanted!)

Could more efficient methods be designed by a ‘time and motion’ engineer? Well, possibly, but isn’t that the point? If you want a group of people to work well, look after the customers and do a quality job - with low staff attrition and no absenteeism - then it appears that less management is more.

It is not as if cleaning, rubbish disposal and car washing are inherently attractive jobs. What makes the job attractive is the way that they are (not) managed.