Page 199 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

180 The Disney Way

■ Set up cross-functional project teams on a routine basis.
■ Develop quick and inexpensive prototypes to test products, processes,
or service ideas.

All the Right Stuff

We were really enlightened by the Global No-Frost team for a number of
reasons. We often work in conservative situations where we cannot really
experiment or try new approaches. This team gave us the chance to do just
that, and in Jerry McColgin we found the ideal team leader. He under-
stood his role.
Right from the start he announced that although he was the leader,
hierarchy meant little to him. “I’m not going to sit in a closed office, and
no one is forbidden to come in to see me. I want to hear from anyone
who has a concern, a problem, or an issue.” As he says himself, “I tend
to be a proactive, risk-taking, cheerleading, inspirational type. Facts and
do-it-by-the-book are not my way of working.” His personal experiences
working in amateur theatricals and on charity drives had also taught him
how to lead groups of people. He realized early on that the team offered
an extraordinarily high level of capacity, and he came to realize that his
job was to harness these talents and to guide and direct them. He was not
there to design a refrigerator; the engineers and designers could do that.
In other words, Jerry understood that he was macromanaging the team,
not micromanaging it. So long as the milestones were reached, he could
preside and guide, leaving the details to his competent staff.
Very early on, at the first retreat, Jerry made a speech that was very
influential in laying out the fundamentals of teamwork. Every individual
at Whirlpool goes through an objective appraisal process that determines
future raises and the size of the year-end bonus. The team would work
by a different norm. Each member would be judged not on individual
achievement but as part of a team, holistically. “I pointed to the marketing
guy,” Jerry remembers, “and said, ‘You will only succeed if the manufac-
turing guy gets the equipment designed on time.’ To the purchasing guy,
I said, ‘You will succeed only if the performance of the airflow system is
up to par.’” Jerry’s message was that the success of the team depended
on the sum of its parts—everyone working together at the highest level
possible.