AUTHOR(s): Barber, James C. TITLE(s): From the working class to the learning class. (organizational effectiveness and employee participation) Summary: Developing a learning organization would require the creation of a dynamic learning system that can encourage employee empowerment. The creation of a true learning organization, however, is oftentimes stymied by outmoded work structures and managerial beliefs. A technique to motivate the larger number of hourly employees is presented. The experiment was conducted at the Huffy Bicycle Co. in Celina, Ohio. The strategy involves mainly a shift in strategic-thinking learning for the hourly workforce. National Productivity Review p461(6) Autumn 1994 v13 n4 DESCRIPTORS: Bicycle industry_Management The drive was pleasant and uneventful. The flat farmland was covered with knee-high corn, and the smell of nitrate-rich soil perfumed the air. I turned right, and suddenly an elongated structure with a billowing smokestack rose from the land. No ivy crawled up the nondescript walls, nor were there imposing academic portals with Latin inscriptions to greet me. This was a factory, not an institution of learning. This was Huffy Bicycle Company, the largest bicycle manufacturing company in the world. Here in Celina, Ohio, a three-shift operation with more than 500 support people and 1,500 production workers turned out 15,000 bicycles a day. I entered the building, and the clanging sounds of powerful machines assaulted my ears. I put on my safety glasses and looked around. I saw men and women bunched over strange machines. They paid no attention to me as they methodically banged out bicycle parts. I gazed over at a swaying line of people. They frantically assembled oncoming bicycle parts. Their body motions reminded me of a nonstop Pac-Man game. This was a fast-paced environment. And the people were working hard. However, my task was not to increase their physical effort. My job was to increase their mental effort. This factory was about to become a learning organization, or at least that's what I hoped it would become, and school was about to begin for the hourly workforce. The development of a learning organization was only one of the reasons why I was at Huffy Bicycle Company. The empowerment of the hourly workforce was the other. The company's management believed that a learning organization would become an empowering organization. Huffy Bicycle Company took a giant step forward, as well as an unprecedented step, when it coupled learning with employee empowerment. The relationship between developing a learning organization and empowering a workforce has, for the most part, been overlooked. The reason for this is that most of the articles written about learning organizations reflect an elitist view of organizational learning. The literature on learning organizations is laden with weighty references about "mental models," "systems thinking," and "strategic thinking." These are exciting ideas. They are conceptually demanding. They require the learning of sophisticated cognitive skills. But although these skills are sophisticated and the concepts demanding, one does not have to be a member of the hierarchical elite to learn them. Sophisticated mental skills can be learned by hourly employees who make bicycles. Conceptually demanding ideas can be learned by people who never attended college. In his excellent book, The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge notes that over 4,000 people have attended workshops on the art and practice of the learning organization. Among those mentioned are managers, teachers, public administrators, elected officials, students, and parents. No mention is made of the man or woman on the factory floor. Yet, in most organizations, the hourly workers constitute the majority of the people. Even so, they are the most neglected when it comes to participating in learning to develop higher-level thinking skills. Higher-level learning is the development of the mind to think in terms of whole systems and complete processes. It is the ability to think in terms of relationships. Higher-level thinking was the key to Huffy's version of a learning organization. For the company to receive the full benefits of employee empowerment, it was essential for higher-level thinking to permeate it from the bottom up. Empowerment does not work very well with employees who have been kept at the operational thinking level, with employees who have developed their motor skills but not their mental skills. Empowerment unifies thinking with doing. Empowerment maximizes the mental abilities of employees and allows them to use those abilities on behalf of the customer. A genuine learning organization dedicates itself to developing the higher-level thinking skills of all its people, not just some in the middle and a few at the top. Unfortunately, a vocational educational mentality dominates most companies when it comes to providing learning for working people. The overriding belief is that hourly employees should learn only those things that are narrowly specialized and that require using motor skills. Before Huffy Bicycles, I worked with a company that was supposedly leading-edge. I suggested to the plant manager that higher-level learning be offered to the workforce. The plant manager agreed. He told me that the hourly employees would be receiving four hours of problem-solving training. They would be learning about causes and effects. Problem-solving training certainly has its place. But problem-solving thinking is not the same as higher-level thinking. One could be a good problem solver, but lack the breadth of a strategic or high-level thinker. Despite my protestations, the company proceeded to run its hourly employees through problem-solving training. It placed its hourly workers on an educational conveyor belt, stamping out problem-solving techniques the way they stamped out their products. The hourly employees clocked into these classes the way they clocked into work: spiritless and uninterested. I parted ways with this company and left for Huffy Bicycle with a strong resolve: I was determined that Hurry would not provide assembly line learning for its hourly workforce. DEVISING A STRATEGY FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING The workforce at Huffy Bicycles was unionized, hardworking, and extremely individualistic. I thought that such an enlightened notion as higher-level learning would be overwhelmingly supported by most of the workers. I thought they would literally jump for joy at the opportunity to have their minds stretched. Was I wrong] The harsh reality was that as much as I was ready to teach, the majority of the hourly employees were not ready to learn. Years of repetitive work behavior had worn them down. It's been said that organizations go to seed when the people in them go to seed. And they awaken when the people awaken. The hourly workforce at Huffy Bicycles had gone to seed. They needed to be awakened. Even if the company tried to hand the shop floor over to them, most of the hourly employees would not accept it. They had a narrow, functional view of their jobs: Punch in, punch out parts, punch out. They were in a rut. This rut would become a grave for the company unless the employees' minds opened up. The biggest waste at Huffy Bicycles was of the minds of the hourly workforce. It was as though over the years, they had internalized an invisible company policy that stated, "Any thinking to improve quality and productivity by hourly employees is strictly forbidden." I was stymied. One does not just walk up to an hourly employee and say it's all right to think now; it's all right to start using your mind. It's not quite that simple. How was I to open up minds that had been condemned to rigidity by outmoded work structures and managerial philosophies? How was I to flex minds that had been conditioned to routine, that had been conditioned to perform simple tasks day after day? In lieu of a miracle, I needed an integrated learning strategy, a strategy that would not only deal with the problem of resistance to learning, but would also develop higher-level thinking abilities. If I did not deal with the former, I would be unable to achieve the latter. I ultimately came up with a strategy that rested on three goals: 1. Reduce defensive behavior, because highly defensive people tend to be closed to learning. 2. Develop strategic thinking, another term for higher-level thinking, the ability to see the big picture. 3. Develop creative thinking skills, the vital tool for a paradigm change. These goals led to the creation of a dynamic learning system that became the foundation for a learning organization at Huffy Bicycle Company. In turn, the learning organization would pave the way for employee empowerment, for employees to eventually manage themselves as members of work teams. Empowered to make on-the-spot decisions to remove bottlenecks, these self-managed work teams would increase productivity and quality. The members of these self-managed work teams would use their minds as well as their bodies. Although I had developed a learning strategy, I had no curriculum. It was obvious that a canned program would not work. Canned programs tend to be contrived and far removed from the real work experiences of the employees. An experience-based curriculum would have to be created, one whose content would be based on real plant and organizational issues. The curriculum would have to be refined as the learning moved along. Such an experience-based curriculum required my teaching the hourly employees to reflect on their experiences. They had to give meaning to the brute facts of their worklife, going beyond the mere description of sensations. Transforming the hourly employees' daily experiences into reflective experiences was not easy. Common sense got in the way. Most of the hourly workers possessed an unquestioned faith in the power of common sense. One hourly employee proudly told me, "I don't have a college education, but at least I've got common sense." Unfortunately, however, common sense bogged the hourly workers down into their operational world, making it difficult for them to look up and consider new ways of working, new ways of manufacturing a bicycle. The challenge was to move them away from a common-sense level of experience and into the reflective level. There were managers and supervisors in the company who were against strategic-thinking learning for the hourly employees. They felt that this kind of learning was totally irrelevant to the work of a shop floor employee. For them, the hourlies might as well have been studying metaphysics. Ironically, the hourlies tended to agree. Many of them were hostile or, even worse, apathetic to the notion of learning. GETTING EMPLOYEES TO THINK STRATEGICALLY At 7 A.M. on a Monday morning, the door to the Bicycle Parts Training Classroom swung open, and a mumbling group of about 22 mostly middle-aged men and women straggled in for the first class. The front row remained empty as they sought the refuge of distance. Most of them withdrew by not making direct eye contact; however, a few bold ones folded their arms defiantly and glared at me. Introductions were sparse. I briefly told them why they were going to be here an hour a week for the next 12 weeks. Groans and moans accompanied my introduction to the course, which was called Strategic Thinking. "What good is this? While we're here, we're not making any bicycle parts," a voice shouted out. I nodded my head and replied, "You're right, but that's not your only job. But we'll get into that later in greater depth." I then did something that astounded them. I passed out pencils. "What's this for?" a gravelly voice yelled out from the back. "You'll see," I shouted back. Next, I passed out a learning activity designed to be an icebreaker and to establish an activity model of learning with them. They would participate in the learning process. More moans and groans erupted and pained expressions surfaced on faces as the workers looked at the assignment. It asked them to make an analogy: Working at Huffy Bicycles is like... Over the next 12 weeks, I provoked, challenged, badgered, baited, and did everything I could to stimulate the hourly employees out of their mental lethargy. I challenged existing mental patterns, particularly the notion that they were only at the bicycle company to provide physical labor. Their narrow work paradigm of one-person, one-machine reduced their visibility. They did not see work as a system. They focused only on their individual work behavior. They needed to develop new perspectives, new ways of looking at everyday situations. They needed to think in terms of alternatives, of different ways to manufacture a bicycle, as well as ways to improve the present approach. Defensive behavior gushed out like pent-up fluid from a lanced boil. "Why do we have to change?' "We have always been successful." "Programs come and go, so will you." "This stuff will never work here." Employees made bets that I would not last two months. I won five dollars in one pool. Sometimes it got ugly, with yelling and cursing. Employees complained to their union stewards, but the union supported the class. The president of the union had seen plants shut down and understood the importance of developing the minds of the rank and file, both for the company and for the union. I also had champions at all levels from within the ranks of management. They believed in expanding the minds of the workforce, and they possessed the vision to see the competitive advantages of doing so. They protected me from the fallout that often occurs when minds are asked to expand. MEASURABLE--AND IMMEASURABLE--IMPROVEMENT Four years have passed since the first class, and the measurable results since then have surprised even the most hardened cynics. In 1986, Huffy Bicycles produced 14,500 bicycles a day in 220 various models. In 1993, the company produced over 21,000 bicycles a day in over 630 models. This could not have been accomplished with rigid minds. The manufacturing system at Huffy Bicycles has been greatly flexed. Employees now are multiskilled. They rotate jobs. They meet in work teams to improve processes. They huddle instantly to solve immediate problems. They are in a learning mode. New technology is no longer imposed. It is introduced through education and involvement. The result of all this is that the company is getting higher volume with greater variety. Nowhere was there a more concrete example of the success of higher-level thinking and empowerment working together than in the Alternative Work Structure (AWS). The AWS is a unique self-managed work team that allows employees to produce bicycles with a holistic view. They receive engineering and logistical support, but the hourly employees design the complete work process. This means they must think strategically. They accomplish their work with a systematic, rather than a narrow task view. The employees expand their skills themselves. They conduct team meetings to solve problems and to devise ways to increase productivity and quality. They are responsible for scheduling, quality, supervision, and meeting productivity goals. AWS was not an experiment. It met an immediate market demand while providing a glimpse of the future. It allowed Huffy Bicycle Company to successfully enter new customized markets in Europe. At the same time, AWS represented a paradigm shift away from dependency on a mass-production assembly-line approach to manufacturing a bicycle. The assembly line may not go away, but it may not always be the best way to produce every bicycle. Some of the most significant changes at Huffy, however, have been the ones most difficult to measure. They can be felt as much as they can be seen. The vast majority of the hourly employees no longer believe that they are merely hired hands or warm bodies. Recently, they initiated a petition expressing their wishes that the company accelerate the pace of employee empowerment. The petition was presented to the president of the company. Engineers and hourly employees sit down and work together to solve problems. Employees raise critical issues to their leaders. Whereas people used to express hostility because they didn't care, they now express anger because they do care. Blank expressions have turned into enthusiastic smiles. Vice presidents, factory managers, supervisors, and hourly employees laugh together. In short, hourly workers have exceeded both their own and the company's expectations. Today at Huffy, a critical amount of higher-level learning, learning that deals with developing the mind, opening it up, making generalists out of specialists, occurs at the shop-floor level. In most industrial organizations, this is unprecedented. The ground at Huffy was hard, often unyielding, but difficult soil has been turned over. There has been more integration of thinking and doing. Maybe not enough, for the company still has a long way to go, but it is certainly on the right road. Based in Yellow Springs, Ohio, James C. Barber is a corporate consultant. He specializes in developing organizational learning as the foundation for organizational transformation and has helped build successful empowered work teams at numerous corporations. On occasion, he teaches graduate management courses at Antioch University's McGregor School.