The Tale of Wonder Widget, Part One

by Mark S. Fulton

Once upon a time, there was a company named Wonder Widget. Founder and president Walter Wonder launched his company in 1970 with the mission of becoming America’s premier widget manufacturer. In short order, Walter built Wonder Widget into a multimillion dollar business that shipped widgets from Worcester to Walla Walla.

As Wonder Widget grew from a start-up business with just a handful of widget assemblers into a blue chip corporation with thousands of employees, Walter carefully followed his business plan, adding the management levels detailed on his organizational chart. Each department, headed by a vice president, had very clearly defined responsibilities and an unambiguous chain of command that extended downward through several strata of directors, managers, supervisors and coordinators, ending with the rank and file workers, each of whom executed a single, simple task. Wonder Widget was a well-oiled model of modern manufacturing. But things began to change.

Five years after Walter Wonder sold his first widget, America was a country in the throes of social and economic upheaval. The Vietnam War had deeply scarred the nation’s sense of self-identity and a United States president had resigned from office in disgrace. A generation disenchanted with “the Establishment” was refusing to blindly accept institutionalized authority. Double-digit inflation and OPEC-induced fuel shortages had pushed most of the world into a recession.

To make matters worse, foreign competition was inflicting serious damage on corporate America’s bottom line. Big American companies were out of touch with their customers. American workers were commonly perceived as mere cogs in the machinery of business. Enlightened management amounted to figuring out new ways to use executive brains to move worker muscles. Meanwhile, Japan, Germany and other countries were experimenting with new paradigms for productivity and scoring successes that were sending a wake up call to American businesses—among them Wonder Widget.

By 1980 Wonder Widget was feeling the pinch from widget makers in the Far East, who were producing widgets faster and more cheaply than Wonder Widget. Walter’s response to the crisis was a textbook example of the scientific management method he had learned in school.

“I want you to add more supervisors to your department,” he told his assembled vice presidents. “We need more oversight to improve productivity. That also means I want you to sign off on every job order. Furthermore, we need new procedures for getting tasks accomplished more efficiently. I want them on my desk by the end of the month.”

It wasn’t long before Wonder Widget began sinking in red ink. Walter’s employees were chafing under the company’s rigid operational guidelines and layers of bureaucracy. Communication between departments— never good to begin with—deteriorated into what one disgruntled coordinator called “memo madness.” Workers became so focused on following the latest procedures and meeting the production quotas handed down from on high that quality began to suffer, leading to the unthinkable—wobbly widgets.

It got worse. Widget assembly lines broke down frequently and stayed down until someone could authorize a repair order. Meetings between department vice presidents and their managers usually ended in a flurry of finger pointing and exclamations of “That’s not my job!” Customers began complaining that they couldn’t get through to anyone who knew how to fix a wobbly widget. And when they finally did, it took six weeks to get a replacement part.

As sales plummeted, Walter began wondering what would become of his company. “I make good widgets,” he said to himself, “but if something doesn’t change, Wonder Widget is washed up.”

Then one day Walter was having lunch with his old friend Gordon Gonzo, president of Gonzo Gizmo, when Walter suddenly started sharing his fears about his company’s future. “If we don’t do something soon,” he said, “Wonton Widget is going to wipe us out.”

Gordon said his company had been in the same predicament a year earlier. “I thought Gonzo Gizmo was a goner. Our workers were so demoralized that they just seemed to give up. Everything we did to refine our procedures just made everyone unhappier. That’s when we hired a consultant to come in and help us figure out what we had to do to turn things around.”

“What happened?” asked Walter .

“Well, the first thing he said was that we had to change how workers perceived their roles in the company and how our management perceived their roles as leaders.” Gordon shook his head at the memory. “Right there I knew we had a big job in front of us.”

Gordon proceeded to recount the revolution that transformed Gonzo Gizmo from an organization with rigid work boundaries and a very steep, very deep management hierarchy into a team-oriented company run by mangers who functioned as coaches rather than commanders. Walter Wonder listened intently. By the end of lunch, he had made a decision that he believed would save Wonder Widget from becoming a business washout.

NEXT COLUMN: Reworking Wonder Widget

Copyright 2000 © Mark S. Fulton