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　　Free to succeed . . .

Whether in troubled economic times or during years of prosperity,

there is a proven way for companies to boost productivity, profits,

and growth. Remarkably, it costs nothing––whether cost is measured

in terms of monetary resources or time– –and is simply based on the

belief that, if only people can be free to act in the best

interests of their company, the results will be tremendous.

Freedom, Inc. presents the evidence that this is not the

Pollyannaish wish of a few dreamers, but a reality built by

bottom-line-focused leaders. . . . 　　

The culture of freedom works–and Freedom, Inc. reveals the

secrets of a successful business paradigm based on a trusting,

nonhierarchical, liberated environment.　　

The visionary leaders profiled here performed near-miracles in

driving their companies to unheard-of levels of success, often from

unlikely or disheartening beginnings. Businesses as diverse as

insurance company USAA, winemaker Sea Smoke Cellars, Gore &

Associates, advertising agency The Richardson Group,

Harley-Davidson, and Sun Hydraulics have had the insight and

courage to challenge long-held management beliefs about human

nature and employees–and radically depart from the traditional

command-and-control structures, rules, and policies. By freeing up

the individual initiative and risk-taking instincts of every

employee, these companies showed they could dramatically outperform

their rivals in an array of fiercely competitive

industries.　　

By listening to employees instead of telling them what to do, by

treating them as equals and not limiting information through a

trickle-down hierarchy, and by encouraging a culture in which

employees have commitments (something chosen) as opposed to jobs

(something imposed), these companies liberated their workers to

fulfill their own individual potential, which has led to more

productive, loyal, and engaged workers, as well as significant

measurable profits and growth.

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　　BRIAN M. CARNEY is a London-based member of the editorial

board of the Wall Street Journal and the editorial page editor of

the Wall Street Journal Europe. In 2009 he won the prestigious

Gerald Loeb Award for Commentary, and in 2003 he won the Bastiat

Prize for Journalism for his writings on business and economic

affairs. After majoring in philosophy at Yale, he earned a master’s

degree in philosophy from Boston University and worked at the

Innovations in American Government program at Harvard University

before joining the Wall Street Journal in 2000.

　　ISAAC GETZ is a professor at the top-ranked ESCP Europe Business

School and holds Ph.D.s in psychology and management. He has been a

visiting professor at Cornell, Stanford, and the University of

Massachusetts. Dr. Getz conducts and publishes research on

innovation, leadership, and corporate transformation for excellence

and growth and speaks on these topics. His work has been featured

in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and many other

media.

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　　1

　　"HOW" COMPANIES AND "WHY" COMPANIES

　　How Not to Run a Business

　　Even If You don't know what Gore-Tex is, you know what it does:

It keeps you dry--guaranteed. As a brand, Gore-Tex has been so

successful that it sometimes seems in danger of disappearing, of

becoming a generic term like "Band-Aid." Since it was invented in

1971, Gore-Tex has given rise to a number of competing products.

Some of those boast properties said to be superior to the original.

But if you walk into a store and want to know whether a ski jacket

is waterproof, the question you'll probably ask is "Is it

Gore-Tex?"

　　It's the kind of brand dominance--over both market share and

"mind share"--that marketers dream of, or lose sleep over. The

story of how it came to be, and came to symbolize an entire market

category, is the story of two radical ideas.

　　Bill and Genevieve Gore's first idea was that there were market

opportunities for a chemical called polytetrafluorethylene--PTFE

for short--that DuPont wasn't pursuing.

　　Today, PTFE is best known as Teflon, that magical polymer that

keeps our pans from sticking and our pipes from leaking, among a

myriad of other far-flung uses. It is supposedly so slippery that

it is the only known substance to which a gecko's feet will not

stick. But in 1938, it was an experiment gone wrong for Roy

Plunkett, who worked at DuPont. Plunkett was trying to develop a

refrigerant for car air conditioners when one of his canisters of

gas seized up solid. He cut it open and found that the

tetrafluorethylene inside had "polymerized"--that is, turned to a

kind of plastic, white and slippery. Three years later, DuPont

received a patent on the stuff, but then contented itself with

selling it as a raw material to those who wanted to incorporate it

into their products. It would be another thirteen years before a

Frenchman, Marc Gregoire, stuck it to a pan so that nothing else

would.

　　Bill Gore had other plans for PTFE. He thought it would make a

great insulator for electrical cables. But DuPont was a chemical

materials company, not an electrical products company, and wasn't

interested. So, at the age of forty-six, this father of four quit

DuPont, licensed PTFE, and set up shop in his basement with seed

money from friends in the Gores' bridge club.1

　　As it turned out, Bill Gore was right about PTFE's potential. But

it was his and Vieve's second idea that gave the world Gore-Tex,

along with more than one thousand other innovative products, and

made W. L. Gore & Associates into a multibillion-dollar leader

in markets spanning from aerospace and electronics to energy and

health care. Like PTFE, that second idea was borrowed, in a way,

from DuPont. But like the remarkable polymer, Bill's insight had to

do with what the company he had worked at for years wasn't

doing.

　　Bill Gore believed that the way we talk about one another and

about our jobs affects the way we think and the way we act. So he

replaced his employees with "associates," their jobs with

"commitments," and their managers with "leaders."

　　Of course, it's possible, as George Orwell knew, to change all

the words without changing reality. And changing the reality of how

people work was Bill Gore's real ambition.

　　THE END OF "FUNNY" BUSINESS

　　Les Lewis, today a manufacturing leader at Gore, was one of the

company's first associates. He recalled what it was like at Gore in

1965. "It was early on, at a funny time for the company," Lewis

explained. "We had [one plant], seventy people, and believe it or

not, a dozen 'supervisors.' I was one of them, and I decided to

write the first supervisor's handbook--how to deal with back

vacations, the sorts of things that a supervisor needs guidelines

for."

　　What Lewis described as a "funny time" is a phase that almost

every successful start-up goes through. The company has started to

grow; maybe one day you walk in and realize that you no longer

recognize everyone who works there and don't always know who does

what and how anymore. Sooner or later, someone decides that order

needs to be restored, or established. An enterprising manager like

Lewis decides he'll share his insights by setting them down on

paper, and the first manual is written to tell people how to do

their jobs.

　　If you're one of those managers, this might seem to be an

attractive opportunity--a chance to show your quality and pass on

your experience. Some people might even think it fun, a bit like

setting down the rules of a whole new society that, from now on,

will run like a well-oiled machine.

　　But Lewis's "fun" did not last long. Today, a handbook such as

the one Lewis wanted would be unthinkable at this company. But how

did founder Bill react to the manual in those early days?

　　Lewis described Bill Gore's big idea as a product of his

experience at DuPont.2 As Gore explained it to Lewis at the time,

"When [DuPont] wanted to work on a project, they would assemble a

small team, and that small team would work very much as equals . .

. where there was not a hierarchical thing. Everybody worked,

everybody brought their skill and knowledge together." This was,

for Gore, an ideal way of working. But at DuPont, "once that

project got to a certain point, they would all go back to their

organizations, in a much more hierarchical chain of command."

Gore's notion was simple: If this collaborative, nonhierarchical,

liberated structure worked for important projects that needed to

get done quickly, why shouldn't a company work that way all the

time? So once Gore left DuPont and started his own company, he

decided to do just that. According to Lewis, Bill Gore "vowed that

if he ever had a company of his own, he would want it that way

because he thought that it really invited a lot of people's

creative skills to come forward." Even so, it took time and

experimentation before Gore settled on an effective way to

implement his idea.

　　The discovery of Lewis's supervisor handbook, as it happens, was

a clarifying moment for Bill Gore. "He wasn't turned on by it,"

Lewis said drily, adding, "But when I wanted to introduce a

requisition form for shop work, that was the end of it--Bill hated

forms."

　　So Bill Gore decided to take his supervisors out to dinner. Soon

the monthly dinners became an academy in the values and principles

of leadership. "It was almost a Socratic approach to teaching

people to lead," recalled Lewis. "At these dinners, he would talk

about how to lead--we wouldn't call it 'leading' then; we were

[still] 'supervisors'--and how to 'sponsor'--we didn't call it

'sponsoring' then. He would discuss problems that we had and would

ask everyone, 'How would you do that?' We would hear different

ideas about how to deal with situations," Lewis explained. "It was

absolutely a dialogue. He would never drive his answers to us,

[saying, 'This is] what you ought to do.' Instead, he would ask,

'How have you solved this problem? Has anyone else experienced one

of these?' Meanwhile, he was also instilling in us values and value

judgments."

　　So the "funny time" ended. No supervisors ever attempted to write

rules and policies again, because there were no more supervisors at

Gore. And the leaders, who took the place of the supervisors, were

busy helping people--instead of telling them how they had to work.

But it would take more experimentation and time before Bill Gore

fully implemented his second big idea of a radically different way

to work.

　　THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

　　Fast-forward to the mid-1980s. Thirteen years ago, Lewis had left

the company for greener pastures. After spending this period in

more traditional command-and-control companies, he's now decided to

return to his native Newark, Delaware, and give W. L. Gore &

Associates the benefit of knowledge and experience he's gained

about managing big companies. Gore itself had gotten a lot bigger

over the years, with several manufacturing sites in the United

States and abroad and several thousand associates. The

circumstances looked perfect. The plant had just been moved to a

brand-new facility and Lewis, a newly minted manufacturing leader

had a big corner office, making him feel important: "I was feeling

very confident--'I have arrived,' you know?" There was a lot on his

plate. Operations were inefficient and the manufacturing techniques

people used appalled Lewis: "Instead of computers they were using a

columnar pad with numbers they were ticking off to run

manufacturing operations by hand."

　　So Lewis decided to change all that, to instill some discipline,

show people that they were working in a backward way, and push them

to use a newfangled tool called a computer spreadsheet.

　　It looked like the right thing to do. Though quite big already,

the company lagged behind its main competitors in the use of

modern, computer-based operations management. Lewis's proposed

course of action was unimpeachable and would have been accepted in

any other company. What Lewis couldn't see is how different Gore

had become since he'd left.

　　His efforts lasted six months and the only result was

personal--he was ready to leave the company again. And it wasn't

because of then-president Bob Gore's--Bill's son--hatred of

computers ("Bill hated forms, Bob hated computers," Lewis

explained) but because no associate would ever listen to him, never

mind follow him. "I was using the techniques that I had been

practicing for thirteen years elsewhere. More power, more

influence, more whatever, and suddenly it dawned on me--an

epiphany: 'You know what the Gore organization is like. You were in

it. Why are you trying this top-down kind of a way?'"

　　And so Lewis rediscovered the values and principles of leadership

Bill Gore had taught him and others at their Socratic dinner

meetings. Lewis dubbed it the "yellow brick road."

　　"You ask your associates 'Where do you want to go?'" Lewis told

us. "And they say, 'To the Emerald City.' So you don't tell them,

'Follow the yellow brick road,' the road your own knowledge

dictates is the right one," Lewis explained. "You don't, because

all they will say is, 'You're crazy. We're going off through the

woods....

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编辑推荐

　　Free to succeed . . .

　　Whether in troubled economic times or during years of prosperity,

there is a proven way for companies to boost productivity, profits,

and growth. Remarkably, it costs nothing––whether cost is measured

in terms of monetary resources or time– –and is simply based on the

belief that, if only people can be free to act in the best

interests of their company, the results will be tremendous.

Freedom, Inc. presents the evidence that this is not the

Pollyannaish wish of a few dreamers, but a reality built by

bottom-line-focused leaders. . . .

　　The culture of freedom works–and Freedom, Inc. reveals the

secrets of a successful business paradigm based on a trusting,

nonhierarchical, liberated environment.

　　The visionary leaders profiled here performed near-miracles in

driving their companies to unheard-of levels of success, often from

unlikely or disheartening beginnings. Businesses as diverse as

insurance company USAA, winemaker Sea Smoke Cellars, Gore &

Associates, advertising agency The Richardson Group,

Harley-Davidson, and Sun Hydraulics have had the insight and

courage to challenge long-held management beliefs about human

nature and employees–and radically depart from the traditional

command-and-control structures, rules, and policies. By freeing up

the individual initiative and risk-taking instincts of every

employee, these companies showed they could dramatically outperform

their rivals in an array of fiercely competitive industries.

　　By listening to employees instead of telling them what to do, by

treating them as equals and not limiting information through a

trickle-down hierarchy, and by encouraging a culture in which

employees have commitments (something chosen) as opposed to jobs

(something imposed), these companies liberated their workers to

fulfill their own individual potential, which has led to more

productive, loyal, and engaged workers, as well as significant

measurable profits and growth.

媒体评论

　　"Brian Carney and Isaac Getz have used their powerful concept

of freedom to serve as a crucial foundation for their imaginatively

framed ideas in the broader area of commerce. A most interesting

and original work."

　　––James MacGregor Burns, author of the Pulitzer Prize and

National Book Award winning Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom,

1940—1945

　　"Human energy and creativity are key to any successful

enterprise–yet most organization theories unwittingly suppress the

power of employees. With dozens of vivid stories, Freedom, Inc.

shows how successful firms tap into the human spirit, building a

culture of accomplishment and human fulfillment. A must-read for

every manager and entrepreneur."

　　––Philip K. Howard, author of Life Without Lawyers and The Death

of Common Sense

　　"I've never thought that any of the things I've done were

radical. They just seemed natural. . . . My total focus is on our

work. . . . What can I do to keep making the work better and better

and better and better."

　　––Stan Richards, founder and head of The Richards Group

　　"If the [work] environment is right, then we do the product right

and we make a ton of money and have a blast. . . . In this culture

there is zero tension and there is absolute trust."

　　––Bob Davids, founder of Sea Smoke Cellars

　　"I had to make the jobs more meaningful. . . . If you enrich the

jobs you enrich the people."

　　––Robert McDermott, former CEO of USAA

书籍介绍

Free to succeed . . .

Whether in troubled economic times or during years of prosperity, there is a proven way for companies to boost productivity, profits, and growth. Remarkably, it costs nothing––whether cost is measured in terms of monetary resources or time– –and is simply based on the belief that, if only people can be free to act in the best interests of their company, the results will be tremendous. Freedom, Inc. presents the evidence that this is not the Pollyannaish wish of a few dreamers, but a reality built by bottom-line-focused leaders. . . .

The culture of freedom works–and Freedom, Inc. reveals the secrets of a successful business paradigm based on a trusting, nonhierarchical, liberated environment.

The visionary leaders profiled here performed near-miracles in driving their companies to unheard-of levels of success, often from unlikely or disheartening beginnings. Businesses as diverse as insurance company USAA, winemaker Sea Smoke Cellars, Gore & Associates, advertising agency The Richardson Group, Harley-Davidson, and Sun Hydraulics have had the insight and courage to challenge long-held management beliefs about human nature and employees–and radically depart from the traditional command-and-control structures, rules, and policies. By freeing up the individual initiative and risk-taking instincts of every employee, these companies showed they could dramatically outperform their rivals in an array of fiercely competitive industries.

By listening to employees instead of telling them what to do, by treating them as equals and not limiting information through a trickle-down hierarchy, and by encouraging a culture in which employees have commitments (something chosen) as opposed to jobs (something imposed), these companies liberated their workers to fulfill their own individual potential, which has led to more productive, loyal, and engaged workers, as well as significant measurable profits and growth.