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Message #272 - TQM in Industry (Reese)  (Rcvd)
   Date: 05-27-94 04:35:00
   From: Eric Bohlman
     To: Tom Glenn
Subject: Driving out fear
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@MSGID: 11:202/299 53841604
@REPLY: 11:202/299 537f52ca
@PID: RA 2.01 80219
John L. Ellis wrote:

 >         After 350 surveys from three companies, the pattern
 > is
 > consistent:  workers rate Point #8 (DRIVE OUT FEAR) the
 > lowest.

You might want to check out the book DRIVING FEAR OUT OF THE WORKPLACE by
Kathleen D. Ryan and Daniel K. Oestreich (1991, Jossey-Bass).  Thier main
thesis is that once an organization reaches a given size, certain issues
become regarded as "undiscussable" unless the organization takes positive
steps to prevent this (note that this will happen even if the management
isn't doing anything to CREATE fear).  They discuss some strategies for
making things better.

I've run into something similar with an employee attitude survey that I've
analyzed for a local manufacturer.  One of the survey statements was "many
people in this company are afraid to speak up for their ideas."  Nearly half
of the 2000 employees surveyed agreed with this to some extent.  The
distribution of responses (on a 7-point extension of the Likert scale) was
nearly flat, in contrast to the distribution of responses to nearly all the
other 58 survey statements (which, by the way, were mostly positive).  There
was little correlation between responses to this statement and responses to
the other statements (including statements involving people's relations with
their supervisors).

I'm working with the HR people at the company to come up with refinements of
this statement for the next survey (to be conducted at the beginning of next
year).

Of course, in some organizations, fear simply results because managers assume
that being effective means being bullies.  The only real way to deal with
this is to change the criteria for selecting managers, which, needless to
say, means that top management needs to rethink its values (if bosses are
bullies, its usually because they're EXPECTED to be bullies).  Note that
several of Deming's other points are also involved in reduction of fear; for
example, forced ranking (you get an unsatisfactory because he did very well)
and numerical goals also generate fear.  A caste system in the organization
(where people can't speak up because they don't have the right status) also
leads to fear and reduced performance; the notion that "not talking back to
one's betters" is a virtue is a leftover from the medieval days of barons and
serfs, and it's grown so much mold as to be downright poisonous.