Excerpt from Why Bother?
By Sam Smith
Even in this country there are many
companies that have offered alternatives to the compulsive, controlling, and
often corrupt capitalism so often used as the desirable prototype. Three
frequently cited are L.L. Bean, Tom's Soap, and Ben & Jerry's. Interestingly,
each began in New England in a culture
with a long tradition of respect for the individual and for integrity in
personal dealings. The companies shared an understanding that business is just
one part of life that must be integrated with all the others. Of course, such
behavior is not purely altruistic. Traditions of fair-dealing survive because
they work well for everyone, including the company. Besides, the Reagan-Bush-Clinton years took
their toll on L.L. Bean which, like so many other large corporations, began
hyping the image of what it is supposed to be even as the reality behind the
image was fading.
Bean's problems began in part when the company hired some Boston consultants in 1998 who advised it to "restructure" the corporate offices into "eight strategic business units" such as LL Home, LL Kids, and LL Sports. The firm also suggested a number of other moves popular with contemporary techno-managers. Soon, however, the company found itself also faced with a major unionization effort by the Teamsters.
According to Lisa Chmelecki of the Falmouth Forecaster newspaper
[The Boston Consulting Group] assigned managers to each unit and they told everyone that they had to reapply for their jobs," said one employee who had worked there for 15 years. According to Kayser [a former employee] and the others, almost every corporate employee had to submit a resume and one-page essay describing their aspirations as an LL Bean employee. They also had to submit a list indicating the positions for they were applying.
"All work stopped for at least three months," Kayser said. "Nothing got done, because we were all printing off resumes and were being encouraged to spend time meeting with the managers who would be hiring us. . . "
"I never even had to write a resume before," [another ex-employee] said." There was so much pressure to prove ourselves, to go around strutting our stuff. My record should have spoken for itself. . . . LL Bean is not the company I went to work for six years ago. The attitude has changed. Now, it is strictly about numbers. People are dispensable."
[Another worker told Chmelecki] "There was a time when LL Bean talked to the [employees] before making any major changes and there were management people that looked after the little guy -- not so today."
Such changes reflect the corrosive effects of the new capitalism and some of the bizarre management techniques that have accompanied it. These changes, according to one survey, found 56% of employees nationally saying their company did not genuinely care about them and a similar percentage saying that they have no strong loyalty towards their firm.
In the end, LL Bean avoided unionization after giving employees some of the benefits that a union would have sought and Bean itself might have offered without prompting in an earlier time. Bonuses, not seen for five years, were resumed and employees were granted additional holiday time off, night-time premium pay, a relaxation in the dress code, and a fitness program....
Another New England businessman, Tom Chappell of Maine, started an natural ingredient toothpaste firm in 1974 with a $5,000 loan and a few investors. By 1981 his firm was doing $1.5 million in sales and has been going strong ever since.
A few years later, however, Chappell found himself telling a minister friend, "I'm tired of creating new brands and making money."
In his book, Soul of Business, Chappell recalls, "I had never thought such a sentence would come out of me. But there I was, asserting that though I was very successful, I felt empty."
Chappell's remarkable solution was to go to Harvard Divinity School. He returned later, not only revived, but with theologian Richard Niebuhr in tow. He gathered his board -- including a business school dean and a Washington lawyer -- to listen to Niebuhr and discuss their assigned reading, Martin Buber's I and Thou. After the talk, the board broke up into small groups, augmented by staff members and local ministers, to discuss "how we might apply Buber's ideas to our lives and business practices." The Washington lawyer later told Chappell, "This was the most exciting thing I've done in a long time."
To Chappell the message was:
Beliefs drive strategy. Your ethics can form the foundation of
smart analysis and clear thinking. Your personal values can be integrated with
managing for all the traditional goals of business .... You can be a hard-ass
competitor and still run a business with a soul ....
o
Having spent considerable time in Maine, such things don't really surprise me. After all, I once bought a used car sight unseen over the phone from R&D Automotive in Freeport because I figured I'd do better that way that shopping around at Washington area lots. The 1983 Chevy station-wagon got both my sons back and forth to college and made two and half trips across the country.
From childhood on I have run into traits that, while not unique to Maine nor universal in Maine, were nonetheless in considerably greater supply there than in many other places. I make no claim as to the persistence of these traits nor do I to wish to romanticize them. After all, when I first went to Maine as an eight-year-old there were four times as many acres in farmland as there are today and much else has disappeared as well. Still certain Maine values have floated on the surface of my experience like lobster buoys off the starboard bow. Among them:
§ Integrity: Integrity is not just honesty but a quality in which all the parts fit together. Watertight integrity on a ship, for example, means that the bulkheads are not three feet thick in one place and rusted out elsewhere. Today those at the top often undervalue completeness, consistency, reliability – preferring the momentary impact, the single-minded pursuit, the exceptional event.
§ Community: Contrary to current mythology, community traditionally has had a great impact on the nature of business. Today's rhetoric denies it a place and derides those who advocate it as "community activists," as if maintaining the social compact was some sort of revolutionary act. I once observed the conflict between old and new ways of business at a meeting in a small Maine town. The CEO of a chain of boat yards had flown up from Connecticut to tell the community why his firm could not save a 19th century building that was the last link with the town's shipbuilding past. The evening progressed as such debates do until a young contractor arose and spoke directly to the CEO. He earnestly explained how, in a small town, business was done in a different way. Everyone was connected to everyone else. Then he added, "I work knowing that if I do a bad job on a house, somebody is going to tell my parents about it." Can you imagine David Eisner or Steve Case saying that?
§ Respect: The prevalence of independent farmers, craftspeople, the fishing industry, and small business – and the absence of plantation agriculture and relative lack of industrial capitalism -- helped to create a culture of respect and a flattened social hierarchy. Authority grew out of competence and reputation, not power. Maine humor, interestingly, centers on the foolish acts of the powerful stranger compared to the less powerful but wiser native.
§ Cooperation. The relationship between farmers or fishing boat captains defies the simplistic competitive rules of capitalist economics. Yes, there is competition, but at the same time there is an unusual degree of cooperation, described well by anthropologist James Acheson in The Lobster Gangs of Maine:
The relevant social unit for most fisherman is not the fishing industry as a whole; it is the men fishing for the same species with the same gear in the same area. They share skills and a common knowledge of the means to exploit and market a certain product . . . Although they are direct competitors, lobstermen are the most useful people in one another's lives . . The men in each gang are involved in an elaborate dance-like interaction in which cooperation must be balanced with competition, secrecy with openness, and sharing with self-interest.
Ecological wisdom: One can not spend much time in Maine without learning what Barry Commoner called the four lessons of ecology:
Everything is connected to everything else
Everything must go somewhere
Nature knows best
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
In Washington and corporate America, on the other hand, the environment is treated as just another special interest group with which to negotiate, to ignore if you can, and to appease as cheaply as possible if you can’t.
§ Self-reliance and appreciation of the real. My time in Maine has been graced by an extraordinary number of men and women who practiced the art of self reliance. I was taught how to get through hurricanes, how to move a house on skids, how to jack up a barn –all before I even got to college. I am reminded of the importance of simple skill and effort each time I look at the loose stones still holding a 100 year-old barn upright. On the other hand, when I return to Washington, all around me I find people who deeply believe that words can substitute for competence. It doesn't work.
