How I learned to let my workers lead

In 1980, Ralph Stayer owned a successful, growing sausage company that had him badly worried. Commitment was poor, motivation was lousy, the gap between performance and potential was enormous. Over the next five years, Stayer turned the company upside down, but only by turning himself upside down first. For years he had insisted on his own control, made all decisions, delegated nothing. But when he tried to picture what the company would have to look like to sell the most expensive sausage and still enjoy the biggest market share, he saw an organization whose employees took responsibility for their own work. After several false starts, he finally began in earnest by making himself give up much of his own authority. Stayer turned quality control over to the workers on the production line. Workers also began answering letters of complaint from customers. Rejects went from 5% to 0.5%. Employees thrived on their new responsibility and asked for more. Gradually, people on the shop floor took over personnel functions as well, followed by scheduling, budgeting, and capital improvements. Managers came to function more as coaches than as bosses. Stayer--a little to his own dismay--began to find himself superfluous. In mid-1985, the company faced a watershed decision--whether or not to accept a massive new order that would make huge demands on every employee and strain the company's capacities. Stayer asked the employees to make the decision. They accepted the challenge, and productivity, profits, and quality all rose dramatically. By the late 1980s, Stayer had reached his goal of working himself out of a job.