Thirty some years ago I started a new position as a transition manager for Pillsbury and my job entailed going into poorly run corporate restaurants and taking control.  IBM developed the corporate employee/management training process I used which followed Maslow’s teachings and was purportedly cutting edge thinking at the time. 

Each unit had approximately forty employees plus a management team of five and it was my responsibility to evaluate key members to decide if they were in the right position or not. Rarely, if ever, did we fire anyone because corporate believed it was too costly to lose the productivity having to train someone new.  Instead, we moved them to a position which maximized their abilities meeting the employees needs as well.  It was almost always win-win.

Considering each unit was serving about 500 customers per day and 80% of its business came within a three-hour window 5 PM - 8 PM, you can just imagine how frantic it was trying to follow through with evaluations, training, and retraining while trying to maintain customer service, quality of product, and cleanliness.  It was very challenging in units that ran like a clock, and a nightmare in troubled units.

So corporate decided that each unit that went into transition would get a corporate management team of twenty for four weeks - all district and regional management types who either had an Ivy League education or years and years of experience in the business.  It made all the difference in the world in that I was then able to become a delegational manager and adequately control the transition.

Trouble was, those Ivy Leaguers didn’t know the business in the unit any better than the last hourly employee hired and the people with years of experience all wanted to manage the unit in their own style with nobody agreeing who the chief would be.  The worst part was that there was so much infighting everybody wanted everybody else’s neck.

I got nowhere fast. 

So I submitted a new plan of action to corporate for consideration - corporate officers in a unit during transition became managers in training regardless of experience and each one was assigned one part of the unit to manage under the transition manager’s instruction. 

Corporate agreed to try it and, wham, productivity and sales per man hour jumped to expected levels within a week - not the four they needed in the past, more than half the corporate officers were back on their own jobs in half the time, and unit sales rebounded faster, employee turnover was reduced, and the need for employee training hours (in excess of unit requirements) nearly vanished.

The key to that success was independent team building instead of one that was attempting to be centrally managed.  Each core group had it’s own manager, direct accountability, and thereby built a closer unity.

Now let’s fast forward to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Remember last May/June when I told everyone something was amiss in the organization - change was on the horizon?  If you do, then you probably also remember that a month or two later deadwood within the organization started to float to the surface attacking anything in its way, including me, and I ended up shutting the blog down for a period of time to let cooler heads prevail.

The point is, that potential for change uprooted folks typical behavior patterns to do what they ordinarily wouldn’t do.  Over the last year nothing has changed - deadwood continues to rise to the surface, infighting continues within the organization, and now it’s grown so loud that I need to hire a translator just to interpret motivations. 

Today I realize that last June when the noise started I was hearing part of the “core team” coming apart at its seams, and perhaps today all I’m hearing is the “team” finally casting out some of it’s last pieces of deadwood as the seeds of the culture change take root.  Perhaps… perhaps.  I want to believe that’s the case but some of the recent infighting and back stabbing has shown me a very ugly side of some of the roots that have sprouted and I can’t help wondering if management is walking around with blinders on oblivious that some roots are potentially decayed and hurting the seedlings.

Not to mention the impact on the players who are eating from the growth of those potentially decayed roots.

I’m not going to name names and I’m not going to cite examples.  Yet as fans you have a right to know not everything is peaches and cream in the Pirates farm system right now and the cries for help within are getting louder and louder by the day.  At the same time also realize some within cite “significant progress” and “glowing change” occurring.

Culture shock isn’t fun for anyone, especially for some who resist change, or whose motivations lie elsewhere, or who happen to be too emotionally attached to the seedlings.  So some noise is to be expected as team building concepts take root, but one year of crying out is a very long time.

Hopefully we start seeing the roots spout more than noise from within real soon. In the meantime, I’ll keep researching the best I can and let you know what I find.