Scanlon August 2005 E-zine

Greetings!

"How do I learn more about Scanlon?" In this E-Zine we feature stories about what the Network is doing to help others understand Scanlon theory and practice. Our newest Scanlon training and development tool-the E.P.I.C. Leadership Culture Inventory-allows anyone to "test" how their corporate culture is doing through the lens of the Scanlon Principles. Our Scanlon Blog provides a convienient indexed 24-hour-a-day site where the Scanlon message can be heard. Our joint activities, speaking engagements, and presentations are bringing the Scanlon message to new audiences. Researchers in the United States and Japan continue to write about the "dream of the steelworker" and his many contributions to organizational excellence. We provide links in this E-Zine to exciting learning opportunities taking place in September. It has never been easier to learn the Scanlon methods.


E.P.I.C. Links Principles With Company Culture
As the Scanlon Leadership Network’s latest training tool, the E.P.I.C. (Equity, Participation, Identity, Competence) Leadership Culture Inventory survey provides a way to measure how the Scanlon principles impact company culture. Designed to present an understanding of Scanlon’s Principles, the survey delivers immediate feedback.

“This is the first survey of its kind designed to help employees at all levels understand how they view their company’s culture through the lens of the Scanlon Principles,” said Paul Davis, Scanlon Leadership Network President. “The E.P.I.C. Leadership Culture Inventory offers immediate results through a fun and interesting exercise and allows participants to see how those results compare to more than 10,000 other Scanlon members.”

The E.P.I.C. survey was developed as a result of the Network’s efforts to design a world-class, state-of- the-art supervisory training program. While the training program is still in development, the Network has gathered several years worth of data in the inventory that the Network felt served a useful purpose on its own.

Participants can complete the carbonless paper survey in 15 minutes individually or as a group. Members plot the results on graphs that illustrate a gauge system similar to an airplane’s cockpit and then compare those graphs against the norm of more than 10,000 other Scanlon members.

The Identity Principle is the radar and represents what employees know about the company, its customers, investors and employees, as well as the company’s competition.

Participation is the gas gauge. The more participation a member company has, the more energy it has both on an individual and team basis.

Similarly, Equity is the oil gauge. When more equity is present within a Scanlon company, there is an increase in accountability and a reduction in overall friction.

Finally, the Competence Principle is the speedometer. Employees who are skilled and trained well operate faster and more efficiently.

With the addition of the Network-owned E.P.I.C. survey, Scanlon has three main surveys to offer its members, including the Motorola survey and Dr. Dow Scott’s Employer of Choice survey. However, only the E.P.I.C. assessment is designed to measure the Scanlon Principles’ effect on members, utilizing scales from the other two prestigious surveys.

“The underlying theme with each of these surveys is that the Network is interested in and committed to creating positive work environments,” Davis noted. “Understanding corporate culture is an essential element in doing so.”

The Network plans to sell the E.P.I.C. Leadership Culture Inventory for $3.00 each for members and $6.00 for non-members to cover the cost of printing. The survey is available for any Scanlon trainer to use as well. Please contact the Network's Office to order the E.P.I.C. Leadership Culture Inventory.


SLN, Luzerne Concur On Servant-Leadership
Two members of the Scanlon Leadership Network’s Board of Directors will participate in “Servant- Leadership,” a daylong conference designed to discuss and apply the principles of servant- leadership. Sponsored by the Workforce and Community Development (WCD) Division of Luzerne County Community College (LCCC) and Leadership Wilkes-Barre, “Servant-Leadership” will be held on September 29 at the LCCC Educational Conference Center in Nanticoke, Pa.

Ray Terwilliger, Owner, Terwilliger and Associates, Forty Fort, Pa., will serve as the moderator for the afternoon panel discussion, “Applying the Best Practices of Servant Leadership.” Paul Davis, President, Scanlon Leadership Network, will serve as a panel participant, along with Larry Spears, President and CEO, Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership, Indianapolis, Ind., Carol Hamm, Trustee, Country Cupboard Inc., Lewisburg, Pa. and a leadership faculty member from the United States Military Academy, West Point, NY.

“This conference is the first joint effort between these four organizations – the Greenleaf Center, Luzerne County Community College, Leadership Wilkes-Barre and the Network,” said Terwilliger. “We intend to utilize this initial meeting as a springboard to an annual conference on servant-leadership that includes all four co-sponsors.”

However, this conference will be the latest in a series of collaborations between the Greenleaf Center and the Network. Both not-for-profit institutions are committed to the ideologies of servant-leadership, gainsharing, employee involvement and open-book management, among others, and have worked together on like-minded endeavors in the past.

Robert K. Greenleaf, a retired AT&T executive who first coined the phrase servant-leadership in 1970 in his classic publication, “The Servant as Leader,” met with Dr. Carl Frost and Network members prior to his death in 1990. In addition, Scanlon steward Max DePree served as the keynote speaker at the first Servant- Leadership conference.

In addition, Spears, who is the conference’s featured speaker this year, plans to serve as editor for the Scanlon Foundation’s first book. Throughout his career, Spears has published more than 300 articles, essays and book reviews and is the editor of nine books, including last year’s “Practicing Servant- Leadership: Succeeding Through Trust, Bravery and Forgiveness.”

In “The Servant as Leader,” Greenleaf described the servant-leader as “servant-first...It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. He or she is sharply different from the person who is leader first...The leader-first and the servant- first are two extreme types...The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest-priority needs are being served.”

The goal of the Greenleaf Center for Servant- Leadership is to help people understand the principles and practices of servant-leadership, to nurture colleagues and institutions by providing a focal point plus the opportunities to share thoughts and ideas on servant-leadership, to produce and publish new resources by others on servant-leadership, and to connect servant-leaders in a network of learning.

The Greenleaf Center’s mission is to fundamentally improve the caring and quality of all institutions through a new approach to leadership, structure and decision-making. Servant-leadership emphasizes increased service to others, a holistic approach to work, promoting a sense of community and the sharing of power in decision-making.

Similarly, the Network is committed to helping each member, from small company to multinational corporation, become the world-class leader in its industry. The Network promotes the Scanlon Principles to advance their application among organizations, provides networking opportunities for its members, serves as a clearinghouse of Scanlon information and a supplier of unique Scanlon-related products and services.

Luzerne County Community College is a public, two- year, comprehensive community college for residents of Luzerne County and surrounding areas throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania. WCD serves as LCCC’s liaison with business, industry, educational and economic-development organizations throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania. The Division works with regional constituents to initiate, refine and deliver programs that support a well-trained workforce and enhance the economic growth and community development of the region.

Leadership Wilkes-Barre is an independent, non-profit community development program designed for adults in various fields of business and industry, government, healthcare, education, social services, professional and volunteer organizations, utilities and labor.


Scanlon’s Legacy Alive Five Decades Later
Half a century after Joseph Scanlon’s death, researchers worldwide are still paying tribute to the Scanlon founder’s legacy.

Two university professors seeking biographical information on the Scanlon founder contacted Network President Paul Davis and Dr. Carl Frost, creator of the Scanlon Principles, curious to learn more about his “fascinating workplace insights” and his innovative ideas. The recent inquiries confirm that Scanlon’s contributions extend far beyond the Network’s current membership.

Having already studied and written about Scanlon’s life and philosophies, the professors wrote to Davis and Frost in search of additional materials and resources detailing Scanlon’s contribution to labor- management relations.

Yasuo Kuwahara, Professor and former President of Dokkyo University in Japan, contacted Davis in May and Kuwahara shared with him a paper he wrote on the introduction of the Scanlon Plan in Japan. With a degree in labor and industrial relations from Cornell University, Kuwahara is also an editor of Japan’s well- known Ko-jien Dictionary, which for years has contained information about Scanlon.

Plans to expand the content of the dictionary prompted an inquiry to the Network for Joe Scanlon’s birth and death dates and other facts about his life for inclusion in an upcoming edition.

“The name of the Scanlon Plan has been widely known among the Japanese, particularly among those working in industries,” begins the paper written by Kuwahara. According to Kuwahara, various ideas of gainsharing, including Scanlon’s, were introduced to Japanese industries during the late 1950s and 1960s.

“Among the ideas and techniques introduced, the Scanlon Plan was one of the most well-known...” Kuwahara adds. He later explains that “although the Scanlon Plan seems to have lost its direct impact in the 1970s, the basic innovative idea of the plan has been well-inherited and deeply rooted in the Japanese industry.”

Daniel Wren, Professor Emeritus and Curator of the Bass Business History Collection at the University of Oklahoma, contacted Dr. Frost for archival material about Joe Scanlon.

In multiple editions of Wren’s textbook, The History of Management Thought, he has written about Scanlon’s work. The book tells the story of major figures and influential ideas that have helped shape the field of management thought.

“I find Joe Scanlon to be a fascinating person with workplace insights that have outlived him for many years,” said Wren.

“These requests indicate a tremendous respect for Joe Scanlon’s life work,” said Davis. “His impact on participative management has clearly spread throughout the world. This tribute merely highlights what we already knew – that his ideas and beliefs are of international proportion and have influenced people in many industries and countries worldwide.”

As the father of participative management, Scanlon, a steelworker and union leader, believed that a company’s survival required a climate of cooperation rather than competition between labor and management.

Scanlon once said that “the average worker knows his own job better than anyone else...given this opportunity of expressing his intelligence and ingenuity, he becomes a more useful and more valuable citizen in any given community or in any industrial operation.”


Scanlon Blog Debut Draws Visitors From Around The World
Scanlon Leadership Tips, the Network’s new Weblog (blog), has proven to be a valuable and effective source for members and other Internet surfers seeking information about employee involvement and the positive impact of participative management on productivity and profitability. Featuring leadership tips, archived Scanlon E-zines and news stories, as of June 2005 the site had drawn nearly 300 visitors since its launch in February.

The blog, accessible at http://scanlonleadershipnetwork.blogspot.com, has attracted visitors from four continents, including 13 states and four countries: the US, the Ivory Coast in Africa, the United Kingdom and Australia. Spanning the US from coast to coast, readers hail from Washington, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Missouri, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Kentucky, Illinois, New Mexico, Texas and Washington, D.C.

“With the advent of blogs as an alternative to mainstream media, we have the ability to keep in touch with the world in a completely new way,” said Scanlon President Paul Davis. “By using a blog to educate those unfamiliar with the philosophies of Joe Scanlon and Dr. Carl Frost, we’ve created an interactive forum that reaches millions of people in a timely manner. Our goal is for readers to value Scanlon’s blog as a credible source for tips on management and leadership.”

The Scanlon Leadership Tips blog was launched to provide another avenue for circulating Scanlon’s message to a larger audience, while at the same time making resources available to existing members, all in a centralized location.

Search engine terms resulting in page visits to the site include: “Scanlon equity,” “Good leadership in financial services,” “Developing healthcare leadership,” “Scanlon management” and “Scanlon Principles.” Eight percent of the visitors spend between five and 20 minutes browsing the blog, while four percent spend longer than an hour on the site.

“We want to share the Scanlon philosophy with as many people as possible,” said Davis. “Based on the keyword searches, it’s clear there’s a market for this information. With the blog, our goal is to serve our audience and provide them with the most relevant, up-to-date, practical advice for their organizations, regardless of the size or type of company.”

Scanlon welcomes comments from visitors, who are invited to share insight or pose questions by clicking on the green conversation bubble at the end of each post.

For more information about the Network or to explore the Scanlon Leadership Tips blog, make http://scanlonleadershipnetwork.blogspot.com a Favorite on your Internet browser and check regularly for updates, tips and member news.


Manufacturing Excellence through Collaboration

Scanlon pioneered collaborative workplace practices. Today many organizations are trying to develop more collaborative workplaces. Recognizing this need, the Society for Manufacturing Engineers (SME) will host a conference in Novi, Michigan on September 13-14, 2005. Featuring a tour of the new GM Cadillac Plant, SME is interested in helping manufacturers develop collaborative-lean operations. The Network's Lean Sim Machine was used to train the GM workforce at this state-of-the art facility. Magna-Donnelly's Tom VonIns and Scanlon President Paul Davis will conduct a workshop on using simulations to teach lean concepts for the SME.