When Good Things Happen DESPITE Management Action: Ron Avitzur’s Story About Apple's Graphing Calculator

My list of “15 Things That I Believe” starts with Sometimes the best management is no management at all -- first do no harm! If you start looking closely at how many innovations arose in large organizations, you will find that yes, sometimes management recognized and helped them along, other times management tried to stomp them out, and still other times, management had no idea that they were happening, but didn’t mind using them and getting the money they produced.

The most lovely statement I’ve ever seen on the imperfect link between management action (or the action of any given group or person)  and organizational performance was written by Stanford Professor (now emeritus ) James March, in his classic 1981 paper “Footnotes to Organizational Change," which was published in the Administrative Science Quarterly. I urge you to dig up a copy of this paper and read it, as it does a lovely job of summarizing themes from vast numbers of studies, and add one creative twist after another. March’s conclusion is that organizations are remarkably flexible, not rigid, although they often change in ways that leaders (and others) don’t expect or want. Here is a key excerpt (with references removed):

What most reports on implementation indicate, however, is that not that organizations are rigid and inflexible, but that they are impressively imaginative. Organizations change in response to their environments, but rarely change in a way that fulfills the intentions of a particular group of actors. Sometimes organizations ignore clear instructions; sometimes they pursue them more forcefully than intended; sometimes they protect policy makers from folly; sometimes they do not. This ability to frustrate intention, however, should not be confused with rigidity; nor should flexibility be confused with organizational effectiveness.

I was reminded of all this by recent note that I got from Ron Avitzur about how he and his friend Greg Robbins developed graphing calculator for Apple AFTER the project had been canceled (they were both contractors) and they were no longer being paid to work by Apple. But their badges still worked for awhile, and so they kept coming to work, and because they wanted to finish the project – and so many people at Apple helped them in little ways – they not only kept sneaking into work to finish the calculator, it has been part of every Macintosh since 1994.  Not many people spend their days sneaking into a Fortune 500 company to do work for free that is in the best interests of the company! 

The story is so wonderful because at every turn, when they faced a setback, someone at Apple would unofficially step in and help them – and keep the project rolling -- to help them break the rules. Take this snippet:

‘We were saved by the layoffs that began that month. Twenty percent of Apple's fifteen thousand workers lost their jobs, but Greg and I were safe because we weren't on the books in the first place and didn't officially exist. Afterwards, there were plenty of empty offices. We found two and started sneaking into the building every day, waiting out in front for real employees to arrive and casually tailgating them through the door. Lots of people knew us and no one asked questions, since we wore our old badges as decoys.”

This story is very well documented.  You can find Ron’s written description here, listen to it on This American Life, or see Ron tell the long version at Google.   In March’s terms, this is a story where good things happened despite rather than because of managerial intention. People who weren’t in management positions took action to keep the project going, “to protect policy makers from folly” even though that entailed breaking many rules. The story also has a cool ending as, ultimately, senior management got behind the project. This story is consistent with the view I emphasize in Weird Ideas That Work, that there are times when good management means no management at all. And there are even times (as David Packard showed in the Chuck House story) that, when employee defiance results in a great product, the wisest thing to do is thank them, and ship the thing! Also like Chuck House, Ron and Greg  were (sneakily) defiant because they believed so strongly that  what they were doing was best for the company and for Apple users -- and were remarkably effective at recruiting people to help by SHOWING  them their work.   

Ron, thanks for telling me about your lovely story. It should be a standard lesson in all creativity and innovation classes.  I am going to start using it in my classes this year, as it is part of  a larger lesson from the innovation literature -- leaders want the MONEY that comes from innovation, but often can't bring themselves to  get out of the way enough so that creativity actually can happen.  This is a theme that I've heard from IDEO and d.school founder David Kelley many times. 

Comments

[Quovadis]

Hi Bob,
A CEO who believes in total non management is Ricardo Semler.
"We give up control so workers can follow their interests and their instincts when choosing jobs or projects”
His book "the 7 day weekend" is well worth reading. Have you come across it?