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November 2005 Doing Good Pays Unexpected Dividendsby Steve Knaebel, MBA ’69
Some people believe that companies achieve great success because they are headed by brilliant, charismatic leaders. I think this is a myth fueled by media hype. Agility, continuous improvement, and outstanding total quality require the ideas and involvement of everyone in the organization. There must be leaders at every level. Why? The worker who runs operation 40 on our crankshaft line knows more about how to reduce variation in the concentricity of the main journals than I could learn in the rest of my life. Toyi Rodríquez, who works in our parts distribution center, knows how to speed up deliveries much better than I do. Our maintenance manager, Javier Shiguetomi, has reduced downtime on the cylinder-head line through predictive maintenance in ways I never imagined. Likewise, how Jorge Machuca can design the perfect power train combination for a truck carrying 60-ton loads on the steep Veracruz–Mexico City route impresses me no end. One unconventional and especially fruitful way to develop strong leaders at every level is to create opportunities for employees to do good in the surrounding community. Volunteering helps them develop self-awareness, confidence, empathy, persuasiveness, tenacity, openness to change, determination, and drive. I learned this through experience—it was not the theoretical construct I started with. Nine years ago, as head of Cummins’ wholly owned Mexican subsidiary, Cummsa, I established a local foundation with seed capital from the Cummins Foundation. Recognizing that a small foundation would have negligible impact if it tried to deal with the vast number of socioeconomic problems and injustices in the country, we decided to focus on two areas—“education for productivity” and natural resources conservation—and to require that every project have the direct involvement of one or more of our employees as volunteers. Cummsa has 120 distributors and dealers throughout Mexico, but its 1,200 employees, three-quarters of whom are unionized, all work at one facility in San Luis Potosí, a city of more than 1 million located 250 miles northwest of Mexico City. The plant there makes cylinder heads and crankshafts and remanufactures a variety of engines for export. The Cummins Philanthropic Association, known by its Spanish acronym AFIC, began in 1996 with three projects and 17 nonunion volunteer employees. By my retirement at the end of 2004, we had eight projects involving 89 employee volunteers. Our union employees are mostly involved in short-term projects, since having to rotate shifts limits their participation. Our first project, the Brayle Workshop, was designed to create decent jobs for people with blindness. Five carpenters produced 370 wooden shipping skids a month to be used for exporting our cylinder heads. By the end of 2004, Brayle had 12 employees producing an average of 7,005 shipping skids for Cummsa and nine other companies. Four Brayle employees are blind, and all but two have disabilities. While the payroll increased 2.4 times, productivity increased 19 times, and annual sales reached $520,000. Ten handicapped former employees have “graduated” to jobs with other local companies. Save a Tree is a project designed to educate Cummins employees and their families about the conscientious use of paper and recycling. In four years through 2004, 940 metric tons of paper and cardboard—the equivalent of about 15,700 seven-year-old trees—have been sent to a recycling center. We estimate this has saved close to 3.8 megawatts of electric energy and 24.5 million liters of water. The Satellite Development Center, located in a poor neighborhood of 10,000, tries to improve residents’ quality of life through “education for productivity” and the teaching of humanistic and ethical values. In nine years, more than 2,000 adults and youngsters have taken courses that include adult literacy, how to parent, computer training, first aid, pastry-making, haircutting, cosmetology, knitting, cooking, and English. Several dozen women use what they have learned to earn income for their families. In 1999, the center spawned the Creation Workshop to create decent jobs for mothers who headed families. Five women produced about 4,000 industrial uniforms for Cummins that year. By 2004 there were 19 women producing nearly 16,000 uniforms for 40 customers, while a nursery for the employees’ children provided two more jobs. Encouraged by Cummsa volunteers, in 1998 the state government constructed the Business Industrial Training Center to provide technical training in manufacturing, maintenance, and metrology. Ignacio Garcia, then our plant manager, chaired the mostly private-sector board that determined course content and teaching methods. He is now vice president of purchasing for the largest of Cummins Inc.’s five worldwide business units. Training and Support for the Handicapped, started in 1999, offers courses in computing, accounting, carpentry, high school accreditation, English, and sports coaching to help people with disabilities develop skills for jobs. In five years some 200 disabled people have been trained, and almost half of them have found jobs. For a Better Future aims to teach street children moral values and the work ethic. We have worked with 10 children, several of whom have stayed in the program for several years. They spend mornings at the plant instead of on some street corner selling chewing gum, candy, and the like. To offset this loss of income, we give their families a small stipend. Our volunteers help them with their homework; most have improved their grades. Serving as a volunteer requires adapting to a world where the relationships, challenges, and satisfactions are very different from those found at the workplace. Within a plant or office, the language and work styles reflect attitudes and behavior that are generally well-known and predictable. But as volunteers, employees are outsiders, and, at least in Mexico, their motivation is sometimes viewed with suspicion. (This was certainly true also when I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in a Venezuelan slum 40 years ago.) Could this Cummins person actually be an agent from the Tax Department or the Ministry of Health, the Attorney General’s Office, or even from the Judicial Police? When they begin, volunteers do not know the aptitudes, education, values, beliefs, and perceptions of the people they will work with. Who has power and how it flows is unclear. In a community, the movement of people and things is less fixed or predictable than when one is working on a machining line, a personal computer, or a company presentation. That is why volunteers learn to observe the nuances of what is being expressed with body language as well as with words: When you’re talking with someone, does he or she move closer or away? Does the person look you in the eye? Do onlookers crowd around or keep their distance? Do they nod agreement with whoever is speaking? Do they look at their shoes? Are their arms crossed or hanging at their sides in a relaxed way? Do their faces show enthusiasm, bewilderment, frustration, or even resentment? When you work with blind people, for example, you have to learn how they “see.” Once when I was leaving our Brayle Workshop after a visit, I said to one of the workers, “Well, Jesús, we’ll be seeing each other.” Without any animosity, he immediately corrected me by saying, “Sure, we’ll be hearing each other.” Volunteers also learn to listen in a different way because the vocabulary and styles of communication are different from those used in the company. One of our volunteers, José Contreras, expressed it this way: “I have learned that you have to give people the opportunity to be heard before you judge them. Also, when I want to find out if a person is qualified or not, instead of basing my judgment on his experience and knowledge, it makes more sense to know about his values and feelings.” Volunteers develop, in a special way, a sense of responsibility, initiative, and perseverance. Obtaining resources is not simply a question of filling out a requisition form and getting it approved. Outside the company, statistical data and information of all kinds are not so readily available or reliable. You need more creativity and tenacity—if the resources were readily available, the problem wouldn’t exist. Gerardo Rosas: “In the projects we see a bunch of things. There, we don’t have the quality or maintenance departments to supply what we need. We become independent and multifunctional. It forces you to take initiative.” Mariana Romero: “We are the ones responsible for seeing that the center operates in collaboration with the government’s Integrated Family Development Program, the local university, and the National Institute for Adult Education. You have to play a forceful leadership role and make things happen, so that the center’s goals are reached.” Volunteers also develop an extraordinary sense of teamwork. Gerardo Rosas: “You’ve got to pitch in regardless of your position, and even help unload the trucks. It makes you feel closer to the people.” I’ve seen that employees as volunteers undergo fundamental changes: They gain confidence and self-esteem; they feel empowered; their horizons expand; and they acquire a new appreciation for their privileged situation. They are proud of what they are contributing, and they feel proud of their colleagues and their company. José Contreras: “Who are the truly blind? Those who cannot see or those who refuse to see?” Patricia Rojas: “It helps me get rid of stress; it shifts my focus in a relaxing way. I’ve found that, through giving, my life has more meaning.” Claudia Ramos: “Over time you come to realize that AFIC gives hope to lots of disabled or underprivileged people who otherwise wouldn’t have any. AFIC is like a door that opens to a better life.” Trinidad Guzmán: “It gives me a chance to interact with people I would never have met under other circumstances—former governors, the secretary of education, CEOs of companies. It raised my sights.” Guadalupe Trujillo: “It has helped me understand how Cummins’ suppliers feel. I have also learned that there is no such thing as a small customer; you must give time to all of them. It gives me great satisfaction to see how these ladies value their work—they set an example for us.” Gerardo Rosas: “You develop a different vision of our machining and assembly lines after designing the Brayle Workshop production flow and putting it into operation.” Without question, serving as volunteers inspires loyalty among employees and makes them want to stay with the company. The word gets out and helps us attract other individuals with similar attitudes and aptitudes for leadership, teamwork, creativity, and accountability. Mariana Romero: “I don’t know if the company makes you feel good because they allow you to participate in the foundation or if being involved in the foundation makes you feel good about the company—perhaps both.” All told, volunteers must learn to be real leaders. Rarely do they find easy ways to reward or to punish. There are no raises or bonuses to be given, nor is it easy to fire someone. They must learn to build partnerships, develop patience, accept frustration, withstand failures, and recognize when they have not been understood. They learn to exercise leadership through persuasion, which means they must understand what people truly want and need—and they must adopt that viewpoint as their own. As author Cooper Thompson has written, “You must develop fluency in the language of feelings.” People who help others who are less fortunate possess universally admired values: integrity, a sense of fairness and justice, compassion, and humility. Thinking and acting on the basis of those values builds trust, and trust is vital to achieving “customers for life”—which is how a company ensures long-term profitability. Community work brings enormous satisfaction, and satisfied employees result in satisfied customers. Listening empathetically and observing with care; taking the initiative and being tenacious; projecting enthusiasm; understanding and practicing teamwork; continuously learning; showing compassion; feeling confident and generating trust; having the power of persuasion—these are the essential attributes of a leader that a volunteer develops. Volunteer activities are a leadership laboratory. That is why promoting philanthropic activities and involving employees as volunteers pay off. |
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About the AuthorSteve Knaebel retired as vice president of Mexico operations and Latin American distribution for Cummins Inc. in 2004. He was president and general manager of Cummins’ Mexican subsidiary for 17 years after working in Venezuela, Brazil, and Costa Rica. He founded the Mexico City branch of ADMIC–Dynamic Assistance to Micro-Entrepreneurs, Mexico’s Special Olympics, and Cummins Philanthropic Association. He served on the board of Accion International. Both Accion and ADMIC focus on microfinance, the subject of another feature in this magazine.
Illustrations by Michael Fink
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