ith their chairs turned around backward, so their backs faced him. He said to them, " 'You know, this is a real lonely job. Are your guys going to talk to me?'" They all turned around, and it turned out to be one of the most honest conversations he had had while at Belle. "By telling the mechanics not to make waves, the managers were trying to stop communication, and it was a very clear lesson to me how important communication it. I'm talking about open communication, open communication."
"People become more fulfilled because they are involved and they see their ideas valued. People begin to discover meaning in their work. You could see it in their posture, how they walked, in their faces." Another thing Knowles changed was the meetings at the plant. "I suggested that from then on at meetings I wouldn't sit at the head of the table, which was a kind of power seat." He decided to let people rotate being at the head seat, to conduct the meetings. After reading a list of rules for treating people from a manager at another plant, Knowles took their basic principles and wrote his own. He hung these everywhere you could think, from control rooms to offices to the lunchrooms:
1. People want interesting work-work that makes good use of their abilities. Boring jobs de-motivate and alienate.
2. They want opportunity for leaning and growth and opportunity to apply the skills applied.
3. They can be trained (that is, they are able and willing) to do several different jobs.
4. They want equal opportunity to advance and try different work.
5. They wan responsibility in their work, some degree of decision making
6. They "want in" on decisions that affect them.
7. People expect management to lead, not abdicate.
8. They expect a leadership team to be consistent and predictable.
9. People want to be part of a winning team.
10. People want to know what's going on at Belle, in the department, and in the company.
11. ...