Fortune Magazine focused on McCown deLeeuw in the October 18, 1990 issue, with an article entitled, "A New Age for Business?"
But while a number of factories like these have resisted the rigid thinking and abject boss-pleasing once labeled "bureausis," decades of running battles within P&G suggest that what's needed is some combination of support from the top and enthusiasm in the ranks.
That's what a former Boise Cascade senior vice president named George McCown, 55, is trying to achieve. Besides serving as chairman of the World Business Academy, a group of business people and thinkers devoted to propagating the new paradigm, he heads McCown De Leeuw, a California investment firm that specializes in doing LBOs. He and his New York City-based partner, David De Leeuw, a former vice president of Citibank, target well-positioned but underperforming businesses and restructure them to stress empowerment of employees, creativity, and openness. Last December they joined former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth in his purchase of troubled Hawaiian Airlines, which Chairman Tom Talbot, a Ueberroth associate, is now trying to pull out of a "plantation mentality" by involving people at every level in an overhaul of operations.
One of McCown De Leeuw's early buyouts was Coast Gas of Watsonville, California, a propane distribution company that has tripled in size in four years to revenues of about $100 million. While borrowing fueled much of the expansion, CEO Keith Baxter has achieved much of the company's growth by instituting new practices that range from the mundane (a budget system) to the innovative. Having taken over a notoriously rigid organization (sample rule: No more than two employees could converse at one time), he literally tore down the walls to transform it to one in which everybody understands the business and its problems.
Helping Baxter reshape the culture at Coast Gas is Michael Blondell, a Carmel, California, consultant who works with a number of McCown De Leeuw businesses. Unlike many self-styled "change agents," whose promises of weekend transformation are worthy of weight-loss products, Blondell works with companies on a long-term basis. "I look at spirituality, at the way people live their life," he says. "What is their motivation? Do they want things to be better? Do they want to be open and honest? But I don't think we're really teaching anything new. I think we're going back to basic, fundamental values -- issues of trust, respect, dignity, commitment, integrity, and accountability. The world is crying out for these things to become more important."
IS ANYTHING really new about the new paradigm? Well, yes and no. "I can argue both sides," says Noel Tichy. "No one element is new, but the attention to soft issues is new to American multinationals."
Seventeen years ago sociologist Daniel Bell wrote that for most of human history, reality was nature; then it became technology; and now, in the postindustrial age of knowledge work and information science, it's the "web of consciousness." That is what's genuinely new about the new paradigm: this focus on human consciousness -- not on capital or machinery, but on people. It has challenging implications. "If consciousness is important, then money and profit are no longer that important," argues Michael Ray of Stanford. "They're a way to keep score, but if you don't have any vision, you're not going to be successful in the long run. If you go for money and that's all, when you get it, there's nothing there."
So what's the alternative? Business as a spiritual pursuit? Don't laugh. Jack Welch recently remarked that he wants people at GE to feel rewarded "in both the pocketbook and the soul." This is the lesson of the new paradigm: If people are your greatest resource and creativity the key to success, then business results cannot be divorced from personal fulfillment. Which is why many executives may discover, as they arise from the hot tubs at Esalen, that when you eliminate the charlatans and strip away the bull, business and human potential are the same thing.
This is a relationship-based program, and they closed this like it was a factory," a counselor at one of the schools told the Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane, Wash.
Brown Schools operate 11 boarding schools and educational facilities in Idaho, Texas, Vermont, Florida and California, according to its Web site. Facilities in Austin and San Marcos were sold to Psychiatric Solutions Inc. in 2003.
CEDU Posts
- Former CEDU Schools Reborn January 5 2007
- Update on CEDU Schools October 28 2005
- CEDU Properties Sold August 18 2005
- The Business of Troubled Teens August 18 2005
- CEDU Closing: Buildings and Contents to be Sold May 8 2005
- CEDU Closing: On Edison Schools April 30 2005
- CEDU Closing: Pete Talbott's Resume April 27 2005
- CEDU Closing: McCown DeLeeuw Sued ByEmployees April 14 2005
- CEDU Closing: George Locker's Criticism of the CEDU Enterprise April 14 2005
- CEDU Closing: 1990 Snapshot of McCown DeLeeuw April 12 2005
- CEDU Closing: A Timeline of the CEDU Enterprise April 2005
- CEDU Closing: Letter from a Former Faculty Member April 2005
- CEDU Closing: Parents of CEDU Students Helping Economically Distressed Faculty April 7 2001
- CEDU Closing: Economic Impact on CEDU Employees Devastating April 7 2005
- CEDU Closing: 310 Employees Stiffed on Wages April 6 2005
- CEDU Closing: Who is To Blame? April 6 2005
- CEDU Closing: Running Springs Area Also Suffers Financial Impact April 6 2005
- CEDU Closing: An Alumnus Pleads, "Save CEDU!" April 4 2005
- CEDU Closing: A Parent's Response to CEDU's Closing April 3 2005
- CEDU Closing: Bankruptcy Trustee Slams Door Shut, Then Open April 3 2005
- CEDU Closing: Parents Out Prepaid Tuition, Employees Lose Retirement. McCown Deleeuw Still Solvent April 3 2005
- CEDU Closing: King George Stays Open as Head Thinks on Feet April 3 2005
- CEDU Closing Shocks Industry Reporter April 3 2005
- CEDU Closing: Parent Company, Brown, Negotiating in Bad Faith? April 1 2005
- CEDU Closing: More Details March 29 2005
- CEDU Closing: Brown Schools, CEDU's Parent, Files for Bankruptcy March 29 2005
- CEDU Closing: Margurite Sallee, The Brown Schools, and McCown DeLeeuw March 27 2005
- CEDU Closing: All CEDU Schools Closing Immediately March 25 2005
- CEDU Closing: Rocky Mountain Academy Folds Abruptly February 12 2005
Related Posts:
- Debunking "Tough Love" Programs April 11 2006
- Advice for Parents Seeking a Therapeutic Program for Their Children January 21, 2006
- Why The "Troubled Teen" Industry is Booming January 2, 2006
- The Road To Whatever August 25 2005
- Nonpublic School Governance April 23 2005
- Why Parents Seek and Pay for Therapeutic Boarding Schools April 14 2005
- NYT Article on the Therapeutic School Industry April 13 2005
- Therapeutic Schools: What Happens to Poor Kids April 10 2005
- Thinking of Sending Your Kid to A "Tough Love" Program? March 30 2005
Questions Parents Should Consider Before Placing A Child
- NonPublic Schools: Part I--Overview
- NonPublic Schools--Part II Evaluating Mission, Values, & Goodness of Fit for Your Child
- NonPublic Schools--Part III Faculty and Staff Qualifications
- NonPublic Schools--Part IV: Evaluating Academic Program
- NonPublic Schools:Part V--On Accreditation
- NonPublic Schools:Part VI--More Detail on Financial Issues: IRS Status
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