Interview with Philip Whiteley co-author of Unshrink

PE: What will the book do for the reader?

‘Unshrink’ will give the conscientious manager, the ethical campaigner and the trade unionist a rational argument demonstrating that human development is the key to organisational success. It exposes the lack of logic or evidence for theories based on people as interchangeable parts or ‘resources’. It tackles the deeply rooted myths created by Adam Smith and Karl Marx that you must take from others in order to win or that companies are like machines.

I recorded the accumulating evidence that good treatment of employees is associated with organisational success; and noted that there is overwhelming evidence that business process re-engineering fails. It was a case of asking: why don’t people believe the results? Then I interviewed e-customer guru Max Mckeown, who became my co-author, who was asking the same questions, and was formulating the same ideas. We shaped the philosophy through long online messenger chats.

We took a risk by inventing a new term – especially as we criticise management jargon! The point about ‘Unshrink’, though, is that it is the best way we could think of to conjure up the idea of personal growth while attacking the myths that limit or shrink us.

People are not resources!

It is complementary to the work of Daniel Goleman and W Edwards Deming, who have argued passionately against the inculcation of fear in the workplace. We claim that we tackle in depth the unspoken myths that cause good people to sow fear.

Here’s an idea: every time you want to say ‘the business unit’ this or ‘the division’ that you say ‘the people in this unit/division’ instead. Immediately you are dealing with reality and ditching the metaphor of the machine. It is a more accurate, as well as a more ethical, analysis. You are forced to think about skills, intellectual capital, services and relationships – the things that matter; rather than costs and processes, which do not matter as much, and in any case are the product of what people do.

South-West Airlines gets it spectacularly right, but analysts misunderstand why they are successful (as we explain in the book, Chapter 3). BT got it completely wrong in the past five years by being obsessed with deals and restructuring, though there signs that Ben Verwaayen is instilling better priorities by focusing on the customer.

I read the papers and talk to people - not only at conferences but also in the pub, the shop and the cricket pavilion. One point I would like to make is that Max and I have spent much time in the cubicle, the call centre and even the shanty town as a volunteer or junior employee. I think this does make us distinct from ‘Ivy League’ gurus.

I have an eclectic background, working as a journalist on a range of topics and spending a year in Latin America. By far the two most important thinkers in my development have been political writers: George Orwell and Eduardo Galeano, who taught me that what matters is what actually happens between people, regardless of the formal ideology. What I have done is bring this approach to corporate life and dig beneath the unspoken ideologies of management.