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THURS., NOVEMBER 20, 1975 Any worse

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Jack helps bosses gei along with unions

 

Genius in bt!

By ALAN DANIELS

At first sight, Jack Gibb seems an unlike-
ly figure to command attention (let alone a
$500-a-day fee) in the corporate boardrooms
of some of North America’s biggest com-
panies.

He is balding, diminutive, middle-aged,
soft-spoken (a socialist, for heaven’s sake)
with embroidery on his jeans and his stock-
inged feet resting on the kitchen table,
among the lunchtime salami and kaiser
buns.

_ Jack Gibb is a psychologist, aspecialist

ional behavior. The main thrust
of his work, he says, 1s trying to humanize
ig business.

“T don’t go in and lecture to manage-
ment. I don’t try to escalate the conflict,
but together we look at the system and see
how we can make it more humanistic.,

“The important thing is to look at the
fears. Let’s look at what people are afraid
of. And let’s look at the defences that stand
in the way of these fellows getting their
work done.”

Gibb says absenteeism, property de-
struction, petty theft, and so on are defen-
Sive reactions — employees punishing the
company. The answer is to jze man-

need for this kind of frustrated reaction.

 

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“Ty fg 7 agem ent is to

learn how_to manage in a way that in-
greases flexibil

 

    

“Supervision,” he says.
at we have found is that people are
over-managed. There is more featherbed-
ding in management than in the unions.
Creative management is dissatisfied
with the status quo, but poor management
responds to public criticism by tightening
controls, imposing more supervision, more
rules, more secrecy and greater imperson-
ality.

Jack Gibb has been hired as a consultant
by companies such as Bell Telephone, Gen-
eral Motors, Dow Chemicals, and Wey-
erhauser (“I don’t try to sell my program to
anyone, they come to me’’): Companies, he
says, who have an image of a better world.

jt is noor management that has produced
werful unions — and, privately, that is
ant They wil tell you.

“T consult with management, but my ide-
ology is more in line with socialism,” he
adds. ‘“‘I am not anti-union, far from it.
Unions are preferable to oppressive man-
agement, but if companies managed the
way I am suggesting, the need for unions
would disappear,

“My system is economic, too, because

you reduce the number of supervisgs,”’

Gibb and his wife Lorraine, wh live in

 

8

ue jeans

oility and reduces unneces
TE

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—

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rnia, are developers of what they call
the TORI theory — a way of living, manag-
ing, parenting, teaching, counselling and
Yearning.

 

 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  

ym — Trust, Openness,
endence — and the
i conducting week-long
oup of people get
to be more trust-
ted a five-day
éampus of Van-

  
 

couver Communit)

“We d es. We don’t use
leadership, We dor role playing and
we don’t impose goals,’ Gibb explains.
“Bae workshop is managed the way we
ihink a good instilition shouldbe managed.
It's essentially avery free-floating experi-
ence that is created by the people them-

Jes

  
 
 
 

 

 

 

Gibb says his workshops examine the na-
ture of fear and the many forms it takes,
and the development of trust — the antithe-
sis of fear

“The amore we fear, the more we close up
our avenues of communication and cover
up our feelings and cover up our liv :s,"”’ he
adds. “‘As we become more trusting, we
dramatically open up to people and let them
in and show ourselves to them.”