Questioning Corporate Hierarchy

Bill Nobles is an Executive Fellow with the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations. His 32 year Exxon career culminated as General Manager (CEO) of Exxon Central Services, a ＄100 million/year internal services company with 600 employees. A trial and error culture change Bill led produced remarkable results with employee improvement ideas reducing original services costs by 30% in constant dollars over five years of operation. Simultaneously employee satisfaction improved sharply and increased customer satisfaction attracted ＄6 million/year of new business. As one manager commented at shut down- ＂ECS was a place where people built a business. Yes, it was for Exxon, but it was theirs and they gave their all for this very special organization.＂ Paul Staley led a similar trial and error culture change as CEO of PQ Corporation, transforming a staid North American chemical company into a worldwide laboratory of continual change and product innovation. For three decades PQ out-performed the S&P 500 by a factor of five causing one competitor to lament, ＂Staley, your advantage in understanding customers leaves the rest of us with no option to compete other than cutting prices.＂ After retiring the authors met at the George Mason University Mercatus Center, talked about their similar trial and error leadership experiences, and discussed frustrations over their inabilities to explain what produced such remarkable results. Their lengthy search for answers ultimately produced the findings shared in this book. Bill is a Chemical Engineering graduate of the University of Mississippi, while Paul earned engineering and MBA degrees from Dartmouth College and a law degree from Harvard.