39. STAGE IV ENTERPRISES:
TWO STORIES

I KNEW IT WAS GOING TO WORK OUT, SOMEHOW, SOME WAY.
WE JUST “LAID A PATH AS WE WALKED IT.”
– Gary Wilson

A detailed explanation of the transformation of a company from an earlier stage to a Stage IV enterprise is beyond the scope of this book. But some of the potential power and creativity that access to the Source offers to companies can be seen through stories. Here are two examples.

In the first story, a man connects to the Source through a near-death experience – with significant results not only for his own personal life but also for his work in the world and for the enterprise he led. The second is of a man I briefly introduced in the early pages of this book – Gary Wilson – who co-led a Los Angeles refinery during 1999–2002 as it went from “worst to first” among the eighteen refineries in the Alliance.

DAVID MARSING’S FAB 11

Sometimes revelation comes after a serious personal crisis, such as a heart attack. Paraphrasing the poet William Blake, the doors of perception are cleansed and things appear as they really are. We have all heard of such experiences. But this one is special to me because David Marsing is a close friend of mine.

During the time David was a senior officer at Intel, he suffered a near-fatal heart attack. He traces the origin of his capacity to lead to the clarity and sense of purpose that arose from that heart attack. This is the story he told for us in a number of workshops:

I died, clinically, in the emergency room. Fortunately, they brought me back. As I lay on the gurney, I knew exactly why I was there: I’d had the heart attack because of the way I was living. I always knew that Intel was a high-stress environment, but I’d thought of myself as somehow above it. I’d been an athlete. I’d worked there for many years. I was tough. But I was also blind. I was blind to what the environment I’d helped to create did to people, including me. As I lay there, I saw all of this very clearly. I also knew that climbing the ladder at Intel was really not very important to me.

In the hospital and during the months afterward, I discovered that my true purpose was to help people realize that they have more potential than they ever imagined they had. I made a conscious choice to go back into that stressful environment, but to do it with a very different perspective and with much more concentration on my meditative and spiritual processes. I wanted to create environments for people that would help them see their true, full potential. I also wanted to protect people from the typical responses that large organizations generate when they’re under stress. These responses can be very unhealthy, as I’d discovered first hand.

David did many things differently when he returned to work. One was to introduce reflective or contemplative practices at alternating weekly staff meetings. He said, “At first people weren’t sure if I was serious. Many doubted that it would last. But over time they found these very helpful in slowing down, being much more aware of their environment and opening up.”

Eventually, these new practices and David’s new outlook led to one of Intel’s biggest successes. David was general manager during the construction and “ramp-up” of Fab 11, Intel’s biggest semiconductor fabrication facility and at the time the largest “fab” of its kind in the world. Fab 11 went from start-up to full-volume production in record time, allowing Intel to recoup its $2.5-billion investment not in several years, as expected, but in just five short months.

A few years ago, I was delivering a workshop in the Netherlands. One of the participants was a cardiologist who gave me an essay in manuscript form that described the near-death experience as a portal to the intelligence of the Source, precisely as Jahn and Dunne had described. It was called “Near-Death Experience (NDE), Consciousness and the Brain” and had been written by the cardiologist’s colleague, Pim van Lommel, a respected Dutch cardiologist practicing at Rijnstate Hospital in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Van Lommel concluded that the NDE is a “transformation, causing profound changes of life, insight, and loss of the fear of death.”

The source of this “profound transformation,” he said, is an interconnectedness with informational fields of consciousness called the zero-point field. “This extended or enhanced consciousness is based on indestructible and constantly evolving fields of information where all knowledge, wisdom, and unconditional Love are present and available, and these fields of consciousness are stored in a dimension without our concept of time and space, with non-local and universal interconnectedness. One could call this our Higher consciousness, Divine consciousness, or Cosmic consciousness.”

During David’s college years, he practiced martial arts and wrestling. In both of these pursuits, he attained a high degree of mastery. After his near-fatal heart attack, David made a commitment to daily personal practices, which included meditation, prayer, and qigong. He built a meditation room in the backyard of his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and worked regularly with a Taoist master to facilitate his personal development, moral sensitivity, and intuitive awareness. His comprehensive program for personal growth and development was designed to deepen his capacity “to be true to myself and maintain pure intentions” as well as deepen his capacity for “deeper and different ways of knowing…. I wanted to integrate and embody the intuitive practices I felt were needed in Intel’s highly analytical culture. The traditional teachings suggest that you need to practice something 10,000 times correctly before you ‘know’ it. At this stage you’ve mastered it, and don’t have to think about the mechanical execution.”

When he accepted the assignment to be general manager of the start-up at Fab 11, he committed to himself that he would “create an environment for breakthrough performance at every level – not just in traditional work indicators, but interpersonally, and in terms of the individual integration of work and personal life.” Fab 11 was to be the world’s largest semiconductor fabrication plant, with 200,000 square feet of “clean room.” Three or four times a minute, all the air is flushed out of that room. With all the support and construction, the plant at its peak involved 4,000 people with a $2.2-billion capital investment, meaning that the plant had to produce revenue projected at $1.7-million an hour by the third year.

“With all this at stake,” David said, “it’s always been a challenge to maintain autonomy. A lot of people at corporate headquarters want to help us make decisions. We had a results-oriented, technology-driven, assertive, risk-oriented corporate culture. Our focus on analytical, rational thinking and decision-making is very strong.” David created an understanding with his superiors that allowed him to operate in his new assignment in a “state of negotiated freedom.” He lost his fear of failure: “If I couldn’t make it work, I figured I could always go be a librarian or a forest ranger.”

Contrary to accepted practice at Intel, David spent six months developing the people at Fab 11 before construction began. The training included:

• The MIT/OLC Core Course and expanded training in the five learning disciplines;

• Dialogue practices, based on David Bohm’s work;

• Work on developing the capacity for good listening, balancing advocacy, and inquiry;

• Human Dynamics training, designed to help people integrate their own learning styles with other personalities on a team; and

• Meditation and other contemplative practices both to manage stress and to develop greater intuitive capacity.

A great deal of emphasis was placed on helping people let go of exclusive reliance on analysis. “In staff meetings, we introduced reflective and contemplative practices designed to help people tap into their innate ability and their true essence. We encouraged people to speak from the heart and learn to look at the factory floor from a sensory perspective. The objective was to help people start to use a different part of their brain. We taught them the positive effect of slower brainwave states as a way to develop an awareness that leads to unique solutions.”

One example of the results of this training occurred with a production supervisor who was responsible for an IC chip production line who had named one of her machines “Annie.” One day, the supervisor noticed that Annie “felt sick.” After a detailed investigation, it was found that the produced IC wafers were close to off-spec. Thanks to her instincts and the quick response of the support teams, tens of millions of dollars worth of product was saved. Collective intelligence develops when people can rely on their instincts and a different way of knowing.

“In the end, we broke all records at Intel for the ramp-up of Fab 11, achieving full-scale operation nine to twelve months faster than the most aggressive estimate. This saved the company over $2.5 billion in cost, not to mention the market benefits of having the new chips we were making available that much sooner. This was an experience of monumental proportions for me – a personal journey of learning and profound personal development. Without the continuous guidance enabled by my personal practices, I would never have been able to help create the culture shift that was core to this result.”

GARY WILSON AND THE LOS ANGELES
REFINERY

Gary Wilson was the deputy manager of the Los Angeles Refinery Corporation (LARC), one of eighteen in the Alliance, and one of the largest downstream operations in the world (refinery, distribution, and marketing). Gary and the general manager of LARC, Jim Nichols, had been appointed to their positions soon after the Alliance was formed in early 1998. I had known Jim for years because of the work Kaz and I had done with him during the Shell Oil Company transformation. That transformation had begun in the early 1990s and was the subject of the 1998 Field Paper that Kaz, Peter, and I had written. Gary had worked for Texaco most of his working life, rising through the ranks quickly because of his inherent capacity for leadership. In the later years, Gary had developed the capacity for Stage III leadership.

Jim and Gary had inherited a refinery with a workforce of roughly five hundred, which had been ranked by the well-regarded Solomon Survey of operating refineries as among the bottom 25 percent in the world. Together, they decided to begin a systemwide change process with Gary assuming overall responsibility for the transformation.

In June 1998, Gary led the kickoff of what he called the “LARC Change the Business Initiative.” The design of the initiative was based on Gary’s capacity for Stage III Servant Leadership and on, he told me, what “I knew in my heart – what I knew was possible if the whole workforce environment became one of trust and faith in one another. I knew deep down these people had capacities that were not being used.”

A few months later, Gary was invited to join the Innovation Lab design team, consisting of managers from key business units across the Alliance. Later, Gary was chosen as one of about twenty people to participate in the Innovation Lab itself, which I led using the advanced U-process.

The declared purpose of the Lab was written by the Lab team itself and included the following:

• To provide a space for us as Alliance leaders to accelerate our reinvention of Downstream Oil and grow our business and profits.

• To produce practice fields, tools, and coaching to build our individual and collective competencies, energy, and courage.

• To grow our capacity to sense emerging futures and business opportunities.

• To develop our skills to unleash and engage the full creative potential of all Alliance employees.

I spent almost a year working personally with Gary Wilson. It was clear to me from the outset that he had the special qualities possessed by those who could grow and develop into Stage IV leadership. He displayed both humility and self-confidence; his ultimate concern was to serve and develop those in his organization so that they would become healthier, wiser, and more independent. He was entirely open – full of wonder and the desire to learn. He had developed to the point of questioning rigid belief systems. By the time I began working with Gary, he was already in the process of questioning the conventional way of leading and operating a business.

I shared with Gary all I had learned over the past twenty years since I had first met Dr. Bohm. In that process, I gave Gary all the reading material that had been produced during our Alliance research project. We had created a reading list that now appears as a bibliography in the back of The Red Book. Those readings included books and essays by Brian Arthur, David Bohm, HeartMath, Larry Dossey, John Kabat-Zinn, and Ikujiro Nonaka. Gary also read Synchronicity, the Field Paper, and summaries of the interviews of Brian Arthur and Eleanor Rosch. He spent hours in Santa Fe during the Innovation Lab Wilderness Retreat with Brian Arthur and Professor Michael Ray of Stanford, who is the acknowledged leader in the field of creativity in business and who, for over two decades, taught the essence of what is embraced by the Four Principles.

By the time Gary had emerged from the Lab process, his worldview had matured and his innate values and character had strengthened his courage to take a stand for that which he deeply believed. He began applying his deeper understanding of Stage IV leadership practices during the Lab itself. At the conclusion of the Lab, he began devoting all his energy to the Change the Business Initiative at LARC.

For the kickoff of the process, Gary picked 60 people representing a microcosm of the system, which consisted of some 800 people, including the employees and the outside contractors. He showed them charts of the abysmal refinery performance for the past ten years. He then showed them a blank chart reflecting the next five years. He said, “Let’s think together about what’s possible. I know we can stretch and reach targets that represent performance at the very top of our industry. Let’s create the way forward together. I will give you the freedom to do what’s necessary.”

The energy in the room was palpable, Gary told me. He was aware of the field effect one person can have in a larger group. At the conclusion of the kickoff meeting, he asked the question, “Who will be willing to make this possibility happen? Who will be part of making this real?” Over 95 percent of the people raised their hands. That’s the way the transformation began.

Over the first year, the core change team was expanded from sixty to over twice that many. The essence of the transformation lay in giving each person in the system freedom to bring more of their talents and energies into their work and to operate with a greater sense of ownership and responsibility both for their own work and the work of the system as a whole. Gary said this approach created enthusiasm, satisfaction, and commitment that were infectious and self-reinforcing. The people moved from being spectators to being stewards. Stewardship, Gary said, is a state where people see the whole and their role in it – and they accept responsibility for their role and the whole.

In the old system, each person was required to follow rigid instructions and perform an isolated functional role. Every step of the work process was defined by the manual. If anything went wrong, the automatic response was, “We followed the process in the manual” – thus absolving them of any responsibility. This kind of work, Gary told the craft workers, was suffocating and mind-numbing. What causes the kind of despair and cynicism that existed in the refinery also caused the abysmal performance over the past ten years. Gary told me that high stress and fear were rampant in the system. It was all about “just getting by.”

Under the new system, people only had to follow what the refinery called the “Big Rules” provided by management. Gary and his leadership team fulfilled their responsibility by providing guidance and support, monitoring progress all along the way. He and his team made certain that all those in the system felt that they were respected and that their ideas mattered. Work became exciting, enlivening, and even easier. Each person felt ownership: “I own this and am responsible for it and am proud of its performance.”

Take for example the pumps in the refinery. Pumps are crucial to the smooth, reliable operation of the refinery – and some of them are quite large. In the process of the transformation, those responsible for the pumps developed a connection to them in almost exactly the same way David Marsing’s production supervisor did for “Annie.” When anything was amiss, the person responsible for the pump “knew” it before the issue became critical. The pumps were serviced and cared for in a way that had never occurred before. As a sign of their increased sense of ownership of the equipment, some people even began painting “their” pumps their favorite colors. When their family members visited the refinery on an open house tour, they would point out “their” pumps with pride.

This is the way it went throughout the entire refinery. Gary said that he and his management team embraced the principle that performance is dependent on the quality of thought that individual members of the system generate and apply to their work. This higher-order thinking, Gary observed, with resulting high performance is enabled by thinking and acting from principles that illuminate the underlying purpose of the work.

Higher-order thinking was a fundamental feature of Gary’s approach. The other fundamental feature related to the belief in “that deeper place of knowing” Gary had learned from Brian Arthur and the whole Lab experience. Gary said that when he had to make a crucial decision, not susceptible to pure analysis, he would follow the U-process and eventually he would, “feel it in my body.”

The results are in the numbers. The refinery went “from worst to first” among the eighteen refineries in the Alliance system, and as a direct result of people’s performance, not market fluctuations, experienced a $58 million a year earnings improvement. After years of losses, it had become profitable, excelling in all dimensions – improved reliability, safety, and cost. It had the lowest unscheduled downtime among all eighteen refineries.

A few years ago, I asked Gary to reflect on the whole experience. Here is what he told me:

I look back at this and wonder where I ever got these crazy ideas. They didn’t come from a single management book, or work process or anything I had seen work elsewhere. It was all anchored in a sense of purpose that I was brought to this refinery to help 500 people and their families move from feeling like losers to winners, enjoying their life, feeling secure in their future.

There is no doubt in my heart that the whole idea of absorbing and being mindful of what’s going on – not just jumping in right away with a decision – is the best way to operate. Just sit back and let it come to you. When the idea hits you, move into action. These past two years, we couldn’t make a wrong decision; it was effortless. My premonitions were consistently correct. The U-process is real powerful stuff!

The cost was peanuts compared to the results. What stands out in my learning during the Lab is the Wilderness Retreat. That was the crowning experience because I had the ability to reflect. You have to break away from the day-to-day, immerse yourself in a new way of thinking about yourself. I had a real sense of purpose of why I was in that job. It was a refinery with 500 employees and another 300 contractors, whose lives depended on the plant being successful. I knew I was there to help bring them job security, confidence, and a sense of pride and accomplishment in their lives.” Then he paused, and taking a line from Synchronicity, concluded: “I knew it was going to work out, somehow, some way. We just ‘laid a path as we walked it.’”

For me, that said it all. That’s the way it is.