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.was that control over11131_Edersheim_c06_f.qxd 2/10/04 3:25 PM Page 152152 McKinsey s Marvin Bowerthings in the field, that is, the operating companies, had beenoverly centralized.There was a strong tendency among theDutch to say,  Control for everything really ought to be here inThe Hague, and by that they meant those functions for whichthey were responsible the technical functions of exploration,refining, production.not marketing, the marketing was cen-tered in London.When we said this to the Committee of Managing Directors,they said,  Well, we don t agree.We think you re mistaken and wewould like you to demonstrate much more convincingly that thisis in fact so,.I mean, if too many things were in fact unneces-sarily centralized, it would follow that you would have a lot of peo-ple in London and The Hague who didn t have to be there.16In response to the Committee of Managing Directors challenge,Marvin sent out three task forces to find evidence of the claim that Shellwas overly centralized.Each task force focused on a different part of theworld (Europe, Asia, Africa, and Venezuela) as they sought proof in theform of anecdotes, correspondence, or any other kind of documentationthat would say,  Here it is, this proves that you are trying to control toomany things from The Hague or from London.Some six weeks later, the team was able to report back to the Com-mittee of Managing Directors with 50 case examples of overcentralizationin their pocket as a result of the task forces efforts.Hugh Parker remem-bers that meeting well:As we recounted these [case examples] to the managing directors,there were gales of laughter because some of these things werealmost absurd.I ll give you some examples.When I was in Vene-zuela, I was told that the Venezuelan management wanted to erectan oil depot, a storage farm.You know, these big cylindrical tanks,and they had sent a plan of one of their depots back to The Hagueand said,  We intend to put another tank here. The Hague cameback and said,  We don t think you should put it here, we thinkyou should put it there. Then the answer to that was,  That s allvery well but what you don t see from this plan is that that s on acliff. It was that sort of nonsense, you know.There was a classic one that Lee Walton came back with from11131_Edersheim_c06_f.qxd 2/10/04 3:25 PM Page 153Inspiring Organizational Courage 153the Far East.I think it was Malaysia, where, for some reason, 50years before the head office had demanded to have tire pressuresreported each month for all the trucks in the transportation fleet.It was something to do with the rainy season and the traction oftires in mud and all that, but the point is that they were stillreporting monthly the tire pressures from the truck fleet.Then there was their man in Cuba., this was, of course,before Castro.who was Cuban and a real businessman whowas very much respected in London and The Hague, but TheHague resented his independence, and they said, in effect,  Look,if you build a refinery in Cuba, you re going to build it to our stan-dards.We are the experts on engineering standards, and we don twant any cut corners and shoddy refineries operating. This guysaid,  Well, look, if you insist, my economics are going to be bad.It cannot be profitable, so you must let me build the refinery in away that I think is commercially and economically sound. Andthere was a big fight about this that lasted over six months.Butapparently he won the day and instead of building what he con-temptuously called a gold-plated refinery, he built one that hethought was commercially right.These are examples of the kinds of arguments that went onall over the group all the time.There was a constant strugglegoing on between the head office and the operating companiesas to who should have the authority to do what.Now, someof those were trivial and we intended them to be trivial, andthese are the ones, of course, that people laughed about.Therewere other more serious things which we felt should not be ascentralized as they were [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]