Standard Decoy in Witchell, Maine, has been making traditional
wooden hunting decoys since 1927. Cyrus Witchell began the
business by carving a couple of ducks a day by hand. Demand and
competition have long since driven the company to use modern
machinery and assembly-line techniques, and they now turn out two
hundred ducks daily even on the slowest days.
When Stewart Alcorn, Cyrus Witchell's grandson, took over the
business, he knew things needed to change. Output hadn't fallen, and
the company was surviving financially despite competition from what
he called "plastic ducks" from the Far East. But Alcorn noticed that
productivity per worker had stayed the same for ten years, even during
the period since the company had bought the latest equipment. While
touring the plant, he noticed many employees yawning, and he found
himself doing the same. No one quit. No one complained. They all
gave him a smile when he walked by. But no one seemed excited with
the work.
Alcorn decided to take a survey. He appointed a respected worker at
each step in the production process to ask each of his or her
coworkers questions and to fill in the response sheets. One
conclusion emerged from the survey: The "fine-tuners," as Alcorn
thought of them, were the most content. That is, those who used fine
tools and brushes to get the ducks' heads, expressions, and feathers
just right seemed to enjoy their work most. In contrast, the people
who planed and cut the wood into blocks, rough-cut the body shapes,
spray-painted the body color, and applied the varnish were all pretty bored.
Alcorn had heard about a technique called "job rotation" and decided
to try it out. He gave all workers a taste of the "fun" jobs. He asked for
volunteers to exchange jobs for one morning a week. The fine-tuners
were skeptical, and the other workers were only slightly more
enthusiastic. The whole program turned out to be a disaster. Even
with guidance, the planers and spray-painters could not master the
higher-precision techniques, and the fine-tuners seemed willing to give
them only limited assistance. After one trial week, Alcorn gave up.
During a lunch break that Friday, Alcorn was wandering around
outside the plant bemoaning his failure. Then he noticed one of the
rough-cutters, Al Price, whittling at something with an ordinary pocket
knife. It turned out to be a block of wood that he had cut incorrectly
and normally would have thrown in the scrap heap. But as Price said,
"It kind of looked like a duck, in an odd way," and he had started
whittling on it in spare moments.
Alcorn liked what he saw and asked Price if he would be willing to sell
him the duck when he got through with it. Price looked surprised, but
he agreed. The following week, Alcorn noticed that Price had finished
the whittling and was getting one of the fine-tuners to help him paint
the duck in a way that made it look even odder. When it was finished,
Alcorn offered it to one of his regular customers, who took a look at it
and said, "You've got hand made?" and asked if he could order a gross.
By the middle of the next month, Alcorn's "Odd Ducks" program was
in full swing. Workers were still responsible for producing the usual
number of conventional ducks, but they were allowed to use company
tools and materials any time they wanted to work on their own
projects. There were no quotas or expectations for the Odd Ducks.
Some employees worked on one for weeks; others collaborated and
produced one or two a day. Some wouldn't sell their ducks but crafted
them to practice their skills and brought them home to display on their
mantels. Those who would sell them kept half the selling price. That
price usually did not amount to more than their regular hourly wage,
but no one seemed to care about the precise amount of income.
The response to the Odd Duck program was so great that Alcorn put
up a bulletin board he called "Odd Letters" as a place to post
appreciative notes from customers. Most of these customers, it
seemed, had no interest in hunting but just liked to have the ducks
around. And when Alcorn learned that some of his customers were in
turn selling the ducks as "Cyrus Witchell's Olde Time Odd Ducks," he
did not complain.
Alcorn wasn't quite sure why things had turned out the way they had
but he knew there must be some lessons to be learned here.