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OUR CHANGING WORLD: CEMENT IS NOT LOW-TECH AT LAFARGE!! Yves Cantat is a 20-year electrical maintenance . Effective teamwork creates an environment of worker at Lafarge's plant in France. Gone are the trust and confidence. This is built daily through days when mixing cement was like making a huge professionalism, personal commitment, shared cake. Now it is all computerized. The equipment goals, and respect for common rules and production processes have changed over his 20 years, but not many of the employees. He says, "In THE LEARNING ORGANIZATION 20 years I have seen only two people leave." That's a long way from the 45 percent annual turnover There are three trade unions at the French plant, rates at Wal-Mart. and despite recent strikes, things seem amicable be- Lafarge is the world's biggest cement producer, tween management and labor. As one employee with over $15 billion in revenues from 133 cement said about the strike, "After all, this is France." plants in 46 countries. It traces its origins to 1833 Many of the workers are shareholders in Lafarge. when it was founded by the Lafarge family. The Several years ago more than half the employees founders were committed to a form of Christian bought Lafarge stock when they were given an op- humanism that still prevails in the company today portunity to buy it at a price subsidized 60 percent even though the family no longer controls it. Since by the company. the end of World War II, Lafarge has had only four An important element at Lafarge is training. CEOs, and two of them have written books about Managers are required to monitor the development the company's culture. CEO Bertrand Collombe of employees "Our aim is to become a learning or- says, "Lafarge will not work in situations where we ganization." says the training manager of the ce- are required to deny our values and participate in ment division. Given the global nature of the practices that we abhor." Collombe is an advocate company, managers are expected to speak English. of the "Lafarge way," a philosophy of participative with Lafarge offering language classes. management. The company practices intensive communica- tion to make sure that its worldwide businesses un- THE LAFARGE WAY derstand its operations. Lafarge operates a Web site for employees and publishes a monthly magazine in The Lafarge way says in part: French and English. . A key responsibility for managers is to develop their people. They expose employees to challenge QUESTIONS ing assignments, help them to learn from their achievements and mistakes, and support them to 1. Can you explain how a culture can persist in outperform themselves. an organization for over 170 years across dif- ferent owners? . We expect our people to share their experiences and to seek those of others. Best practices derive 2. Visit the Lafarge Web site (www.lafarge.com) from our ability to recognize and share our local to read and critique the "Lafarge way" and successes, regardless of their scale. other company practices and philosophies. . Dealing with conflict is an integral and productive Based on your research, is Lafarge a learning araanization? Gunnart your noeition part of teamwork. Teamwork is not about reaching organization? Support your position. consensus on every issue. It is about each individ- ual contributing, accepting, and seeking differ- ences of opinion as a source of progress