Section Four
Interestingly, although Chaparral has achieved much of
its productivity through technology, its managerial approach
has also made substantial contributions. This is because the
company’s industry leadership in technological innovation is, in
part, a result of its unique work environment. Major
characteristics of this environment include encouragement of
risk taking; challenge in the form of specific, reachable goals;
the freedom to question; trust; and an absence of policies.^3 In
fact, Chaparral has a “no fault” absence policy in which “an
employee can be absent for a good reason, no reason, or a bad
reason.”^4 Interestingly, with this policy, “the daily absence rate
is less than one percent.”^5 Chaparral’s former CEO, Gordon
Forward, has explained the company’s ration-ale for the
absence of policies as follows:
We don’t have policies... We felt that a lot of
the procedures in many organizations were
designed to catch the 3 percent who were trying
to cheat in one way or another. We decided to
design our rules for the 97 percent we can trust.
The others would stand out like sore thumbs, we
figured, and they’d eventually leave. That’s
exactly what happened.^6