Aftermath of 1973 management reorganization
Gryskiewicz discusses the immediate aftermath of the 1973 reorganization of the Center for Creative Leadership's management team. During the reorganization, Gryskiewicz's supervisor, Doug Holmes, was removed from his position, as were a number of others. Gryskiewicz describes how the Center approached this, emphasizing that the Center was not vindictive in its hiring and firing processes. The passage concludes with Gryskiewicz's brief comments about David Campbell, who was hired to help with curriculum development.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Stan Gryskiewicz, November 5, 1998. Interview S-0016. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JOSEPH MOSNIER:
-
Tell me about settling in after the reorganization. Bob Dorn has come to
your house after you had to be down in Florida.
- STAN GRYSKIEWICZ:
-
Yeah, yeah. Then the announcement was made and all these
people—as much as Holmes had stuff going this way, well, when
he brought in this captain, there was a lot of stuff going this way,
too. So here were these people who all of a sudden realized that we
looked around and we're going to go. Sherry Douglas, she may
be worth interviewing. I think I can get you—she's
in Austin, Texas now. She's got another name. But I can get
that for you. And then there was this new Ph.D.
that Doug had just hired and three months, six months later, she lost
her job. So she had to leave. The captain left. He went to work for
Celanese. He's now working for Exxon, I believe. There were
several people. There may have been one or two more, but I remember
those distinctly, those three.
- JOSEPH MOSNIER:
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How was that, the reorganization handled?
- STAN GRYSKIEWICZ:
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Joe Wexler was another one. Joe Wexler was yet another one who left. And
he's now with Compaq Computers and doing fine.
- JOSEPH MOSNIER:
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How did they handle it? I mean did people pack up and leave?
- STAN GRYSKIEWICZ:
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No, I think they handled it pretty well. They gave them a period of
time. They gave them, I think, some cash. And they helped them find
work.
- JOSEPH MOSNIER:
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So it wasn't just...
- STAN GRYSKIEWICZ:
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No, no, no, no. This organization has never done that. I
don't think it's ever, ever done that. In fact,
one of my learnings as a manager, one time I managed a large group here
was to fire someone, which is always a difficult thing to do. So the
Center let the guy stay here for a couple weeks. Well this couple of
weeks turned into a couple months. I remember having finally to go down
and take him and say, "David, you need to go." I took
him to the front door. He said, "Oh, okay." It was
David Strong, and he's out in Hawaii now. But he also had a
lady inside the organization that he was living with, so he would spend
a lot of time at her desk. So I finally had to say, "David,
David, David." So he was out. But we've never done
anything that was you're out of here. Never, never. At least
I'm not aware of it. It may have happened, but...
- JOSEPH MOSNIER:
-
How did Bob Dorn kind of regroup for everybody and get things going
again?
- STAN GRYSKIEWICZ:
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He had this guy working for him named Al Scarborough. So he had
Scarborough, Sternbergh, Gryskiewicz, and Peter, a guy named Peter who
left too. Peter left too, Peter Murdoch. He was an English psychologist
from Manchester University. So Bob clearly had to move us in the
direction of we needed. And what they said was okay was a leadership
training program. So we've got to make this happen. So we
fussed around for a long time trying to find out what that would be and
it was this group of executives they brought in
again, listened to what we said could be in this thing and tried out
some of our exercises and they were giving us feedback like yeah, yeah.
And John Red eluded to this the other day. Remember, one of them was my
former father-in-law. He was an executive at Prudential, and he was very
supportive, liked what we were doing. So early on, we had Prudential
people coming through courses. But in terms of moving us along quickly,
it took really was David Campbell coming in to finally say
there's a northbound train. We need a curriculum. We need to
run a program.
- JOSEPH MOSNIER:
-
Let's spend a little time on that. Did the arrival of Ken
Clark at the level of chairman of the board of governors and David
Campbell as this person who's going to have this big role as
recharting research direction.
- STAN GRYSKIEWICZ:
-
You've heard my story about this, I thought they had the
wrong Campbell. Oh, it was great. I said, "This stupid board we
have, we've got the wrong Campbell." There are at
least three Campbells at the University of Minnesota. We heard Campbell
form Minnesota. David is the last one that who's had any
interest in research and leadership in management. There was a John
Campbell. There was a Donald Campbell. And then they said, "No,
it's David Campbell." You mean the interest measure
guy? John Campbell is an industrial organizational psychologist. What?
You know. Oh yeah, the other name that was floating around then was
Marvin Dunnette, which was another big name. But David Campbell, I said,
"This stupid board." We had the sense of the board
doesn't know what they're doing. But David came on
with another great person who for me was Donald MacKinnon, who opened
doors for me and he was the one who got me to go back and get my Ph.D.
And he was the one who counseled me through my divorce. This guy in his
70's here and he was telling me, "You know,
I've studied creative people all my life and
there's a lot of turbulence in their life." He said,
"Not to worry, this will pass." A wonderful human
being. So Campbell and MacKinnon came in at the same time.