Chrysler executive brings attention to LV firm

John Wilen

Monday, Dec. 7, 1998 | 11:30 a.m.

If two days in the classroom and one day behind the wheel of a high-performance race car is your idea of a great corporate training seminar, then Performance Learning Inc. of Las Vegas has the program for you.

Performance Learning received a lot of press last week when it lured Dennis Pawley away from DaimlerChrysler Corp., where he had been Chrysler's respected chief of worldwide manufacturing.

But the company has been offering corporate training programs at the Las Vegas Speedway since 1983. The idea, said company founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Donald Steele, is to teach split-second decision making and speedy idea implementation through the metaphor of sports and racing.

"We help companies compress the amount of time it takes to put new ideas in place," said Steele.

In the modern corporate world, where competition can intensify overnight, the speed with which a company implements a plan is crucial, he said.

"Speed of delivery is getting more important," said Steele.

Steele says entertainment is a large part of Performance Learning's training process. The company uses racing as a metaphor to show corporate and labor leaders how to use teamwork to implement changes quickly.

The metaphor flows in many different directions, said Steele, from the owner of the car who has to tell the driver what to do, to the driver who has to pass the competition without crashing, to the pit crew, which has to service the car quickly and efficiently.

"It's a good metaphor for a company," said Steele.

Executives and labor leaders from companies like Chrysler, Mack Truck and Black & Decker have attended Performance Learning's three-day program, Steele said. Attendees spend the first day in the classroom, learning his basic racing metaphors. The second day, they get behind the wheel -- driving anything from racing motorcycles to Winston Cup Stock Cars and Formula Race Cars -- hitting speeds as high as 140 mph.

"They actually compete and win trophies," said Steele.

The third day, attendees wind down in the classroom, where instructors tie the academic theory of day one to the white-knuckle experience of day two.

The idea, said Steele, is not to make race car drivers out of executives, but to show them, graphically, how split-second decision-making and teamwork can improve corporate performance.

"Focus on how you change performance in relation to your business goals," said Steele.

Steele started performance training in 1983, when he formed Steele Enterprises. He initially used a variety of metaphors, including athletics, art and racing, but eventually moved to racing exclusively. In 1996, he changed the name of his company to Performance Learning.

Performance Learning has a contract with the Las Vegas Motor Speedway under which the Speedway gets a percentage of its gross in return for its use of the track, its administrative offices and some on-track advertising.

Not all of Performance Learning's seminars take place at the Speedway, or behind the wheel. For example, the company conducts personal empowerment and cross-unit training seminars at MicroSoft Corp.'s Redmond, Wash., headquarters offices.

Future clients may include Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers, and possibly the gaming industry.

"We're looking at the possibility of working with some of the casinos now," said Steele.

As a former corporate executive who has actually been through the Performance Learning program, Pawley will bring a new dimension to the company, said Steele. Steel characterizes himself as the more academic-minded "soft-side" of the training equation, while Pawley will be the experienced, operational "hard-side" of the equation. In other words, Steele comes up with the training programs, but Pawley knows how to implement the training in a real corporate setting.

"He's a good speaker," said Steele of Pawley. "He's got a wealth of knowledge."

Pawley will join Performance Learning as co-owner, president and chief operating officer.

Pawley is the first top Chrysler executive to depart since German rival Daimler-Benz acquired the automaker last month.

Bloomberg News reported Pawley, 57, who joined DaimlerChrysler's board of management two weeks ago, was Chrysler's top negotiator with the United Auto Workers and a champion of Japanese-style production methods designed to lower defects and cut costs.

While Pawley said he supports the merger and is leaving for personal reasons, he'll be associated with an influential industry consulting company whose chief has criticized the combination.

Performance Learning is affiliated with Harbour and Associates, a Troy, Mich., consulting company that produces widely watched factory efficiency reports.

James Harbour, chairman of Harbour and Associates, was quoted by Bloomberg as calling Daimler's efforts to improve productivity "kind of a joke" and that it had little incentive to change because European rivals like Bayerische Motorem Werke AG also are inefficient. The takeover's main impact has been to make millionaires out of dozens of top Chrysler executives, Harbour said.

That would include Pawley, who will join him in future consulting work.

Bloomberg reported his personal payday from the takeover may have been about $9 million, and analysts said other Chrysler executives may cash out as well.

Pawley defended his payoff, saying anybody who worked as hard as he did had the opportunity to move up.

Also, the company's U.S. blue-collar payroll increased by 24 percent since 1991, to 69,628, suggesting others have benefited, he said. "I can walk out of Chrysler and say 'I'm the best manufacturing executive on the planet, and go out and do other things,"' he told Bloomberg.