GM and Toyota launched their joint auto plant where GM’s work force had been at its worst. Here’s what happened next. And why.
The joint venture between Toyota and GM known as NUMMI yielded some surprising success stories, including the transformation of GM’s worst plant into a world-class manufacturing model. Examining how this transformation took place provides insight into corporate-culture change and lean manufacturing.
The most important and difficult “cultural shift” that has to occur in a lean-manufacturing transformation revolves around the entire concept of problems. What is our attitude toward them? What do we do when someone finds and exposes one? Making it easy to learn from mistakes means changing our attitude toward them. That is the lean cultural shift.
The way to change culture is not first to change how people think, but instead to start by changing how people behave. Integrating quality, support and ownership into the job is vital. Those of us trying to change our organizations’ culture need to define the things we want to do, establish the ways we want to behave and want others to behave, provide training and then do what is necessary to reinforce those behaviors.
2 Comments On: How to Change a Culture: Lessons From NUMMI
“Cracks in the transparent matrix around us reveal where it is.” (I cannot remember who said this.)
Mike Rother
John – are you saying (in my words) automatic imprinted defence mechanisms coupled with an openly accepted belief in ‘Logic only Systems’ which further provoke egotistical (Fear) based reactions to conditions, subsequently undermine individually perceived comfort zones, due to a lack of congruence to tacit and intuitive knowledge which inhibits not only change efforts organisationally, but also stifles creativity & innovation by knocking confidence; detaching us from an ability to psychologically take ownership and feel empowered, while provoking a tendency to ‘Blame’ thus generating further negative emotion and poor performance becomes relative to the attitude and approach in leadership. Therefore – what the lean tools do at a psychological level is provide an almost immediate feedback mechanism (day by the hour box scores for P&L, hoshin kanri, 5s, performance monitoring charts etc. as examples) whereby multiple intelligences are satisfied – i.e. the tools work well for the ‘People system’ at an experiential level.
If that is indeed the case, the culture change realised at NUMMI was surely due to a change in mindset; in belief that happened in the leadership BEFORE they provided the right attitude and approach (partnering with Toyota) (to address ego’s) and BEFORE they developed the conviction required to put in place visually managed systems (providing the feedback required at a psychological level) that enabled their workforce to ‘Do’ something different! (and thus have experience that enabled a change in the mindset of others?).
It’s ok to say ‘Doing’ changes the way we think, as it’s factually correct, our Emotional Environmental Experience (EEE©) imprints via neural synaptic stimulus and growth, (but it’s still only one half of a whole picture we have to keep in balance – in context).
If the ‘beliefs’ are not right, the levels of understanding, the buy-in & ownership required in leaders, isn’t there, the conditions in which ‘Doing’ (stopping the line and being empowered) can be experienced will not be provided … and are historically not provided!!!!
…. the last 35 years from QC to OE, of the ‘Tools first’ (at the hands of consultants) to tick the logical box of a short term ROI is testimony to the fact Leaders do not perceive a WIIFM factor in addressing change at this level.
We’ve all heard ‘we don’t have time for this Cultural right brain, soft, pink and fluffy crap in Business, we’re focused on the bottom line! End of month out of the door is the only driving force i’m worried about sonny! ….
and thus the world turns….. shame really, recognising there are ways to address attitude up-front (dare I mention PCC) enables the type of changes seen at NUMMI to be made anywhere.
So surely this is all down to changing a ‘way of thinking’ first – as it was the way of thinking, that came before the action that saw NUMMI evolve. Ultimately this is all down to the mindset – the ‘belief’ – in leaders ….. and yet we STILL talk about the application of tools even in relation to culture and attitudes to satisfy that ROI box ticking exercise based on our ‘Judgement’ (emotional) of the logic only data that pours from our measurement systems, unable to ‘Account’ for the ‘people system’ – which is ultimately ‘Root cause’ of Profit.
Isn’t it about time we stopped banging on the ‘Tools change culture drum’ and realised it is the assumption inherent to our standard approach to financial management, recoveries, forecasting and every other practice that involves ‘assumption / prediction’ that ultimately inhibits the western worlds capability to change – hell, if we have to satisfy Sarbanes Oxley, that’s fine, but don’t let it dictate our psychological conditions and undermine performance – just run two books – one that works for people and one that ticks the box for the outside world.