Ducks in a Row: Success Requires Everyone
by Miki Saxon
You can learn a lot from the Chrysler turnaround and here’s one of the most important points.
Fixing the product isn’t enough.
Developing recruiting and retention of knowledge workers isn’t enough.
Fixing basic problems that affect lower-level workers is imperative.
It took five years, starting in 2009 and when Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne finally owned Chrysler (free registration required) the situation in the manufacturing areas was worse than expected.
Marchionne is a smart guy; he knew that no matter how many billions were spent on design and other high-level needs Chrysler wouldn’t turn around without the full support of the blue-collar workforce.
Marchionne said the company also made sure to spend money on the parts of the plant that touched employees more personally — bathrooms, lunchrooms, parking lots and reception areas. Why?
“The state of disrepair, of neglect of the work environment that these people were offered to make a high-quality product that was supposed to compete internationally with the best of the best, right?” You can’t do that when you can’t walk into the bathroom at one of the plants because they’re just not presentable.” Along with retooling and good leadership decisions, he said, the success of Chrysler “was due to the unwavering commitment of a group of people who make up the blue-collar force of Chrysler.”
A lot of people believe that union employees don’t care. Therefore, because it’s hard to get rid of them it doesn’t matter how you treat them.
And it’s not just in unionized areas.
Wall Street is famous for treating its pink-collar and back room employees, including IT, poorly.
Tech companies do everything for so-called stars, while treating the rest as replaceable ciphers.
The bottom line is that bosses who treat any part of their team as replaceable is, at best, short-sighted and, at worst, plain stupid.
Flickr image credit: Monikah Wiseman
