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

If you follow any form of news you know that sexual foible has once again reared its immortal head and laid several leaders low.

This time, one of the high-flyers who fell was a woman.

David Petraeus, retired four-star general and director of the CIA, resigned, while Christopher Kubasik, destined to become Lockheed Martin CEO on January 1, was fired.

Their downfall was to be expected; every guy who has been caught playing around has watched his career sink in the harsh glare of the media spotlight.

The difference is that this time one of the women involved is being treated to that same spotlight.

Up to now Paula Broadwell has had the kind of career that positioned her for a stellar path over the next 25 years.

Her biography on the Penguin Speakers Bureau Web site says that she is a research associate at Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. She received a master’s in public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. A self-described “soccer mom” and an ironman triathelete…

40 is young to have your career cut short, but the American public is unforgiving when it comes to anything that involves sex—especially true in our wired world.

I’ve always found it amusing to hear it claimed that “a woman wouldn’t [X], they are different.”

I think women are capable of being just as arrogant, just as stupid and just as conniving as any male out there.

The difference lies more in their survival instinct, which has been honed by several thousand years of pure necessity.

So even as the coercion eases the instinct has stayed strong.

Additionally, it’s a numbers game.

There are far more high-profile males than high-profile females, so the number of men who act out and get stupid is significantly greater than the women who do the same thing.

Flickr image credit: Tom Raftery

Have you noticed the efforts to diminish the compensation or banking honchos and Wall Street hotshots?

Or at least make it look that way.

Our friends at Goldman Sachs are in the forefront, which should give you lots of confidence that the effort is for real.

The bonuses are in restricted stock that has to be held at least five years, so if the stock value went down 20% the banker would receive only $8 million instead of the $10 expected—poor baby, a lousy $8 million dollars, that’s terrible! Of course, the stock goes up 20% they’ll pick up an extra two mil.

Goldman benefits because the shares don’t count as compensation until they vest, which means they don’t show as an expense and that will boost profits.

Another piece of sleight-of-hand is counting consultants and temporary workers as employees; this raises headcount and significantly lowers pay per employee making politicos and the media happy.

Does it make you happy?

Do they really think we are that stupid?

Are we?

Leadership Turn ends December 29. I hope you’ll stop over today to read Leadership Needed—By 2015. To be sure you continue to get your daily fix of Miki you should subscribe via RSS or EMAIL.

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Image credit: Robert Couse-Baker on flickr