How a facility identified for closure became number one in 14 months, with the same people, equipment, and budget

The facility was a loser, and everybody knew it. It was old, it had been declining for a couple of decades, and corporate had already identified it for closure. No date was set. It was a matter of when, not if.

So when I volunteered to be its general manager, more than a few people thought I’d lost my mind. But I had a reason. A little over a year earlier, I had studied highly successful commodity manufacturers, and a pattern stood out: they all shared a handful of key behaviors and best-practice processes. Nothing exotic. Nothing expensive. Just common sense, applied every day. I wanted to know if those lessons could save a facility everyone else had given up on.

There would be no outside help and no new money. Same people, same equipment, same budget.

What we did

• Day one, no memo. I announced my own assignment before corporate did. By afternoon, the reserved salaried parking spaces were painted over and everyone parked in the same lot. That evening, I was in blue work clothes on a hydro blaster, cleaning the back of the plant. Before long, employees were lining up to take a turn.
• Finance 101. In two days, every employee, on every shift, walked through the real financials line by line. Nobody in the company had ever done that. The handwriting was on the wall, and in less than 36 hours, the workforce had accepted the Need for Change on its own.
• Behaviors before processes. Trust came first, with a Learning Session called “Who Do You Trust?” Being trustworthy, being a team player, and giving your best effort became job requirements, in a unionized plant.
• Delegation all the way down. Managers moved from directing and controlling to developing and supporting. Within six months, hourly employees were running their own shifts, and the supervisory role was no longer needed.

What happened

Fourteen months later, the facility ranked number one among its 25 North American sister facilities, then earned the number one ranking three more times in the next 12 months. Corporate suspected a broken measuring system or cooked books, and sent in the auditors. They found nothing awry, just a spotless, efficient facility changed in two ways: its people and its processes.

By the third year, capacity had grown 30 percent, about 20 million more pounds of product a year, from efficiency alone. The facility received its first capital spending in years. It’s still running today.

Why it worked

Nothing we did was new. Every action came down to common sense, simple logic, and human nature. Those lessons became Common Sense Change Management (CSCM), and it’s worked for more than two decades since.

Start here, free

Start with the free “Who Do You Trust?” Learning Session, the same one that started building trust at the facility. Subscribe below and we’ll send it to you.