Quality Leadership = Quality Results

I was listening to a story on the radio last night. It was about the Toyota Production System. Despite recent problems surrounding Toyota quality, what happened to the people who built the cars at a former GM plant in Fremont, California during the 1980s bears retelling. There is undoubtedly a lesson here about how to lead for quality results in business and education.

In the radio story, the narrator and his interviewees, all former employees of the Fremont plant related how, in the days leading up to GM's abandoning the facility, people routinely came to work drunk or got that way shortly after arriving, sold drugs to and used them with fellow employees, deliberately and dangerously sabotaged production by putting wrong parts on cars, and secreted random objects inside door panels to cause mysterious noise for the unwitting buyer downstream. And this was happening on the days workers showed up at all. Records showed that the absentee rate was 20 percent on average. In fact, it was not unusual that on Mondays and after holidays that the line had to be shut down altogether so few were the hands to turn out product. In short, everything was happening at Fremont except quality work.

Then Toyota bought the plant. The narrator told how their new and altogether unwanted Japanese owners required that all employees come to Japan to learn their production system. They came in groups of 30 employees most of whom had never been outside the United States. What they learned from Toyota was totally game changing. They learned that the production line, heretofore as unrelenting as the tide, could be stopped by anyone at anytime for any reason that had to do with quality. They learned that working in teams, not as individuals, led both to better products and more committed workers. They learned that to speak up to management with ideas to improve work processes was not only valued but expected. They learned to have pride. Grown men cried, one auto builder said, when it was time to leave for the US, so profound had been the experience of learning to care and be cared for in the workplace. The rest is history.

What is the leadership lesson? Simple: empowered workers produce quality results. The same vandals, theives, and drug addicts who came to the Fremont plant disguised as auto workers turned out to be producers of some of the soundest, most reliable cars on the road once leadership understood the power of giving voice and choice to skilled labor. Very interesting, isn't it? Deadbeats become dedicated workers when the structures and systems within which they labor change. That is a function of leadership.

So I worry about federal education legislation that preaches removing principals and teachers from underperforming schools when, in fact, the fault may lie with the system. Let's agree to do some thinking over the next few weeks. Let's learn what we can do better with the people we have rather than giving them all the pinkslip only to expose new educators to the very conditions that led to the ouster of the last bunch. Let's think about how quality leadership equals quality results.