Now that you've learned about team misalignments, let's get some practice with the real life example of the type of conflict that comes up all the time in the work place. The story I'm about tell is adapted from Transforming Culture, a book by the anthropologist and consultants Elizabeth Briody, Robert Trotter and Tracy Meerwarth. It describes their experience applying their anthropology training to help GM build a better more cohesive work culture. In the book they step through an everyday conflict between two co-workers at GM that's really a prime example of the types of team barriers the company faced while it was going through these changes. We're going to take a closer look at that conflict today. First, let me give you some background. GM used to be the dominate player in the automobile industry. They built a business empire based on a top down mindset, where every step of the vehicle manufacturing process was broken down in specific detail. And every worker on the assembly line only worried about their specific task. Basically, if there was a problem somewhere else, it really wasn't your job to fix it, you just stay in your silo. Now, this way of working was efficient, but the lack of collaboration made it a lot harder to fix quality issues in GM cars, or catch safety problems on the production line. In the 1980s GM's dominance was challenged by Japanese auto makers like Toyota, that thrived on a totally different model. Where every employee was responsible for the quality of the whole car, not just their one piece of the assembly line. So as a Toyota employee, if you saw a flaw in the manufacturing process, you had to communicate about it with your team and work together on finding a solution. GM leaders realized that in order to stay competitive, they would have to adopt elements of the Japanese model. And they began working to change their culture from one where you worked pretty much alone, and focused on producing as much as possible, to a culture that emphasized product, quality and safety. To meet these goals, GM realized that they would have to promote better team collaboration. And that became a top priority for the company, at the time these anthropologists were there. With that in mind, consider this scene captured by one of the consultants in a GM manufacturing plant. As you listen, take notes for yourself on what you think the conflict is all about, and what the underlying issues are. So here's the scenario, Tracy Meerwarth is sitting in a break-room chatting with her coworkers when she hears a loud crash and a hissing sound outside. Running out, she sees a stud gun lying on the ground. Now, a stud gun is the device used to bolt car parts together and this one appears to have broken and fallen over. There are small studs scattered all over the place, and the air hose the gun was attached to is swinging around wildly. After team members on the assembly line shut off the hose, Ned walks over to find out what happened, and determine how to get it fixed. Ned is an electrician who's been with GM for a long time, he's also a union member. Normally in this situation he would just attached a backup stud gun to the air system and get the assembly line moving quickly again. But in this case after taking a close look, he decides that the air system is just too damaged to safely use a backup stud gun and that the assembly line really needs to be shut down while that system gets fixed. His supervisor Al runs over, Al is a contracted employee, not a union member like Ned and he's been with GM for much less time than that. Al's first reaction is just to get the line moving again as quickly as possible. He says to Ned, bypass it, we're in the business of making cars and tells Ned to use the backup stud gun. Ned replies, stay out of the way, you don't understand the problem. Ignoring Ned, Al says the the rest of the team members who have gathered around, we need to clean up those studs, that's my profit sharing lying on the ground. He totally ignores Ned's recommendations. Ned walks away clearly frustrated, and he says to Tracy, I've been telling management that it was never a safe operation around here. Now Meerwarth and her colleagues use this incident as a learning opportunity for teams throughout the company to become better collaborators. So now it's your turn to play a team leader. Imagine you're Ned and Al's supervisor, what would your diagnosis of this problem be? What would be your next step in trying to fix this team misalignment?
