A Lean manufacturing programme had stalled. The coaching packs had been bought and the teams trained, but nothing was moving. Three days at one table changed that.
A training course in a structured method for solving problems and making decisions, delivered by consultants with a coaching pack for each Lean track. The programme was meant to end the old "they break it, we fix it" divide by putting a fitter in every production team.
The union shop stewards were blocking key steps, especially the visual management boards. It looked like resistance. It was also protection: a real fear that the new tools would be used against their members.
Management and stewards described the same breakdowns in completely different terms, blamed different people and proposed different fixes. No amount of training for either side alone would close that gap.
I signed off the coaching packs but cancelled the consultants' coaching component and ran the training myself.
With the general manager's backing, the plant's management team and the shop stewards took the course together: three days, side by side.
No case studies. The method kept bringing both groups back to the evidence, and the problems couldn't be argued away. Slowly they began to see the factory through the same lens.
The general manager backed an unusual intervention, stayed involved, and protected the work through the difficult days.
When the Lean work was done, the factory announced it wanted to launch the new Lean factory itself. They invited the senior executives, painted, cleaned until you could eat off the floors. At the end of the day the general manager came over and said: "From now on, I'm launching every change initiative." Nobody throws a launch party for a change that was done to them.
I would love to tell you it was my course that moved the numbers. It wasn't. The change in structure did.
The course was the vehicle. What it carried was something moving between management and the stewards that I couldn't yet explain. That question sent me into organisation development and, later, Tavistock group relations, which is where the thinking behind my work today began.
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