The Lean manufacturing, PPT Plus,
"Back-to-Basics" e-Training Package 
Lean Manufacturing Solutions

Increase the effectiveness of your
Lean Manufacturing Training Program
Lean Manufacturing Simulation Game 

What's the Point?

These historical events are often portrayed, as mentioned before, in a good versus evil story. Attila is often seen as evil incarnate. Dante in The Divine Comedy, Inferno, CantoXII, wrote "There heaven's stern justice lays chastis­ing hand on Attila, who was the scourge of the earth." Even in recent history Attila has not escaped this type of refer­ence. In his "final confession" to the North Koreans, USS Pueblo commander, Lloyd Bucher requests his captors "to forgive our dastardly deeds unmatched since Attila."

Yet Attila is proudly remembered by the Hungarian and German people. The German, Nibelungen-Lied said it best when he wrote, "There was a mighty king of the Huns whose goodness and wisdom had no equal." But what about his savageness at the killing of his enemies. Attila was less savage than the Romans, who cast thousands of Christians to wild animals for mere entertainment. In comparison, he was less cruel than Ivan the Terrible, Cortes, or Pizarro. In his sparing of Rome, he showed more mercy than did the Norseman, the Germans, and the Spanish mercenaries, who all pillaged it without regard.

Yet, good or evil, Attila has a place in history not often considered. As a leader, he was able to unite a conglomera­tion of nomadic, multiracial, and multilingual tribes and mold them into the nation of the Huns. He was also able to transform this vast group of people, who clothed them­selves in skins and used weapons of stone, into a force that all but controlled the known world. Then, by his will, return this mass of humanity to their homeland and to more peaceful pursuits.

These are not the actions of a butcher or a man with small dreams. These are the actions of a great leader, actions for which few people could show the same satisfactory results. The question is, how are these tasks accomplished and is everything as black and white as we once thought it was?
Like the description of Attila, leadership is not a concept which is easily defined by a singular set of rules. Yet there do seem to be some common denominators that all great leaders seem to have in common. It is with the help of Attila, and others, that we will look at some of these concepts.

The Importance of Teamwork

While discussing teamwork in his book, The Winner Within, Pat Riley takes us back to the 1970's and the situation between the United Auto Workers and General Motors Management. At the Fremont, California, GM plant team­work was not part of management or labor's vocabulary. The GM Fremont plant was full of individuals who were great at protecting their own territories. The overall plant was suffering, absenteeism was so far out of control that some mornings not enough people showed up to start the line.

"When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers."
Kikuyu Proverb

By 1982 the big three auto makers had lost over $5.5 billion and GM could no longer afford the anarchy at Fremont. In March, GM closed the books on the worst disciplinary problem in the company. Teamwork did not exist at Fremont and everyone suffered. To some degree this was the wake-up call for both GM's management and the UAW. GM decided it had to learn why Japanese car companies were so much more efficient. Concurrently, the United Auto Workers needed to get their members back to work.

As a result, in February 1983 a joint venture was signed by GM, the UAW, and a Japanese management team to again build cars at Fremont, CA., called the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. or NUMMI. On September 21st, 1983, NUMMI and the UAW signed a letter of intent. Unlike the four-hundred plus page contract filled with legal doublespeak that was used as a weapon a year earlier, this contract was a simple fifteen-page document.
The contract reduced the number of job classifications from one hundred to only four. Workers formed teams and learned new skills. As a result, by the fall of 1986, NUMMI had been chosen by the Department of Labor for a case study of labor-management relations. Newsweek, For­tune, and Industry Week all praised NUMMI's operation. Today, $300 million is pumped into the local economy by the close to five thousand jobs generated by NUMMI and its suppliers.

"He who does not open his eyes must open his purse."
German Proverb

It is important to point out that the actions of management and leadership are often not the same. The leadership at NUMMI had accomplished something that the manage­ment at GM was unable to do. Like Attila when he merged his disjointed tribes, NUMMFs leadership was able to bring various distinct groups together and form one cohe­sive unit. A unit that was able, through its use of synergism and teamwork, to accomplish great things. Things that provide benefit to all parties concerned.

To be Continued