SEPTEMBER 21

They said there was nothing employees could do about it.

PROVING THEM WRONG

Inspiring leaders can get employees to do incredible things. We love the true story about Ralph Harding, former manager of General Motors’ Wilmington, Delaware, plant. In the early 1990s, executives from headquarters gathered the plant’s 3,500 workers to tell them their factory would be closed by 2006. “There is nothing you can do to affect this decision,” they were told by the visiting GM suits.

After the executives left, Harding made an impassioned speech to the shell-shocked workers. “There may be nothing we can do to affect the decision,” Harding said, “But there is something we can do: we can make them feel really stupid! Because they are going to be closing the best plant in General Motors!”

Within two years, the workers made the factory the lowest-cost producer in GM, with the lowest warranty costs as well. Car dealers began specifically requesting Chevy Corsicas and Berretta models made by the Wilmington plant. GM reversed itself in 1996 and kept the plant open.

“They didn’t expect financial rewards,” recalls Harvey G.Thomas, the plant’s current manager. “It was their [the employees’] sense of self-esteem more than anything else. Nobody wants to walk out of a closed plant.”