Page 166 - The Power to Change Anything

Harness Peer Pressure 155

ion leaders in making the undiscussable discussable. Learn how
to transform taboo subjects into a routine part of the public dis-
course, and you possess an enormously powerful tool for deal-
ing with some of the toughest cases imaginable.

Make Undiscussables Discussable
In the early 1980s, the authors were invited to help a manage-
ment team revive a dying manufacturing plant that labored in
the very center of the industrial rust belt. The task was to
increase profits in the facility by reducing costs and increasing
productivity. This manufacturing facility posted a productivity
level significantly below that of the average offshore competi-
tor. If this embarrassing benchmark continued to drag bottom,
the place was doomed.
To find out what it would take to turn the productivity prob-
lems around, the authors met with key personnel and asked one
question: “If you could fix one thing around here, what would
it be?” The very first person we posed this question to was a
superintendent who had worked in the plant for over 20 years.
When answering the question, he leaned forward, lowered his
voice, looked around twice to see if anyone was listening in,
and stated, “All we need to do is one thing. If we could get a
good six hours a day out of our skilled labor force, we could
make a profit.”
The nervous fellow went on to explain that while it was true
that many employees were giving the job an honest effort,
many weren’t. In fact, most had developed a lifestyle that
depended on overtime pay, and, to ensure this overtime, they
had slowed down. The majority of these free-effort employees
were on the clock for an average of ten hours a day, but they
were actually working only about four. So if they could just get
six hours...
We couldn’t help but notice that the superintendent
was talking to us in much the same tone and style of an FBI