Best Drama Around Organizational Change: NUMMI Episode from This American Life, NPR Here’s something totally different. NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc.) was the acronym for a joint Toyota and GM plant launched in 1984 and shut down on April 1, 2010. This story, told on National Public Radio (and available on iTunes) in gripping first-person accounts by union and management speakers against the backdrop of GM’s fall from 50 percent market share down to 20 percent and eventual bankruptcy, is a stunningly vivid depiction of how powerfully organizational culture can resist change. At the NUMMI plant, GM workers so successfully learned from Toyota the values and practices associated with teamwork and continuous improvement that within two years, the plant was transformed. It went from a place that routinely produced cars with engines installed backwards, to one whose productivity and quality matched that of Toyota (before its recent troubles). Costs went down and quality went up. But when GM tried to replicate the lessons from NUMMI, it hit an entrenched bureaucracy that “had learned to live with its culture of dysfunction.” GM executives refused to share parking lots with workers, and workers reported that “continuous improvement made them act like managers and lose sight of the unions’ primary role of protecting them from management.” Lack of committed leadership at the top and a lack of belief in urgency were also cited as barriers to change in GM’s wider system. The rest, as they say, is history. No, orchestras are not automakers. But anyone interested in organizational change in a collective bargaining environment will find lots to reflect on in this ultimately tragic account. Smart Change Strategies: Competing for the Future, by Gary Hamel; The Profit Zone, by Adrian Slywotsky As conversation in orchestras has increasingly focused on the profound changes in
We have strengthened the arguments for our public value, citing education, free concerts, economic impact, and engagement with underserved populations. But surely there must be public value in our core activity: playing concerts! our environment and the need for business models to adapt, I’ve been pleased to discover that there is a significant body of literature on these subjects. Gary Hamel’s Competing for the Future (Harvard Business School Press) says leaders need to ask different kinds of questions when change is rapid: questions like “What new core competencies will we need to build? What new product concepts should we pioneer? What new alliances will we need to form? What nascent development programs should we
protect? What long-term regulatory initiative should we pursue?” He describes the limits of downsizing and restructuring— strategies that are sure to make companies smaller, but will ultimately fail if they do not create the markets of the future. Adrian Slywotsky studies business models. He is a principal at the consulting firm Oliver Wyman, and was kind enough to devote three hours of his time for a meeting with managers of Group 1 orchestras at the League’s Mid-Winter Managers meeting. For Slywotsky, it’s all about “customer-centric business design,” a concept he explores thoroughly in his bestselling book The Profit Zone (Three Rivers Press). “Exactly how is the customer changing?” is the overarching question. Slywotsky says the answer doesn’t come from market research, but rather from onthe-ground conversations with customers, from asking the “questions to which you are afraid to hear the answers.” (Interest-
Nnenna
Freelon Tribute to Ella Fitzgerald (Mike Berkowitz, Conducting; Nelson Riddle Arrangements) From Hollywood to Broadway: The Great American Songbook
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Around The World: Celebrating 80 Years on Planet Earth
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Featuring David Amram, Nnenna Freelon & T.S. Monk Sextet – Celebrate Music in the 20th Century
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Featuring Nnenna Freelon, Mike Garson, Harolyn Blackwell
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