General Motors (GM)

The American automaker whose worst factory became Toyota's best - with the same workers.

In the 1980s, GM's Fremont, California plant was legendary for dysfunction: 20% absenteeism, 5,000 defects per 100 vehicles, grievances flooding management, the "worst workforce in the automobile industry." GM saw a people problem. Toyota saw a leadership problem.

When Toyota partnered to reopen Fremont as NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc.), they hired the same workers. Same plant, same union, same people. But Toyota implemented prosocial leadership principles: workers as sensors in a quality system, problem-solving authority on the line, respect for human intelligence. Within 24 months: absenteeism dropped to 2%, defects to 45 per 100 vehicles, grievances from 5,000/year to 2/year. The transformation wasn't magic - it was proof that leadership model matters more than workforce composition.

But NUMMI couldn't fix GM's deeper metabolic inefficiency. While Toyota achieved 12-15x inventory turnover and 8-10% operating margins, GM's traditional manufacturing relied on large inventory buffers and high overhead, delivering 6-8x turnover and 2-4% margins. GM optimized for batch production and inventory insurance; Toyota optimized for flow and metabolic efficiency. Same industry, radically different operating systems.

The lesson: your people aren't the problem - your system is. And no amount of leadership fix can overcome metabolic inefficiency at the organizational level.