“The data was in our favor, but could we detox our workplace environment?”





Changing colors: New product
required a new attitude

CLIENT: Midwest Auto Paint manufacturer selected to produce ink for inkjet printers.
CHALLENGE: Detox workplace, improve internal relations and give managers tools to facilitate the successful switchover.
RAPIDCHANGE ASSETS: Breakthrough Leadership; Fundamentals of RapidChange; Targeted Executive Coaching.


Story By Ruth Skeens

The business manager walked briskly into our conference room for the final meeting of the day. He was holding a stack of papers in his hand and thumped it down on the table. His body language spoke clearly: he was not happy.

All the data, he said, told him he should bring his business to us. We had been making auto paint at this Midwest plant for years and our processes fit fairly well with his new product – ink for computer inkjet printers.

But he had spent the morning touring our plant. Employees on the floor had told him a great deal of what was “wrong” with the plant and everyone in it. He was amazed that when he questioned one employee, he discovered the incident that had angered him so much had occurred 15 years earlier.

Yes, the data was in our favor, he said. But he was afraid that people’s minds and energy would not be focused on his new product but on all their troubles.

As a management leader sitting in that meeting room, my initial, internal reaction was, “who did he talk to out there? Who had the audacity to air our dirty laundry?” I was quickly preparing my defense when the product manager announced he would not stay to hear our presentations. Instead, we had six months to clean up the “toxic” work environment. He wanted to be able to bring customers to the facility, but he certainly wouldn’t do so now. Six months to detox the plant.

As with many companies in the 1980’s and early 1990’s we had been through just about every type of training possible to improve our productivity, ROI, etc. What we recognized was we had not successfully addressed the work environment and our ability to adapt to change.

During the next few months, we learned that organizations can become toxic pools of unprocessed emotional energy.  These toxic pools can develop over years and may not be apparent to the people who live in them day in and day out. The toxins build up so gradually that the awareness is not there until people realize they are feeling extremely stressed, the workplace is not as “fun” as it was at one time, there is a high level of absenteeism and illness in the workforce, or someone from outside the organization brings the problems to a conscious level for those involved.  

Entire work groups and companies can be stuck in these toxic pools that drain emotional energy from the individuals and the groups collectively.  Many of these toxins occur from “change” that has taken place at different times. Change is not an event; it is a “process.” Without tools to process the emotional energy attached to undesired and/or difficult change, these emotions hang around for years and can block the flow of energy of employees toward success and new opportunities for the company.  If the emotional energy is not “transformed” into useful energy, it gets “transferred” onto others or things that is not productive for anyone or the company.  

At that plant, we knew we had our problems just as other manufacturing sites were having at the time. The plant had gone through a series of downsizing due to the sale of a house paint formula that was the primary product made for almost 50 years there. We were able to stay functioning because of the reactors that produced pigment for automotive paint at sister manufacturing sites in our division.  The reactors were our “saving grace” in that it can be very costly to shut down reactors or build new ones.  We converted over to produce automotive paint in lieu of the house paint that picked up some of the idle capacity.

As we were able to increase production through the automotive paint, a decision was made to shut a newer sister plant down about four hours from our location.  The labor force at the closed location was able to take the new jobs at our plant based on years of seniority.   I remember the first group of 40 labor employees who came to our plant the first day from the other site.  As they walked through the guard shack, they passed under a second floor in the production area, and our current labor employees spit on them!  It was indeed a very volatile situation.  Our employees were upset because many of their friends, co-workers and relatives were not given the option to be called back to work before these senior employees from the closed site.  It was just as strained between the new management and support staff from the closed site that were given opportunities as well at our plant.  We were like a blended family from a divorce that did not want to live together!  We weren’t even sure what everyone’s roles were.  We had become so accustomed to this toxic environment that we were not even aware of just how “toxic” it had become.  In hind site, perhaps the labor force picketing due to excess overtime was a process indicator of the toxicity.

Our plant was out seeking new products to increase our production and pretty much taking what other plants did not want.  In order to stay viable and productive we needed to put aside egos and think “future”.  We were given the opportunity to produce the pigments for a new formula that had been developed between our corporation and another major corporation for a pigmented base ink vs. a water based ink used in printers.  The scientists were now ready to go to full production at a manufacturing site.  We suggested our plant be considered the production site as the process for making ink was very similar to making automotive paint.  

Our safety record, geographic location and workforce skills all lined up with the project. So we were fairly confident when the business manager showed up. Then he dropped the bomb: He wanted to spend the day walking around the mill, not talking to us. Since we did not have adequate time to announce his tour, we realized many people would not readily know who he was.  

Edward Deming was once known to have said, “People do not resist change, they resist being changed.”  I have found that saying to be ever so true.

Due to a series of inquiries we were introduced to the Rapid Change Group.  They had been doing training at an executive and management level in our corporation and had not worked with a manufacturing site before.   It was in the Rapid Change training, that I realized that it was easy for me to see how others contributed to the “toxic” environment we had created over years and not see how I contributed to the toxins through my behaviors and attitudes.

It was only with the realization of our own “victim” mentality, game boards we created, and our inability to speak the truth were we able to begin the process of detoxing our workplace history and continue to detox on a day to day basis.  The plant did make the culture shift to a welcoming environment of high energy and customer focus in order to become a place of customer preference.  Today they produce very little automotive paint and primarily ink!