Your team is the pits

by

Over the past four years, I’ve visited dozens of manufacturing plants, and no two were exactly alike. I’ve toured plants that make everything from cars to cake mix, caskets to cruise missiles, chemicals to commercial jets. There has been one common theme, however: plant employees’ passion for auto racing.

At every plant, it’s a given that I’ll see employees wearing NASCAR team hats, T-shirts and jackets. That’s saying something since I rarely see plant workers sporting pro baseball, basketball or football gear.

It goes beyond work clothes. It’s a given that the breakroom bulletin board will include a driver rotisserie league standings and points sheet. In the purchasing department, at least one computer monitor will have a race team screen saver. On the plant floor, number stickers will be affixed to tool boxes, forklifts and hard hats.

On the extreme end, I’ve interviewed assembly line workers who race stock cars on the weekend. I even interviewed a maintenance worker once who had an image of Dale Earnhardt tattooed on his left bicep and the phrase “Anyone But Gordon” tattooed on his right one.

This fanaticism amazes me. But even more amazing is this: Managers at only a few of these plants have ever tried to tap into this fanaticism in order to incite positive change and improve performance at the department, plant or corporate level.

What can you as a manager or a blue-collar worker learn from NASCAR and individual racing teams? Sure, big paychecks and commercial endorsements would be cool, but how about teamwork? Is teamwork a strength or weakness at your plant? John Reiser, a CEO of a manufacturing plant in Wisconsin, believes “most manufacturing companies stink at teamwork.”  To improve, he says, such firms need to take a page from NASCAR teams.

One of the most visible and easily transferable concepts from the NASCAR circuit is indeed how individual members of a team (from the car owner down to the crew chief, driver, metal fabricator, jack man, etc.) pull together toward the common goal of winning on race day. Every team member knows his or her role and how it fits into the next person’s role and the team as a whole. Watch a pit crew on race day. Says Reiser, “That could be your team.”

This article appeared in the April/May 2002 issue of MRO Today magazine. Copyright, 2002.

Back to top 

Back to Editorials archives