Engines of Democracy

Meanwhile, Sims went to GE/Durham's hr council and asked, "What's the best way to support this new team?" The hr council -- with representatives from every team at the plant -- came up with a rotation plan that involved lending one member of each team to the new CFM56 team, as well as maintaining a list of volunteers who were willing to work overtime on the weekends. Pit-crew time, in other words: Everyone over the wall with a wrench. In the end, GE/Durham got off to what Sims politely calls "a very aggressive" start. "We announced that we would do this work," she says, "and nine weeks later, we shipped our first engine."

Two months later, Sims's boss sat in his Of_ce in Evendale, just outside Cincinnati, and offered a slightly different perspective on GE/Durham's performance. "They have been producing the CFM engine for eight weeks," said Bob McEwan, 46, general manager of Evendale assembly operations. "In Evendale, we have been producing it for years and years. And in Durham, they are already producing it for 12% to 13% less cost than we are here."

In the case of the new engine, Paula Sims did one thing that was potentially controversial: She made a decision. She made the decision to take on the work -- without consulting people in the plant, or reaching consensus, or forming a council to consider the options. "That was a no-brainer," says Sims. But not quite.

"I made that decision," she says, "and we call it an 'A decision.' It was a unilateral decision. I don't make very many of those, and when I do make one, everyone at the plant knows it." When she says she doesn't make that many A decisions -- the kind that managers of her rank at other workplaces probably make several times a week, dozens of times a year -- she isn't kidding. "I make maybe 10 or 12 of those a year." Sims has spent several hours over three days explaining the way that GE/Durham does its work and what her role is. It is a measure of how acclimated people at GE/Durham have become to their unusual environment that it has taken this long for any of them to mention one of the fundamental rules of the place.

At GE/Durham, every decision is either an A decision, or a B decision, or a C decision. An A decision is one that the plant manager makes herself, without consulting anyone. B decisions are also made by the plant manager, but with input from the people affected. C decisions -- which make up the most common type -- are made by consensus, by the people directly involved, with plenty of discussion. With C decisions, the view of the plant manager doesn't necessarily carry more weight than the views of those affected.

That decision-making taxonomy perfectly captures one of the most nagging questions about a place like GE/Durham: What is the role of a plant manager in a place that manages itself? If the plant needs a manager like Sims to make just 10 decisions a year, what does she do with the bulk of her time?

She does the kinds of things that most managers talk about a lot but that they actually spend very little time on. At the operational level, her job is to keep everyone's attention focused on the goals of the plant: Make perfect engines, quickly, cheaply, safely. "The marketplace for jet engines is very, very competitive," says Sims. "They sell for less this year than last year, and that has been true for the past five years in a row. To sustain our business, we have to reduce our costs every year. The nice thing is that here, instead of one person saying, 'Mush harder,' everyone has 15 people looking at them -- 15 peers to whom they are accountable."

Strategically, the plant manager's job is to make sure that the plant as a whole is making smart decisions about talent, about time, and about opportunities for growth. Says Sims: "Each team, or group of teams, may be optimizing itself, but what's the right way to optimize the plant? If we've optimized each engine program, how do I free up resources for growth and for process improvement?"

Because there are no financial incentives for technicians to improve either their productivity or the quality of their work (Sims says simply, "They [financial incentives] are not part of the culture at GE Aircraft Engines"), job security is something that people at the plant think about a lot. So it's the plant manager's job to make GE/Durham the assembly facility of choice -- the place where senior GE executives, and GE customers, turn first whenever they need a new jet engine built. "Then, as new work becomes available, we have the potential to bid on it internally -- and to get it," says Sims. That approach should help cushion GE/Durham during an economic downturn, when senior management will want to make engines at the most efficient plant available. The plant manager, in other words, has to manage up -- to make sure that her bosses understand how well the plant does its work.