Anna Muoio (amuoio@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company associate editor. Learn more about the U.S. Mint on the Web (www.usmint.gov), or contact Philip Diehl by email (pdiehl@usmint.treas.gov).

Sidebar: The West Point of Turnarounds

Brad Cooper's initial impressions of his first day on the job were intimidating: a chain-link fence, enormous coils of barbed wire, a guard at the front gate with a machine gun. Walking inside, he was a little less intimidated. "The building was so old," he says. "It was like walking through The Land That Time Forgot. I thought to myself, 'I can't believe I've taken this job.'"

Cooper was the first nonpolitical appointee to become superintendent of a local Mint. He was also an experiment in Philip Diehl's change program. Once Diehl changed the law so that he could appoint whomever he wanted to leadership positions, the question was, Could those people deliver? Cooper, now 38, was a test case: "West Point was considered the black sheep of the Mint. Everyone wondered whether it was going to shut down." But Cooper didn't shut it down -- he turned it around. He became superintendent in 1996, a year in which West Point made fewer than 638,000 American eagle gold coins -- and had reject rates that were higher than 8%. Last year, it made nearly 2.8 million gold coins (along with more than 166,000 platinum coins) -- and had reject rates as low as 0.5%.

How did Cooper change so much so fast? By applying to the West Point Mint his personal approach to minting change.

Don't just do something, sit there.

Cooper knew he had to unleash changes or the facility's future was in jeopardy. He also sensed a climate of fear among the 220 employees. So for three months, he just listened: "I basically walked around. I met with everyone in small groups. I did nothing -- because I knew that if I started acting before I had built trust, any changes would fail."

Sell hope, not fear.

After his listening tour, Cooper had doubts about the operation's viability. But he painted a vivid picture of an upbeat future: "I told people that we could radically improve our productivity, quality, and financial position." He also painted a tough picture of what might happen without change: "Only huge gains could prevent reasonable minds from shutting us down."

The shortest road to change isn't a straight line.

Despite his patience, Cooper had a brutal first six months as West Point. But as his changes became performance gains, and as the takeoff in the market for gold bullion triggered big increases in West Point's production, small strides snowballed into major advances. "The more we improved, the more people wanted to keep improving," Cooper says. "People here were once considered the worst manufacturing organization in the Mint. Now they see that they can be the best."

Contact Brad Cooper by email (bcooper@usmint.treas.gov).