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When manufacturing leaders discuss operational challenges, “culture” becomes the catch-all explanation: “Our culture doesn’t support discipline like Asian manufacturers,” or, “We need to change the culture around quality,” or, “It’s a cultural resistance to following procedures.”
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This framing feels true. After all, the behavior differences are visible and consistent. But it’s also paralyzing. How do you change culture? It feels amorphous, resistant to intervention, requiring years or decades to shift.
Here’s what manufacturing leaders often miss. What are labeled as culture problems are usually systems problems in disguise—and systems can be designed, implemented, and measured.
What ‘culture’ actually describes
Culture is the emergent property of repeated behaviors. The patterns that feel like cultural differences, such as discipline, consistency, and accountability, result from systems that encourage and reinforce those behaviors over time.
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Comments
People are not the problem
Thanks for the reminder of the NUMMI story. Blame the process, not the people. Process is management's responsibility!
Thanks, Susan. The NUMMI…
Thanks, Susan. The NUMMI story never gets old, partly because it's so counterintuitive. Same workers, same union, dramatically different outcomes. Most people want to do their jobs well. When they don't, the first question should be "what's making the right behavior difficult?" not "who failed?" That reframe changes everything about how you design systems.
Manufacturing’s Culture Problem Is Really a Systems Problem
Hi James,
Thank you for this article it was very thought provoking in that the simple approach to addressing culture in an organization is by implementing a system. Now you listed ways the system implementation forces a new behavior whereby bringing about a change in culture. With that in mind that challenge now is developing a system that will capture the following:
-Clear expectations
• Practice opportunities
• Feedback mechanisms
• Accountability structures
• Barrier removal
I do not believe it is a one size fit all for each manufacturer or organization, but the key to success is having an approach of a systems thinking mind.
My question is how one can foster that systems thinking approach? Can you offer good suggestions, I found a few online, but I would appreciate your recommendations.
Regards
Dwane
Fostering systems thinking through practice
Thanks, Dwane. You're right that there's no one-size-fits-all solution.
The most practical entry point is to start with a specific failure and work backward. Not "we have a quality culture problem" but "operators are skipping this particular checkpoint. What's making that the easier choice? And what impact does it have on the business?" These questions naturally surface expectations, feedback, barriers, and accountability as a connected system rather than separate initiatives.
John Shook's insight from NUMMI applies here: "it's easier to act your way to a new way of thinking than to think your way to a new way of acting." Systems thinking develops through structured practice built into daily work. That's where I see the biggest opportunity.
The right platform makes this feasible at scale. Activities embedded in daily workflow, managers reinforcing in real time, plant leadership with visibility into execution data, and the feedback loop itself surfacing barriers you didn't know existed. The system you're trying to build becomes the practice.
Another example
When I was head of quality systems for a large manufacturer one of my areas dealt with SPC and its disciplined and appropriate use across the series of plants I was responsible for. When the leader of one of those plants retired, all of a sudden no one was responding to limits. Turns out that this leader would respond to each one. They had set up limits for every possible situation so at its worst 60% of points taken were alarming. No one would respond to alarms because they were constant and everyone knew that it was "crying wolf". I went to that plant and told the operators that this was management's fault, not their fault (they had previously been scolded about not responding). We didn't do our job in setting you up with the right decision tools. I told them that I would go through the entire plant and create meaningful limits and alarms. Once I did that, then after that time they should treat them as "no $%^& alarms". In a year, we were at 5% alarms and people reacting.
Thank you for that anecdote…
Thank you for that anecdote. I think it illustrates why good understanding of SPC theory, like that advanced by Don Wheeler in his Quality Digest entries, is so important. It's not that there are better or worse ways of looking at the data: it's that you either have an effective filter to separate signals from noise, and this filter allows you to stomach looking at the data every day and seeing what it has to show you... or you just get sick of being nagged by something that will always nag you no matter what, and you eventually stop looking at the data because it's a fruitless source of stress when there is still work to get done. Without the right tools, the data become meaningless, and workers correctly intuit that there's no point in looking at something that's meaningless.
Your culture problem is a systems problem—and systems can be des
Culture is a matter of having engaged each and all plant and administrative personnel, as well as the compromise of high management.
You're right, Maria,…
You're right, Maria, everyone needs to be involved. It's a big task, and an important one.
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