MAGIC OF WE

Produced

• September 2004

Key Features

VHS Video or Chaptered DVD, Leader’s Guide (including reproducible participant handouts), PowerPoint CD-Rom, and 10 “Magic of We” Post-It® Notes.

A preview guide, including sample pages from the Leader's Guide, is available upon request. The preview guide is a .pdf (Adobe Acrobat format) file and can be emailed to qualified organizations. Call us at 1-800-488-0319 or email us at rctm@rctm.com to request the Magic of We Preview Guide.

This innovative video program tells the compelling and true story of how management and employees turned Snapper Lawnmowers around – together, and turned a $54 million dollar loss into a $13 million dollar profit.

In The Magic of We, you’ll see a team of 25 Snapper employees gather in the main plant on a Saturday morning for a very different kind of meeting. Senior managers, engineers, suppliers, customer service and marketing are assigned one task: Put together 4 lawnmowers themselves.

It comes down to nuts and bolts – literally! As they work, these diverse teams realize that a universal bolt that was supposed to streamline production is causing more problems than it was supposed to solve. See how they use the ‘magic of we’ to find the solution.

The Magic of We video and workshop materials tell the story of one organization’s experience with a unique learning process. It was a process that helped Snapper Lawnmowers reverse a series of significant problems that threatened its very existence—along with the livelihoods of thousands of employees and retailers.

Your market may be different, but the lessons learned have relevance to any organization, in crisis or not.

The Story:

It wasn’t the typical Saturday morning for the senior management team at Snapper Lawnmowers. As each manager, along with various suppliers, strode through the plant door to a waiting pile of lawnmower parts, they knew something about the day would be different.

Nearly 12 hours later, significant results had been achieved. Beyond building half a dozen lawnmowers, there was a new attitude. Important lessons had been learned. Something had changed! There was a sense that, perhaps, the serious downslide the company had been in could be reversed. No one thought the problem was over, but everyone could see how a solution could be reached.

Five Ways to Use This Program:
Through a focused effort, Snapper’s top executives and stakeholders in all key areas of the company’s business were able to put differences and long-held habits aside and discover ways to resolve a number of serious planning and assembly line problems.

The story of Snapper Lawnmowers’ Saturday Session holds important lessons for any organization in the areas of Leadership, Teamwork, Problem Solving, Lean Manufacturing, and Communication.

The Magic of We gives you the resources to present a focused, thought-provoking workshop on any one of these topics – or to combine materials and work with your trainees in several of the topic areas at the same time.

The Results:
At Snapper, they had experienced The Magic of We . They had seen that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts, and that by working together – and communicating – they could solve the most critical of problems. A great deal of work remained - lessons learned from that productive Saturday would need to be implemented, starting the next Monday morning. But the energy they felt, and the commitments they made in that intensive environment carried over to the full workforce. At the end of the year, their $50 million loss had turned into a $13 million profit.

The Magic of We is one story, shown five times with five different intros and closings, each addressing a different topic area:

• Leadership
• Teamwork
• Problem Solving
• Lean Manufacturing
• Communication

Here is just a sample of the learning points covered:

• Gain first hand knowledge and experience. Walk your “four corners”. (Leadership)
• Understand the team’s mission and each individual’s role. (Teamwork)
• Step outside your day-to-day environment to change your perspective. (Problem Solving)
• Help create a work environment that brings down barriers to talking, listening, and sharing. (Communication)

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produced by CRM Learning