This synthesis is a tentative attempt to translate into English a text that I´ve written in Portuguese and published in a book¹.

In this paper I intend to show a real situation that happened in a stamping for automotive components Company. I will call this Company: “Stamper”. This was done by analysing the difference, or the evolution from a “basic assumption” to a “work group” in the sense that Bion proposed. At that time I was working as a consultant for this enterprise.

Stamper´s customer seriously complained because of a problem of quality with the pieces they were delivering. Dimensions did not meet the specifications.

When something like this happens, an alarm breaks out and causes a serious concern.

Moreover, the company was at risk of losing their client.

The Quality Assurance manager was the person responsible for intermediating things in this difficult situation between Stamper and their customer.

Some antecedents:

When the order was placed, Stamper Planning Department judged that the severity of the control process when manufacturing could be reduced. They did it on their own and ended up risking the final dimensional quality. However, when their customer found a discrepancy in some of the critical pieces, they appraised the whole shipping. Therefore, the customer demanded an urgent action correctional plan with times, quantities and categorical responsibilities.

There were several people in this stamping company involved in these pieces fabrication process. Nevertheless, despite the gravity of the situation, my client´s team was in a standstill.

Nobody felt responsible for the problem, and everybody was self convinced that they did their best to comply with what they thought was their particular task. However, they did it individually and didn´t perceive that in order to meet their customer needs they had to think and work as a team. In other words, they should think their contributions directed to a system and not to particular tasks.

As a result of this, great anxiety aroused and meanwhile there was the need to find a scapegoat. It seemed as they projected their guilt on the Quality Assurance Manager to feel free and relieve their anxiety. But that was in vain.

The QAM, as can be supposed, was feeling upset, worried and sad.