It’s belief in many businesses that, as long as all of their employees have enough health & safety education, they have got everything they need to prevent a disaster. The truth is that, irrespective of the industry you’re in, basic training in health & safety regulatory affairs just is not enough. Equipping your staff, selecting good supervision and supporting frequent practise are crucial to the safety at work.
Anyone in a supervisory job has a bigger function to carry out than simply supervising the work area. Your selection of supervisor needs to be a good communicator and see health & safety education as fundamental. On top of observing rules and regulations, a supervisory role also usually includes supervising employee performance levels. Naturally it’s not easy to achieve all this at once. An accomplished supervisor is advised to possess excellent knowledge of both the business and production as well as an advanced understanding of current legislation regarding safety, risk assessment and first aid. Just providing basic training in health & safety really is not enough for your workers. Your employees must gain practical experience of risk assessment and the identification of hazards. Staff need to know how to eradicate safety hazards and how best to cope when something goes wrong. Not until these processes have become a habit are staff properly protected.
Safety equipment is equally as critical to the safety of your employees as the instruction itself. If they do not have the proper gear or alternatively if staff discover that equipment is damaged only after an emergency has occurred, the safety training your staff have already taken is basically for nothing. It is essential to perform conscientious checks on a regular basis to make sure that all the required apparatus is where it should be as well as checking that everything is functioning properly. When you have a issue with your safety gear, have it repaired or call out a service professional as a matter of urgency. Your workers have to get appropriate health & safety training, however they also require quality supplies, the opportunity to practise, and a knowledgeable supervisor who gets the workforce to be enthusiastic about working safely. And then adopting health & safety legislation will be established in your business culture not an inconvenience everyone has to attempt to think about constantly.
A new design for residential, recreational as well as office space in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter has been planned out for the commercial development of the area. This St Georges plan on the site, which spans 2.75 acres, actually holds a lot of promises for a number of people who will find it an ideal place for shopping, working as well as living.
Redesigning the Kettleworks factory will be the first phase of this development project. The factory that manufactured tea sets and copper kettles had actually started as a brass foundry. The developers are trying to keep the external structure in place and improve upon the inner structure to come up with an office fitout of premium-type office space.
Chord Deeley, the developer for the project, is working in collaboration with Online Architects Limited and Urban Initiatives to try and retain the basic character of the 1890s architecture while giving a modern touch to the historic Jewellery Quarter.
The first phase of the project, to be undertaken at an estimated cost of £160 million, is expected to be completed by autumn next year, though the entire project will take about three to five years for completion. The project has received positive responses from the residents as well as commercial houses, as it is being seen as beneficial for the city as a whole.
The project involves creation of low cost BREEAM-centric office space spread across an area of 236,000 square feet, in addition to two new hotels with as many as 250 bedrooms and separate residential units. it also includes safe parking spaces. An additional 12,000 square feet area has been approved for bars and restaurants.
Numerous companies feel that, by offering each member of staff some education in health and safety, they are sufficiently equipped to manage an emergency. The reality is that, regardless of the industry you’re in, staff need more than simply basic education in health and safety and risk assessment. You must provide your staff with a capable supervisor, the appropriate equipment, and last but not least regular practice. Someone in a supervisory capacity has a much larger role to carry out than simply managing the shop floor. A supervisor is required to see their health and safety training as essential and be able to share their enthusiasm about it.
In addition to enforcing health and safety legislation, the supervisor furthermore should check that each employee performs to the best of their abilty. Naturally it isn’t easy to accomplish all this at once. It means that the supervisor is expected to have extensive knowledge of both the industry and production as well as an in depth understanding of current regulations with regard to safety, risk assessment and emergency assistance techniques. Just supplying health and safety training isn’t enough for your employees. To successfully discover a safety hazard they require to put their new-found skills to the test. Staff have to know how to eliminate safety risks as well as knowing what to do if the unexpected happens. Your workers are only protected when their training and procedures have become routine. Instruction is in fact ineffective without safety equipment. Without the right gear or alternatively if workers see that items are not working correctly when they are required, then all the education your staff have completed will have been basically for nothing.
You need to perform detailed checks regularly to ensure that you are in posession of all the necessary equipment and that it’s all being properly looked after. If you find your equipment isn’t in good working order, have it repaired or call out a service engineer as quickly as possible.
Your workers need to have good health & safety training, but they require the correct apparatus, scheduled practises, and a knowledgeable supervisor who can get the workforce excited about being healthy at work. When you put this advice into practice you should find that health and safety legislation will become a natural part of life in the workplace rather than an inconvenience for employees to remember.
Pacific Quay Hub developed along the Clyde by the development company Downtown Space targeting at the creative companies in Glasgow has done very well in spite of recession. The predictions were that the building might not be occupied. However, half of the building has been leased out already while the building was finished only in February this year.
The real estate development company Downtown Space is marketing the building well as an addition to the creative focus of the city. The area already has offices of BBC Scotland, STV, the Glasgow Science Centre, Galaxy Scotland radio and Film City Studios which makes it an in-demand area and adds to the attraction of Pacific Quay Hub.
The building and office planning provides hi-tech offices with modern design. It is being called the ‘heart of the new Digital Media Quarter’. It offers 65,000 sq ft of space, which has been split into different offices spaces ranging from 129 sq ft to 7922 sq ft to ensure that everyone can find the space they want.
Current occupants of the building are Shed Media, the Glasgow School of art’s Digital Design Studio and many IT firms. Digital Studio is expected to move around 70 employees into the commercial building by September of this year. This will make the number of total occupants close to hundred. The two new lessees Safehinge (a design business) and Caboodl (a social media company) will occupy the office space of 180 sq ft and 450 sq ft respectively.
A prosperous business depends on the competent management of people. You may acquire and develop these techniques. It may be an advantage to have a natural affinity for getting along with people, however you can do some things that will help the process.
Build relationships: Addressing people by name should be a start. Encourage conversation; look individuals in the eye as you are speaking. Have a respectful attitude, also be attentive to everything the other person says, irrespective of whether you are in agreement with them. The development of listening skills is among the best things you can do to improve your human resources management skills. Be sure to exhibit interest in what they can offer the team.
Exhibit integrity: Keeping your promises is key. If you can’t keep your promises, the delicate bond of trust is broken, and no-one will offer you their best if they can’t trust you. Everytime you make a statement or give a promise, you are wasting your time and effort if you don’t act with integrity. The truth is, if you can’t be counted on, they will not be there when you actually need them. Encourage feedback: Feedback should be a reciprocal process. Human Resource management skills mean having an open mind to all feedback. If you can show that you are accessible and receptive, you establish that you appreciate your co-worker’s ideas, your opinions will be respected in return. Welcoming open discussion in addition promotes development of fresh ways of thinking, original methods of achieving goals, and strengthens the team. By giving the employees an input, each member of staff invests in the project’s outcome.
Encourage all sorts of communication: Good communication is the key to managing staff with skill. Keeping an open door policy, employ listening skills, encourage all sorts of feedback, and give team members an equal voice. Employees should be encouraged to talk to each other not just with you. The exchange of ideas is imperative in the creative process, if the team communicate openly, it becomes easy to discover issues before they might present as a problem, allowing corrective measures to be implemented to prevent any further problems.
This may take some effort, even so the rewards are worthwhile. Through establishing the bonds of a good team and by listening to your team’s ideas, a successful business can be achieved.
Training managers use many of the same interpersonal and analytical skills that other types of departments use. In particular, they need to be good communicators, and highly skillful in interpersonal relations. They need to delegate effectively, support their staff emotionally, give accurate and timely feedback, and set departmental goals that are consistent with organizational goals. Barbara L. Thornton, an independent training consultant in the St. Paul area, says that training managers need to exercise leadership skills in guiding their people. “[A good training manager is] a good coach,” adds Robert Bertschy.
Outside the department, the training manager plays a role that is part public relations, part strategy. After all, your staffing levels depend on your organization population, their needs and the budget allocated to your department. Your most important goal is to insure the strength and relevance of the department in the larger picture. Once you return to the training department with a mandate from the organization, and, hopefully, the support necessary to implement that mandate, the training manager’s focus must change. Inside the training department, getting, keeping and motivating a staff of highly talented individuals is your most important function. Everything the department does, and how it is viewed, is affected by how skillfully you help your people manage themselves.
Sharon Burns offers the following tips for the training managers interviewing prospective trainers. During the interview, look at the applicant’s questioning skill, how they get information from you. Does the applicant have a logical thought process? Does the applicant equate training with corporate business? She has personally found that psychology graduates with good interpersonal skills sometimes out-perform former classroom teachers, who have to unlearn old habits when faced with adult learners. Larry Lottier suggests having the applicant do a presentation for the department. Does he or she come across as a performer? Is the presentation boring? Have department members present for the trial training discuss the applicant’s classroom style how well would this person wear with the group as a whole?
New trainers, once on board, need seasoning and supervisory attention. Our interviewees identified some of the common mistakes that new trainers make which a manager can help them to sidestep. Overall, most managers agreed that new trainers usually are too dependent on prepared lectures, and too easily affected by the personal need to be liked. “A new trainer will spend too much time lecturing, clinging to instructor notes,” Additionally, most new trainers have not had enough expeosure to different cultures, and will either misread the intentions of their trainees’ questions or blame unsatisfactory feedback on a lack of interest in the subject, not their own style or content. New trainers need help with listening skills.
The key to good trainers is a good training manager.
Copyright AE Schwartz & Associates All rights reserved. For additional presentation materials and resources: ReadySetPresent and for a Free listing as a Trainer, Consultant, Speaker, Vendor/Organization: TrainingConsortium
CEO, A.E. Schwartz & Associates, Boston, MA., a comprehensive organization which offers over 40 skills based management training programs. Mr. Schwartz conducts over 150 programs annually for clients in industry, research, technology, government, Fortune 100/500 companies, and nonprofit organizations worldwide. He is often found at conferences as a key note presenter and/or facilitator. His style is fast-paced, participatory, practical, and humorous. He has authored over 65 books and products, and taught/lectured at over a dozen colleges and universities throughout the United States.
Answering the question of what Supply Chain Management is, is as simple as breaking down the phrase into its component parts. Supplies are those inputs that a company relies upon to produce the product that will ultimately reach its customers. The chain is the group of suppliers that bring those inputs to a company and the process whereby those inputs are integrated into the company. And finally, management is the coordination and organization of all these inputs and their implementation. So put it all together, and Supply Chain Management is the science and art of improving the processes that bring suppliers of raw materials together and move those materials through the company until they reach the endpoint, the customer.
What SCM Involves
If defining the term takes a full paragraph to cover even in its most basic sense, you can imagine how complex the industry surrounding Supply Chain Management truly is. It involves managers who map out the entire process and look for inefficiencies and others who develop and maintain relationships with suppliers to ensure a steady supply of inputs. It involves the actual process of manufacturing or value add in which those inputs become the products that will be sold as well as “logistics” or the process of getting those value added products to customers. And finally it involves dealing with and compensating for supply chain returns, such as defective products. Supply Chain Management covers every aspect of the business from input to output and as such requires an extensive array of tools and strategies to help managers to coordinate and organize a
company.
The Dilemma of SCM Software
One of the most innovative and revolutionary tools in use by managers involved in the supply chain is Supply Chain Management Software. While I have outlined five general sections that make up Supply Chain Management, each of these sections is unique to a particular business. As such, no single product has been developed to handle the software needs of a company from start to finish. As a result, when industry insiders talk about Supply Chain Software, they are really talking about a combination of many different programs that, when applied together, help manage the supply chain. While literally thousands of different products are on the market today, they all fall into one of two broad categories, Supply Chain Planning (SCP) or Supply Chain Execution (SCE) software. Supply Chain Planning software covers those programs which use advanced mathematical algorithms to map out the flow of products through a company and to identify any inefficiencies. The ultimate goal of this type of software is to help reduce faulty products, to speed up the time to market, and to reduce inventory. Supply Chain Execution software is designed to automate different components of the supply chain. For example, Supply Chain Execution Software might update inventory listings in a central directory as soon as inputs are brought in from a supplier or are sold off to the customer. In this way, SCE software eliminates the costly and time consuming task of tabulating the total current supply so as to know when to place the next order.
The Goals of Supply Chain Management
Ultimately the goal of Supply Chain Management is to bring greater efficiency to a company by reducing errors, maintaining steady inputs, and reducing excess inventories. With the growth of the internet, however, it is transitioning into a means of collaboration between companies. By concentrating their efforts on better communication with suppliers and customers, inefficiencies are ironed out not only within the company but in those surrounding it as well. The internet has made the communication between firms necessary for this to take place possible. Consequently, the hope for Supply Chain Management in the future is not only to create a more efficient and profitable business, but to contribute to a more efficient and profitable global marketplace as well.
Dan Johnson enjoys writing about supply chain management. Visit www.scmlowdown.com/ to learn more.
Listening to seasoned musicians play jazz can be a rewarding experience. Even if we are not jazz enthusiasts, we can appreciate the talent that becomes quickly evident, as melodies are created in a seemingly spontaneous fashion, but with notes flying together in an underlying theme.
What isn’t evident, is what’s behind this top-level performance. There certainly is obvious physical dexterity — the ability to produce what is required upon demand. But, playing good jazz requires agility as well as ability — the innovativeness to continually introduce new ideas in response to the mood created by the notes just played. Each phrase has to be linked with the next for continuity. There must be integration of thoughts and ideas.
The best excitement is created when teams of musicians improvise to create new harmonies. The players have mastered the rudiments, become very dexterous, agile and adroit, and trained themselves to be spontaneous. In their terms, they “cook.”
Take away these ingredients and the players get clumsy, stumble in execution and produce bad results. The music becomes stale and the listener grows disinterested. What’s the consequence? …….Losing the audience.
What does this have to do with manufacturing?
Consider that the U.S. has significantly lost world market share in key industries over fifteen years. Also consider that the complexion of manufacturing is rapidly changing, in the process of a global re-segmentation of markets. With more companies competing worldwide, pressure is on for U.S. manufacturers to give a top performance — designing and building the best quality product in the shortest time possible.
Sour Notes
How do we compare today with that new standard? We have spaghetti factory flows, poor interaction between functional departments, physical walls, classes of workers, poorly integrated information systems, and component factories separated from assembly by states and, sometimes, continents.
As a result, we find ourselves clumsy in moving parts across the factory floor, stale or too slow with introducing new products to respond to market demand, stumbling in execution of production, and severe quality problems. What’s the consequence? Losing business.
Jazz in the Factory
How can we tune ourselves to be top performers in the next decade We must start with the fundamentals, the rudiments. Any organization, just as in a jazz group, is only as good as its weakest player. As individual skills are raised, so is the performance of the organizational unit. We must be ready and skilled in physical movement. Physical dexterity is paramount in the hands of a classical pianist, a jazz saxophonist, and in the production cycle.
We must remove the obstacles that prevent us from manufacturing with high velocity — our set-ups, the excessive material handling, our poor physical flow, and all production interruptions. We must streamline the physical flow, integrate our processes and close the distances between supply, production, assembly, distribution, and our end customer. The emphasis must be on quickly satisfying the service chain of events from the time a customer needs something until he is satisfied.
Being Innovative
We must be adroit in introducing new products and quick in getting them to the market to satisfy demand. We must create a dynamic integrated environment where people can work together in generating and sharing thoughts. Just as a jazz musician is free to choose his notes, in business there must be built-in flexibility to allow members to explore, and be creative.
Fostering innovation, among many other things, requires good organization of information. Our current systems and procedures have been developed at length to control an unwieldy information channel. Our functional organizations are stifling; natural and functional conflicts create internal adverse relationships that prevent the sharing of ideas.
Only when we get past the stifling paper flow, disparate computer systems, and functional organizational walls, will the homogeneity of ideas begin to generate at a fast pace. Linking computers is part of the answer, but it’s also streamlining the information flow, and consolidating the knowledge of the idea producers. We need to organize for ease of sharing information for innovation.
Playing in Harmony
Having the ability to produce spontaneously upon demand requires an organization that is quick and resourceful. It requires short lines of communication, and velocity throughout the work chain. This means not only being able to enact the physical events swiftly, but also completing the business cycles quickly.
A jazz stage band keeps good time by closing physical proximity between players. This is so there is a minimum of delay in hearing the rhythm. In business, close proximity is critical to producing velocity. Each element of a business cycle must be linked with the next for continuity.
Every member must be in tune with the overall needs of the market, and close enough to one another to be spontaneous in helping each other support the common mission — serving the customer. Team play is a basic necessity to produce the results required to be competitive in the next decade.
When a manufacturing company becomes physically dexterous in the factory, organized to be adroit and innovative throughout, and its members work in concert toward a common theme of satisfying the requirements of a dynamic market, it will be a world-class competitor, it will possess enterprise agility, and that’s when it will “cook.”
BIOGRAPHY
Richard G. Ligus is President of Rockford Consulting Group, Ltd., located in Rockford, IL., with over 30 years experience in manufacturing, procurement, transportation and distribution. He specializes in developing and implementing supply chain strategies. Rich is an author and a speaker, and has developed seminars with the American Management Association. He is certified by both the Institute of Management Consultants and the The National Bureau of Certified Consultants.
Rich has a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and a master of business administration degree from Rutgers University. He is a member of CASA/SME, and has been listed in Jane’s Who’s Who in Aviation and Aerospace. He has been a speaker at IMTS, USCTI, APFA, NEPMA, MCAA, Hand Tools Institute, CASA/SME, and others. He has appeared several times on WREX-TV, Mid-Morning Magazine.
I learned a valuable lesson over the holidays. I learned the real value of experience. The real difference between academics and “On -The - Job” experience. You see, our garbage disposal went out between Christmas and New Years. I won’t use the excuse that I couldn’t find a plumber. I just figured that replacing a garbage disposal was no big deal. I am educated, smart and I can use my hands. After all, how hard can replacing a garbage disposal be for crying out loud?
Well, as I found out, it can be very difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing or have never done it before.
Off to Lowes I went to buy a replacement disposal. Much to my surprise there were no directions in the box. Of course, I bought the super upgraded model. It just didn’t look like my old one. Getting the old one off was not too much of a problem other than skinned knuckles.
The new one was a little bigger. It was quite a site watching me on my back, head under the sink, trying to attach the new disposal with Tracy sitting on my stomach trying to hold the new one in place while I tried to figure out how to attach it. After about thirty minutes of frustration, lack of success and dropping the disposal three times but grazing my head only once, we took a break. (I bled a little but didn’t need stitches) Tracy noticed a tool inside the box that just happened to fit the neck ring of the new disposal. Once we figured out how to use it, attaching the new disposal was a piece of cake. I laughed at how funny and how stupid I must have looked. I was glad none of my plumbing friends could see me.
Once I got the new disposal on, I thought I was home free. After attaching the elbow coming out of the disposal, I noticed that the pipe to the drain was too long. Must be because I bought the big one I thought. No problem. I’ll just cut the pipe, so I did. Unfortunately, I cut it a little too short but didn’t notice until I had it hooked up, tuned it on and water shot everywhere as the short pipe just busted out of its connection.
Tracy now insisted for the third time that I call the plumber. I wasn’t having any of that. I could do this. Tracy ran down to Lowes to get a new pipe for me since the old one was too short.
I contemplated my situation while she was gone and figured out that the original pipe wasn’t too short. I had attached the new elbow on the disposal backwards. What a revelation. I am almost too embarrassed to admit it.
Tracy returned with the new pipe and I managed to get it connected. Home free, so I thought. I turned the disposal on and it leaked. After taking it apart about four times and reassembling it without being able to stop the leak, I decided that Lowes must have sold me a defective garbage disposal. Maybe there was a washer that was left out of the box. By the way, this all took place over the course of three days.
I decided to take the thing apart, take it back to Lowes and get a good one. One that wasn’t defective. Back under the sink I went for about the fifteenth time. As I looked up at the neck of the disposal I just happened to notice that it wasn ‘t exactly fitting real snug up against the drain. After further investigation I realized that I never actually had it seated right and the leak wasn’t coming from the pipe but it was actually leaking from the top by the drain itself. Once I reattached it correctly, everything worked perfect.
It only took three days, four arguments about calling a plumber with Tracy and a bloody head where the disposal scratched it as it fell.
So much for having an MBA and a Doctorate, No wonder experience over education is a deciding factor in many new hire decisions.
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If you missed Issues #1, 2 and 3– e-mail: rick@ceostrategist.com for copies of these issues.
http://www.ceostrategist.com Dr. Rick Johnson (rick@ceostrategist.com) is the founder of CEO Strategist LLC. an experienced based firm specializing in leadership and the creation of competitive advantage. CEO Strategist LLC. works in an advisory capacity with distributor executives in board representation, executive coaching, team coaching and education and training to make the changes necessary to create or maintain competitive advantage. You can contact them by calling 352-750-0868, or visit http://www.ceostrategist.com for more information. CEO Strategist - experts in Strategic Leadership in Wholesale Distribution.
This article was published in the Nov. 2003 edition of Hamilton, Ontario’s BIZ Magazine under the title “Leadership’s Triple Crown” LM
What does it take to be the head of a small business, a department manager, or even a corporate CEO? The effective director isn’t one persona but three: a Visionary, a Manager, and a Mentor/Coach. A leader must be capable in all three roles and must have the proper perspective of their relative importance for him, in his position, at this time and place in his career. A tall order, complicated further by those roles never being static, shifting with circumstance, the business climate, organizational needs and with the individual’s preferences and abilities.
The Leader as Visionary
The visionary is the one who handles the creation or inspiring of goal-directed action. This leader is the man, or woman, with the plan.
The senior manager, CEO, president, general manager or owner has a fundamental responsibility to “Create the Vision.” The illusory definition of who, as a company, we are, what we do and why, where we are, where we’re going and how we get there from here. Once that vision is defined — and that’s no easy task — the leader must articulate it in terms the will enable, even compel, others to buy in and dedicate themselves to it. In other words, agree to follow. To quote author John C. Maxwell, “If you think you are a leader but have no followers, you’re not leading, you’re just going for a walk.”
The visionary, however, is not just a dreamer. The plan must translate into action. The leader is the one who must outline a clear, specific, and effective strategy for bringing the vision to life. This “plan” isn’t just a simple timeline. You can’t say you intend to land on the moon next year without considering how to build the rocket required for getting there. The vision will fail without a reasonable estimate of the necessary resources, including capital, facilities, equipment, people and talents essential to a successful implementation. Determining what is needed, how to acquire it, and where best to deploy assets is fundamental to making a vision reality. Any map includes milestones along the road and a method for tracking results so that everyone involved knows at all times what progress is being made. You would run out of gas on the highway without a fuel gage. Don’t expect your people to complete a journey without an idea of how far they have to go and what resources they have to get there.
A leader’s ability not only to be a visionary but to convey that message powerfully enough so employees want to strive for that goal has a direct impact on the company’s bottom line. The clearest example I know of this is two well-known Hamilton, Ontario companies located just down the street from each other but miles apart in direction, focus, and profitability. I’m talking of course about Canada’s two largest steelmakers Dofasco and Stelco.
Dofasco, with a clear vision, and a history of strong leadership, is seeing major returns even during tough economic times for the steel industry as a whole. The story is completely different a few blocks away. At Stelco, there seems to be a focus on the bricks, mortar, and machinery as the corporate essence without a real sense of where the company is going and why. The absence of apparent vision and feeling of corporate destiny breeds apathy in the workforce and leads to no feeling of accomplishment or pride in their work. It’s just a place to earn a living and to get away from as soon as possible. In a recent meeting with a Vice President I was told that in one mill, “wrench time” (the time that maintenance people actually charge to specific jobs) was down to 90 minutes per shift compared to the industry average of 4 hours, and no one can see a way to improve it.
While the absence of vision and poor atmosphere are not the sole factors in the company’s decline, it’s hard to argue with their lack of success. Stelco again reported a net loss of $82 million in second quarter 2003, more bad news after a first quarter net loss of $44 million.
Stelco is now trying to stop the hemorrhaging with a change in leadership. Jim Alfano stepped down as President and CEO in July, replaced on an interim basis with Fred Telmer, Stelco’s Chairman of the Board. While Telmer heads the transition team, the search is on for a new CEO. “Has vision” should be at the top of the qualification checklist.
Results rest on the shoulders of the visionary, no effective leader acts alone. The senior leader may only create an initial “rough draft” of the company plan and must flesh it out through team input. But unless the leader has a clear vision of where he is going, the rough draft is likely to remain just that. He must guide the polishing process.
As the vision is disseminated deeper into the organization, internal leaders — for example, the middle management, department heads — are presented with an already defined goal but the process of articulating that vision and of directing the rest of the process through his or her level of responsibility is much the same as the view from the top. After all, leadership exists at every level in a company. Even when the plan reaches the “shop floor”, every employee can learn to take responsibility for self direction in accepting personal responsibility for his or her actions, results and focus on the corporate goal.
The Leader as Manager
A manager, by definition, manages. In other words, the manager must plan the processes, create the rules, assign responsibilities, direct activity, provide training, focus efforts, control costs, measure progress and report on results. The “leader as manager” is the one with the “hard skills” — the planning and organizing, the number crunching, the industry, equipment and process knowledge. This is the foundation of leadership on which true leaders build their soft skill development.
The key to being a successful manager-leader is the ability to troubleshoot. That is, to find solutions to problems and make effective decisions that will keep them from reoccurring. The manager shouldn’t be just putting out fires; he should be preventing them. The ratio of prevented crisis to reactive problem solving is the main indicator of the effective manager-leader. If the leader is always running around with a bucket of water, sooner or later someone is going to figure out if he’s always putting out the same type of fires. Either he lacks the necessary planning, organization, influence, and resourcing skills to manage or he has failed to build on his hard skill foundation to bring his leadership to the next growth level. If the leader brings nothing more to the role than the ability to problem solve, the company doesn’t have a firefighter, it potentially has an arsonist — someone who consciously or unconsciously creates the conditions that require his skill set. If the operation runs from one inferno to the next, when does anyone have time to grow the business? The company suffers. No matter how addictive the rush of being the “go-to” person can be, nobody can run on high octane forever. The leader, his performance, as well as his quality of life outside of work, all deteriorate. What the arsonist has done thinking it will make him essential will eventually burn him out of a career.
Time spent on the managerial role is on a continuum. The more junior the leader, the more time — as much as 80 per spent — is spent on the management functions. The senior executive dedicates less than 20 per cent of his time to “managing”. While the CEO must always pay attention and be aware of what is going on, managerial tasks are an effective subordinate developing tool and are among the first to be delegated.
If a leader can not delegate, he creates a development and succession bottleneck. Essentially, he is limiting his own potential for advancement by not cultivating talent to take over. He becomes locked (at best) in his current position or (worse) shifted to even more managerial-heavy (and thus, lower on the leadership continuum) responsibilities. Moving forward requires the soft skills of leadership. Vision and courage are absolutely essential for delegation as well as the ability to trust others and to get of the way, allowing people to make their own mistakes.
As the leader grows, he must not only delegate his managerial tasks, but also transition from being “hands on” to “hands off”. No one, particularly those higher on the corporate food chain, likes to be micromanaged. Being able to affectively assess the level of one’s involvement and required degree of tracking in delegated assignments is the main skill leap between the leader as manager and the leader as mentor/coach.
Steve Thompson of Brantford, Ontario-based Stellarc Precision Bar is one executive mastering this tricky delegation balancing act in his leadership style. Thompson wasn’t really sure where his skills needed development, he had only an uneasy feeling that he was spending a lot of time “spinning his wheels.” So, he came to The Leadership Centre for support. When he began to recognize how much of a “hands on” manager he was, he resolved to make immediate changes. He reorganized offices, added responsibilities to all of his departmental managers and provided personal productivity, leadership and time management training.
His new focus on giving his managers the responsibility and authority to get things done — rather than doing them himself — has given him time and freedom to focus on new visions and new directions for the company as well as on some important personal goals. In the past three years he has more than doubled the size of the plant, added a million dollar state of the art bar processing line and brought in a new, dynamic plant manager all while reducing his own work week to about fifty hours from a grueling seventy hour schedule.
The Leader as Mentor/Coach
Some 80 per cent of people say they are not “engaged” at work. They don’t like, respect or care about their company, their managers, their fellow workers or their customers. What’s truly scary about this scenario is that the overwhelming number of these employees have no immediate plans to change jobs. They don’t believe things are any better someplace else. Is there a measure of personal responsibility for this situation? Definitely. But whose job is it, ultimately, to help change the situation? The leader as mentor/coach.
Of the three fundamental roles of the executive, this is the one that most affects the continuing growth of both people and the organization. It is also the face of leadership requiring the highest level of soft skills. The mentor/coach must have the self confidence to not see growing the potential of others as personally threatening. The mentor focuses outward on results — not inward on actions; on strengths and on what can be — not on weakness and what is impossible.
The mentor maintains focus on the goal, the vision, and the “quest for the grail” that drives ordinary people to extraordinary performance. It has been said that everyone has it in him or her to be a superstar in some field, in some role. The mentor helps a person define his or her strengths to build on them, to strengthen them, to find or create a role where these strengths can be utilized to their fullest potential. With proper mentoring, a person’s weaknesses — and we all have them — do not matter. People are driving their careers on a road that leverages their superstar qualities.
The mentor-leader grows individuals, departments, and the entire organization by helping to set SMART — specific, measurable, attainable, results-oriented, and timely — goals. SMART goals at each level must reflect and support the overall corporate vision. By forging that link between individual performance and how it directly impacts on the bottom line, the mentor-leader is engaging the employee, making him or her part of the plan, not a victim of it. Influencing others through consensus building and buy-in strategies is a key mentor-leader skill.
Effective mentoring/coaching skills are at the root of a striking turn-around story at Hamilton’s ailing National Steel Car. The company, founded in 1912, designs and manufactures railroad freight equipment. But the company was on a bumpy track a few years back until it brought in Dan Elliott, the former President of Wabco Freight Car products in Stoney Creek, as chief operating officer to help turn things. The previous owner/management seems to have been rather autocratic with little responsibility vested in even senior managers — not at all in line with Dan’s way of thinking — and the company had slipped from its position as one of North America’s leading rail car manufacturers. Employment had dropped from nearly 3000 to a mere 300 workers and the company’s economic prospects looked grim.
With a senior management team of about a dozen vice presidents, many of them in their early to mid thirties, Elliott began the process of rebuilding the company’s vitality. The mixture of youth and experience would succeed only if everyone believed in the future and proactively worked to make the corporate vision a reality. To achieve this, Elliott took on the task of mentoring his VPs in setting departmental and individual SMART goals and then monitoring progress.
The new focus on the vision, with everyone knowing where they want to go and committing themselves to getting it done, is working like magic. Not the process has been an entirely smooth one. The long term people found it difficult at first to accept and believe in the new responsibilities entrusted to them but now, just over a year into the transition, the VPs are emulating Elliott’s style and their people, in turn, are emulating them.
Elliot supports his VPs on a daily basis, mentoring and coaching individually and collectively, while ensuring they know he believes in them, trusts their decision making abilities and is prepared to back them up. The result so far — National Steel Car is regaining its top industry position, employee levels are back up around the 1500 mark and the company, despite overall market slumps, is making steady progress towards real profitability. Vision, mentoring and delegation of managerial responsibilities are combining here to make a huge difference.
Three leaders in one
To be truly great, a leader must comfortably and effectively wear all three “faces”. Strong managers may not have a clear picture of where they are headed, dreamers may not get the job done and mentors will find it difficult to grow others if they are not first secure in both their own hard and soft competencies. Defining the fundamental skills required is the first step in developing one’s leadership potential. The leader must then be willing to recognize his limitations and weakness and be committed to continuous learning and development. This sort of honest self-evaluation, willingness to build on strengths and address development areas is fundamental on the road to the top. That journey can span a career but the pay-off is a successful, prosperous and growing organization with you at the helm.
Len McNally is President and founder (in 1996) of The Leadership Centre, dedicated to leadership development, management team building and change management through executive and corporate coaching - from the top floor to the shop floor. With more than thirty years experience in sales, marketing and business development Len has for many years been an avid student of psychology, behavior and motivation. He still reads three to four books a month and has writen several book reviews for Amazon.com. He can be reached at (519) 759-1127 or email: the.leadership.centre@sympatico.ca. Other articles may be seen at: http://www.tlc-leadership.com
