Tag: production

THE NEW GENERATION OF WORKERS NEED NEW LEADERSHIP STYLES

As we continue to actualize our production or service, we tend to make every attempt to hit our commitments and goals. What makes us unique as leaders is the ability to manage success. There is always a pattern of accomplishing our goals during our careers but we need to reflect on just what we are doing to accomplish those goals. There are several ways of meeting our deliverables and unfortunately we grew up in a society where leadership was recognized for “block and tackle” techniques. This methodology worked in years past and still can yield results on a short term basis today, but there are several elements that limits the success of this management technique in our present culture.

If you haven’t noticed, the world has changed. The mentality of the worker, the philosophy or labor, and the expectations of human resources are different than in the baby boomer days. Today’s workers have evolved, especially with Generation Z . The baby boomers strong work ethic was rewarded by companies by giving lucrative pensions and benefits . Companies revered loyalty and long term employment with one company. As global competition evolved, companies have been forced to pull back on benefits and have learned that employees that switch jobs and companies bring forth new diversity into a workforce. Generation Z functions different as they are social creatures that are flexible in nature and expect flexibility from institutions and companies. They are so flexible that employers are challenged to retain them if demands are too high. They expect instantaneous rewards and recognition for performance. They cannot be intimidated and sometimes can feel entitled to their job. Therefore we cannot intimidate them or insist they work long hours to please the company or their boss. They are now flooding the job market and leaders need to change their style from micro management and a demand persona.

The philosophy of labor has changed. The labor market will soon have more jobs than people as the prior boom generation retires. Labor’s paradigm is changing to one where employees desire constant increases in salaries and benefits and they do not react to an environment where people are expected to be patient for recognition. This requires that management spend a significant amount of time on the recognition aspect of employee management. Leaders must also determine how they can bridge the gap between expectations and business restrictions. There is always a way of managing a company to meet the business’s needs and employee’s expectations. This does require creativity and good communication with the workforce to determine methods that satisfy both criterion. Most studies show that monetary recognition is not the only avenue to engaging and delighting your workforce. Honest description of the business conditions will help employees understand what restrictions exist and the performance necessary to embrace monetary improvements.

Finally, the next generation of workers have different expectations of human resources. In prior work generations, the worker did not engage human resources as deeply as they do today. Human resources was the element that defended them against unreasonable management demands and was a defender of worker’s rights. Seldom did people involve human resources in anything but these matters. Today, human resources is viewed as the element that helps workers remain in a safe, politically correct, and respected workplace. Workers expect that human resources will assure they are continually trained thereby allowing employees to grow in the organization. They are looked upon as the employee’s ally and employees use human resources as a sounding board for both work and personal issues. Human resources’ tasks have grown immensely in the last ten years as they have expectations from the workforce that assimilates both a counselor and personal carrier growth advisor.

In conclusion, our success as leaders is dependent on an engaged, self empowered workforce that is allowed to be creative and involved in determining the business’s future. This workforce is more highly educated and has characteristics that will not respond to older management styles. It is the leaders responsibility to change their tactics and embrace the new workforce’s personality. It is an enriching workforce that will guide us into a better workplace and one that self actualizes itself to a more productive society if we embrace them. Do not rely on the “Block and Tackle” micromanagement tactics as they will eventually fail. Leaders will be more successful if they accept this new generation’s philosophy and work with it to aspire the business to new heights of performance.

Plan Ahead and Succeed

It is the time to set next year’s goals and expectations. You should not wait until the first of the year arrives and attempt to set the plan and goals for new year. We all have completed our pro forma for next year and estimated our EBITs, but have we created our strategic plans that will yield double digit growth? Estimating the financials for the upcoming year will not suffice and allow success. Below is a short list of initiatives that we should look at for the upcoming year.

1. Set your goals for cost of poor quality. Understand how you are going to measure it. Are you going to include the rework, the loss of productivity due to poor quality, customer returns and investigation costs, and repair costs? Whatever you measure in the upcoming year, assure that you show a reduction and have projects with milestones established to begin in January. Do not set yourself up for the next year by having a bad first quarter and chasing the year’s goals to recover those costs. Make your goal a reflection of projects you will manage and not a wish list. Spell out the plan’s expectations month by month with start dates, cost realization dates, project completion dates, and determine who the leader is for each project. Set your report out dates for the next year and schedule the team’s calendars to assure that teams know when they are going to review projects with the executive team.

2. Create a process improvement team and set expectations. You should know where your efficiency losses are and establish which ones you are going to tackle and the order and timeframe for those projects. Set a reasonable amount of tasks. Many businesses will create a wish list that is too large for the staffing. Scheduling too many tasks for your workforce can only lead to frustration, fractured efforts, and a disengaged workforce. Strategically assign those tasks, determine reasonable expectations, and set a detailed review schedule for the plan’s events on a regular basis. Become involved as a leader because your workforce will prioritize their efforts by the attention and involvement your leadership displays in the upcoming year.

3. Assure that you have an active environmental health and safety plan to improve the safety and ergonomics of your operation. Remember, people want to be treated fairly and they will engage more if you are concerned for their well-being. Strive to improve the ergonomics in the workplace. Recordable and lost time injuries are bad for a business’s reputation and finances, but they also can disengage a workforce quickly. Care about your employees and make it a passion to evolve the workplace to a safer environment. Embrace their concerns as you would your family members. They are your livelihood. If you do not have a methodology to collect the employee’s risks, hold a “stand-down” for four hours to collect ideas from employees. Take those ideas, Pareto them by risk to employees and aggressively burn them down. Assure the plan attacks these on a monthly basis. Form subcommittees to address these ideas. Everyone in the organization can take ownership of a task as safety is everyone’s job.

4. Train your employees early and on a repetitive regular schedule. You should have already met with your employees and determined their training needs. Now you must schedule a plan to deliver on those internal and external needs. Do not leave this as a human resource task. It is a leadership responsibility that our reports are enriching themselves each year. You may want to look at your most unproductive weeks in the previous years and declare them training weeks. This allows you to write off the week from deliveries and profit based on poor historical performance. Typically, the first week of the year, the week of July 4th and Labor Day week are poor performers as the previous quarter has just ended and people include additional vacation days to long weekends. Put training into this week and declare the week as a non-production week. Planning this activity allows customer commits to be maintained by overproduction in prior weeks and planned delivery commits pushed out of these weeks where possible.
5. Create production start plans that are visual and observable to all employees. Plan on Gemba walks daily and review these start plans. These plans are critical to success. If you start on time, you will finish on time. Don’t leave the plan’s execution to the planners and materials department to manage. All directly involved employees must understand the plan, discuss it daily at Gemba walks, and assure that procurement, operations, quality, and the materials department understands when the production starts for every job. This is critical for mixed model production. This plan is should not be in a notebook but must be displayed on some visual system that all employees can monitor. The more visuals you have in your company, the more self-managed it becomes.

Remember that strategic planning will assure 2016 will be better than 2015. Don’t wait until the year begins to invoke the plan as you will have an overly burden the last two quarters of the year. If you have not already shared your vision and plan with the entire organization, do it early in the year