There are seldom times that you can work for a true leader. Not only was I blessed with working for this man, but I was blessed for over ten years. I sit back and wonder why this leader was so effective and beloved by his workforce. The attributes of this man were outstanding and I have taken the time to reflect on what made him great and listed them below. He was a driver and drove his workforce to levels that the company had never seen and will probably never witness again. He was a compassionate leader who understood what it was like work his way up in a company. He did not forget his roots and his team had an allegiance to him that was unmatched. These are the attributes that made him so great of a leader.
1. Reward success. We are always under budget restraints but he taught me to take the time and money to reward a successful team. The text books will tell you that money is not the greatest motivator but there are times that you must make the financial life easier for your team because of the time away from there family that is required. It is not always money, if could be a dinner, an outing, a picnic, or just a simple reward of no intrinsic value. But you must reward success to be effective.
2. Lead by example. Whether it is ethics or principles, one must always take the high road. As a leader your team will follow your example. A great team always sustains by superior values and ethics
3. Recognize performance. A verbal recognition of a team goes a long way. A “Thank you”, “Good Job”, “Great Effort” means so much to people. Seldom do we work to merely get a check. People go the extra mile because they want to be successful and please others.
4. Mentor people. We all believe that we are good workers but we all know, or should, that we have deficits. We have strengths but there is always room to improve. A great leader takes the time to mentor people to a more successful career. They do not mentor when it is time to reprimand poor performance but they take the time to explain why we haven’t risen to the next level.
5. Drive performance with measurable metrics. People need to know what success looks like. They want to succeed but many times a leader does not spell out what success is. Give our team objectives that they can drive forward towards and be successful. Discreet, measurable, and attainable goals are necessary for a team
6. Be a good human being. Many times there are people that are successful because they drive a team. But will the team work so hard so their leader is proud? Not always. The leaders that have a team that will put their heads down and work themselves to new levels and repeatable sustain are the ones that are led by a good person who cares about each and every one of them. The team will recognize that and will follow that leader through every challenge to assure his/her success.
7. Be honest. You must tell the truth because you need your team to believe in you. You may not be able to say everything to the team at all times and a simple “I can’t discuss that right now” earns more respect than a deceitful answer. Tell the team of the challenges that it has to face and the repercussions of failure. Don’t dodge the hard conversations. We all fall short of expectations in time and a leader understands. A great leader can discuss the shortcomings and will coach the team in how to be successful next time.

There are successful bad leaders who the team has no real respect towards. They cannot sustain and at the end of the day the teams dismisses their leadership skills and seek out new opportunities that are led by a true champion.

Running a successful business is much like an NFL Team. The successful team has its “A” player but the focus is not on superstar efforts. The team has a game plan and the methodology to succeed. When we look at the teams that just move the ball down the field play after play and appearing impossible to stop it is impressive. Performing in all factions of the game, defense, offense and special teams, is the only way to sustain a victory week after week. When all the factions of the team meet their objectives, they find themselves winning it all.
So what does that have to do with business? It is the same philosophy that is required to sustain success week after week. Business cannot jump to react to different metrics each week or month. Many businesses will sometimes look at sales and EBIT with little regard for quality and the costs associated with bad quality. Business will then react to an analysis that states the cost of quality is too high and place multiple assets in place to rectify those conditions. Then a metric will be reported that there is excessive inventory cost. Again, some businesses will react to those metrics and put teams in place to burn down that poor metric. This is the problem with management by objectives. Many times, people will manipulate the data so that the metric gets better without improving the system that is creating those metrics.
The businesses that will be the most successful set a vision on efficiency improvement and waste reduction. They will have a multi-faceted plan that will be built around a production or a service system that will assure all long and short term objectives are met and they will measure themselves to that plan. Metrics are merely a report card and a business should not react in haste to attain their goals. If you examine your current state, create a vision of what success look like, and then create a strategic plan that supports that vision, you will succeed. The metrics will tell you if you are executing to plan, whether your plan should change (because of continued poor performance) or whether it is only a short term deficit to the entire plan’s execution. We continually attempt to exceed each prior month’s performance but in reality that could create “knee jerk” reactions that destroy your long term strategic plan. Don’t discard the metrics but look into them to see if you are observing a short term effect of doing the correct plan execution. If your short comings are a result of a temporary complication to your strategy, don’t over-react. Examine the plan to see if it is executing properly and then make small adjustments to assure that a trend does not develop.
Finally, always keep a pulse on your employees and their opinions. We tend to think that we as management have the answers but many times the answers are in the minds of our employees. Always pursue an engaged workforce and treat their issues as a priority. Assure there are no ethical gaps in your organization and communicate with employees continuously. Never forget to reward employees for their actions and outstanding performance and thank them for doing their best.

We continually speak of a short term and long term vision. We usually back them up with a strategic plan. Be very careful with your vision. You may have to look at your vision and listen to your customers regarding their wants and needs. Customers will tell you what they are looking for in the future and you may want to give serious consideration to amending or augmenting that vision. We can all remember the industries that did not listen. Do you remember the lines and availability at the video stores of the 1990s? Those companies died because they did not listen. Imagine if those companies changed to on line stores, Netflix would have not owned the industry. Customers have told the American furniture industry that they do not want to spend a fortune on furniture but they want something that has a better longevity. They are not listening but the European and Middle Eastern companies are responding. What will the furniture industry look like in ten years? We cannot say today but we could predict they are on the same predicted path. Lean up your business, reduce costs of production by eliminating waste, change the culture and stay as a world leader.
Leaders need to drop their egos and re-examine their vision. There is not an easy fix. Automation works in some industry facets but not all. Reduced cost of materials can assist you margins but only in areas that do not effect quality or the customer. Don’t work faster, design processes that work smarter. Lead the industry you are in by examining your vision and adapting. Your competition may have a hard time challenging an ever evolving target. Listen to your customers, embrace your employee’s ideas, and own the industry.

If you have not created a vision that is the result of an engaged workforce and one that the population does not understand and embrace, substantial changes will only occur temporarily and will not sustain. The absolute worse position that a business can be experiencing is stagnation. Change is good. Organic growth reflect the lack of a competitive and forward thinking leadership team. A business must always look to another step change to increase its competitiveness and fend off competition. There are so many businesses that “copy cat” other business models that you must continue to re-invent yourself. Leaders must continue to benchmark and analyze their business model. Create a different vision that has long term and short term strategies. Contingency plans are necessary for all step change initiatives as they fend off high risk adventures. Plan and re-plan for failure. If your changes fail, you will have a contingency in place and you can quickly adapt to it. Do not stagnate and be satisfied with organic growth. Competition may steal your market and your niche can disappear quickly. We all know of the business that we state, “Remember when they owned the market. What happened to them?” Stagnation probably occurred in all those businesses. Don’t change everything that made you successful but change your path to re-invent and expand your business vision and mission. It is difficult to catch up to a moving target and your competition will get frustrated.

Many businesses were known to manage their activities by metrics (MBO). Metrics are a measurement of the effectivity to your strategic plan. They are a tool and not the driver to how to execute a daily business model. Metrics are useful in determining your whether your strategic plan is working but business practices should not change daily or weekly to compensate for metric improvement. We all know that metrics are reviewed and demands are flowed down to improve certain elements but we cannot not fall prey to changing our mode of operation and vary from our strategic plan. If metrics indicate that our plan is not executing properly or was mis-defined during plan development, then we may need to re-group and revise our plan. However, strategic plans are derived via multiple perspectives and with concurrence of our leadership team. It is unlikely that the plan is totally flawed but a redirection after repeating results don’t meet our expectations may be necessary.
Don’t over react to short term misses. There are times you must stay the course to redevelop your business even though metrics may state otherwise. Drill down into the data and if the metrics validate that the long term improvements and enhancements are being met, continue the path. It may indicate that the risks associated with the plan were not realized at its conception and the next time you formulate your yearly plan you will now understand some of the unrealized impacts. Stay the course if the plan is executing properly. While the world seems to recognize short time goal attainment heavily, you must drive the business to new levels by step changes and in the long term you will succeed.

When we try to improve productivity and efficiency, seldom are sustainable results easy to enact. We can attack the specific problems on limited areas but we need to look at the possibility of systemic changes. Efficiency improvements are not gained on a long term basis by “block and tackle”. We tend to chase a metric and not the root cause of why we are not improving. Sustainable improvements can be only gained by culture, vision, strategic planning, employee enhancement, lean processing, standard work, mistake proofing, cross training, and employee recognition. That sounds too large to tackle at times but as long as we direct the business to attack each area in small bits, the long term gains will sustain for years to come. Management does some of these well but lacks in others. A vision needs to be shared and a strategic plan presented to the entire organization for inputs and confirmation. If we do not take those steps, culture will flat line itself. Engaging employees on the understanding of lean techniques and how they fit into a vision is essential for success. Many leaders know the tools to improve efficiency, but have we educated the workforce why we are doing things? Success comes easier when you have the entire workforce driving the business down the same path. The resistance and failure of most consultant companies is the lack of embracing, educating, taking input, and reacting to employee suggestions. Changing a business effectively comes in small steps that add up to a dramatic overall change. There are no easy answers and nothing in the text books that reveal a hidden secret. The answers are right in front of us and in the heads of our teams. We can teach them new techniques, but they already have the real answers to success. They will drive the change because they want to be part of success. Change the total package and you will attain double digit productivity improvements year after year.

Managing your team is key to success. That does mean micro-managing them, but merely is the re-enforcement of the common vision, cross checking to the strategic plan, and removing the roadblocks that may be interfering with their success. Many of today’s leaders believe they must micro manage their team. That quickly tells the team that you do not trust them or their skill sets. It eventually removes the ownership of accomplishing the plan from the team to the leader. Team members begin to become less driven to accomplish goals and feel that any accomplishments will be minimized or second-guessed by the manager. So why do managers micro manage? If you read textbooks, they will tell you that it is their own insecurities or their belief that they are more skilled or talented then their team. If that is true, these leaders should not be in a leadership role. There may be people who have unique talents or skills in distinct areas but few people are so ingenious that their knowledge surpasses a team of skilled people.
A true leader is a visionary that polls their team for unique strategic plans. A leader is not more intelligent or driven than his/her subordinates but respects the team and seeks out ideas that will make the team successful. Micro managing is a disease to the engaged workforce and sustainability of the mission. Be a leader and embrace the team’s ideas. It is acceptable to hold the team accountable to deadlines but be willing to remove roadblocks and celebrate success. Recognize the team’s abilities and enhance them with vision and support.

Transition to success is not an easy task. The underlying tasks may require a culture change. That culture change is easy if you are passionate, empowering, ethical, honest, and embrace your employee’s values. Many leaders derive their vision in a vacuum, form a strategic plan with a few select team members, and roll out a plan that may or may not be appropriate. The flaw in this leadership style is that it is exclusive to themselves and a small part of the population in the company. If one wants to truly drive an organization forward and change a culture, they need every person in the organization to help develop it and agree to it by consensus. Cultures need the buy-in of the entire workforce. Leaders must be willing to compromise their initial vision to accommodate the paradigms of the entire workforce. Sit with your entire staff in groups and explain what you want to accomplish. Take their inputs and amend your vision to one that may not be your ideal vision but it will be one that has employees understanding and support. After you reach a consensus, present it to the entire workforce so they all understand the compromises met.
Next you need to form a strategic plan to support the vision. It should have a detailed short range plan, followed by a two, five, and ten year plan. The more distant the timeline, the content will be more philosophical and less detailed. This can be accomplished with the same “vision groups” or with representatives of those subgroups. The strategic plan is a step-by-step plan with milestone dates and agreed upon methods of verification. When the plan is agreed to with the subgroups, you must present it to the entire population.
Finally, you must put a system in place to measure the results and take input from the workforce. It is key that you and your leaders pay attention to the workforce’s questions and concerns. Your plan will only succeed if you cheerlead the group on and remove the barriers that inhibit their success. Reward and thank people again and again. Realize that without them you will not be successful. Culture change only occurs when people change. You are responsible as a leader to lead the change and support the entire workforce. They are the backbone to your success.

Transformation into a lean state takes many forms and has re-invented itself many times. There have been an excruciating amount of consultants who have brought their package to companies but have not been able to deliver a sustainable and regenerating culture. While there are success stories, the basic elements of lean transformations are missing in many plans. First, you need to accept that what you are doing is not where you want to be in an optimal state. While we have attempted to bring efficiencies into the market place, most industries have failed. If a company is not turning double digit productivity rate increases, delighting the customers with on time deliveries 100% of the time, and are focusing away from the conforming product mindset to controlled processes that guarantee superior quality, then they have missed the transformation.

Fact 1: Lean transformation never ends. Being lean continually presents more opportunities with every re-generation. That does not mean that companies will never see results or that results are slow in coming. I have turned companies from losing millions to turning profitable results within a year. Transformation in lean educates us and with every completion results in another quest for improvement.

Fact 2: An unsafe environment can never sustain lean processes. A workplace that requires a person to act differently to protect themselves from injury or ergonomics cannot be productive. Safety must be always provided at all costs. No one should ever work in an environment where they cannot return home in the same condition they came to work.

Fact 3: Forget what you think you know. There are a series of actions you may embark to complete. There are significant gaps in process standardization that exist with the more popular lean tools. We analyze processes and production lines and create value stream maps. However, those maps are developed by what engineering and a select team believes executes. In reality, there are multiple people, shifts and supervisors that may not execute the processes exactly the same and those differences can affect flow and quality. Re-examine all the elements of the process and create the map. Then verify through process observation that everyone executes exactly to the same methodologies.

Fact 4: Mistake proofing needs to be implemented in as many areas as possible. AS we develop processes and tooling we must remove as much variability as possible. Every piece of variation in process and tooling will contribute to higher CPKs and lower process yields.

Fact 5: The process of creating a more profitable company is based on a hierarchy that is founded in quality, ethics, safety, employee empowerment and enrichment and lean standard business processes. Quality is not a stand-alone entity and its greatest impact is customer satisfaction. While there are inherent risks with any process, they can be eliminated or minimized by creating robust processes and products, eliminating assignable variation causes, and minimizing normal process variation to acceptable limits. On time delivery, lead-time reduction, and cost reduction are the major benefactors of robust processes. Excellence should be an assumed customer expectation. Product robustness can be attained in all business processes including but not limited to procurement, environmental health and safety, engineering, training, financial systems human resources, and customer relations.

Fact 6: Benchmarking is key to leading any industry. When we benchmark our completion and like industries, we inherently learn different elements of processes. It is this learning that shortens the trial and error factors that make process development and stabilization a long process. Learn from others and become a repository of knowledge.
Fact 7: Talk to your customers and regularly be evaluated by them. We may perceive that we are delighting customers but in reality they may only be marginally satisfied. Customers will explain the results they see in inefficiencies in your processes and they will prioritize them for you based on the impact to them.

Fact 8: Let the people working the processes design them. It is the employees and associates that know the processes and the difficulties with the execution of them. They understand any the day to day process variations and always offer constructive improvements to those processes.

Fact 9: Always seek the proper root cause of problems. Do not treat the symptoms and drive to the true root cause. There are several tools that allow root cause analysis and they all aspire to force you away from treating the results of variation and focus you on the cause.

Fact 10: You will not succeed without employee engagement and empowerment. Leadership needs to listen and react to employees and their suggestions and concerns. Close the loop with them and communicate. I have led organizations that are self-run by hourly associates and only supervisor ratios exceeded 70 to 1. Employees decided the shops priorities and developed process improvements that saved the company from financial distress. Employees are your greatest asset and they need to be empowered to take control. Leadership should be removing roadblocks, elevating their training, and rewarding their successes.
Finally, ethical behavior is King. Employees need to believe in their company and they can only do that if we always act ethically. Never betray their trust and always question the actions you take. You are leaders and therefore need to set the example.