Category Archives: Podcast Series: Finish Strong®

Finish Strong® Podcast Series The journey to excellence is not a simple one, nor does it follow a straight line. This podcast series addresses issues important to manufactures worldwide. Becky's insights include commentary on global, strategic, and tactical issues, as well as observations on current challenges and opportunities in manufacturing businesses. Feel free to suggest topics of interest to you; no doubt Becky will have something to say that will make you think.

Heijunka is For Thinking Too

This week between Christmas and New Year is commonly wasted by US manufacturers. I get the holiday spirit, and that people need to relax and have personal time. But can your business afford to lose 2-3% productivity every year-end?

Heijunka is a part of the Toyota Production System thinking system; most of us think of it as a tool. But that important concept of level-loading to eliminate less visible wastes is a critical thought process.

Most consider Muda the form of waste to be eliminated, but it is only one family of waste. Mura is the family of wastes that emanate from unevenness, irregularity and lack of uniformity. An even flow of product and information will always be superior to that of start-stop.

What does that have to do with Christmas and New Year?

That same thinking process should be applied to how we observe, reflect, learn and improve. In fact, the phrase continuous improvement reflects just that. Why do so few of us actually continuously improve? Simply we seem to favor the “slam on the accelerator; then slam on the brakes” approach.

While performing the traditional year-end exercise of looking back to see what we could or should do differently this next year, ask yourself if the most important change would be to observe, reflect, learn, and apply every single day?

Heijunka thinking applies to our thinking, not just to production.

Let’s make that the lesson learned this last year and implement the improvement immediately. Why would you wait?

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You’re Already Behind!

The end of the calendar year is just that. Nothing more, nothing less. We behave as if the turning of the calendar page marks a huge turning point for our organizations.

Is January 1, 2022 really a critical day in the future of your company? Is December 31 less critical? For public companies, the end of the month, the quarter, and the year are false demarcations of results that have entirely too much impact on behaviors.

For non-public companies, those same calendar pages are used in similar ways: as false deadlines and false starting lines.

Developing, finalizing, and implementing your strategy should be an ongoing process, not one determined by the calendar.

Don’t waste the first few months of 2022, nor any of the others. Every quarter, every month, and every day is of strategic import to your business. Depending on the calendar to tell you when to start and when to finish makes no sense. Depending on your grasp of reality, your vision for the future, and your strategic priorities as of right now does make sense.

If the calendar drives your planning, you’re already behind.

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Micromanage Vs. Disciplined Follow Up

No one wants to be micromanaged, and no leader wants to be called a micromanager. But if leaders are not following up with their teams regularly, misalignment and ineffective prioritization are predictable.

Casual conversations in the hallway, a comment in a meeting, or a sentence in an email may be understood as an order by the subordinate, and as just-a-thought by the leader. Or those same comments may be considered just the leader’s thought at the time by the subordinate, and a high priority action item by the leader.

If misalignment is more common in your organization than you would choose, disciplined follow up is one easy means of eliminating much of it. If you have 1:1 meetings with your team regularly, that is a great opportunity to review their tasks and priorities, see what help or clarification may be needed, and make any adjustments the two of you see fit.

If you don’t have scheduled 1:1 meetings, or even worse, don’t keep most of those, it’s time for leadership discipline there as well.

There is absolutely nothing close to micromanaging about reviewing priorities, needs, and progress. There is absolutely nothing close to effective leadership in dropping by frequently to examine the details of your teams’ activities.

Disciplined follow up requires mutual respect and trust. Micromanaging reflects lack of respect and trust by leadership, and promotes the return of those undesirable feelings.

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Does Your Job Matter?

Is the time you sell to your employer time well spent? If it puts food on the table, shelter over your head, and clothes on your children, then it is. But could it be, and should it be, spent very differently?

Most companies have mission statements; the majority of those look inward and inspire little. We may not be able to change that, but we can ensure that’s not true for our own lives. We’ve all heard that no one ever on their death bed said they wished they had worked more, but perhaps that because they were doing meaningless work.

If you have a pit in your stomach when going to work, it’s past time to change jobs. Perhaps change industries or careers. Do you feel Groundhog Day on each trip? Is that what you want to remember?

If your intent is to make enough money to support your family comfortably and spend as much time as possible with your family, you don’t have to accept a miserable role in a miserable organization. Concentrate instead on how that job with that company contributes to your life and that of others you care about positively. Or better yet, move to a role where you can learn and grow and have fun while being a part of something bigger than yourself. Those positions exist and they do not preclude providing a comfortable level of financial support and significant support for the whole person that is you — the person who attends sporting events and spelling bees.

Your job matters. If you believe it doesn’t, find a different one. Do that until you have a means of support that builds your skills, brings you joy, and makes you proud of how the world is better because of what you do.

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Cognitive Dissonance Cripples Manufacturers

If ambiguity is a major problem within your manufacturing organization your leadership likely demonstrates cognitive dissonance with regularity. Hypocrisy at its most obvious, cognitive dissonance is the discomfort that arises from holding two opposing views at the same time.

If your leadership team doesn’t suffer that discomfort but your people can feel that you should, you likely say one thing and do another. People are your most important resource yet they are not treated with respect for the whole person, they are suspect in their explanations, and they are the first to be cut when cash flow suffers.

Suppliers are your partners, yet you unilaterally extend payment terms when you want, and violate contract commitments when you choose to.

If your organization has a stated mission and declares core values, but behaves to the contrary, your people cannot help but be living in ambiguity that the leadership is needlessly creating.

Successful and enduring businesses actively look for cognitive dissonance within and bring those conversations to the surface. Professional disagreement is one thing; talking out of both sides of your mouth another entirely. Cognitive dissonance is not about disagreement among people but within a single person. When that person is in leadership, the entire organization is put in that uncomfortable position.

Look out for those disconnects, discuss and resolve them, and save your company the wasted energy and time they create. Otherwise you’ll be limping along until you can walk no further.

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Low Expectations in Manufacturing

You face numerous external obstacles to success, and those you identify and address. But your internally generated obstacles are often overlooked entirely. Surprising to many of you is the fact that low expectations is one of the most common.

When John F. Kennedy established the goal of sending a man to the moon and returning him safely home, no one knew how. But the expectation was set.  And importantly, resources required to accomplish this seemingly far-fetched goal were supplied.

Working with one Operations VP to define and implement an operations strategy, we agreed to a 3-year goal of reducing product cost by 25%. We didn’t know how, but we had a few ideas and commitment. His boss, the COO, reduced that goal to 20%, believing it to be unreachable. The expectation placed on operations was lowered.

Wishful thinking is very different from high expectations and high expectations cannot emanate from frustration or anger. High expectations that are important to the larger picture and are supported by invested resources should be the norm for every manufacturing business that intends to endure.

Kennedy said: “…not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”

Look at the expectations you have placed on your organization and team. Do they “measure the best of our energies and skills?” Does meeting them propel your business and team forward into new potential?

While your business faces many impediments in becoming an enduring one, do not let self-induced obstacles like low expectations be among them.

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Disciplined Leadership

No manufacturing organization can become successful, much less enduring, without a leadership team and culture that is disciplined. We all know that variability negatively impacts quality, and that’s true not only for products, but for communication, decision-making, processes, and more.

As a leader it is your responsibility to ensure that employees understand organizational priorities and how day-to-day actions must mesh with them. Just because you give an order doesn’t mean it is implemented, or that it will be. Leaders and managers are frequently known for dropping ideas and suggestions in hallway conversations, emails, or meetings with many of those really reflecting “thinking out loud” and not actual decisions.

Disciplined follow up by leaders to ensure the entire team understands priorities and is working on the right things is crucial. It is NOT micromanaging unless you are telling the worker how to do the work. Verifying significance and common understanding, listening to challenges and providing help to address them, and communicating clearly when things change is part of disciplined leadership.

Discipline does not preclude innovative or agile cultures; in fact it is a requirement of both of those.

How disciplined is process design and execution, prioritization, decision-making, communication, and capturing and sharing knowledge in your manufacturing organization? Probably not enough.

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Leveraging Priorities

Entirely too many leaders refuse to lead. The evidence? They refuse to sequence priorities and share the reasoning of that sequence with all employees to use in making decisions. If leaders don’t make the hard decisions, they abdicate them to those with less information and vision.

Afraid if you sequence them the lower ones won’t get done? Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. You’ve just identified too many priorities for the organization’s capacity. Wouldn’t a good leadership team rather see Priority One completed and Priority moving along the path, than to see none of them completed?

You want an aligned organization? How will you ever obtain that if the leadership team isn’t aligned? If you provide sequenced priorities and explain the reasoning behind them, your team can make aligned and higher quality decisions day in and day out.

Yes, the leader who “owns” the lowest priority may not get what he wants when he wants it, but the most important priorities for the future of the business will be satisfied.

Leverage one set of sequenced priorities by (1) gaining leadership team commitment and alignment on them, (2) sharing those with the entire team, and (3) do not change them every time the phone rings!

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Iterative or Innovative?

Most everyone is declaring the importance of innovation and an innovative culture to future success. And many claim to offer both now.

Not true in most cases. Yes, there have been significant innovations in technology and materials. But can your business honestly claim that its market now receives new and innovative value from doing business with you that it didn’t get last year? Most, emphasizing the word ‘honestly,’ cannot.

Most all can claim iterative changes. Sadly many of our engineers graduate without the basics that were ingrained a few decades ago. Design for Manufacturing is often overlooked, as is design for service. Too much design now relies on software “optimization” programs.

Optimization mathematics and software has been around for a long time; I personally used and wrote some of it in the late 1970s. But we’re skipping important aspects of design and frequently overlooking innovation entirely.

Reduce weight by x, cost by y, number of parts by z. Those parameters are not unimportant, but rarely reflect innovation.

The PC, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPod were all innovative. The thousands of versions of each since, while more powerful and capable, are iterative. Love the camera, and it took some amazing engineering to figure out how to get it so high quality in the phone, but …..

Don’t let yourself off easy. Being truly innovative today will set you apart from the rest. Coming out with Rev 15 won’t.

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Your Energy Crisis

Energy around the world is now expensive and in many places unavailable. The transition from carbon-based to renewables is coming, and brings with it complexities that many of cannot even imagine. Storage and transmission, the current state of our grid, changes to the grid that are required, and more stand between us and smoothly available power that we need. We’ll get there but it will be ugly in the interim.

Every manufacturer requires energy; every one of us must gain an understanding of the coming challenges and the alternatives we have to minimize disruptions to our businesses. Disruptions will happen during the transition. We must develop plans and capabilities to ensure that our equipment, data access and sharing, and communication are not damaged by the challenges.

Start thinking about these issues now.

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