Business Quote - 2

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Leadership

Leadership

What is Leadership? 

Leadership is a unique trait that only a few people possess.  Leaders are enablers.  They have the ability to see things other people don't.  They can see through mounds of unrelated data and see a path to success. They are looking at the big picture and want to help everyone achieve mutual success. They can 'read' people.  People want to follow them.  People want to learn from them.  People trust them.  They (the leaders) want to serve the organization and the people in the organization, not the other way around where poor leaders (not really leaders at all) think that the organization and people must serve the leader.

Good leadership in the 21st Century Company requires attitudes and behaviours that relate to humanity.  Of course leadership involves decisions and actions relating to all kinds of other things as well.  However it is unique in its special relationship to people - the people who follow leaders.  The leader is always serving these people and looking out for their welfare and the company's.  Leaders' followers trust and respect them (the leaders) rather than the skills they possess.  Skills are important but not the most important factor.

Leadership traits can be learned to make you a better manager - but only a few people actually possess the true innate ability to be leaders.  When you are going about your everyday work look for the people who seem to automatically become the team leader on any team they are assigned - they rarely possess any more skills related to the assigned task than most other team members.  So why are they chosen to or automatically assume leadership of the team?  Or  how about the person that you feel you can trust or that their organization seems to be always ahead-of-the-curve? Or the 'manager' who is more concerned with their people than with his/her standing in the organization? These are people in your organization that need to be sought out and moved into roles where they can feel comfortable helping people and the company succeed.  They are the visionaries.  They have a positive attitude that is infectious. They are the enables to success. They look for mentors that can guide them, not manage them.  They must enable, that is what they must do or they will move on to other companies where their rare talent may be used by your competitor to negatively affect the fortunes of your company.

Leadership is absolutely essential to the success of any company today!  There must be one or more leaders to lead the managers and every successful company will have, must have, one or more leaders in the C-suite.  A company led by managers will not be successful in the long term. Generation X and Y employees need managers with leadership skills and love to work for Leaders versus Managers.

Leading, Coaching, Praising - R. Hibbard

Change Drivers - Quality Issue Resolution

Quality - Who's Responsible

This is an example of a Change Driver Process - Improved Quality

This example of a Leadership Process is focused on the suggested activities to be undertaken by a person – designated as Vice President, Processes.  The person needs to hold a senior management or executive management title to be effective in resolving the current company quality crises on a short and long term basis.

This example is based on a corporate quality issue faced by a company in Ohio.  It is the result of a three hour on-site consultation visit hosted by key corporate management personnel. The following is a preliminary outline of suggested action items for the business team. As you will see there are many, many focus areas that will need attention if there is any hope for a long term resolution of the problem. The underlying business operations are in need of immediate attention. These actions are based on limited information but will give the management team a preliminary road map for actions and will help prioritize the approach.

The company manufactures industrial and commercial hardware products for the food industry containing large amounts of welded product and control system hardware.  The company is well respected in the industry but its reputation is rapidly slipping due to a wide range of quality issues experienced by their customers.  After a three hour visit to the company the following observations are made:

1. The factory is old and outdated
2. The IT (Information Technology) system is early 1980's
3. There are no formal sales to factory processes in place
4. Lots of verbal communications take place for the specifications for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment with only limited documentation formality
5. Communication channels are at 1960's business levels
6. They do not really know what the customer expectations are for the products
7. Sales is not well organized with clear processes in place for complaint resolution
8. The factory is only loosely and poorly supervised - again it is 1950's in technology and organization
9. The factory is dirty and cannot be used as a sales tool to present food industry products or bring in customers to see their custom built products under construction

With these observations in place a basic outline of action items can be established.  The situation here is one of almost overwhelming proportions to the current business leaders.  When you are reading this please keep in mind all of the areas for potential failure in the change process.  There are two major steps to take - one is to resolve the short-term customer concerns in order to buy time to implement the longer term process changes.  Of course it goes without saying that the biggest problem for the Process Change Leader will be the: "We've always done it this way." The training and education of the work-force in modern business methods and customer requirements will be the most challenging.

The objectives are:  Short Term - Eliminate the quality shortfalls seen by the customers.

                              Long Term - Re-establish the company's leadership status

The first observation is that QUALITY to the customer is not isolated to one business process. [The view by the management team is that it is a factory issue.] Today - quality must be inherent in everything the company does.  Quality isn't something that is tacked on at the end of the manufacturing process or checked by inspectors.  It is built into the process and becomes the 'normal' way business is conducted with the customer as the only reason for being in business.

Quality from the Customers Perspective

Now we need to look at what should the new Process Leader do?  Where should the focus be placed?  One suggestion is to break the work into Focus Areas.  I am suggesting five areas.  These areas will be expanded into more detailed tasks during the initial ninety days of 'The Project'.  As we will see later this 'quality issue' will turn out to be a "Portfolio of Projects" managed by a "Program Manager"(perhaps the Process Leader) with a number of Project Managers (may be exiting company personnel) working on individual projects.  The five areas are shown in the following slide.  One of the areas is the Process Leader's function- since it is a new position at the company - along with other business processes.

Focus Areas for a Quality Issue

These areas can be broken down into three other groups:  Company, Supplier, and Customer items. Since the major short-term issue that must be addressed is perceived quality by the customer there is a whole group of customer facing items that must be looked at.

Qualtiy Action Items

Focus Area One is the initial action items for the "Vice President of Processes" or Process Leader.

Here it will be important for the person to get to know, understand, establish expectations, and define the job scope for their position. 

     ·        “Get to Know”

o   Personnel

o   Processes

o   Customers

o   Products

·        “Understand”

o   Issues

o   Personnel

o   Company Vision

o   Relationships

·        “Establish Expectations” for…

o   Position

o   Facility

o   Goals

o   Training

·        “Define”

o   Approach/Style

o   Methodology

o   Initial plans

o   Job Requirements

o   Support Personnel

o   SCOPE of the task

o   Funding of initiatives

Focus Area Two are The Customers.

What are those things that must be done immediately and what are areas for later development.  Must establish the corporate customer image.  Clearly determine the fundamental, current issues, and initiate plans to minimize the problems while long term solutions are implemented.  Here are eleven suggested action items.

1.Define links to Quality issues

2.Establish current customer state of mind (general for all customers)

3.Define Customer Base

4.Determine 80/20 issues

5.Review market

6.Look at sales process (for each channel to market)

7.Determine Customer priorities

8.Establish desired state for every customer (not individual customers);  satisfied, happy, delighted, business partner, sole supplier, etc.

9.Establish project approach and methodology from initial customer contact to customer acceptance

10.Establish short, medium, long term focus

11.Develop training program

Focus Area Three is Quality.

Again, the first step is to clarify the issues.  What is the customer really saying?  The Process Leader must meet with personnel from multiple customer sites and listen. No judging, no solution presentation, no excuses, just fact finding.  Only assurance to customer is that all of their concerns will be addressed and they will be kept informed and be part of the solutions.  There are ten suggested action items.

1.Clarify issue(s) as seen by Company personnel.

2.Clarify issue(s) as seen by Customer personnel – site visits required.

3.Clarify issue(s) with Suppliers – site visits required.

4.Quantify issues

5.Initial Brainstorm session at  Company – 2 hr. max.

6.Prioritize issues – 1 hr. max.

7.Create focus groups

8.Establish short, medium, and long term priorities for items

9.Establish actionable items with completion dates.

10.Develop Training Program

Focus Area Four is The Plant.

What is needed?  How can it be turned into a competitive advantage?  In my opinion it is a given that the plant must become a lean manufacturing process.  There are so many safety, process steps, and other issues that a methodical 20 Keys approach will be needed over perhaps a three year period.  The plant will need strong leadership and significant training to become an asset for future business development.  Here, again, there are eleven suggested action items.

1.Establish reference point for factory

•Best in class?

•Cleanest?

•Most organized?

•Most efficient?

•Best Trained?

•Etc.

2.Establish Links to Quality Issues

3.Establish objectives for facility (desired state) for example: facility becomes sales tool, facility is competitive edge, becomes focused factory, etc.

4.Create a Vision for innovation

5.Develop Safety Program (OSHA?)

6.Housekeeping/Work Environment

7.In the “Food Business” shouldn’t the factory look-the-part?

8.Move from “Old” manufacturing to “New” manufacturing

9.Define Priorities

10.Establish short, medium, and long  term focus areas

11.Develop Training Program

Focus Area Five is The IT Infrastructure and Systems.

The flow and availability of information is absolutely critical to the success of a business and any strategic programs undertaken.  Instant communication with the customer, sales, plant personnel, and management is essential.  Collaboration tools and knowledge management is critical in this business due to the market.  Competitive advantage is knowledge based for this company.  The IT system must support the business and be easy to use by EVERYONE. Here are eight potential action items.

1.Define current concerns

2.Establish links to Quality Issues

3.What would you like? ( for example: customer, production, sales, financial, executive, welder, supplier, receptionist, etc.

4.Determine “as-is” system

5.Establish “desired” system

6.Create plan to go from current to desired over “24 month” period

7.Establish “check-points” or “gates” to implementation

8.Develop Training Program

This is just a preliminary look at one possible path to follow to address a major customer issue that is threatening to undo years of leadership.  However, as I have said in the intro to this blog:  "Everything can change in the blink of an eye."  The business processes must be ready and able to respond to internal or external threats to success.

See also:
- Drivers for Organizational Innovation
- Causes of failure within the Change Driver Process
- Causes of failure for Change Drivers within the business infrastructure

Causes of Failure for Change Drivers within the Business Infrastructure

You are all excited about the results and business improvements you are going to achieve as you implement your first process change or embark on the development of a new market.  As you move down the road things do not seem to be happening the way you thought they would.  What went wrong? 

To avoid the bumps - opportunities for failure - you need to know what to watch out for and when to take action.  There are five major reasons that Change Drivers fail due to the business infrastructure.  Please look at these areas carefully because they will be some of the most difficult obstacles to overcome on your road to Leadership and Lean Practices!  They must be dealt with head-on and may require a change in your business culture, procedures, IT, and information dissemination, etc.  Look at how these areas will affect the possible outcome of your Change Process or Organizational Innovation Process.

Remember:  Failure is not an option!

Failure could mean the loss of your competitive edge, revenue losses, etc.  It must be avoided and the only way to avoid it is with an open, enlightened environment of collaborative personnel at all levels.

In today's 21st Century Organization knowledge is a valued commodity.  Knowledge is something you must retain and manage.  We will speak in more detail about knowledge management in future posts. Every organization has a vast amount of knowledge about their processes, products, and customers.  Keep that in mind as you look at the five most common reasons for failure for Change Drivers within the business infrastructure: (O'Sullivan, 2002)

1. Poor knowledge management (of people, processes, products, customers)
2. Poor organization of company infrastructure
3. Poor communication within the company in general
4. Poor empowerment of individuals to do the job
5. Poor leadership of the change and the company, division, unit, etc.

See also:
- Drivers for Organizational Innovation
- Causes of failure for Change Drivers within the Change Driver Process
- Example of a corporate Quality issue and suggested leadership approach

Lean?

What do you think of when you hear the word lean?  Lean muscle? Lean meat? Lean protein? Lean cuisine? Lean manufacturing? Lean leadership?  Since this is a blog about Visions of Leadership you should have thought of Lean Leadership. A lean body and lean leadership have a lot in common.  Like the guy pictured, this is how you should visualize your business - lean, muscular, agile, strong ethics, handsome.  This picture represents your customer's expectations of your business - value, stability, flexible, integrity, great image.

So let's look at how lean is being applied.

1. What is the meaning of the word lean?
2. What is meant by this term in business?
3. Why is it in use today?
4. Why associate it with leadership?

The word lean has a number of meanings.  It can refer to 'moving toward', as in she is leaning toward this candidate.  It can refer to something which is tilted, like a tree or building is leaning.  However in the case of business processes it seems to refer to thin, sparse, to-the-point, minimum, no waste, only what is needed, pure, like lean muscle!

The word lean would seem to take on the meaning - that only the essential elements are to be considered and utilized, that there is no waste, no fat in the approach to manufacturing processes or recently in terms of leadership.

It has become fashionable today ( and essential to stay competitive)  to think in terms of lean methods, or to adapt many of the processes pioneered in Japan to your business. The lean process used by Toyota Motor Company focused on the customers needs and desires, which in turn required a re-think of how things were manufactured to allow for more variety, lower cost, and fast changeovers. As with everything in life... overindulgence can produce unpredicted outcomes such as Toyota recently faced.  The focus on the customer must be maintained. As Toyota moved from total customer focus to a focus on becoming the largest car manufacturer in the world they missed the point.  By staying focused on the customer they would still have achieved the 'world title' it just may have taken a little longer.  Most car buyers want zero failure, stylish cars that meet their transportation and/or psychological needs. If you provide cars with the customer's need in mind better than any other car manufacturer you will become the the number one car manufacturing company. Toyota only went a little bit astray but it cost them billions to correct.

The lean concept has moved from the manufacturing process to the management/leadership process over the years due to the need for a new kind of leadership approach to business.  Lean manufacturing requires 'out-of-the-box' thinking to be successful.  It requires managers with special skills to see and effectively lead  a lean organization's ongoing changes needed to stay competitive. Lean in terms of leadership refers to a focus on the key elements of personnel styles, traits, and needs to effectively motivate personnel and maintain the focus on the company's goals.  It is a - 'just what is needed'; 'just enough'; 'at just the right time'; and  an 'agile and flexible' approach.  In other words a to-the-point, consistent, and supportive approach to leading.

Look for additional posts that provide more insight into each of the areas outlined here.  Follow this blog to obtain the latest posts on the subjects you need to incorporate lean into your business operations.