Source: iStockPhoto.com

A couple posts ago, I talked about 5 things leaders do that managers don’t. One of the key differentiators between a leader and a manager is their attitude towards people. If you want to get the most out of your team and your people, you cannot stand over them all day and brow beat them, you need to influence them and help them develop their own motivations. That’s a lot easier to say than do, so here are four steps you can take to have a greater influence with your team.

1. Spend time with your people – on purpose. Sure you’re in meetings with your team, you give them assignments, and follow-up on those assignments; yet, how much time to you devote to developing a relationship with the people on your team? If every interaction is tactical in nature you won’t develop the level of trust necessary to develop a high-performing team. We have to intentionally invite people into our lives if we want to earn the right to have influence with them.

2. Consider your relationships critical & essential. If you didn’t think your relationship with your team was important before, consider in study after study it’s been confirmed that the number one reason why people leave a job is their relationship with their manager. People will even stay in a position earning less money if they have a good relationship with their manager and believe in what the team is working towards. Successful people recognize the need for key people in their life. If you are going to accomplish anything worthwhile, you need a supportive and engaged team. Have you ever noticed that soldiers never go to war? Armies do.

3.  People will fail you – get close anyway. If you want to get the most out of your team, never let the failures of another person determine your resolve to develop your team. This is probably one of the hardest steps. People are going to fail us. Instinctively, we want to protect ourselves from being let down, but if you pull back, you won’t experience the upside which is seeing your team become what you knew they were capable of – and more.  Remember, people are not against you, they are simply for themselves.

4. You are responsible for accomplishments AND  your people. It can be tempting to use the goal we are working towards as an excuse or substitute for connecting with and developing our people. However, the end does not justify the means. As a leader, you have a responsibility for all of your resources, including your human resources. If you kill and frustrate your team, but still achieve the goal, did you succeed? Maybe in the short term, but how will your team respond the next time a difficult challenge comes up? What will your turnover look like? Will you be able to attract other high-caliber people to your team? If you are seen as someone who develops his team, people will want to come work with you and you will begin attracting the best and brightest. Isn’t that what you want?

As I said in the beginning, these steps are not easy, but if you follow them you will be amazed at what you and your team can accomplish!

Here are our upcoming training courses for April/March:

April 23-27 : Lean Six Sigma Black Belt (Week 1), Catalyst Connection, Pittsburgh, PA

April 30-May 4 : Lean Six Sigma Green Belt (Week 2), Catalyst Connection, Pittsburgh, PA

Click on the links for more information or to register for the class.

There has been a lot of talk about the skills gap in manufacturing and every CEO and business owner I speak with is aware of the problem. What I’m not hearing as much is what manufacturers can do about the skills gap. This is reflected in a recent Kennametal survey on people’s attitudes about manufacturing:

• Only 9% of respondents see manufacturing as a bright spot in our economy
• Just 11% believe that manufacturing is a growing industry
• And 68% believe the lack of manufacturing jobs is more troubling than the lack of skills needed to fill those jobs.

So what’s a manufacturer with an aging workforce to do? I’m big on identifying the problem, determining where you want to be, and developing the plan to get there. Here are four actions I believe manufacturers can take to attract the next generation of employees.

1.         Partner with local trade and technical schools: Develop relationships with the instructors and administrators at local schools. Offer to host tours or job shadowing for the school’s students. Not only will you enhance your reputation with the schools, but you will also get some insight into what they are training their students on and may even be able to have input.

2.       Take a hard look at yourself: Look at your operations as a potential employee might. How does your compensation package stack up? What about your plant, is it clean and well-lit or dark and cluttered? How about your culture, are people friendly and look like they’re happy to be there or do you have a high turn-over rate?

 3.       Develop apprenticeship program: If you don’t have a trade school near you or enough graduates for your demand, consider developing your own apprenticeship program. An internal apprenticeship program would allow you to train new employees on the skills most important to your organization. This new pipeline of skilled employees would position you for growth without having to scramble to fill positions.

 4.       Connect with your community: The first three steps won’t mean much if the parents in your community are discouraging their children from going into manufacturing. Get involved in local STEM activities and initiatives. Host open houses for local schools and your employees’ families. Manufacturing has come a long way over the past couple decades and most people are surprised to see how modern and advanced companies have become. 

What other steps have you taken to attract new employees to your organization?

There is one lesson from early in my career that has stayed with me over time. In fact, I think about this lesson almost on a daily basis: there is a difference between managing and being a leader. While this may not be an earth-shaking revelation, there are very few people who actually live this out every day. In fact, if we don’t think about this on a daily basis, I would propose that we tend to manage people instead of lead them.

So what do leaders do that managers don’t?

1. Treat People Differently. I learned this lesson at GE’s New Manager Development Course. To be an effective leader you can’t treat everyone the same – fairness is a fantasy. It’s more important to treat people justly. This means you need to understand the people on your team, their strengths, skills, personalities, and weaknesses. What is a reasonable expectation of a team member with five-years of experience may not be reasonable for your newest hire. Tailor your leadership to where they are.

2. Take Responsibility. Seth Godin once stated, “Managers want authority, leaders take responsibility.” Managers want the position and all the accolades that go with it, but when a problem arises they always seem to find someone to blame. It’s not unusual for me to hear a business owner or department head blaming their people for all the company’s problems. My initial thought is usually “you hired them” followed quickly by “and who trained them?” Leaders take responsibility for missed targets, poor performance, and unhappy customers because they know they set the tone and behavior standards for the rest of the team.

3. Develop People. Another lesson I learned working at GE is to always be developing your people. We were encouraged to invest 20 percent of our time developing our people.  When you consider the attention and focus GE places on making your numbers, you realize what an almost radical statement this is; yet, this is why GE is known for developing great leaders. Managers worry about losing their employees or not being seen as the expert. Leaders recognize that if they develop their people and are able to promote them, they will attract other high-caliber people who also want to be developed. In turn the leader himself is developed.

4. Serve People. As a leader you are there to ensure your people have what they need to be able to achieve their goals. To quote Dan Rockwell, “People don’t serve leaders. Leaders serve people.”  This doesn’t mean you become a doormat, sometimes you serve people by helping them find a position better suited to their skill set. You serve your team by making the tough decisions, accepting responsibility for the results, and sharing the successes. Managers expect their employees to serve them, so the manager looks good. Your team members’ lives should be better as a result of your influence.

5. Embody the Strategic Plan. Finally, leaders embody the strategic plan – everything they do is aligned with the vision and the strategic plan. They are willing to suffer short-term set-backs or a slower start in exchange for long-term success. Managers can be so focused on the month-end or quarterly results that they make decisions that harm the organization long-term. Think of companies that cut training and improvement projects when margins get squeezed. Leaders don’t just talk the talk, they also walk the walk.

What difference have you noticed between a manager and a leader and which characteristic are you working on developing?

Here are our upcoming public training courses for February:

February 16 – Statistical Process Control – Knowledge Park at Penn State Erie, Erie, PA

February 22 – Root Cause Analysis – B3C at Linden Pointe, Hermitage, PA

Also, we will be holding a public Lean Six Sigma Green Belt course in Pittsburgh. Week #1 March 26 – 30, Week #2 April 30 – May 4.

Click on the links for more information or to register.

Photo Credit: Mattox

Whether I’m coaching one of my Six Sigma belts on their project or working with a business on their corporate strategy, I find there is an area that always needs revisited and refined: Clarifying the goal. It’s easy for a team to say we want to reduce costs or cycle time, we want to grow our market share, or we want to enter this new market. Great! But what does that really mean?

If you’re going to win in business you need to have a Vision and Strategy for your organization. For that vision and strategy to be effective, you need to begin with the end in mind. In other words: You need to define the win. If you don’t define what a win is, then you will never know if you get there.

1. Define the Win: Part of being an effective leader is defining the win. If you want to reduce costs, which costs and by how much? How much do you want to grow your market share and over what period of time? What does entering a new market mean – Is it having a new product or service available, landing that first client, or simply attending a trade show? Earl Nightingale in his The Strangest Secret says “A success us anyone who is realizing a worthy predetermined ideal, because that’s what he or she decided to do … deliberately.” Therefore, to win in business you must deliberately determine what it is you want to achieve.

2. Establish the Measure: To be able to define the win, you must identify what it is you are going to measure. By measuring, we can determine from where we are starting, where we want to get to, and how big that gap is. Once you’ve established the metric, baseline, and goal, you have something to monitor your progress towards that goal.

3. Develop the Plan: Look at what you defined as a win and work backwards to identify the milestones you need to hit to achieve that win. What are the quarterly or monthly activities that must take place to move you towards that win? Break those activities down further into the weekly and daily tasks you and your team must accomplish. Now when you are planning your day you know what those activities are that will get you closer to your win, versus just a random to-do list.

4. Communicate the Plan: It’s not enough to simply define the win, establish the measure, and develop the plan. Countless organizations have developed beautiful strategic plans in nice three-ring binders that sit on a shelf gathering dust, never to be looked at again. You must communicate the plan and get people involved. There is a great verse (Judges 5:2) that basically says “when leaders lead, people will volunteer.” If you do an effective job of leading, people will want to follow up and be a part of what you are doing. Remember, people are not against you, they are for themselves. Make sure when you are communicating the plan and the win that you connect it to how the people on your team will be impacted. If you reduce the cycle time, what does that mean for the amount of overtime people have to work or the additional capacity you create to take on more work or the available time for innovation? What’s in it for them?

If you follow these four steps you will set yourself and your organization up to win in 2012.

I would love to hear what your “wins” are for 2012, please share them in the comments.

Photo by Vivek Chugh

This time of year people often talk about their goals or plans for the year; businesses talk about strategy. Unfortunately, only three percent of people actually achieve their goals. So what can you do to improve your odds of achieving your goals, either business or personal?

First, we need to understand what these terms mean. I’ve often heard people use the words strategy, goals, missions, and plans interchangeably. I’ve also noticed that people overlook things like purpose, vision, or tactics. Simply understanding these terms and how they connect to each other can help you achieve more of your goals.

1. Vision – Vision is training yourself to be able to see what is to come to pass. It is a mental attitude you must develop. Proverbs 29:18 says where there is no vision, the people perish. If you are leading others (or even yourself, for that matter) you must have a vision for your team, believe in that vision, and impart that belief to others.

2. Purpose – Purpose is the why. Vision seeks clarity to better understand why you want to do or accomplish something. Purpose gives meaning to people and helps them develop their own internal motivation towards the vision.

3. Goal – Goals are mile markers that help you know if you are moving in the right direction. They can be short term and long term, but they are the “what” that drives toward the vision. Goals help you determine what a win is and keep you focused.

4. Strategy/Mission/Plan –Strategy is the “how” of accomplishing the vision. Strategies may, and sometimes must, change depending on circumstances, but the vision never changes. Remember also, that you may not have the entire strategy laid out in perfect detail. If you know the next step to take, you are not lacking in direction.

5. Tactics – These are the precise disciplines or behaviors which you follow in order to implement a plan and strategy. These become the day after day and week after week actions that enable you to execute your strategy.

If you simply funnel everything into this structure and execute on it, you will place yourself far ahead of those around you.

December 1: Root Cause Analysis – Penn State Behrend’s Knowledge Park, Erie, PA

December 8: Failure Modes & Effects Analysis (FMEA) – Penn State Behrend’s Knowledge Park, Erie, PA

December 9: Root Cause Analysis – B3C at LindenPointe, Hermitage, PA

December 14: Statistical Process Control – Penn State Behrend’s Knowledge Park, Erie, PA

Operations Strategy is pleased to welcome our newest consultant to our team, Sara Goncus. As a consultant and trainer, she will be focused on helping our clients improve their processes and achieve operational excellence. Sara comes to us from Lockheed Martin where she was a Quality Assurance Engineer at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico. A certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, she knows the importance of making improvements that benefit the client as well as the client’s customers. Please join us in welcoming her to the team. (Full Bio.)

Let me publicly say thank you to Buddy Hobart for inviting me back as a guest on Friday’s “Solution 21 Show” on The American Entrepreneur Radio. I was joined by Rob O’Donnell, Managing Director of Solutions 21, as we answered listeners questions on how to maximize their business’ productivity while keeping your employees from breaking down, especially in a tight economy when these workers are more put upon than ever before.

Listen to the Audio.