Saturday, November 15, 2014

Try lending a hand, not pointing a finger

What kind of manager are you? You really have only two options in today’s global workplace. The first one can be equated to the lion tamer in the circus. Is this a fair indication of your management style? If you still operate under the notion that your employees have a job to do. That they have a certain set way to do things and that each employee understands that their purpose is to follow in lack step your demands. As a manger, you firmly believe in command and control style of corporate hierarchy. Your predecessors handed down the command and control method, and you in the corporate tradition have followed the same path. Your assets do not need to know everything about the organization; just what you deem is necessary for them to know.
Toyota and the Toyota Production system has show us a path to a better alternative to the dictatorship model described above. Your responsibilities as a manager are to provide an environment centered on nurturing the human capital assets of your organization. Our responsibility is to be a leader not a manager. So how do we bring about this change to the organization?
We begin the process with the hiring and onboarding of new hires. We hire for attitude, not just skills. Jeffrey Liker in his book Toyota Talent describes a new hire at the new Kentucky plant where they hired an employee for the factory floor as a manager who had management skills from the retail market. Once they are onboard as a leader you are charged with the responsibility of educating them bout their job responsibilities, the corporate culture and the work environment. This education process also includes teaching them the skills to be successful in the new position.
Following the education period, it becomes your responsibility as a leader to be there as a support vehicle when problems arise. Trust me they will arise in the daily activities. Your role as a leader is to lend a hand to the human capital asset to guide them towards getting the support that is needed to make them productive members of the organization. We are not suggesting that you by lending a hand you should do their work for them. We are suggesting that you should act as a coach to help them on the path to full productivity.
John Wiley on their For Dummies site, define business coaching as the act of challenging and developing your employee’s skills and abilities. You still maintain your title as manager, however we have added a new path for you to take. We assume that the human capital asset has been brought on board and gone through the onboarding process. They have received that initial education process to learn what is expected of them in the workplace. The goal is to make them as productive as possible in the shortest possible time period. As with everything else in life, things don’t always go as planned. There are times when the initial education process is not enough. When life goes in another direction, then we are confronted with several options.
The first option is that we need to determine whether the problem is due a lack of skill. During the education process the human capital asset did not acquire the right set of goals to be a contributor to the team. It is in this scenario that you as a leader need to work with the FTE to gain those missing skills. It may mean sending them back into the classroom. It may mean pairing them with a mentor that can work side by side with them to get the new skills up to par.
The second option is that you have determined that the problem is not due to a lack of skill, but rather a mindset, which says, they just do not want to do the job. This recalls another type of coaching skills. It becomes your responsibility to guide them to another position within the organization or for the benefit of both parties, coach them out the door.
We are deep in a new paradigm. It is rapidly changing the workplace environment and conditions. While there are still organizations whose corporate culture demands that your human capital assets be considered as essentially chattel it is increasingly becoming a minority. The new paradigm suggests that we need to create a vibrant partnership with the entire organization and its components. It requires that instead of being the dictatorial manager, we consider the organization as one big family. This new view changes our roles. We need to take a cue from Toyota and work with our human capital assets to guide them towards being a fully productive member of the family. We do this by educating them regarding the position and then coaching them to make sure they get the skills to the level required to meet the voice of the customer. It also at times means that we must play the role of the tough parent and guide them in a different direction if that is what is beneficial for all involved.
The next time you have difficulties with a FTE, who is not living up to expectations, forget about pointing the finger. Instead lend them a hand to find the correct path for them within your organization. Change from the slave driver to the guide along the path to organizational excellence.

Need help making the transition? Ask us about our executive coaching options to help your organization excel. Contact us at dan@dbaiconsulting.

Friday, November 07, 2014

You can't see the picture if you are in the frame

On the way to the Veterinarian’s for an emergency run, we passed a church whose billboard stated “You can’t see the picture, if you are inside the frame.” The statement clearly applies to both our organizations and the dichotomy that exists in almost every workplace on the face of this globe we call earth.
Taiichi Ohno, the creator of the Toyota Production System, charged his managers with standing in a circle and observing the organization in real time. If we take Ohno’s charge in to consideration what we find despite the functional area, each is asking for a seat at the partner table. The difficulty is that each looks at the partner table from its own unique perspective. Sales and marketing proclaims that they deserve that seat because they bring in customers to the business. Accounting/Finance proclaims that despite sales role, they are the ones who need to be at the table because they control the spending that keeps the organization afloat. Research and Development says wait a minute; we are the only ones who deserve to be at the table because the success of the organization is dependent on the innovations that they bring to the market. Production says no they are the true party that belongs at the table because they make the products that the customers purchase. Human Resources says that if it is anyone who deserves to be at the table it is them, as they are the gatekeeper for the introduction of talent to the organization to fill staffing needs.
The problem is that each looks at their entitlement to be at the partner table from inside their particular picture frame. When asked to look at the bigger picture the tendency is to reply that is not my job. In order for the organization to sustain itself, to thrive, to be the market leader that reply is the proof they are looking at the picture from inside that frame.
The business world of the 21st century requires every function learn the language of business. They need to understand how each function plays as part of the whole jigsaw puzzle. They need to understand that each and every function within the organization is interdependent on the rest of the organization. Sales and marketing creates the market for our products, which requires manufacturing to build the products. Research and development creates new versions of the products to which sales and marketing takes into the field. Accounting and finance works with manufacturing and Research and development to determine the pricing level we need to be at for the organization to make a profit. Human resources need to understand that their effort to introduce human capital assets to the organization is part of the effort to create a viable organization. If HR understaffs the organization, manufacturing will not be able to produce the final product on the customer’s schedule of need.
The final picture of the organization becomes clear only after we take ourselves out of the frame we call our silos. The real empowerment of the organization comes when we change the culture of the organization away from the silo mentality and move toward a totality of organizational DNA as Ohno asked their managers to seek out as they observed the organization. The final picture becomes clear when everyone is respected for what they bring to the organization and the mood of the organization changes to one of we are all in it together.

Look the future and take yourself out of the frame and truly look at the total organization and what the new normal requires all of us to achieve in order to be strategic in focus, central focus on the needs of our customers and alignment with the mission, vision and objectives of the organization as a whole. We can no longer remain inside the frame, we need to constantly see the whole picture.