Category Archives: Leadership

Value-Driven Manufacturing in Action at James Heal

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Works Management magazine hosted a superb best-practice factory visit last week to our award-winning client James Heal, based in Halifax, West Yorkshire, UK: The visit presented an excellent opportunity for delegates to see first-hand exactly how Value-Driven Manufacturing can transform a company, despite the economic down-turn.

James Heal is a highly successful UK precision testing instruments manufacturer delivering outstanding growth, employment and export. Sales have increased by over 50% in the last two years with a significant increase in revenues from new product development and innovation, whilst product costs have been reduced by up to 25%. This success is a direct result of the lean manufacturing programme, innovative product design and a “can-do” culture. 

Visitors took part in an interactive workshop – Value-Driven Manufacturing – facilitated by Manufacturing Consultant Andrew Nicholson, where they learned how to apply the principles of Value-Driven Manufacturing “back at the ranch”.

Watch this space for the forthcoming Visit Report, Case Study and Learning Points!

Better still, sign up below to this blog and never miss any future posts!

For more information about Value-Driven Manufacturing, have a look at the blog posts here or visit the website ImproveMyFactory.com – Value-Driven Manufacturing – where you can download a free guide to Value-Driven Business.

How to Sustain Lean – the Discipline of CANDO (5S) …

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It takes Leadership and Discipline to build a great company. And it takes Leadership and Discipline to sustain the Lean journey.

Back in 2oo6 at the AME Conference in Dallas, I heard a keynote presentation by Jim Collins, bestselling author of “Good to Great”.  I can’t do justice here to what was an outstanding presentation, but you can guess the main thrust of what he said: “Of all the things that helped companies go from being good performers to outstanding performers, Leadership and Discipline are by far the most important”.

Previous blog posts here have talked about Leadership, so let’s have a look now at Discipline, and why it’s a critical element in sustaining the Lean journey.

Put simply, Discipline is about doing a small number of important things consistently – day in, day out, week after week, month after month, year after year. So you can immediately spot why most organisations and most people never achieve greatness.

Let’s take an example that will immediately be familiar to  most manufacturers – Workplace Organisation.

Workplace Organisation is most commonly known as “5S”. Sometimes – particularly in the automotive industry – it’s referred to as 5C. Far less common but the one that I prefer is the acronym “CANDO”. The “D” stands for Discipline, so you can see where I’m going with this.  Most organisations don’t find it too difficult to complete the first three steps of CANDO- Clear out unwanted items, Arrange everything in the right place, then ensure Neatness. The next two steps are far harder – Discipline and Ongoing improvement. It’s often said that CANDO is above all a test of management discipline. That’s why the Japanese regard it as probably the first and most important building block of Lean. Put simply, if managers and leaders don’t have the discipline to sustain CANDO then they probably don’t have the discipline to sustain any worthwhile improvement journey. More importantly, they don’t have the discipline to create a great business.

The tools and techniques needed for sustaining CANDO are well known – agreeing and setting the standard, implementing checklists, standard operating procedures, measures and audits, etc, etc. Where most organisations fall down here is that they don’t build it into the day job and make it a habit.

So here are some ways of achieving the necessary Discipline:

  • Ensure that Line Managers / Team Leaders are held personally accountable for maintaining the agreed standard in their area
  • Train and encourage them to ensure that every employee works to that standard every day
  • Check and record performance hourly or daily
  • Audit performance weekly or monthly
  • Apply PDCA to find and address the root causes of non-conformance

In future blog posts we’ll look in more detail at Discipline and “how to build Lean in” – as always, your comments and experiences are very welcome!

World Class Manufacturing Leadership

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World Class businesses have world class leaders. So what does it take to lead a successful World Class manufacturing business in 2012? Here’s my view…

The leaders of World class manufacturers are highly driven; they need to be the best in the world at what they do. They have high expectations, they create a strong sense of urgency and they inspire the right people to join them on the journey.

They understand that you don’t have to invent anything new and different in order to be world class. What you have to do is configure a value chain that delivers unique value in a different way.

Here are some of the things that they do:

Purpose: they communicate the purpose of the organisation in a way that is meaningful

Performance: they inspire people to perform at their best and they do not tolerate mediocrity

Passion: they are personally invested in what they do – they get fired up and it’s contagious

Process: they create streamlined processes that deliver outstanding and unique value to their customers

People: they get the right people on the bus; they expect to make some people unhappy

These are just some of my own thoughts – what are yours?…

Motivation Made Simple – the Top Four…

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Allow people to do what they do best every day. Give them the tools to do the job right. Make sure they know what’s expected. Regularly recognise and praise good work. That’s it!

If you can provide a workplace that delivers these things then you’ve addressed the Top Four Motivators (*) for most people.

Here’s my simple take on employee engagement, motivation and world class manufacturing:

  • There’s no such thing as a world class plant without an actively engaged workforce.
  • The more employees who are engaged, and the fewer who are actively disengaged, the better the organisation performs.
  • Employee engagement can be measured.
  • There are 12 Top Motivators.
  • If you want to improve the performance of your plant, company or organisation, do as much as you can to address these, measure the results, and keep at it.

* The Gallup organisation (www.Gallup.com) has conducted more than thirty years of research into employee engagement, with nearly two million employees. They’ve boiled all of that down into the Top 12 Motivators and these are the Top Four. If you want the best motivated workforce in the world, try all Twelve! They’re at http://businessjournal.gallup.com/content/811/feedback-real.aspx and you can read about them in the book “First Break All the Rules.”

Leading the Value-Driven Business: Character

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People trust Leaders who demonstrate Competence and Character. In a previous post I talked about some of the fascinating Leadership research outlined in a recent series of HBR blogs. The most recent explains why Character is so important, and how effective Leaders should demonstrate this. I’d like to pick up on the main points here because they’re incredibly relevant to every owner-managed business, to every Continous Improvement approach, to every major change programme, and of course to every Value-Driven Business. Personally, I believe they’re so important to our day to day interactions that they’re intuitive – it’s how we behave, even without realising it. As you’ll see, they’re so common that they’re repeated and commented upon to the point of becoming cliches…

1. People need to know what you’re trying to achieve and why.

Whenever we first encounter a stranger we want to know: what is this person’s intent or motivation? Hence the cliched challenge: “Halt stranger! Friend or foe?” It’s why the first words of the alien in the 1950’s sci-fi movie, as it steps from its flying saucer, are: “I come in peace”.  It’s probably why so many novels and films feature encounters between strangers – we become immediately engrossed and our natural instincts are instantly engaged.

It’s why the method actor asks his/her director : “What’s my motivation?” It’s why the question:”Who are your heroes?” tells us so much about a person. It’s why the best situation comedies are so funny – great actors develop well-defined characters, and we enjoy and come to anticipate how the different characters will interact, each seeing the world from their own perspective.

In a business context, many owner-managers vastly over-rate the mind-reading abilities of their employees. It’s important that you explain what it is that you’re trying to achieve, and why you do what you do. We all know how important it is for a business to have a clearly stated purpose, but it’s also important when it comes to the day-to-day decisions and actions of the leaders in the business. And talking of actions…

2. People hear what you say but they believe what you do.

Words are important but actions are what counts. It’s about leading by example and doing what we expect others to do. We cannot always understand a person’s motivation so we judge people by their actions and behaviours. Again, this is so well understood it’s part of our everyday language. We have phrases like “Walk the talk”. We understand the emptiness of “Do as I say, not as I do”. It’s one reason why stories and fables are so compelling. It’s why we tell “war stories” and we recount tales of key moments in people’s lives, and how they behaved.

3. Consistency is everything.

We act in accordance with our values and beliefs so one way that we can judge the extent to which others are sincere or genuine is by observing how consistent is their behaviour. If a person acts inconsistently or in a way that does not match their stated values and beliefs, we take that as a sign of falseness. To quote Marx (Groucho not Karl): “These are my principles. And if you don’t like these, I have others…”

To read more, the original HBR Blog is http://blogs.hbr.org/hill-lineback/2012/04/for-people-to-trust-you-reveal.html

You can find other blog posts about Value-Driven Manufacturing here on the Manufacturing Times blog (helpfully categorised under “Value-Driven Manufacturing”!), and you can find out more about Value-Driven Business at www.ValueDrivenBusiness. co.uk.

Value-Driven Manufacturing and Value-Driven Business

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Value-Driven Manufacturing is an application of Value-Driven Business, in the same way that the Toyota Production System is part of the Toyota Management System. For an outline of the  main points there’s a free PDF download: What every Owner-Manager needs to know about Growing a Great Business

Leading the Value-Driven Business: Competence and Character

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“Your ability to eilicit people’s best efforts depends on their trust in you – their confidence that they can count on you to do the right thing” *. In a previous blog post we talked about the fact that this trust is earned by Competence and Character. Let’s look at how you can incorporate these principles into your Value-Driven Business System.

Firstly, the whole area of competence. For every role you need to  need to know what skills and knowledge are needed to do the job well. Critically you need to understand the core competences – the things that make the difference between an average performer and an excellent performer. The Value-Driven Business System uses core competences as a key part of the “People” system. Painful Truth #1: in a small business you won’t have the time or the resources to develop these so recruit people who already have them. If you want excellent performance, recruit excellent performers. This is particularly important when it comes to management. When I started my management career in the 1980’s British Industry was blighted by “Happy Amateurs” at all levels of management. Sadly, little has changed since. Management is an area of expertise in its own right – it needs specific knowledge and skills, and these have to be developed. Painful Truth #2: managers have to take responsibility for their own development, particularly when times are tough. If they don’t, don’t retain them. Regularly assess the skills, knowledge and performance of key staff. Where there are gaps, take action to fill them quickly. Either provide the right training and development, or move the employee out of the role.

Secondly, character. This is about values, beliefs and behaviour. Value-Driven Businesses are successful because they have clear values and beliefs – everyone knows “how we do things around here”.  Recruit, recognise and reward those who demonstrate the values. Painful Truth #3: if employees don’t live the values then you need to move them out of the company. Jack Welch, former CEO at GE, felt that any leader who did not live the values did not belong at GE. Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry-Wehmiller has a great phrase: “Some flowers grow better in someone else’s garden”!

The Value-Driven Business System incorporates a version of Jack Welch’s Performance-Values grid. Why? Because the Goal is to maximise the value of the business, and a large part of that value is based on the value of the company’s employees. It’s part of the Complete Balance Sheet, another component of the Value-Driven Business System.

[* Harvard Business Review (HBR) blog post – “Do your people trust you?”(http://blogs.hbr.org/hill-lineback/2012/03/do-your-people-trust-you.html ]

 If you have any thoughts or comments on these topics, or if you’d like to know more about the Value-Driven Business System,  please comment directly here or drop me an email at “an at nicholsonconsultancy dot com”

You can find other blog posts about Value-Driven Manufacturing here on the Manufacturing Times blog (helpfully categorised under “Value-Driven Manufacturing”!), and you can find out more about Value-Driven Business at www.ValueDrivenBusiness. co.uk.

Leading the Value-Driven Business

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I’d like to share a couple of examples I’ve seen over the last week, that reinforce what effective business leadership is all about. They’re absolutely core to Value-Driven Business and Value-Driven Manufacturing. The first is from a Harvard Business Review (HBR) blog post – “Do your people trust you?”(http://blogs.hbr.org/hill-lineback/2012/03/do-your-people-trust-you.html) . “…your ability to eilicit people’s best efforts depends on their trust in you – their confidence that they can count on you to do the right thing”. Tnat trust has two elements. Firstly, your competence – put simply, you know what you’re doing! Secondly, your character – “your intentions – what you’re trying to do, your goals and values as a boss”; whether you act in your own self-interest or you care about them, the group and the work.

At least the good news is that competence is learned. Character, on the other hand…

The second is from  “The 100 Best Companies to work for” in today’s UK Sunday Times newspaper (www.http://bestcompanies.co.uk/). They picked out “some common ingredients shared by all the organisations with the most engaged workforces”, which include:

  • Having confidence in the leadership skills of your manager
  • Having senior managers who listen rather than just tell people what to do
  • Having faith in the leader of the company / being inspired by them
  • Having senior managers who truly live the company values
  • Managers who support their team members and help them to fulfil their potential
  • Having middle manager role models who care how satisfied team members are in their jobs

And remember, these are not theoretical – all of these examples are based on current research of real businesses.

In my next blog post I’ll show you how to take these principles and build them into your Value-Driven Business System.

You can find other blog posts about Value-Driven Manufacturing here on the Manufacturing Times blog (helpfully categorised under “Value-Driven Manufacturing”!), and you can find out more about Value-Driven Business at www.ValueDrivenBusiness. co.uk.