Author Archives: Tom Foster

About Tom Foster

Tom Foster spends most of his time talking with managers and business owners. The conversations are about business lives and personal lives, goals, objectives and measuring performance. In short, transforming groups of people into teams working together. Sometimes we make great strides understanding this management stuff, other times it’s measured in very short inches. But in all of this conversation, there are things that we learn. This blog is that part of the conversation I can share. Often, the names are changed to protect the guilty, but this is real life inside of real companies.

Too Many Layers

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Sydney thought for a moment. “We just promoted Justin to Team Leader. The rest of the guys on the crew say he is breathing down their necks. He is obviously not ready to be a full supervisor, and we are losing his productivity as a machine operator.”

“And?” I prodded.

“And I really don’t know what to do,” Sydney replied.

“Let’s look again at your instructions to Justin. You said if a team member has a problem, help them solve it, if they have a question, answer it and make sure all the work gets done by the end of the day. And yet, you said he was not ready to be a supervisor? Sounds like you gave him supervisor tasks, but you already know he is struggling with those tasks.”

“Yes, but, if we are going to have the team report to Justin..” Sydney stopped. “So, I took my lead technician and tried to make him a supervisor, even though we already have a supervisor. It looked good on paper.”

“Actually, it didn’t look good on paper. You have 112 employees and twelve layers,” I observed.

“I know, I said 112,” Sydney explained. “Now it’s 110, two people quit this morning.”

Looks Good on Paper

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I was looking at Sydney’s org chart. I could see a familiar pattern.

“We have been working really hard on this,” Sydney explained. “Every manager knows who reports to them, so there should be no confusion. And every direct report has a manager.”

“I am just looking,” I said, “how many layers, or levels do you have on this chart?”

“That’s what took so much time,” Sydney replied. “We have 112 employees, in twelve layers. Pretty good job, neat and tidy.”

“Well, it all fits on one page,” I observed, “even though it’s a big piece of paper. Where did you get this printed?”

Sydney laughed. “The problem is, it looks good on paper, but not so good in reality.”

“Oh?” I said, with a diagnostic look on my face.

“Yes, like the guys on the shop floor. They all report to a Team Leader, Justin, best equipment operator we have. We told Justin, from now on, if they have a problem, you help them solve it. If they have a question, answer it. And at the end of the day, all the work needs to get done.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

Sydney took a breath. “The guys are now complaining that Justin is breathing down their necks. They say they already know how to do their jobs and that if they have a real problem, Justin is no help, they have to go to the supervisor, anyway. What’s worse, even Justin’s productivity is suffering, eight out of the last ten production days have been short to the work orders.”

“So, what do you think you are going to do?”

Identifying KRAs – Quick Exercise

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From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
Okay, you sold me on the importance of writing better Role Descriptions. In your workshop last week, you referred to Key Result Areas several times as part of the Role Description. I am curious about how you establish KRAs.

Response:
Indeed, Key Result Areas are the framework of the Role Description. When you took English Composition in high school, your teacher always told you, before you write your paper, you should always write the outline. (No one ever did it, but that’s another story.)

Identifying the Key Result Areas (KRAs) in a role is like writing the outline. For every role, there are between 4-8 Key Result Areas, depending on the complexity of the role.

For the Role of Plant Floor Supervisor, here are typical KRAs

  • Raw Material Inventory
  • Personnel Scheduling
  • Equipment Scheduling
  • Production Output
  • Production Output Counting and Reporting
  • Equipment Maintenance

But your question is “how” to identify these Key Result Areas? Here’s a simple exercise. Take a sticky note pad and on each note, write down one task related to the role. Don’t stop until you have at least 50 sticky notes, more if you want.

Now, look at the sticky notes and figure out which ones go together. Put them in groups. You will likely identify 4-8 groups. Once you have all the sticky notes divided into groups, give each group a name, like the names above. Those are your Key Result Areas.

Here is how they work in the context of a Role Description –

Role Description
Role Title –
Purpose for the Role –

Key Result Area #1
–Task and Activities
–Level of Work
–Accountability (Goal)

Key Result Area #2
–Task and Activities
–Level of Work
–Accountability (Goal)

Key Result Area #3
–Task and Activities
–Level of Work
–Accountability (Goal)

Key Result Area #4
–Task and Activities
–Level of Work
–Accountability (Goal)

Key Result Area #5
–Task and Activities
–Level of Work
–Accountability (Goal)

If you would like an template for this Role Description, in MS-Word, just Ask Tom and I will send you one.

Individual Technical Contributors and Levels of Work

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From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
Attended your workshop last week. I understand Levels of Work related to a manufacturing business model, but we are a financial services firm. How do we approach Levels of Work in our company. We simply don’t have Stratum I production workers. In fact, our producers have to help people make decisions that will impact their lives 10 years, 20 years down the road.

Response:
Financial services, attorneys, CPAs, architectural firms, engineering firms all share a similar approach to Levels of Work. Indeed, production work in professional services often rises to Stratum II, III, IV or higher. For a more specific discussion on Levels of Work in a CPA firm, you can visit this post.

But your question leads me to a more general discussion of Levels of Work from individual technical contributors. In the workshop you attended, we focused on Levels of Work in a manufacturing business model. That model illustrates the following managerial roles –

  • Stratum I – Production
  • Stratum II – Supervisor
  • Stratum III – Manager
  • Stratum IV – VP
  • Stratum V – Business Unit President

But, in professional service firms, there are individual technical contributors whose capability, Level of Work, may land in any of these Stratum, depending on the complexity of the problems to be solved and the decisions to be made. I find it interesting that you easily made the leap in your question, that you have individual technical contributors helping people make decisions that will impact their lives 10 years and 20 years down the road.

Time Span gives us critical insight into the capability required for these technical roles. Indeed, these technical roles may not manage other people, but, rather, manage the uncertainty of technical projects into the future.

So, yes, your production work in financial services, is most likely Stratum II, III, IV or above. And it likely depends on the age of your customer, your customer’s own Time Span capability, even the size of the estate.

Making simple decisions inside a young employees 401(k) plan is quite different than the complexity of the decisions to be made where trusts (revocable or irrevocable) and other large estate decisions must be made.

Chocolate Mess, Related to a VP

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From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
I was hired into the company six months ago, in a managerial role. One of my team members, a supervisor, was promoted beyond his capability. It’s a mess, but a mess that I inherited. This guy is not a bad person, he means well, just over his head. Oh, did I mention, he’s related to one of the Vice-Presidents?

Response:
You are doing no one favors by leaving this person in a role where they consistently underperform, no matter who they are related to. This person may be doing their best, but pace and quality suffers.

The fix is managerial work for you. Your options range from modifying parts of the role to a complete reassignment to a different role. If you intend to modify the role, you will need to break it down into Key Result Areas and determine which parts of the role are done well, reassign the rest to someone else. In your assessment, take a look at the history of this person, what were their previous positions and how well did they do? Everyone has competence, somewhere, you just have to find it.

The political part, being related to a current VP, will require some finesse, but will likely be easier than you think. If you truly have a chocolate mess on your hands, everyone already knows it, they just don’t talk about. And yes, the VP knows it, too. You will be doing the VP a favor if you can determine a more suitable position.

It’s Not About Project Buffers

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Sharon was perplexed. “We missed the deadline,” she explained. “And my Project Manager doesn’t seem to understand why.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I wanted to know what caused the delay in the schedule that put us behind, and he just shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not my fault,’ he says. ‘Circumstances outside of my control.’ I mean, I know the customer changed the spec on the project, and that we had to go back for another permit, but I expect my Project Manager to anticipate things like that.”

“How so?”

“Projects of this length always have changes, customers always change their mind, that’s why we use project buffers in the schedule,” Sharon sorted out.

“What could you have done differently?”

“Me?” she quizzed. “I’m not the Project Manager, it was his job.”

“Who assigned this project to this Project Manager?” I pressed.

Sharon stopped. She had overlooked that one small detail. “You are right,” she began. “I hold my Project Manager accountable for the output of the Project Team, but I am accountable for the output of my Project Manager. I should have had more interim meetings with him to see how we were using the project buffers, to help him make decisions and solve problems.”

Can’t Put a Schedule Together

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Morgan was complaining. “You have been talking about checklists and schedules as the core tools for Project Managers and Supervisors. It just doesn’t seem that hard. Why doesn’t my lead technician get it? I have showed him how to create a schedule a dozen times.”

“Morgan, it’s not just a matter of training. Supervising and Project Management are clearly Strata II roles. A lead technician role is more likely Stratum I.” I could see Morgan was struggling with this.

“But, if I take my lead technician, why can’t he seem to put a schedule together?” Morgan was pushing back.

“Morgan, a lead technician likely has experience, best machine operator you have, yet may only be capable of running his machine in an expert way. You are asking him to think about coordinating other people.

“The time span required for a supervisor is longer. And the story doesn’t end with just scheduling. Scheduling responsibilities may only require a two or three week time span, but there’s more. Supervisors must also think about building bench strength, recruiting technicians, training technicians, testing technical competence, cross-training. For a supervisor to be successful, I usually look for a minimum three month time span. The supervisor needs to be able to work into the future, without direction, using their own discretionary judgment, on tasks that may take three months or more to complete.”

No Real Work Experience

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From the Ask Tom mailbag

Question:
I am interviewing a lot of college hires that possess limited if any relevant work experience. While I am very comfortable interviewing candidates with experience, I find it very difficult to translate the Hiring Talent approach to those without any real experience in the field I am interviewing for. In some cases there is barely a internship to ask questions about.

Response:
They have work experience, they just didn’t get paid for it. Work is comprised of these two things –

  • Making decisions
  • Solving problems

Here is the sequence –
Look at the typical task assignments in the open role.

  1. Identify the Level of Work.
  2. Identify the critical role requirements, keying in on decision making and problem solving.
  3. Create questions based on the critical role requirements.

“Tell me about a time when” – this could be a student project, coursework, volunteer work, extracurricular activities, a hobby, a contest.
Let’s say the critical role requirement is to create and maintain work schedules for seven people on a project team where the duration of the project is thirty days.

  • Tell me about a time when you had to maintain some sort of written schedule on a project?
  • What was the project?
  • What was the purpose of project?
  • How long did the project last?
  • What did you have to schedule (people, project elements)?
  • How many elements (people, materials) did you have to schedule?
  • What information did you have to gather before you entered elements into the schedule?
  • After you created the initial schedule, did it ever change? How often?
  • Before you changed the schedule, what information did you have to gather?
  • Were your schedule changes ever challenged? How did you resolve the situation?

I am listening for decisions they made and problems they solved. And I don’t care if it was a pageant for the school choir or volunteer work at a hospital.

Market Responsive

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“You improved your quality, so your warranty program became a competitive advantage instead of a liability. Your lead time was down to four weeks. You lowered your cost structure. Your output and unit profit was consistent and predictable, systems focus. And then the rug got pulled out?” I asked.

“Yes,” Arianne reluctantly explained. “Everything, up to now had been internally focused. Efficiency, pace, quality. Then, the market fell out. Our customers would shrug their shoulders and buy from someone else. At first we thought they didn’t understand what a quality product we had. We even sent out our engineers with our sales people to explain why our product was more durable, lower cost and could be delivered faster. But, it was us who didn’t understand.”

“What do you mean?” I quizzed.

“We had been so internally focused that we didn’t notice a shift in the market. Our market moved. Our product was fine, but our market wanted something different. Our competitor smoked us. They had re-tooled a number of features based on user-feedback. We had no clue.”

I nodded my head, “Market responsive.”

“Yes,” Arianne confirmed. “It cost us a million dollars in stagnant inventory and months of development time to catch up. We had been so internally focused, we almost lost the ship.”

Your Customer is Not Your QC Department

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“You cut your lead time from six weeks to four weeks. Higher throughput with the same number of people, with the same equipment, in the same facility, you lowered your cost. You shifted from just getting the orders out the door, to a consistent, predictable system. And that’s when your troubles began?” I was curious.

“Yes, we were certainly focused on our systems,” Arianne continued, “but we had to match a competitors warranty. We figured, no problem, but we were wrong. We had our cost-to-produce down, but our warranty returns went through the roof. Everything we made up in cost savings went right back out the door in warranty repairs and replacement. We had a quality problem.”

“Pace and quality,” I said softly.

“Yes, our throughput was quicker, but it just meant we were making mistakes faster.”

“What did you do?”

“We were relying on our customer to be our Quality Control department. Bad move. We had to retrench, put inspections after each major step, so if we had a problem, we could identify it before we made another thousand parts. We tracked everything on white-boards. We didn’t make it to six-sigma, but enough quality improvement to make a big difference.”

“So, finally you got organized, accelerated your throughput, beat your internal quality standards. It must have been a proud moment,” I encouraged.

“Not really,” Arianne replied. “That’s when the rug got pulled out from under.”