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.

Who Owns the Problem

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“Ownership thinking, that’s what I want to focus on,” Joel said. “Too many problems bubble up to my level. I want my team to own the problems that come their way.”

“Explain to me,” I replied, “how problems bubble up to you?”

“Pretty simple,” he started. “The team encounters a problem they can’t solve, so they bring it to me, deposit it on my desk and leave. It’s now on my desk, so I end up owning the problem. I want that to change.”

“Why do you think they can’t solve the problem?”

“You’re right. Sometimes, I think my team is totally incompetent. They can’t solve the problem because they are incompetent.”

“So, is there a connection between competency and owning the problem?” I wanted to know. “Is it possible that if you are not competent, you cannot own the problem?”

Joel thought for a minute. “Are you suggesting a shift in my focus?”

I nodded. “You can focus on who owns the problem, or you can focus on competence, meaning increasing competence. Do you think that team members, competent to solve the problem, hesitate to own the problem?”

What the Goal Doesn’t Tell

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“But, can’t we celebrate for just a moment? It has been a good year,” Yolanda was insistent.

“Yes, indeed. Celebrate the moment. And, there were good moments. But, what does that tell you about the future? Achieving this year’s goal tells you the mark in relation to your forecast, which was created a year ago. Where is your current journey and where are you along that path? Achieving your goal in relation to a forecast doesn’t tell you what went wrong that you can learn from. Achieving your goal doesn’t tell you where you could be if you had taken a different path. Achieving your goal doesn’t tell you about the preparations you took, the capacity your team developed, or didn’t develop.  It doesn’t tell you how good your competitors are, what the market was like or if you have the right people.  It doesn’t tell you who, on your team, has potential.  It’s fine to have the goal as a mark, but focus on the things that drive the goal.  Those are the rich moments in your journey.”

Call to Adventure

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“We finished the year in fine form,” Yolanda announced. “We met all of our goals with some to spare”.

“Good, now what?” I asked.

“We’re going to have a party,” she smiled.

“Yes, and then what?” I pressed.

You’re never happy, are you?” Yolanda pushed back. “I know where you are going with this.”

“Arriving at your destination is the end, and it is fine to celebrate the mark. But what is your journey? What’s next? That is the call to adventure.”

Multiple Paths

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“Stop with the frantic heroic efforts,” I said. “That is supervisor strategy. You’re a manager, now. Your strategy is a system focus. Stop working harder and longer and start working smarter. How can you see the work as a system?”

“You mean starting with when we get the work order from sales?” Paula wanted to know.

“That’s the way your team sees the work,” I disagreed. “As the manager, you have a larger scope than the team. You know the work starts way before the team gets it. The work starts back in sales, informal discussions about unsigned contracts in the hopper. Your system has to account for all the anticipated work volume AND the unanticipated variability in the work volume.”

“I can sit in on the sales meeting and get some visibility on projects in the works,” Paula nodded. “But, then what happens when the project gets delayed or completely scuttled?”

“Variability means variable,” I replied. “As the manager, you have to make contingency plans, multiple paths to the goal, anticipate what might happen and be ready to call an audible. A system not only has to account for the same characteristics of every project, but also has to account for the individual nuances that are different about every project.”

Go Find Out

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“So, what you are saying is that I am stuck with the team I have?” Paula floated, uncertain in her conclusion.

“Yeah, pretty much,” I nodded. “Unless you think you should fire them all and do the work by yourself.”

Paula huffed a little sigh. “So, if I am stuck with the team I have, where do I start? I mean, sometimes things get tight out there. We have deadlines and things going wrong. Sometimes, we need extraordinary effort just to get to the end of the day.”

“You seem to think it takes heroic effort to just keep up with the work on the schedule? That if you worked a little harder, or worked a little longer, you could stay above water?” I asked.

“But I can’t,” Paula protested. “I can’t yell at them any more than I already do and I can’t work overtime more than one hour per shift.”

“What if you could dispense with the heroics?” I wanted to know. “What if you could still meet your schedule, but things were dull and boring? What would have to change?”

“Not going to happen,” she put her hands on her hips. “We start the day, then get a priority rush job right off the bat, throws everything off schedule. I mean, if I knew we were going to get a rush job, I could have re-shuffled some of the work, pulled someone off another project. But, I never know.”

“And, why don’t you know?” I asked. “The day before, could you meet with the sales team and find out the unreasonable promises they were making with customers? You are the manager. You have the authority to re-shuffle resources to accommodate a rush order, if you only knew about it. So, get out of your office and go find out.”

Ordinary People

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“My team is a bunch of idiots,” Paula started. “They can’t get anything right. Everything they touch turns to rust.”

“Oh, really?” I replied. “When did this start?”

“Always been this way,” she said.

I nodded. “Before you were promoted to manager, weren’t you a member of this team? Were they idiots then? Were you one of the idiots?”

“Okay, okay,” Paula agreed. “Maybe I was an idiot, back then. It’s just so frustrating being a manager. I wish I could get better people on my team.”

“Why would that make a difference?” I asked.

“If I had better people, I could get better results,” she pursed her lips with a defiant look in her eyes.

“So, you think you would get extraordinary results if you had extraordinary people?” I prodded.

“Yes, absolutely,” Paula sat up straight.

“What if I told you there were not that many extraordinary people out there. That most people are just like you and me, more ordinary than brilliant. Your challenge, as a manager, is to get extraordinary results from ordinary people. If that were true, what would you do? What would you work on? By the way, if you WERE able to get extraordinary results from ordinary people, maybe your team wouldn’t look so ordinary.”

Gratitude

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We have a formal holiday in the USA this time of year, to give thanks for the opportunities and people in our lives.

And so, I want to thank each of you for the opportunity to come into your busy day, at least for a few moments, to stir the pot, rearrange some things in your head. I started this blog in November 2004, so by my count, that makes 20 years. I thought that ten years would be a milestone, never thought that 20 was possible. And I have you to thank. Some ask, how do you keep doing this? The real question is, how could I stop?

I think it’s time for a beer. Happy Thanksgiving, November 2024. -Tom

Daily Grind and the Grand Scheme

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“They just don’t seem very motivated,” Rafael explained. “I try to give them a pep talk every once in a while, it seems to energize them for a day or so, but then it goes back to the same old grind. I mean, yes, the things we do are repeated day in and day out, so I can see it gets a bit boring. It contributes to turnover on the team. It even gets ME a little down at times.”

“Yes, the grind even infects upper management,” I replied. “Why do you think that is?”

“I told you, it’s the repetitive nature of what we do. Some days are busier than others, but at the end of the day, we just look forward to coming back the next day to do it over again.”

“You produce these products, day in and day out. What do these products do for your customers?” I knew the answer already, but Rafael had not made the connection.

“We manufacture safety products for the construction industry,” he said. “Perimeter flags, traffic cones, safety vests, hard hats. Not very glamorous stuff.”

“And, so you see your work as just an endless stream of orders that come in every day? One after another, day after day? One day like the day before?” I asked.

Rafael nodded. “Pretty much.”

“What if you shifted the way your team sees the work from an endless chain of events, to see the purpose for the products you crank out? When was the last time you took your crew out to a construction site to see the way your equipment is used? Or invited a safety manager from one of your customers to talk to your team about how important your products are and how much they rely on the quality of each piece?”

“Never,” Rafael sat back. “That sounds crazy. We can’t bus a manufacturing team to a construction site,” he explained.

“Really?” I nodded. “Most work is boring and monotonous if all we think about are the events of the day. The only way to truly understand the work is to understand its purpose, how it fits into the grand scheme. Nothing changes about the mechanical assembly of what you do. The only thing that changes is the way you see your impact on the world around you.”

Breakpoint

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“I know you want me to press my team, stress test my system,” Naomi agreed, “but what if they are simply not capable in that pressure?”

“When things are calm, wouldn’t now be a good time to find out?” I replied. “Identify the breaking point now, instead of after it is broken.”

Naomi looked reflective. “I can do that. I can run drills, like a sports team in practice. And, I know I am looking for the breaking point, but what about the wobbly point?”

“Capability is much like performance. The best indicator of performance is performance. The best indicator of capability is capability. And, the problems that must be solved, the decisions that must be made have to be within the capability of the team member. When you assign a decision to someone who does not possess the capability for the decision, what happens?”

“That’s easy. First they avoid the decision, deflect the decision, or find a scapegoat for when it inevitably fails,” Naomi said, without hesitation.

“There’s your wobble, that’s what you have to pay attention to.”

Beyond Limits

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“So, you identified a situation that would stress-test your system. Your system is optimized at a certain volume with a standard lead time. Your team has the necessary skills, rhythm and practice to meet the expectations of sales. But, sometimes your system is stressed by the insertion of a large order, additional volume, at an expedited pace, tight timeframe. Your sales department has a sudden interest in this new customer, has overpromised and received your thumbs up, because even you don’t want to disappoint. Your apple cart is about to be turned over. You think if you work harder, dictate some unauthorized overtime, press your team to their limits of exhaustion, that you will be successful.”

Naomi quietly listened, picturing this chain of events. She had seen this before. The pictures in her mind created a simultaneous, imagined tension. Unfortunately, it was a familiar feeling. It was pressure, an undercurrent that occasionally erupted in short tempers, discourteous exchanges in her team, a contemptuous roll of the eyes.

“When all is within limits, things under control, your system within limits, tempers jovial, what could you do with your team, not to operate harder and longer, but differently and more effectively? How could prepare the team to add the occasional variable that leaves the apple cart firmly on its wheels? What can you do today that others won’t, so that tomorrow you can do things that others can’t?”