Category Archives: Organization Structure

Juggling and Pacing

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In response to Monday’s post about Nicole and her new supervisory role, we received this comment from Gail.

Just because you place an individual in a leadership or supervisory role does not necessary mean that they are fully prepared. This is especially true for individuals that have moved up the ranks to leadership. They are still working as a worker and not a supervisor or manager. I believe it is important to give leadership and management training to all managers no matter what level they are on for reinforcement. Nicole just needed some leadership training and she could have been more successful a lot sooner.

I find the preparation for most supervisors is non-existent. Most companies don’t have the first clue what they truly expect from their supervisors much less how to train for it. Supervision is a coordinator’s role, juggling materials and schedules, pacing production to meet targets, keeping bottlenecks loaded up front so they’re never idle. Supervision is knowing your team, who is not feeling well today, who busted up with their girlfriend, whose car broke down on the way to work. It is a totally different role than running a machine or doing finish work on a cabinet. Training is more than important. It is essential. More on Nicole tomorrow. -TF

Stop Doing That Work

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Nicole was complaining. Her department was behind. She was working 10-12 hours per day and could never seem to get ahead. She thought her boss should appreciate her efforts and hard work, but instead, she got quite the opposite. He was disappointed in her performance and intended to follow-up on her numbers every two weeks instead of once a month.

“What am I supposed to do?” she said. “I get here an hour early and leave an hour after my team has gone home. It seems, they are always pulling me into the weeds. I just can’t get anything done.”

“Tell me about the weeds part. How does your team drag you into the weeds?”

“They always need help. I try to work alongside them for most of the day, but then I cannot get my stuff done.”

“Then, stop!” I said. “You are the supervisor. You are there to make sure the work gets done, NOT to work alongside your team. If they have a problem, help them through it, but then get back to your responsibilities. You are supposed to do production counts three times during your shift so you can know if you are ahead or behind. That’s your job. Your team is not meeting its daily production and they don’t even know it.”

I continued, “I will be back tomorrow. I want to see the 10 o’clock count and the 2:30 count posted on the white board. We will work from there.” -TF

A Different Skill Set

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In response to Wednesday’s post, Sean writes:

How does someone make this leap from technician to manager? I see it all the time in IT, and I think it’s why there are so many bad managers out there. Isn’t this the Peter Principle, where people are promoted to their level of incompetence?

It’s more than a leap. It is a completely different skill set. The technician is an expert in a technical skill. The technician does the work.

One stratum above is the supervisor. The supervisor does NOT do the work. The supervisor makes sure the work is done; completely, accurately, no missing segments and on time. The tools of the supervisor are checklists and schedules. This is not a subtle concept and most companies don’t get it.

The role of the supervisor is coordination. It is not that people are promoted to their level of incompetence. Brilliant technicians are promoted to a role where they are expected to use a skill set they have not developed and the company is not prepared to train. There are so many bad managers out there because companies do not know how to train managers. -TF

Don’t Know How to Run the Press

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Cindy’s assignment was simple. As a successful supervisor in another division, she had been transferred to a line unit that was having trouble keeping up. After her first meeting, she wasn’t so sure she was up to the task.

From the back of the room, “So, tell us about your background. Have you ever run one of these presses before?”

She admitted that she had not. “So, how do you expect to be our supervisor when you don’t know the first thing about how we do the job?” She had never been challenged so directly. Worse, it was a perfectly valid question.

Now Cindy was in my office. “Here is the central issue,” I asked. “How can you bring value to their thinking and their work?”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t know how to run the press, but does that really matter? How do you bring value to their thinking and their work? How do they know when they are doing a good job? How do they know when they are doing a poor job?”

“Funny, I know the ops manager was complaining that they did not meet the production quota last month. But those numbers were never broken down on a daily basis so the line never had a clue whether they were ahead or behind. The last two days of the month, somebody came out and yelled at them to pick up the pace, but it was too little, too late.”

“So, you can bring value to the work by giving the floor feedback on daily production runs, perhaps accelerating things a bit, but avoiding a hysterical crunch at the end of the month.”

One month later, Cindy’s crew was ahead by 150 units, yet had worked no overtime, even taken the press down for a half day of preventive maintenance. Every morning, Cindy had a two minute huddle meeting and posted the day’s production goal. At ten and two she posted updates with a final count at 3:30 when the line shut down. Though she had never touched the press, she was bringing value to the thinking and work of her production crew. The skills to be a successful supervisor are quite different than the technical skills of the crew. -TF

In a Pickle

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Now, we were in a pickle. Our top salesperson for last year, $450,000 in gross sales, was on the chopping block to be fired.

In January, he had been promoted to sales manager, moved to a guaranteed salary equal to last year’s total comp, and now he was failing. Relieved of all, but the most critical accounts, he was supposed to be leading the sales group, holding meetings, inspiring, helping others to set targets and holding them accountable. As a salesperson, he was great, as a sales manager, he was the pits.

This is the classic mistake. Take your best producer, whether it is in sales, production or research and make them the manager. Management requires a totally different skill-set, miles apart from producing technical work.

Once done, tough to get undone. No one likes to move backwards or have their guaranteed paycheck moved back to at-risk. Most importantly, whose fault was it? -TF

First Days of a New Manager

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Justin was leery about his new manager. This was the second time in three months that he had filled this position. “I don’t know what got in to the last guy. He had the experience, but by the second week on the job, he had managed to get on the bad side of most all his team members. By the third week, the team was silently plotting his overthrow. With his new processes and control systems, he created more mutiny than efficiency.”

I was curious, “In his first few weeks, what kind of orientation program did you run him through? What were his assignments?”

“Well, we went over his job description. He seemed eager to get to work, said he had some changes he wanted to get started on right away. Of course, it took him a week just find out where the men’s room was.”

The first days on the job are different at the manager level. With technical roles, the point is to get new hires productive quickly. With managers, orientation, getting to know team members and learning existing processes are critical first steps. In the first week, a new manager should be required to report short biographical thumbnails of all team members and create fundamental work flow charts documenting existing systems. To do this, the new manager will have to meet people, ask questions and listen. The reporting assignment will require analysis and thought. The new manager should NOT think they have something smarter to introduce without a thorough understanding of both the work and the people that run the work. So give them the assignment. -TF

Losing Talent

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Marty was at a loss to explain why he was losing his most talented people. His office was upscale, roomy cubicles, good benefit package, competitive wages and reasonable bonuses. I asked about his managers. Aside from the CFO and the HR person, there were two project managers running thirty technicians in the field.

“So, Marty, tell me, you have managers running the projects, but who is running the technicians?”

“Well, the Project Managers tell the technicians what they need and the technicians do the work.”

“Marty, the Project Managers run the projects, but who is running the technicians?”

Many companies pull out a layer of management without understanding the roles that managers play. Project Managers run projects. We weren’t losing projects, we were losing technicians. The most important element related to employee retention is the relationship between the manager and the team member. This is a difficult relationship to cultivate if you do not have a manager in the equation.

Examine your organization, where are your managers and how have you defined their roles? -TF

System Dependent?

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“Yes, but we can’t afford to fire this person, right now. If we did, we would lose everything they know about our system. I know their performance is unacceptable, but we would be lost without the things they know about our processes, our machines, the tolerances, the setups.”

“So, where does that leave you,” I asked.

“Between a rock and a hard place. We can’t even let this person find out that we are recruiting for his replacement. He might quit.”

In the beginning, most companies organize themselves around people and their abilities. As the company grows, an inevitable transition must take place. Ask yourself the following question, “Is your organization people dependent, or system dependent?”

If you think your organization is people dependent, what steps would it take to transform into a system dependent organization? It starts with the simple documentation of processes and roles. That’s the first step to prevent becoming hostage to an underperformer. -TF

Fast-Brain “Storming”

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We had twenty minutes to complete the assignment. Go!

Our job was to document 180 discreet operational steps in a manufacturing process, placing each step in an approximate sequence. We had nine volunteer managers from each of the operating areas.

Step One: We distributed little 3×3 sticky note pads to each manager, along with one of those bold felt tip marking pens. 19 minutes. Go!

Instructions to the Manager group: On separate sticky notes, please write down the key words describing the most important operational steps in your area. Please select the twenty most important (major) steps in your area. Ten minutes from now, when you are finished, you should have twenty separate sticky notes, each with an important step written on it. Any questions? Go!

While the managers prepared their sticky notes, we taped 27 feet of 36 inch wide butcher paper on the wall. Double thickness, in case someone wanted to write on it (save the wall). We lightly marked and divided the butcher paper into nine sections, one for each person.

Time’s up. Please take your 20 sticky notes to the butcher paper. Arrange yourselves in the same sequence as your areas on the floor. Stick your notes on the paper and place them in the sequence that work is performed in your area. You may draw appropriate arrows and make appropriate notes on the butcher paper to further clarify your operational steps. You have five minutes. Go!

Team, we still have 3 minutes left before our twenty minutes expire. There is coffee available on the table at the back of the room. Thank you very much for your cooperation today.

Now, what could you do with a flow chart like that, documenting your work flow? -TF

What is the Role of A Manager

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When I talk to groups about this structure, I draw a picture. The picture makes it simple. It is the fundamental building block for any organization engaged in productive work. It clearly defines the role of the worker, the supervisor and the manager. This is simple, fundamental, but most companies don’t “get it.” Once you “get” this, you can build infrastructure in any organization.

The picture is a triangle with three levels.
On the top level is the – Manager
On the middle level is the – Supervisor
On the bottom level is the – Worker.

The role of the Worker is to “do the work.” The Worker uses machines, equipment and tools to “do the work.”

The role of the Supervisor is to “make sure the work gets done.” The Supervisor uses checklists, schedules and spec sheets, observes production, marks completion, inspects quality. The Supervisor coordinates, checks available material and labor, re-sequences production to meet the deadline. The role of the Supervisor is to “make sure the work gets done.”

The role of the Manager is to “create and maintain systems in which the work is done.” The Manager uses flow charts, capacity grids and budgets. The Manager plays “what if,” anticipates problems, creates contingency work programs, looks for bottlenecks, designs and tests sequence for efficiency, time and motion. The role of the Manager is to “create and maintain systems in which the work is done.”

These are the keys to the Kingdom.

This is so fundamental that most companies miss it. When I inspect their job descriptions and review their organization charts, I see a big chocolate mess. And they wonder why things are so screwed up. Get this right, and you will have the basic building block to create the infrastructure you need in your company.