Leader of the pack

Julie Smith. The name doesn't leap out at you like a Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela or Joan of Arc. But for Mike Price, MD at The Manufacturing Institute, Julie Smith teaches a lesson in leadership to rival of any of history's great icons. "As an engineer, when I went to operations I thought I should be the problem solver, showing people what to do," says Price of his debut in charge of ops at Pac International. "The breakthrough for me was when I realised this one team leader, Julie Smith, was very engaged with her team and got better results than me – just by involving the team members. She really knocked me out of the court. It forced me to rethink my approach. There's only one of me, but a hundred of them. How much more could we do if I engaged my employees?" The room threatens to break out into a chorus of "I'm Spartacus" as Price recalls his eureka moment from the stage of The Manufacturing Institute's (TMI) 20 years of Enterprise Excellence conference in Cheshire. An audience packed with winners of the Shingo prize – an international benchmarking model to help manufacturers deliver operational excellence – are gathered to debate the essence of great leadership. And the consensus is that UK manufacturing could do with some pointers. The phrase "the eighth waste" is a hot topic. Yes, it seems someone needs to hand Taiichi Ohno the Tipex as the Toyota engineer's seven lean wastes make space for a new arrival: untapped human potential. The hearts and minds of our people risk being lost amid a myriad of systems, tools and processes, according to James Lyons, director of operations at medical equipment manufacturer, Boston Scientific, Galway. "The people environment is absolutely the multiplier," he says. "You can have the best systems and tools, but at the end of the day, if your organisation is not engaged and involved, you're not going to get the performance. Traditional management is wrapped around optimising and organising. But leadership is about passion, inspiring, the heart. It's not one or the other, we need both." Lyons urges delegates to heed the message of Harvard Business School, Professor John Kotter. Leadership is a distinct skill to management, Kotter advocates. Managers excel in planning, organising, measuring KPIs and problem solving. Yet a leader brings something off-diary – the vision to exploit change and the emotional intelligence to inspire others to buy into it. "Great change requires great leadership at all levels of the organisation," Lyons adds. "Our view is, if someone works for you, you have a responsibility to lead them and leading is not just managing. Inspire them, give them a sense of where they want to go, get your people to bring passion into the business." One site that has done just that is Newsprinters, Eurocentral. "We haven't really learned from Deming [W. Edwards Deming, lean manufacturing guru]," George Donaldson, group continuous improvement manager at Newsprinters told the conference. "Back in the 1950s he said management must transform their attitude towards the worker, focus on variation and improve the systems." Donaldson adds: "We're all born with a huge amount of intrinsic motivation and then life kicks it out of us while we're at school or work. Management must focus on the people and bring back that intrinsic self esteem, curiosity and yearning for learning. If we can do that then we've already won." Swearwords in Glasgow Deming's teachings have been given a unique Glaswegian twist at Newprinters' Eurocentral site near Motherwell. "You can imagine the swearwords in Glasgow if you said to somebody 'I'm going to go on a gemba with you'. We still have one kanban called 'grab and go' because the engineer didn't like the word kanban," jokes Donaldson. Through involving and empowering its workforce, senior management have been able to share in the laughter. Eurocentral has just become the first UK site to win the overall Shingo Prize, a feat powered by a winning combination of management structure and leadership flair. Eurocentral set out in 2012 with a clear strategic vision to become the best newspaper manufacturer in the world, according to Donaldson. There were process, controls and alignment to focus the daily activities of management and shopfloor behind the goal. But there was also something more aspirational. Donaldson explains: "We set out a series of values: the Newsprinters' Way [honesty, dynamism, respect, commitment, motivation, responsibility and flexibility]. We've had these values from the get-go and the people you see on our site believe in them." The values are not displayed in sans serif on some anonymous notice board. At Eurocentral, shopfloor employees are photographed holding up cards displaying each value. The site has also created poster displays of employees demonstrating the seven values on their days off. "It makes sure our values and behaviours are not different from the ones at home," says Donaldson as he shows a slide of an engineering manager come hill climber standing on top of gigantic boulder, presumably to demonstrate motivation and commitment. "It's opened our eyes. We've started to ask our workers: 'what do you do?' We walked by them in the past. It goes back to Deming: unleash their potential. Ask them what else can you do to help the business?" A compelling narrative Newsprinters illustrates the essential precursors of employee engagement – a strong leadership team that delivers a compelling narrative about the organisation and where it's heading; enlightened managers who understand what makes the individuals in their team tick and empower them to deliver; and a public set of values enshrined in day-to-day behaviours. One more ingredient in the winning mix is humility, according Frank Hayden, associate director of GNEO, which provides software solutions to support operational excellence. Hayden, whose CV includes ops excellence projects at Rolls-Royce and Airbus, says: "The best factory I've ever been to was an automotive parts supplier. What struck me was the leaders were completely dedicated to the people who worked for them. It was the best example I've seen of the so-called inverted pyramid. The CEO and senior leadership team were all dressed in company workwear and entirely comfortable on the shopfloor." The scene encapsulates the "high impact, zero ego" leadership style which Hayden claims is a hallmark of world-class manufacturing businesses. "If you're going around thinking you've got all the answers, then that's great. But it's 10 times better when you ask a coaching question and coach the people that work with you until they give you the answer you had, or you get an answer that's even better than the one you thought." Some might shift uncomfortably, tut about soft skills and turn back to the serious matter of fixing the bottleneck on Line 3. Yet, be bold, step up as a leader and engage your employees and you will unlock the biggest blockage in your site's quest for operational excellence. "This sounds like soft stuff. Where are the returns?,"concludes Lyons. "In an average organisation, you have 60% engagement. If you can move that needle to 80%, it would be like having 33% more people around. Can you imagine with the same number of people you can have another third working for you? Just by bringing people to work, their ideas, thoughts and getting them involved. That's the ROI – a 33% return on investment. It's massive." Want to find out more about leadership? Check out these links: ? http://tinyurl.com/ktn5ay2 ? http://tinyurl.com/kgre9oc ? http://tinyurl.com/kzqoce8 From pack leader to shift leader: what wolves teach us about becoming better leaders Whether you're bringing down an elk for dinner or trying to drive operational excellence, success is down to more than the size of your snarl. "The image most people have of wolf packs is of the alpha male that fights his way to the top, but that's been disproven," explains Neil Lewin, learning and development senior consultant at training provider Festo, which uses wolves to teach key management principles as part of its Lesson from Nature training series. Promotion to alpha male involves a shrewd eye for strategy and the innate ability to pick the best team for the job. "Alpha males know the strengths and weaknesses of the pack," says Lewin. "Who's good at what and where to deploy that to best effect. The alpha male will often have a beta male whom he empowers to take the lead in the hunt." Packs also display a decidedly selfless streak. "If you watch wolf packs going though difficult terrain, they'll fall into line and take turns in leading," explains Lewin. "The one at the front breaking the trail has the hardest job, but, rather than say he's the best at that so let him do it all the time, they understand that the animal gets tired and therefore take it in turns." But, while the skillset for leading a successful pack or manufacturing plant looks to have plenty in common, there's one big difference between wolf leader and shift leader, stresses Lewin. "In companies, when an initiative fails, the consequences are not that high. Do people get sacked or demoted? Very rarely. If a wolf pack fails, they go hungry and may die. That's why, if a wolf pack has non-performing members, they don't last very long." For more information on Festo's Lessons from Nature concept, visit http://tinyurl.com/oeqo8z8 Taking the lead: three key leadership qualities 1 Humility: popular myth casts leaders as Bruce Willis's John McLane character in the Die Hard movies – an action hero who pulls off a spectacular solo mission to rescue his stricken colleagues from disaster. In reality, you will find true leaders prefer to appear as the supporting act. Leaders thrive as facilitators, creating opportunities that can be handed over to others to convert and take the credit for. This selfless outlook helps cultivate a whole team of leaders rather than relying on a single mastermind who can, if things don't go according to plan, become a single point of failure. The aim of any leader should be to make his or her own role redundant, according to training consultant Festo in its 'Manage to Engage: the role of managers in employee engagement' white paper. Leave your ego at the door please. 2 Emotional intelligence: great leaders build rapport with employees across the factory hierarchy. They have a strong goal focus, but are able engage others in the strategy by pulling on our hearts as much as our heads. For example, a leader might secure buy-in by making an employee feel integral to project success. 'Look Mike, I need someone with exceptional problem solving skills to revamp the work bays. You're the only guy for the job. Can you help?' Leaders make us feel valued and special and we return that by putting discretionary effort into the task. The goodwill a leader builds up in his or her team can also be invaluable in times of crisis, says Lyons of Boston Scientific. "You don't get to withdraw from the balance in any relationship in life, whether it's you better half or your employees, if you don't have credit in the bank." 3 Courage: with great power comes great responsibility, as the saying goes. That means accepting accountability for the bad as well as the good. A leader takes a rational, problem solving approach to underperformance. Leaders are not found rattling the vending machine and threatening to bang heads together after a botched production run. Instead, they will engage in a tough conversation with team members where they need to. But leaders conduct those discussions calmly, with evidence to support their arguments and by asking the individual to examine the consequences of his or her actions.