by Gary Mintchell | Dec 22, 2016 | Leadership
Let’s make 2017 the year of leadership in manufacturing. Lean leaderhip.
When we started the magazine I ran editorial for ten years, one of the founders talked about how Lean and Six Sigma were so old that she hoped I wouldn’t write about it. That was in 2003. The topic of Lean thinking is as fresh and useful today as it was then.The good thing is that these are skills that can be learned.
Perhaps for the new year, we all evaluate our leadership and look for ways to elevate our effectiveness in 2017.
A few years ago, a publicist sent me a copy of “Anatomy of a Lean Leader”, by Jerry Bussell with Emily Adams. The book is organized around ten traits of a Lean Leader.
If you are not familiar with Lean, it is a proven effective way of thinking and leading manufacturing organizations. It’s core elements are continuous improvement and respect for people. I’ve included a brief description of the ten traits. Perhaps you can pick up some ideas for self-improvement this year.
Purposeful—this trait relates to having a strong, but brief, mission statement. An example from a medical organization: “Alleviate pain; restore health; extend life.” As Peter Drucker said, your mission statement should fit on the front of a T-shirt.
Respectful—a respectful leader is in service to the people.
Transparently honest—Bussell says, “I found that morals and principles were a source of strength in everyday behaviour.”
Influencer—to affect real, lasting change requires more subtlety and time—it needs influence. Influence means guiding people to finding the right answer on their own, so that the right path becomes their natural inclination.
Continuous Learner—the continuous learner asks questions and relies on observations to hone his or her understanding of the issues. A problem well-defined, I have learned, is a problem half-solved.
Persistence—persistence means showing up every day, ready to tackle problems afresh—even when your entire company seems outmoded.
Holistic Thinker—to think holistically is to think broadly about the implications of an action on the entire complex, interconnected organization. When Paul O’Neil was CEO of Alcoa, he made workplace safety a priority. Seems strange, but thinking holistically, he said, “If we bring our injury rates down, it will be because individuals at this company have agreed to become part of something important. They’ve devoted themselves to creating a habit of excellence.”
Problem Solver—take a methodical approach to problem solving. Define the problem clearly; investigate the current situation; list all the options, including the ideal; plan and implement a solution; and, check results.
Results-Driven—the modern CEO interested in changing her ways to become more results-driven must first look at the organization’s processes. The CEO must have confidence that the organization’s approach to problem solving and analysis is sound. Only then will she have confidence that her results will be reliable and foreseeable. The results-driven leader is also a holistic thinker, working through the process with care and consideration of the whole organization.
Courageous—courage is embracing change that is substantial, unafraid of failure, inclusive, respectful, honest, and persistent.
Make 2017 your year of leadership bringing your organization to growth and success.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 7, 2016 | Commentary, News
Here is a bold manufacturing revival proposal from someone who has been deep in strategy. I worked with John A. Bernaden in his roles with Rockwell Automation and the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition. Now retired, he evidently has time on his hands to think. I saw his blog post go up before he sent me his press release.
[Disclaimer: Bernaden is retired and no longer works for either organization nor speaks for them.]
Not one to be bashful, Bernaden begins, “Wall Street’s short-sighted leadership of U.S. Manufacturing has created a crisis!”
“They reap; but they do not sow. They restructure to take billions; but they do not reinvest to make trillions. They destroy industries; but they do not build new ones,” said John A. Bernaden, co-founder and past vice chairman of the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition, Inc., a Washington DC nonprofit group.
Past bipartisan 20th Century U.S. industrial policies and Congressional programs have been complacent in creating this crisis, he continued.
“We need new leadership to create and construct a new era of revolutionary, highly-automated, IT-driven, super-productive, 21st Century Smart Manufacturing with a long-term vision to make America’s manufacturing great again,” Bernaden said.
Other nations have long-term policies and long-range programs to more smartly support their manufacturers at home and abroad, he said pointing to a new “Policy Makers Guide to Smart Manufacturing” published last week by the Information Technology and Information Foundation (ITIF), a Washington DC think-tank. The report provides a comprehensive summary of the long-term Smart Manufacturing policies and long-range programs established by other governments around the world, most notably by China, Germany, Japan and Korea.
“As a leader who values building things, President-elect Trump will soon have an opportunity to smartly lead our nation’s Manufacturing, to renovate the world’s oldest factories, as well as to start a construction wave of smart new factories and plants in every State in America,” said Bernaden.
To achieve the President’s huge vision to make American manufacturing great again, Bernaden drafted a bold $2 trillion to $3 trillion U.S. Manufacturing Stimulus Package with almost no cost to taxpayers for Congress to consider that he released today.
Here is the gist of his proposal. Comments welcome, but I’d suggest making them on John’s site. I did graduate studies in political science, but I have little appetite for politics anymore. The refreshing thing about this proposal, however, is that I find even “conservative” business leaders going to Washington or their state capitals with their collective hands out wanting a gift. This proposal supposedly eschews that.
Between $2 trillion to $3 trillion from repatriated corporate wealth stranded overseas could catalyze a construction wave of between 2,000 to 3,000 new factories — highly-automated, super-productive smart plants, via a stimulus package developed by Bernaden, co-founder and past vice chairman of the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition, Inc., a five-year-old Washington DC non-profit group. Disclaimer, Bernaden is no longer affiliated with either Rockwell or SMLC. This is his proposal all by himself.
Corporations that repatriate past overseas earnings and purchase 20-year USA Industrial Bonds will annually receive 1/20th of their investment totally tax-free, although at a zero interest rate. USA Industrial Bond funds will then become 20-year interest-free loans for States to use in stimulating the construction of new smart factories, mainly by midsize manufacturers.
To avoid federal or state governments picking “winners and losers” which has been a historic failing of past U.S. industrial policies, according to Bernaden, each state’s Governor will appoint 15-member commissions, chiefly consisting of manufacturing and business leaders, to make loan decisions.
State commissions will make loans that range from $500 million to $5 billion to construct smart factories, with typical costs averaging $1 billion each. If multinational corporations repatriate $2 trillion tax-free by investing in these USA Industrial Bonds, a state like Alabama’s share will be $34 billion to loan to business leaders who could construct about 34 smart manufacturing plants, according to Bernaden.
American midsize manufacturers, in a “Mittelstand” movement, are expected to construct most of these new factories because of this unprecedented access to billion-dollar-size, long-term interest-free loans. In Germany, the “Mittelstand” or midsize manufacturers, are renown as the engine of their economy. The Trump-size stimulus plan is also expected to create millions of new jobs needed to operate as well as supply, support and service these newly constructed 21st Century smart factories
[Gary talking again] I find the interesting thing about this proposal to be reference to a highly successful strategy from Germany. The US seems to venerate hugeness. In the common business mind small to medium businesses exist for the purpose of acquisition to make larger companies even larger. But this inevitably stifles innovation and competition. Things grow stagnant.
Unfortunately, I doubt that a politician exists that has a clue about the German Mittelstand. Further, none seem to have any clues about manufacturing or technology. We elect lawyers and career politicians who in many cases never worked a day in their lives building things. Prove me wrong, I dare you. [Please note: in this entire conversation I’ve not said anything about the opinion spectrum or political parties.]
Further unfortunately, I don’t find Mr. Trump to be a manufacturing guy. He negotiates deals, buys properties, builds hotels and other buildings. However, he claims true religion on helping the manufacturing guy. Here’s hoping this proposal gets a little visibility and at the least spurs some conversations around the country.
by Gary Mintchell | Nov 9, 2016 | Automation, News, Software
There is a discernible change in atmosphere around Rockwell Automation these days. The statement is not meant in anyway to reflect on former President and CEO (and still chairman) Keith Nosbusch. Newly elected President and CEO Blake Moret appears to be settling in to the new role, and he brings a distinctly new personality to leadership.
I was greatly honored that due to some schedule changes that created disruption with the usual media interviews on Tuesday he still worked out some time late Monday afternoon for a private interview.
When I left my last position, I searched for a focus and name for a new, Web-based media site. The Manufacturing Connection made the most sense—and I could get the domain name. Then I went to the first Rockwell Automation event following and found a new theme—Connected Enterprise. We’re all thinking about the importance of connections.
Moret started with the Connected Enterprise theme. His vision for the company’s direction includes and expands upon the theme. It’s not only EtherNet/IP (they still talk about “standard, unmodified Ethernet”). Networking is important. Beyond the network are connecting people, projects, services.
Not only did Moret present the importance of the Information Solutions business, the topic came up later in a general session. Rockwell has definitely grown the capabilities of its software solutions. Its analytics capabilities appear to be robust (Rockwell is using it internally in its own manufacturing processes) with the goal of continually improving its ease of use.
The foundation of Rockwell Automation’s Connected strategy lies with plant floor devices. “Since the majority of devices come from us,” Moret said, “we can connect easily to obtain the information necessary for the MES and enterprise levels.”
Several integrators pinged me before my trip to ask me to investigate the repercussions of the acquisition of system integrator Maverick Technologies. “We’ve always had a dual approach,” Moret told me. (That reminded me of my sales engineer days in the 90s when I had Rockwell quote a couple of projects as the integrator.) “We have no intention of walking away from our partners. But there are customers who want a single source of responsibility. We can handle those projects now.”
“And, by the way,” he added, “we doubled the number of Chemical Engineers in the company with this acquisition. We added a lot of domain expertise.”
The transition seems to be smooth so far. Leadership changes are a critical event in an organization. Handled well, the organization gains renewed vitality and direction. Rockwell Automation is on the right path.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 29, 2016 | Education, Productivity
“I am still learning” wrote Michelangelo at age 87. That’s one of my goals in life.
Seth Godin ran across this idea from the other direction. He wrote this week in Fully Baked:
In medical school, an ongoing lesson is that there will be ongoing lessons. You’re never done. Surgeons and internists are expected to keep studying for their entire career—in fact, it’s required to keep a license valid.
Knowledge workers, though, the people who manage, who go to meetings, who market, who do accounting, who seek to change things around them—knowledge workers often act as if they’re fully baked, that more training and learning is not just unnecessary but a distraction.
The average knowledge worker reads fewer than one business book a year.
On the other hand, the above-average knowledge worker probably reads ten.
Show me your bookshelf, or the courses you take, or the questions you ask, and I’ll have a hint as to how much you care about leveling up.
Where Do You Get Information?
I wrote yesterday’s post about getting information spurred by the thoughts of Jessica Lessin, founder of The Information. This is a Silicon Valley technology news site that is funded by subscriptions. No advertising. No worrying about pressure from advertisers to write something nice about them.
She recently wrote about the recent trend toward company CEOs or CTOs writing a piece, say on Medium, and then sending links and a quote to a few “trusted” sources in the media. She was seeing these stories picked up and passed along verbatim. No analysis or value add.
That is just what the PR people were hoping. How do they get their message out unfiltered. I’ve been advising marketing people along this path for years.
I knew a guy in my business similar to me who would just copy the press release and call it an article.
I have no problem learning about new products and solutions and technologies in the market from the source. Note: You do have to wade through an awful lot of hype and superlative words to get to the news. I don’t advise that, but marketing people seem to have no confidence in what they are peddling, so they resort to verbal overkill.
But when you go to a magazine or other source (like mine), you surely expect some perspective and analysis.
Where do you go to get this information? What do you trust?
Speaking of information
This piece in the MIT Sloan Management Review, Why Learning is Central to Sustained Innovation, seems to fit in with these thoughts. How do you create a learning environment for your people development culture?
Many managers think they can create better products just by improving the development process or adding new tools. But it’s skilled people, not processes, that create great products.
The authors, Michael Balle’, James Morgan, and Durward K. Sobek II, note, “We frequently visit companies where managers say they want to improve their product development capability. they want to learn how learn principles and practices can improve their ability to innovate while reducing costs and improving quality. When we inquire about their approach to human resource development, we often hear, as one vice president of product development recently told us, that ‘of course, people are our most important asset. Se we recruit and hire the top people from the best universities and get out of their way.’
However, the only things many companies actually do under the heading of people development is to have an annual training-hours target and a travel budget for sending employees to conferences. If managers really thought that people were their greatest asset and that it’s the energy and creativity of employees that drives innovation, why do companies do so little? Why doesn’t growing and developing people excite them just as much as installing new additive manufacturing equipment or the latest cloud-based collaboration tool?”
It takes leadership concerned with a learning culture, beginning with the leaders. Are they always learning? Reminds me of James Truchard, founder of National Instruments. He had such tremendous curiosity. He passed that along to the organization in many ways. Everyone wanted to be like that.
Millennials and learning
In his On The Edge Blog, Keith Campbell, wrote:
Is a culture of entitlement contributing to the workforce skills gap?
There has been a lot of discussion of the entitlement mentality of today’s young people as they leave college and expect that they are owed a well-paying job starting somewhere near the top. On today’s news, there was a discussion about some interns who decided that they were entitled to a work environment that operated the way they wanted it to, and they proceeded to challenge the employer’s policies (yes, the same employer that was kind enough to give them their first work experience). They were summarily fired. I was recently asked by a parent to provide some guidance to a son who had received a mechanical engineering degree, but had no job. I suggested that he consider companies such as packaging machinery manufacturers or packagers – not only because they are hiring mechanical engineers, but because they offer exciting careers. But after a few minutes of speaking with him, I learned that he knew more about how the engineering workplace operated than I did (after 30 years), and he felt entitled to wait till some job came around that suited his vision of engineering.
Less often discussed is the entitlement mentality of employers. I see employers also acting as though they are entitled to the workers that they want, when they want them and with the skills that they need. There was a day when there were multiple qualified applicants for each open manufacturing job. Employers had to use various screening mechanisms to pick from among the qualified. But those days seem to be behind us. Automation has raised the bar for entry level employment while high schools have arguably lowered the bar for graduation and reduced the diversity of programs, driven in large part by increasing state and national control. The gap between the unemployed and unfilled manufacturing jobs is growing wider.
I’m currently sitting in a conference session. A speaker mentioned about Millennials and their work ethic. Sounded like Campbell above. I think that is a misplaced thought and terrible generalization. Remember when we talked about Gen X and the “slacker” mentality? I’m in a room about evenly divided with Boomers and GenXers. The GenX guys and gals are doing some really good engineering. But I remember when many of them asked how many months it would take before they would be CEO. Sounds more like the exuberance of youth than a generation thing.
The question remains. How do you keep learning? Where do you get information? How are you helping others learn?
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 31, 2016 | News
James Truchard, “Dr. T”, co-founder and CEO of National Instruments has announced his retirement effective January 1, 2017. This is no surprise. The company has transitioned from a small, hungry, engineering-driven company to a large corporation during the past 5–7 years. It appeared during NI Week 2015 that a transition was imminent. Also no surprise is his replacement, and the person I perceive as the architect of the new NI, Alex Davern, who has been COO/CFO.
Dr. Truchard will remain as Chairman of the Board. The Board of Directors plans to appoint Mr. Davern to the Board by the end of January 2017. This transition is being undertaken as part of the Board’s succession planning process.
“It has always been my goal for NI to be a company built to last,” said Truchard. “Over the last decade, in the face of a weak industrial economy I have focused my efforts on helping to ensure that we were making the long-term strategic investments necessary to set NI up for future growth. I believe these major platform investments, in key areas like PXI modular instrumentation, RF measurements, CompactRIO, and our entire software platform, will continue providing NI with disruptive platform capabilities needed to expand our long-term market opportunity. Given our significant progress, much of which was showcased at NIWeek earlier this month, I believe NI is well-positioned for the coming decade.”
Truchard continues, “It is the right time for me to retire as CEO. I have worked with Alex Davern for more than 20 years. He is an exceptional leader and business strategist, with a demonstrated track record of success. I have complete confidence in Alex and the rest of the senior leadership team at NI to continue delivering on our consistent track record of innovation, growth and profitability.”
“As a company built to last, Dr. Truchard has built an extremely capable senior leadership team over the years, and I am honored and excited to lead NI into its next phase of growth and profitability,” said Davern. “Our differentiated platform and ecosystem coupled with our strong business model, give us the opportunity to be the preeminent company in test, measurement and control.” Davern has served as Chief Operating Officer of NI since 2010, and Chief Financial Officer since 1997. Davern, and the rest of the senior management team, including Jeff Kodosky, co-founder, Fellow, and Board member of NI; Eric Starkloff, Executive VP of Global Sales and Marketing; Scott Rust, Senior VP of R&D; and Duncan Hudson, Chief Platform Officer, have over 100 years of experience at NI, working closely with Dr. Truchard.
“Countless entrepreneurs have great ideas and start companies, but very few have accomplished what Jim has – from moonlighting out of our garage and kitchen in 1976, to self-funding the business, to a successful IPO in 1995, to the $1B+ revenue company we are today with over 7,000 employees around the globe,” said Jeff Kodosky, NI co-founder, Fellow and Board member. “But more than just financial success for the company, what truly stands out is the impact that Jim and NI have had on engineering and science over these last four decades. The innovation he has enabled across so many industries inspires me to this day. I look forward to his ongoing contributions as Chairman.”
In light of Mr. Davern’s promotion, the company will start the process of considering candidates to serve as Chief Financial Officer and expects to complete the process by the end of 2016.
I had the pleasure of chatting with Dr. T a little every year at NI Week. He impressed me with his immense curiosity and humbleness. He’s a fantastic leader. I feel a sense of loss at the way NI used to be, but it is positioned to survive long term as an engineering leader. I missed this year’s NI Week. Judging from the announcements, the company’s direction and mine have diverged. But it is still a company to watch.
And all the best to Dr. T in his retirement.
