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COMMUNICATOR

A quarterly newsletter of the

Work in Northeast Ohio Council (WINOC)

April 2007

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This Issue:

Lean starts at the top with Nordson CEO Ed Campbell... Nordson's Chairman and CEO challenges listeners at March 7th "People Make the Difference" conference sponsored by WIRE-Net and WINOC.

WINOC's priorities for 2007 and beyond... WINOC sets new goals at its Annual Board of Trustees Meeting.

The unique, and not so unique, challenges of implementing Lean practices in a unionized worker environment... what are the manufacturing best practices fo supporting companies with organized workforces?

Improve your leadership by faking it!... practicing perceived behavioral control on the path to improved leadership skills.

Managing the workforce in the 21st century... no, Dorothy, we are not in Kansas anymore!

Found on the web... 

Why Toyota Won and How Toyota Can Lose

Servant Leadership

Advance Northeast Ohio

Coming Events... see right panel.

Lean Starts at the top with Nordson CEO Ed Campbell

Nordson Corporation Chairman and CEO Ed Campbell had a powerful message for attendees at the March 7th "People Make the Difference" Lean Conference (see Flyer here) sponsored by WINOC and WIRE-Net. His address, entitled "The Power of Lean in Promoting Growth and the Role of Champions" covered Nordson's Lean journey to date... Chapter One according to Mr. Campbell,

Nordson's need to change, post-2000, was clear. Pressure on product pricing was unrelenting. The Wal-Mart affect was being felt everywhere. The dot.com bubble had burst. And even China wasn't a cheap enough place to outsource anymore.

So Nordson adopted Lean; because it was necessary and because Lean works!

Mr. Campbell had some important messages for those considering or engaged in a Lean journey. 

Message #1. Regardless of where it starts, it has to be top-down driven in order to make it work and in order to sustain it.

Message #2. Beware of losing momentum; Lean doesn't happen on its own.

Message #3. Lean is a Journey; it has to become a mindset.

Nordson's journey started by first learning Lean, then deploying Lean in the factory, involving suppliers and then deploying it to office processes. 

Nordson's results to date are exactly as advertised by lean practitioners: supplier performance dramatically improved, revenues way up, inventory way down, employee productivity way up and share price doubled! Maybe Ed Campbell's messages should be taken to heart!

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WINOC's Priorities for 2007 and Beyond

At its February 26, 2007 Board of Trustees Meeting WINOC set its priorities for 2007 and beyond. WINOC seeks to leverage core competencies of networking, facilitation and planning to execute three key strategies:

1. Partnering – partner with others to help advance WINOC’s public awareness mission. 

2. New Supports Model – balance our reliance on fee-for-service with more focus on obtaining supporting grants. 

3. Networking – continue to help northeast Ohio manufacturers learn from each other.

The Northeast Ohio Center for Labor Management Cooperation at WINOC will work with other northeast Ohio OLMCP (Ohio Labor Management Cooperation Program) Grantees to help execute these strategies. See information on this Northeast Ohio Network (NeON) here.

WINOC is soliciting additional support to scale up its school building level planning product (see www.sir.winoc.org) and its leadership development assessment, planning and coaching approach and seeks to offer similar products in the Government and manufacturing sector.

We will continue to work with like organizations serving the manufacturing sector, like WIRE-Net.

We will continue to promote Lean and other manufacturing best practices to our manufacturing clients.

We will continue to sponsor and/or co-sponsor what has been a very successful series of Manufacturing Forums since 2005.

We will continue to provide Advisory services to the manufacturing , education and government sectors.

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Coming

Events

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July 31, 2007

Manufacturing Forum at Tremco.

The Tremco Forum/tour will be at their Cleveland East 80th St. roofing materials plant from 8 to 10 am on July 31.

Learn and see how labor and management are working together to enhance their Lean/Six Sigma efforts. 

Attendance will be limited so register early with Bob Meyer here.

Further details, including directions, will be posted at www.winoc.org/programs.html and notice will be sent to COMMUNICATOR Subscribers.

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For other programs and events of potential interest to WINOC COMMUNICATOR Subscribers, such as those sponsored by MAGNET or WINOC Partners, go to our Public Programs Calendar and/or to our Partner News and Events page.

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For further information on Programs and Events contact us at Progrms@winoc.

Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this Newsletter by email.

News@winoc.org

Type "Subscribe" or "Unsubscribe" as your subject.

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The unique, and not so unique, challenges of implementing Lean practices in a unionized worker environment

We had occasion recently to sit down with WINOC Trustee John Brandt, formerly editor-in-chief of IndustryWeek, and now CEO of the Manufacturing Performance Institute, a research and consulting firm. Given his extensive research into manufacturing best practices, we asked him what are the best practices unique to manufacturers with a unionized workforce. As we have observed ourselves, unionized or not, the successful companies do two things: they do continuous improvement in some form (such as Lean) and they implement employee empowerment and/or self-directed work teams.

There is at least the perception that these best practices might be harder to do in a unionized environment. Yes and no.

These practices do not have to run afoul of the labor agreement. Through labor and management cooperation get a labor agreement that embraces these practices. These practices require change management, which in turn require the right "guiding coalition" to implement them. The good news is that in a unionized environment you have union leaders identified who you can bring into the guiding coalition on behalf of employees. [Check out John Kotter's book Leading Change to learn more about the absolute necessity of a guiding coalition.]

"Yeah but, Lean means job loss" you might be thinking. So does going out of business. In the long run continuous improvement creates jobs through increased business. It's paradoxical that a growing business is in a better position to implement Lean (it can sustain the present workforce) yet the business that is not growing needs Lean more urgently.

If these are issues for you, you are not the first to encounter them and you would not be the first to solve them. Do your homework. Benchmark. Get help.

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Improve your leadership by faking it!

Have you ever thought through the differences between education, training and development? Think about it in terms of expected outcomes. Through education we gain new knowledge. Through training we gain new skills. Through development we become someone different, someone better..

We can gain knowledge and skills quickly but over time we can lose both by not putting the knowledge to use and not practicing the skills. With respect to developing ourselves (e.g., into a better leader) the opposite is true... it can not be done quickly and practice is needed not to keep it but to get it.

Take for example the matter of leadership development. The leadership model WINOC espouses is predicated on three premises. 

First, intention is the immediate antecedent of behavior; we must intend (through leadership development planning) to change who we are. 

Second, because many behaviors pose difficulties of execution that may limit volitional control, perceived behavioral control is also important... working on how others perceive us leading to eventually becoming that person. Assessment, especially 360-assessment can help us be reflective about how others see us. 

Third, perseverance is required.

Let's illustrate. One of the strongest, if not the strongest, characteristics of executive level leaders is the characteristic of warmth... it's part of their charisma. I have decided to develop more warmth (intent). I have decided on a number of things to do to become a warmer person. I'm going to smile and greet everyone I meet or even pass near. I'm going to research the personal interests of customers before I meet with them so that I'm not all business. I'm going to dish out three compliments each day. And so on. Question. As I do those things am I a warmer person, really, or am I faking it? I'm faking it of course; I'm not really like that (yet). But I persevere for weeks, months or even longer and the day comes when I no longer have to fake it... I have become like that!

So can you become a better leader by faking it? We suggest that that is the only way you can develop yourself into a better leader. Of course learning about leadership (education) and honing your leadership skills (training) should also be part of your leadership development plan.

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Managing the Workforce of the 21st Century

In the 1939 movie Wizard of Oz Dorothy lives on a farm... a vestige of the 19th century. If agriculture describes the 19th century and industry describes the 20th century what is the one word that best describes the 21st century? Information. Just as industry transformed nations and economies in the 20th century so too information is transforming nations and economies in the 21st century. And the implications for managing the workforce are even more profound.

Consider some of these trends:

• The global economy. In the 20th century USA exports exceeded imports... quite the opposite in the 21st century. In 1992 only thirty countries were connected to the internet... now they all are.

• Job shifts. Percent of manufacturing workers down, Businesses with less than 100 employees up. A ten million shortfall in skilled workers expected by 2010... driven by ever expanding services and information sectors.

• Worker shifts. Older workers are staying in the workforce longer. More single with children workers are in the workforce. The number of women working continues to increase. The workforce continues to increase in diversity.

• Education shifts. Tomorrow's workers started using computers as early as 3-years old; most of today's workers still do not use computers. Essentially all high-value jobs in the 21st century will/do require some form of post-secondary education. There are at least sixteen alternatives to a public education.

• Technology shifts. Your PC has more power than the computers designed into the Space Shuttle. Your PC would have cost millions in the 1980's. Americans now spend more on PC's than on TV sets. Information is doubling every two years. Ninety percent of the information we will use in 2015 does not exist yet.

Wow! 

According to Boyett and Snyder, authors of Twenty-first Century Workplace Trends there are four workplace trends that we must manage in the 21st century.

1. The growing contingent workforce. It's at 20% and growing.

2. Flexplace work. You may need the comfort of your office but 60% of jobs are NOT location critical and telecommuting and working off site are growing trends.

3. Upskilling of jobs and workers. One in four newly created jobs is technical. 

4. Self-managed team. One-third of US companies have more than 50% of their employees participating in self-directed or problem solving teams.

Wow!

WINOC has had occasion to explore these trends using Theory of Constraints. [There is a book by that name by Eliyahu M. Goldratt, author of The Goal.] In Theory of Constraints we inquire as to the extent that these trends are desirable and undesirable and then try to discover which of the undesirable effects are the core issues. From all of this information we can then decide what management strategies are appropriate to manage the workforce in the presence of these trends.

Management strategies should be constructed for each trend. To illustrate let's use the "growing contingent workforce" trend. The desirable effects might include lower overhead, lower liability, lower benefit costs, easy exit/termination, a more diverse employee pool to draw from et cetera. The undesirable effects might be non-unified culture, loyalty issues, revolving door, cost of hiring and training, harder to establish teamwork, lower productivity, limited career paths for workers et cetera. The culture-related effects may well be the core issues that can aggravate or mitigate the other undesirable effects. Management strategies might include developing bench strength, keeping critical skilled in-house, incentivizing contingent workers with repeat business, finding ways to show loyalty to contingent workers et cetera.

The point is that we are not helpless in the face of these trends. We can construct effective strategies to manage the workforce of the twenty-first century.

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Found on the Web...

"Why Toyota Won and How Toyota Can Lose"... check out Jim Womack's April eLetter (here) at Lean Enterprise Inc (http://www.lean.org). Toyota won because of the Toyota Business System. Are recent news recalls a symptom of how Toyota could lose?  "Toyota's real challenge for the future is to introduce and sustain lean management and lean leadership at every point in a rapidly growing organization."

"Servant-Leadership"... Would you believe that there are 110  leadership theories? One of them is Servant-Leadership. Servant leadership embraces ten principles: Listening, Empathy, Healing, Awareness, Persuasion, Conceptualization, Foresight, Stewardship, Commitment and Community. For a succinct description of these principles go here. For a more complete description of Servant Leadership go to the source at the Greenleaf Center for servant-Leadership (Robert Greenleaf was the man who coined the phase Servant-Leadership).

Advance Northeast Ohio... The Fund for Our Economic Future is promoting Advance Northeast Ohio, our region’s economic action plan – Version 1.0. Initiatives for 2007 are being planned in the areas of 

• Marketing to promote the benefits of the region,

•  Minority Business Accelerator to assist mid-sized to large minority-owned enterprises,

• Regional High-Tech and Health Care Jobs Portal,

• Early stage capital fundraising, and

• Pathway Innovation Project that will improve student transition from high school into higher education and/or the job market.

You can follow the progress of these initiatives at the new online website of Advance Northeast Ohio here.

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WINOC activities are partially  subsidized through a grant from the Ohio Labor Management Cooperation Program (OLMCP) of the Ohio Department of Development (ODOD) to operate the Northeast Ohio Center for Labor Management Cooperation (NEOCLMC).