Plant Services - August 2008 - (Page 53) better leader and manager. He appears to be someone who chips away at the edges of a problem instead of diagnosing and repairing the cause. He was poking around at symptoms by hiring a marketing consultant. The buck stops at the top person, who must understand the business and have skills needed to achieve high performance levels. It’s likely that Dan lacked either experience or knowledge about how to manage operations effectively, which resulted in poor revenue performance. If Les were a solid leader, he’d have assessed Dan’s performance and either helped him to develop or he would have found a more qualified manager. When Les hired Sara to shore up sales, he did so without any objective evidence that it would solve the problem. Hiring a marketing consultant was insufficient. It’s likely that Dan wasn’t controlling costs, or maintaining critical production assets. When equipment isn’t maintained properly, it becomes unreliable, leading to missed deliveries and higher production costs that limit pricing flexibility. A leader needs to master five areas: technical expert, coach, manager, architect and trailblazer. Technical expertise means having a thorough understanding of your areas of responsibility – not necessarily being the absolute expert. Coaching means motivating and professionally developing your team. A good manager is a good coordinator, anticipating what is needed and getting resources. Also, managing is ensuring policies and procedures are followed. An architect constantly looks for ways to improve policies and processes: supporting or leading continuous improvement efforts through Lean, process mapping, Root Cause Analysis, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis, and so forth. Trailblazers look beyond what’s currently being done, growing an organization’s capabilities by step-changes in methods, materials and technologies. Both Les and Dan would benefit from a leadership self-assessment. The issues surrounding the conservative owner and the appropriateness of the relationship between Dan and Sara would fade in importance if business results earned respect within the corporation. Yes, the owner can have a significant influence over the culture of an organization. However, people are free to take part in that culture in exchange for their compensation; two operations people confirmed this by voting with their feet. If Les and Dan had better leadership skills, they probably wouldn’t need a marketing consultant and they might not be putting their jobs, and those of other people, at risk. An effective leader would have addressed the noncompliant behavior with specific language that delineated consequences for future occurrences, and he would have acted on those consequences. Instead, Les engaged in repeated, ineffective “lines in the sand.” August 2008 As for Dan, he’s a senior member of the plant’s staff. How can he expect others to follow policies and procedures if he doesn’t? With regard to Sara, I learned a long time ago as a military service member that to preserve integrity, when faced with an ethical or moral choice, you must choose the path that eliminates the appearance of impropriety. Respect the client’s policies; don’t maneuver around them. Both Dan and Sara should have either discontinued the marketing services contract or immediately ended even the appearance of an inappropriate relationship. Whether there was pregnancy, miscarriage or crossdressing involved is immaterial. Have integrity and avoid the appearance of an impropriety. Tom Moriarty, PE, CMRP Organizational Reliability Professional Services Consultant (321) 773-3356 tjmpe@alidade-mer.com An academician says: If you own a business, you have latitude in the rules you set for your employees. You can have them dress up like chickens as one restaurant owner has done, refuse to employ smokers (as we saw in a recent case), or even ban dating between employees. These “no dating,” and “husband-wife” bans have a long history. Some companies have prohibited engaged or There are five areas a leader needs to master. married couples from working there, and other companies allow married couples to work, but not in the same department. Others allow working in the same department as long as one of the pair wasn’t supervising the other. These bans aren’t that common anymore, but they were instituted with good reason. Regarding the “no dating” bans, many sexual harassment complaints are against (usually male) supervisors who ask for dates or sexual favors from (usually female) employees, who might think that she will be fired if she complains and if she doesn’t comply with the supervisor’s wishes. Moreover, the employee might receive better job assignments or pay because of the relationship with the boss. This might have occurred in the Dan and Sara case, or at least other employees might have perceived it to have occurred. So, point one is that Acme’s owner is within his rights to prohibit dating between employees. Point two is that Acme probably is located in a state that permits “firing at will.” Acme doesn’t need a reason to fire either Dan or Sara (assuming they aren’t covered by a union contract 53 www.PLANTSERVICES.com http://www.PLANTSERVICES.com
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