Yesterday I arrived back at
a consulting engagement with an MRO contractor that I have been consulting for
in the past. Since I hadn’t been here in
a while, this trip was to see just how they are sustaining the wonderful
improvements that were put in place over the course of 3-4 months. This contractor had established an all hourly
core team of Mechanics, Avionics Techs, Supply Personnel, Flight Line people,
etc. a true cross-section of the work force.
I had explained how important it was to form this group and actively
listen to their improvement ideas and potential solutions for improving the
availability of aircraft for this DOD organization. Active listening is the practice by which the
management of the organization not only listens to ideas and solutions, but
implements them as long as they are compliant with company and customer
requirements. This particular contractor
had been struggling to deliver “x” number of aircraft to their customer every
day. They had been using enormous
amounts of mandatory overtime in an attempt to meet their contractual requirements
and it simply wasn’t working. The
mandatory overtime, as well as the past management practice of “command and
control” had created a serious morale problem.
In very short order (i.e. about
4 weeks into this engagement) after implementing active listening, everything
changed quite dramatically. This
contractor went from chronically missing their aircraft availability to levels
that not only met requirements, but was recognized by their customer as a
quantum leap above how they had been performing. In addition, this contractor was also able to
move from mandatory overtime to voluntary overtime and in fact had reduced
their overtime in the neighborhood of 50%!
In so doing, the workforce morale improved dramatically! So how is it that by using active listening
that results like this can happen so quickly?
The answer to that question comes from a book entitled The One Minute
Manager written by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson first released way back in
1981. I remember reading this book and
the message I took away from it was this…..People
who feel good about themselves, produce good results. These authors wanted their readers to help
people reach their full potential by catching them doing something right.
Since then, I have used the
teachings of this book to my advantage by creating an environment where people
have the opportunity to feel good about themselves. This is the reason behind the formation of
the all hourly core team to present and implement their great ideas and
solutions for problems that have existed for years. Problems and barriers that get in the way of
success! These teams always deliver great results if their
ideas and solutions are implemented as presented and not variations of their ideas. These core teams are made up of the true
subject matter experts (SMEs) within a company.
The people charged with producing products, delivering a service,
designing new products, etc. They are
SME’s because they live in the processes and experience the negative impact of
ill-fated policies and procedures that have been in effect for years.
I had the pleasure yesterday
of sitting in on a core team meeting and I have to tell you that it was a very
pleasurable experience. Because
management had taken the concept of active listening to heart, this core team
had confidence that their ideas and solutions to problems would not only be
heard, but would be implemented intact.
Because of this confidence in the management team, the ideas brought
forward were bold and beautiful. It was
apparent to me that if the core team was a cross-section of the work force,
then there was no longer a morale problem in this organization.
They were indeed producing good results because they were feeling good
about themselves and that was the message of Blanchard and Johnson over 30
years ago.
I would be remiss if I told
you that the concept of active listening was the only ingredient we injected
into this company, because it wasn’t. Early
on I spent one meeting with the core team teaching them about the concept of focus and leverage. I taught them about the simplicity of
identifying the system constraint and then focusing their efforts only
there. Once this team identified the
system constraint and focused their thoughts and improvement efforts on it, wonderful
things happened almost immediately. So
if your company is floundering, late on deliveries, having quality issues,
wasting time on overtime, etc. try these simple concepts and you’ll see the
difference. Focus and leverage plus
active listening is a combination that always works for me.
Bob Sproull
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