Every organization has its own language. At RBB we use the term swarm to describe how we behave whenever some task or activity needs extra help. But don’t think of kids swarming on
 the beach on a summer afternoon. Think instead of piranhas attacking a fresh kill.

Our own special notion of swarming grew out of RBB’s implementation of LEAN manufacturing methods. Simply put, LEAN is all about eliminating anything a customer is unwilling to pay for. Like most small companies who bought into the idea of continuous improvement decades ago, RBB embraced LEAN.

Unfortunately, early results were limited: we implemented many projects (known as kaizen events) before we discovered that LEAN in a job shop environment is simply not the same as LEAN anywhere else. We found that we needed to swarm.

The basic idea is this: we perpetually reassign our people and other resources to where the work is temporarily heaviest. Since job shops like RBB operate in a world with unpredictable/unforecasted demand, we cannot afford to design a rigid, hyper-efficient system for satisfying customer orders. As with card games like gin rummy, the best hand is the one with the most tactical options as new cards turn up. If you’ve ever waited in vain for that one right card to appear, you know what I mean.

As our daily shop floor situation changes, we reconfigure and reallocate resources once again. That’s the other dynamic of any swarm in nature – it changes direction quickly and seemingly effortlessly.

Swarm Killers

Swarming behavior is easy to recognize – you know it when you see it – but it’s almost impossible to describe. So we don’t spend time precisely defining it; instead whenever we see things that prevent us from doing a fast, smooth job of swarming, we take action to knock down these barriers.

Examples of things that can’t coexist with good swarming techniques include:

• Long product changeovers
• Stubborn, inflexible employees
• Stubborn, inflexible equipment
• Specialists that don’t cross-train or share knowledge (aka egos)
• Complicated procedures
• Too many levels in the company hierarchy
• Lack of cash, materials
• Customers who don’t pay their bills
• High employee turnover

All of these cause the swarm to stop everything and ask for directions.

Where Will It Go?

Like real swarms, once the energy is flowing nicely it can be amazing where it will spread. Not satisfied with just swarming on the shop floor, RBB-ers decided to keep going and swarm the new product quoting process as well. And the product documentation system. And the purchasing of materials. And month-end closing. A highly motivated and skilled workforce – with few energy barriers – can combine the best LEAN principles with a hungry attitude.

I can share from personal experience that watching a swarm at work in your company is a joy to behold. But be prepared for the morning when you realize that your job as a leader has completely changed. You now work for the swarm. Your new role: point the swarm, clear away their obstructions, and lead the cheers.

Bruce Hendrick has been a leader of major change in corporations and small business alike for the past 25 years; currently he's the owner of RBB Systems and Organizational Development Services, LLC; noted speaker, author, active church member and community volunteer.

We wrap up this series on job shop leadership by considering a topic that pervades many shops – something that could be driving employee behavior more than we realize.

Look at the picture; what do we see? It’s the beautiful bride, of course. We note in passing that she’s wearing a veil but take little notice of it. It’s not something that would distract most of us. That’s how it should be, but what does this have to do with leadership in job shops? Well, let’s look at two images found in job shops the world over – the ubiquitous organization chart and the process flow diagram of the business.

The org chart conveys general responsibilities, job titles, who reports to whom, what the official “chain of command” is supposed to be, and related information. It is helpful for quickly communicating relative levels of influence, especially with people that are outside of the organization.

Process flow diagrams show the sequence of activities. The one shown here is the most basic, for illustration purposes. These are less common than org charts but every enterprise can make one readily.  It’s what the people are actually doing each day to serve customers.

Here is RBB’s org chart. I’ll bet that yours looks similar.

Which One Is The Bride?

Okay, so now think about this: of the two drawings above, which one is the bride and which one is the veil?

This is not an obvious answer. Many people don’t see it, but a moment’s reflection reveals the answer: the business process is the bride! It’s what really matters! The health of the business depends on how things flow, whereas the org chart is simply the way we have divvied up our talents to accomplish these processes.

In your own shop, how often has your process changed compared to your org chart? Think of it this way. The chain of command matters, yes, but only in the successful accomplishment of the mission. As often as necessary we reorganize ourselves to accomplish our mission; we never change our mission to accommodate our structure.

So What?

A reasonable question. This is what I tell the folks at RBB – “Take care of the bride! Keep her healthy. Never let the veil – the org chart – get in the way of a happy bride. Make things a little bit better for the bride every day.”

Unfortunately this is a lot easier said than done, mostly because we’ve picked up some bad habits at less functional places along the way. When folks get distracted by the veil they do things like:

·     Avoid owning a problem completely (it’s not my place…)

·     Pass the buck (it’s her job…)

·     Sit on important but unasked questions

·     Craft “ticking” emails to others, copying bosses (hey, I’m a team player…)

·     Confuse influence with authority

·     Assume their value to the organization is defined by what org chart box they’re in

Through The Veil

Employees at vibrant, growing job shops look through the veil and concentrate on the work at hand. They don’t worry much about who “should” do what, according to Hoyle. Get the job done right and quickly is their mantra. They sense the health of the bride (the daily business) and act, even if it means apologizing for overstepping their authority on occasion. 

Just as important – managers and supervisors foster this environment. They have small egos and toes (it’s hard to step on them). Risks taken for the bride’s benefit are rewarded, not punished. They don’t take themselves too seriously.

In these healthy shops the org chart is seen as a communication tool, nothing more. They refuse to let it dictate their behavior.

At RBB we move heaven and earth to get our small batch customers what they need, when they need it. Our customers don’t care much about how we’re organized, do they? 

I leave you with a final challenge. What are you or your people doing this week that serves the veil instead of the bride? And are you okay with that?

Bruce Hendrick has been a leader of major change in corporations and small business alike for the past 25 years; currently he's the owner of RBB Systems and Organizational Development Services, LLC; noted speaker, author, active church member and community volunteer.

None of us are as smart as all of us – so says the well-known Japanese proverb. And while this holds true in every organization, job shops in particular must take special heed. 

RBB focuses on low volume electronics: what we like to call “small batches.”  We assemble and test our customers’ high tech products on a made-to-order basis. It is common for our 40-person workforce (not counting support staff) to run 200+ highly intricate, mission-critical jobs through the shop at any one time.  That’s a lot of opportunity for our employees to use their smarts!

As we’ve discussed earlier in this series, a mission, a vision, and a daily dashboard can do wonders to get everyone on the same page. These tools help crystallize what it takes for the business to win – and gives us a scoreboard for how we’re doing. Which is good. But, alas, once again, it ain’t enough.

Crunch Time

Three frogs sat on a log. One decides to jump in the pond. How many are left? Well, three, of
course. Deciding to jump… is not jumping. Knowing does not always translate into doing, as we realize only too well. The leadership tools described above prepare folks to make the right call at crunch time. But actually leaving the log is what matters.

More than at many other places, the scarcest resource in job shop environments is usually time. With so many jobs running at once, and so many variables in play, the performance of any one job – and the satisfaction of that customer – often comes down to whether one single employee feels free to make the difference at “crunch” time. And most every job has it. That pivotal moment when someone must step up and do the often-invisible-next-right-thing or the job will suffer a quality, cost, or responsiveness problem.

The crunch time, crucial moment will likely come for somebody else on the next job. So it’s not enough for most of our people to “get” it. We all need to; we sink or swim together!

Do your folks pull the trigger? Do they feel comfortable making decisions and immediately executing on them? Must they check with the hierarchy first or inform them later, if at all?

Is shop floor (or kitchen, or wherever else) risk-taking and initiative feared? Welcomed? Encouraged? Rewarded? Even taught? The answer to this question will determine how far employees will stretch their necks at crunch time. It may be saving and building your company right now, one job at a time, without you even knowing it. 

Or it may be the culprit behind some chronic problems that you’ve been attempting to solve with technology, or high sales growth, or org chart calisthenics. 

Whether it’s small volume electronics or some other type of job shop, in future blog entries I will tackle a number of proven strategies to help induce our frogs to leave their logs.  For now though, I invite you to get out there and get some honest answers about whether your folks truly feel free to do whatever is needed at your “crunch” time. Then just go do the next-right-thing.

Bruce Hendrick has been a leader of major change in corporations and small business alike for the past 25 years; currently he's the owner of RBB Systems and Organizational Development Services, LLC; noted speaker, author, active church member and community volunteer.

High Wire Act

Even the best run job shops should not underestimate their level of employment paranoia. Sometimes it’s our best people who can get very antsy, very quickly. It doesn’t take much.

In my experience, the more finely-tuned an operation we have, the closer to the edge we are likely to live. Most job shops must:

• Quote aggressively to get the work,
• Squeeze the highest gross margin out of every single job,
• Staff for the “most likely” amount of work (knowing that we will usually be under- or over-staffed),
• Invest in costly equipment and tools to remain competitive… well before we have enough business to truly justify it,
• Pour a massive amount of information into everyone involved, and
• Do the above better than everyone else in the industry.

Sprinkle in a few years of chronic economic pressure and we test even the most resilient co-worker.

To Look Or Not To Look

So if we acknowledge that there is well hidden fear and uneasiness even with good people, good processes, and good business prospects, then we have a choice to make. Do we openly face and discuss the unsettling aspects of our situation or do we shield our employees from the stress and distraction of our business realities so they can focus on their immediate tasks? 

I pose this as a viable choice but in truth it is not. Workers have lost their innocence; few are willing to fully commit to organizations unwilling to level with them. Plus, in the absence of actual information, folks assume the worst anyhow. So most progressive job shops tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, whether they are assembling printed circuit boards (pcba’s), building custom airplanes or making deli sandwiches.

The practical question becomes how to quickly convey the shop’s complex status and direction in ways that everyone understands. If I were on a tightrope (not gonna happen), I would have just three urgent demands that would really decide my stress level! Smart job shops figure out how to communicate this information simply and constantly:

1. Am I safe and secure right now?
2. What can I do to get across my rope (week, month, etc.) safely?
3. What upcoming conditions must I deal with?

1-2-3 Go!

RBB has created a dashboard, published daily by 9:00 a.m., which allows every employee to tell how we are doing and what the near future looks like – while there is still time to change it! Its core content is these four charts. (Real dollar figures are used but have been removed for this publication.) Let me explain.

This was the RBB dashboard on May 31^st, 2012. In Chart A, the shaded area shows our planned shipments (USD). Green dots are added daily showing actual results. At a glance we know whether we are ahead or behind schedule. The blue “ideal pace” line reminds us to try to ship the same amount of dollars every day (impossible in a job shop but still a cool goal). Chart A says that in May we stayed very close to schedule and even shipped a few added circuit boards.

Chart B shows the Gross Margin (= price – [material + labor]) of what we are shipping. The MTD (month-to-date) bar is our current status. Simple: Green is best and the higher the better.

Chart C weaves Charts A and B together. Folks understand that gross margin dollars are what we use to pay for the built-in costs of the business. Every morning we see whether our shipment profitability is high enough to cover the fixed costs of the day. If the green dots are above the shaded area on Chart C, we are safely expecting to make money this month. The green line at the top is the projection of monthly profit if we ship everything in the schedule and if the MTD gross margin holds all month. You can see that May was a joy. 

Looking ahead then, Chart D shows the actual backlog of booked orders, by month. The pattern here is typical of most job shops: where it looks like demand disappears after the short term. Serious faith that new orders will come in is required (more on this in a future post)! Chart C says that at least June looks busy.

Now fast-forward to mid-June and let’s take another look.

 In 5 seconds, we note many things:

1. Shipments are on schedule! (Chart A)
2. The last day of June will be a VERY busy day. (Chart A)
3. So far the gross margin is still in the green but it’s weaker than May. (Chart B)
4. At this moment June’s profitability projection looks dicey. (Chart C)
5. July’s orders have filled in nicely; August is even looking great. (Chart D)

Bottom line: to finish out June well, we need to make sure everything in the schedule ships and yet do it without raising costs (through overtime, etc.).

And this is the whole point. A simple, powerful dashboard turns every staffer into a business person. Each employee knows what needs to happen to maneuver this month’s tightrope safely. And once we get across, as the new orders dictate, we get to do it all over again.

This ongoing tension is the fun, the thrill, and the stress of the average job shop.  Dealing with it as a true team of unified business people – now that’s the real victory.  And yeah, it was a squeaker, but we saved June.

Bruce Hendrick has been a leader of major change in corporations and small business alike for the past 25 years; currently he's the owner of RBB Systems and Organizational Development Services, LLC; noted speaker, author, active church member and community volunteer.

It came as a shock when Glinda the Good Witch of the North told Dorothy that she “always had the power” to go back to Kansas. Do you remember her answer when Scarecrow asked why Dorothy had not been told this before? “Because she would not have believed me; she had to learn it for herself.”  Which pretty much sums up my life and career.

Like Dorothy, I am compelled to try things my own way before I surrender to the counsel of others. One of these hard lessons was in the need for a company Vision. Oh what pain and strife I could have saved myself and my coworkers! If only! 

In Part 1 of this series, I argued that it is vital for any job shop to create a strong separation from its competitors via a crystal clear Mission for existing in the marketplace. But a good Mission can’t do all the heavy lifting; a Vision is also required.

Let’s not spend the time to describe the process for writing a business Vision. Any search on vision will provide all the detail you need on how to write one. The “How” is not really the problem anyway, is it? It’s the “Why.” And the “do I have to.” Here’s what I’ve learned at our small batch electronics company:

1. Most job shop leaders already carry in their heads some kind of vision or prediction of the future. It may not be written, but it is there. It’s what fires them up, fuels them to face daily risks, and signals them when the company is off track.
2. Employees cannot read the mind(s) of their leaders.
3. When employees don’t exactly know what the official company vision is, they naturally make up their own versions. 
4. These competing visions sound perfectly reasonable but they are often based on bad, outdated, or very individualized assumptions. 
5. Leaders spend a great deal of their time correcting erroneous decisions or behaviors.

Bottom line: The absence of a galvanizing vision causes our people to take the company in their own preferred direction – in other words, we get a perpetual tug-of-war. 

Ruby Slippers

I recommend the simple yet powerful visioning process used by the smart people at Zingerman’s. According to Zingerman’s, all good visions are:

• Inspiring: Others are excited about the vision and want to go there.
• Strategically sound: It might be a stretch, but it is do-able.
• Documented: It’s in writing.
• Communicated: Everyone knows about it.

Now that we know the why and the how, we gotta somehow overcome our reluctance to commit our vision to paper. 

Here are some of the excuses I’ve seen (and used) over the years:

Excuse 1:  But I’m a lousy writer.

Excuse 2:  What if my best people don’t agree with the Vision?

Excuse 3:  But I don’t want to choose one future over another. I’m best at rolling with the punches.

Excuse 4:  But I don’t want to be held accountable for what I write down!

Excuse 5:  Okay but what if I’m wrong?

And this is what I’ve discovered:

Lesson 1:  Getting someone to record and transcribe an interview with you works very well.

Lesson 2:  Then they are already working against it! You’d better hurry.

Lesson 3:  Choose a healthy, vibrant future that is true to your values but still gives you some wiggle room. Then invite lots of voices to flesh it out.

Lesson 4:  This is definitely the price you pay, but in the end it is much cheaper than the costs and lost opportunities described above.

Lesson 5:  At least you and your team are now building toward a positive, specific future instead of settling for whatever life throws at you. Or doesn’t.

RBB’s world is small batch electronics. Maybe your world is dry cleaning, or custom fabrication, or consulting. You need a Vision as much as we do! Where is your store, factory or office headed? What will it look like in ten years? How will its personality evolve over time? What demons are you fighting now that must be slain if you are to survive?

Describe your Kansas now and you will find, as we have, that you’ve had the power to get there all along!

Bruce Hendrick has been a leader of major change in corporations and small business alike for the past 25 years; currently he's the owner of RBB Systems and Organizational Development Services, LLC; noted speaker, author, active church member and community volunteer.