Your Workforce. Your Way.

Every day, the people you’ve hired to do the work in your shop show up to get it done. They are, quite simply, amazing. I’ve never seen people more driven to move work “to the right” or “to the dock.” They are often driven to match daily volumes and really work hard. They work for both you and for your customer, because you need them to do the work for you and you need them to do it right for your customer. ALTERNATIVE IDEA: Your success hinges on your employees’ ability to serve both internal production needs and external customer demands.

Have you thought of them being The Way? I’ve talked about running before – I run daily. Every day. Today, as I sit and write this, I’m on day 785. That’s at least one mile every day, no exceptions. I do it because I find the discipline clears my mind. And the running keeps me in shape, of course. Over time, I’ve been really determined and also doubtful. It’s a tough thing to do when you’re tired – exhausted – and you realize it’s 10 PM and you haven’t run yet. Or you’re traveling and you have to run through the terminal to get the time in every 24 hours.

At one point, I watched The Way. This movie tells the story of a group of people walking the Camino. This is a 2,500 mile stretch of road through Spain that pilgrims walk. Each has their own reason. Each, their own struggles. In the movie, a son starts the path and ends up dying (I’m not ruining anything here – it’s early in the film). His father comes to find him and take him home. He has to determine whether he is going to walk to do so. Will he follow in his son’s footsteps? Create his own?

The Way is the epitome of a reason to be. It’s a purpose.

Production Operations

I’ve always thought of our team as my purpose. I’m here to serve them as they’re here to serve the customer. It’s my job to help them get the work done. Every day, it means I need to make sure they have all the materials and tools and knowledge they need to do their roles well. Sometimes it could simply be lending them a hand.  They are The Way for CIMx.

How about your team? Over the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about things that might be obstacles in your path to having a great year this year. Are your people in this picture?

By providing a strong culture and reason to be there, I believe your team could be The Way for you, too. To care, they need to understand why things are important; why things are required or requested. Understanding why and how things are important or done a particular way is a first step to getting there. I believe strongly that people need purpose. I’ve told you mine. It took me years to craft. I feel strong when I verbalize it. I know it’s me. Others, too. They know that this is my reason for being.

Paperless Manufacturing

In talking through the use of tools to empower you and your team, we want to address this purpose. Are you open – truly open – to feedback from your team on how work is going and what would make it better and easier for them to do the highest quality work? For the sceptics in the audience here, I’m not asking what makes their job easy. That might not be the right answer for anyone. I’m asking what makes it easy for them to do the highest quality work. That’s different. How can they do a 10 out of 10 every day for you?

So, the tools you give them must help to push this forward. It needs to have a few key elements to really work. It must:

• provide easy access to the information they need to do their work,
• teach them when they don’t know how to do the work,
• give warnings when things are going wrong,
• queue the work to be done so it’s easy to know what to do, and
• help them quickly get back on track when things go wrong.

Whether you believe in a purpose-filled crew or just want to get the work done, we hope you’ll find content here that helps you get there. Our goal this year is to clear the way for things to go well for you. Next week, we’ll discuss what happens when you have sudden or unexpected changes in work and how to deal with those.