Will We Have The Talent To Recover?

A recent report on talent skill gaps in the manufacturing industry sponsored by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute indicates that when business picks up we will not have the talent to meet the customer needs. With unemployment hovering around 9%, how can this be?

Furthermore, 67% of skill gap study respondents report a moderate to severe shortage of available, qualified workers and 56% anticipate the shortage to grow worse in the next three to five years…exactly when the recovery will be most demanding. The respondents indicate that “access to a highly skilled, flexible workforce is the most important factor in their effectiveness, ranked above factors such as new product innovation and increased market share by a margin of 20%”.

It makes sense that as manufacturing constricted, key talent either retired or redeployed. To complicate things, during this time manufacturing has changed so much that it’s difficult for talent to keep up or reintegrate within the workplace. The number one skills deficiency highlighted by the survey, among current employees, is problem solving skills. In other words, it is difficult for current employees to adapt to changing needs and solve new problems caused by changing customer needs or competitive products or services. After reading “Do It Right The First Time” in this newsletter we should add problem prevention…

Adding to the problem, it seems some are waiting for the good times to return so we can return to the same practices of the past. What are we (you) doing differently to adapt to the talent needs of the future? Who is responsible and who is going to pay? The answers typically involve industry, learning institutions and government working together to develop and sustain a constant stream of talent ready to meet both current and future customer needs. Where do you begin? Let’s not wait for Congress.

Also, could it be that we are considering the pace of change from the 90’s when we develop our training and development budgets and approach? Obviously, the pace has dramatically accelerated but have we changed or adapted?

It’s hard to believe that we have so many people ready to work and spend money and yet we have no way of deploying this asset. How would you begin? What is missing in your industry or specific business?

6 Hats Can Yield Better Innovation Results Than Brainstorming

The other day I attended an evening workshop at St Louis University on innovation. The presenter was Jonathan Weaver, University of Detroit Mercy Mechanical Engineering Department. His remarks were focused on ideation and all the techniques available for teams, and there a many! Each one has a place and purpose. 16 examples below:

Biomimicry Painstorming Functional Decomposition Axiomatic Design TRIZ Lateral Benchmarking De Bono’s Six Hats De Bono’s Concept Fans

Bisociation Blue Ocean Strategy Nine Windows The Search for the Problem Kano Model De Bono’s Provocation Trimming Brainstorming

One in particular caught my attention- De Bono’s 6 hats http://www.edwdebono.com/. In the past, I avoided using the technique thinking it’s too involved and complex or no one would want to participate. It’s not and they will!

The goal of 6 hats to design a way forward taking advantage of the team’s different perspectives and various approaches. I am certain you have heard “lets put on our thinking caps”. The approach involves having the entire team consider the opportunity from a common perspective represented by a specific hat. Six perspectives - six hats.

Another way to look at it-rather than arguing over who is on the right (or wrong) path to a solution, the team is working together to build on each other’s view of the situation (parallel thinking).

The 6 different hats:

White: The information hat – focus on the data, trends.

Red: The emotion hat- gut reaction, intuition, how would others react?

Black: The caution hat- think about the bad things, think defensively.

Yellow: The optimism hat – visualize the benefits and value of the decision.

Green: The creativity hat – use the creativity tools, free-wheeling, little criticism.

Blue: The procedure hat – process control, meeting lead might use the blue hat to move the meeting by referring to another hat.

An interesting approach to using the 6 hats is to just use it without much fanfare. Think about past meeting agendas or team plans. They typically begin (or should) with evaluating the facts (White Hat). Can you see how your agenda or plan can follow the 6 hats without even using the term?

Summarizing-

• The Six Hats method allows teams to take things ‘one at a time’ thereby removing confusion.

• All team members remain on the “same page,”dealing with pure information, expressed emotions, unleashed creativity, hopeful optimism and non-threatening criticism, all with personal sensitivity and process rigor.

• Hats de-personalize discussions and encourage all team members to build each other up, rather than argue debate and tear down.

• A careful mix and sequential use of the hats ensures a thorough exploration of the design space and makes the end route obvious.

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Why am I not achieving results from our strategy?

Have you ever experienced the following?

• The project is taking longer than we expected and won’t achieve our planned results much less hit the budget target.
• We provided all the tools and training but people seem to resist the change.
• We communicated how important the project was to the company and tried not to micro manage.
• The project manager is really smart and well respected but seems to focus mostly on the process and not results.

These comments highlight actual leadership struggles implementing important business critical strategies. The most common issue communicated- organizational resistance to change. According to Drucker, people really do not resist change. It is the way changes are introduced in organizations that they often object to. How many times have we been told (hoping I am not alone in this area) “it’s not what you said but how you said it”

Several common issues are present in one form or another, with organizations struggling to implement their strategy or mission critical project. Ask yourself the following questions in an effort to begin diagnosing your own situation.

• Where the people impacted by the change truly involved and early enough to feel ownership?
• Where the goals complimented with a clear, realistic plan (how are we going to achieve)?
• Do you really have the necessary resources (the right people with real available time) or are you assuming 120% capacity or possibly that customer issues will take a vacation?
• Are there milestones, project schedules or metrics established to manage the project and facilitate easy follow up?
• Are there contingency plans?
• Do you fully understand your organization’s readiness and capacity for change?
• Have I clearly communicated the vision or goal? So over stated and under rated-have you established either a burning platform or sense of urgency important to all those involved?

Expanding on the last and probably most important bullet… First, is the project really important or is it filler work to an already busy work day? Prove it; what is the business case? Don’t underestimate the organizations ability to digest business case logic for implementing change or executing a specific strategy. Second, I suggest considering the goal as a 3 dimensional object that can be viewed from many perspectives. Each perspective represents a different person or function on the team. Describe the goal from each perspective so that everyone is able to align themselves. Give them a change to get on board and make good decisions to support the cause.

One last comment about execution. Think of the leader’s role as one operating a complex machine with many levers. Imagine operating an earth moving machine that has many components. It is key to constantly view both what is far and near and make adjustments to 3, 4, 5 or more aspects like blade, direction, speed, depth, angle etc. It’s more than just making sure the process is in place or a stretch goal or a team is engaged. It’s also much more than the fanfare of project kickoff. More on this later.

What does success look like?

THE most important step in achieving outstanding results is being able to clearly and thoroughly define what success looks like. It’s not as easy as it may seem, requiring more than a quick meeting or creating a simple vision statement which in many instances is something like a two dimensional picture. Business is more complex and requires us to consider numerous perspectives. Mark Twain once said “I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want”.

Consider defining success as a three dimensional object that can be viewed from all angles. In order to clearly define the object, one has to consider the perspectives of all those we need to engage in making the words become a reality.

What does success look like from the owner perspective? What about finance or operations or human resources? The owner might be thinking legacy and industry reputation. The finance team wants cash in the bank or credit to support the business plan. Operations needs certain productivity levels, enabling technology or possibly supply chain partnerships. HR wants to be able to draw top talent, spend more time on development and less time on reports and systems.

Also, we can’t forget the most important perspective of all, that of the customer. What trends are driving the industry; what are they saying about your products or services; what are they not saying?

After clearly and thoroughly defining success, step back and using similar perspectives, describe your current reality. At this point it’s probably obvious that there is a gap between where you want or need to be and where you are. If you have done a thorough job with the process of defining success, you should have a team committed to develop the strategies and plans necessary to close the gap. Now, it’s all about execution.

“Determine that the thing can and shall be done and then we shall find the way.” Abraham Lincoln.

Leadership’s innovation role

In a very old Bill Cosby routine….God asks Noah to build him an ark. Noah says “right, what’s an ark?” God also tells Noah how big by telling him how many cubits tall, long, and wide. Noah says “right, what’s a cubit”?

It’s the same way with innovation. Leadership can say “we need to be more innovative” and maybe provide a few measures to track progress. As with any important initiative, leadership has to get close to the action and remain close. That’s easy for many leaders, after all how many times have we gone through this change management stuff?

What’s really difficult with innovation is that for many that have ascended to a key leadership role; they did so by limiting risk, carefully improving productivity, continuous improvement, being the operations person, etc. Innovating or creating new businesses requires discontinuity, a level of destruction and disruption. What got you there will not keep you there without making a few very personal changes.

Innovation begins with the leader believing, really believing, that it’s critical to long term success and relevance in the market place. You must believe that innovation is the strongest strategy for building wealth in today’s economy. We all talk about how much everything is changing every day. None of us are exempt from a dramatic shift in technology, environment, regulations, customer interest etc. Foster and Kaplan (McKinsey) in the late 80s examined more than 1,000 companies in 15 industries and discovered that even the best-run and most widely admired companies are unable to sustain market-beating levels of performance for more than 10 to 15 years. This was in the 80s’, with today’s technological progress, we are talking about 5-8 years!

Don’t even begin if you are consumed with day to day operations and waiting for the right time to innovate. But, if you want to leave a legacy or just make sure the business is viable and growing for the next 5- 10 years, there is no time like the present to begin implementing an innovation strategy. It begins with leadership.

Innovation is more than Creativity

I recently read “The Other Side of Innovation” by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble. The visual they provide is very powerful. In the book they describe the efforts of climbing to the top of a mountain. The excitement and rush of achieving the summit. With respect to innovation it’s coming up with an idea which obviously can be very exciting.

The journey doest end there. Climbing up the mountain means you have to come down and after the hoopla of reaching the top many climbers lose focus and stumble on the other side; on the way down. It can be the same with innovation. It’s many times not about the creativity step in the process but about executing on the creativity and realizing value.

The innovation process involves a great deal of blocking and tackling and working in the trenches so that you can develop and execute creative ideas for your business. Over the next several posts I will describe the 6 categories of innovation. It’s not a machine with a single knob (twist to dial up creativity), it’s a machine with 6 management focus areas. Successful companies understand where they stand in each category and are able to manage the complexity of all six.

1. Leadership
2. People
3. Process
4. Metrics
5. Ideation
6. Culture

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