Latest posts
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What’s the Worst That Could Happen?
About six months into a turnaround, I told my staff, “We don’t need the supervisory role any longer.” They thought I’d lost it. So we listed everything a supervisor did and picked the five most important tasks: schedule changes, equipment breakdowns, maintenance and overtime callouts, quality problems, and customer delivery issues. We’d train the hourly…
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The Hydro Blaster
At the end of my first day leading a facility identified for closure, I borrowed some blue work clothes and asked Lloyd, a mechanic, to bring the hydro blaster to the very back of the plant. “What are we doing here?” Lloyd asked. “Lloyd, we can’t make quality products in a shithole, and this place…
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One Parking Lot
On my first day as general manager of a failing facility, the salaried parking lot sat right next to the building, with names painted on the spaces. The hourly lot was 50 yards away. By afternoon, a mechanic had painted over every name. The gate guard told everyone to move into the lot next to…