The organization was experiencing quality issues. The Boss was young, inexperienced, and frustrated. He was ranting about the poor quality his team was producing on the shop floor. He began by complaining about his staff not completing a time-sensitive job by the time the customer arrived to pick up the product. Obviously, the customer was angry and upset. The Boss was embarrassed that the customer experienced poor service and was looking for someplace to put the blame. I suggested the blame should not fall on anyone on the shop floor. This began a somewhat tenuous discussion with The Boss. I said the quality problem was with him, it was his problem. The Boss immediately became defensive and said, “How could this be my problem? I wasn’t even on the floor to screw it up! It was Joe’s problem, and he should have done a better job!” Unfortunately for Joe, he was the bearer of the bad news and the crew member who had the courage to tell The Boss the customer arrived and was angry. I was in the room when this whole conversation happened. When Joe left the office for the shop floor, I began to ask The Boss […]

The Boss was venting to me regarding his frustration with his top performer, who was his assistant manager. I let him speak and when he calmed down, I asked if we could do a simple exercise with the assistant manager. He agreed, so I asked each of them to list the assistant manager position’s top eight duties, without collaborating and without sharing their lists until we were ready. They both had a hard time listing eight, but we waited until eight were on the page. Then I asked The Boss to put his eight on the whiteboard in the conference room, and then I asked the assistant manager to write her top eight on the board. As you can imagine there was not a consensus. Actually, these two did better than most when I did this exercise in other organizations. They had five duties listed the same, The Boss’s frustration was coming from the three duties that were different between the two lists. This made for an excellent discussion and by the time we were finished, they were both on the same page regarding the top job duties of the assistant manager’s position. The assistant manager was thrilled about the […]

Recently, while working with a client, I had the opportunity to lunch with two business owners from Europe. We began with casual conversations, and I was impressed with their understanding of our NFL football teams. Eventually, our conversation turned to business and the similar challenges we all experienced. The most interesting subject was people. It didn’t matter what continent we were on; people offered the greatest challenges. More specifically, we agreed we each had good workers and decent managers but were lacking enough leaders to go around. Some questions we discussed were: Is leadership taught or is it innate in an individual? We discussed personal growth plans and what types of training newer leaders needed. We discussed the benefit of giving candidates for leadership the opportunity to lead before being promoted into a leadership position. Will people like this person as their leader? Will they follow this person? Will employees trust this person as their leader? Great questions that needed to be answered prior to promoting a person. By this time in the meal, I think we were more interested in what we were discussing than the food. Those who know me will find that hard to believe! We discussed the […]

I recently had a conversation with The Boss regarding one of his younger employees who was an underachiever. I asked if I could talk with the lad and see if I could help to motivate the young man to improve his work ethic. The Boss agreed and the conversation went something like this. We were in the middle of March Madness and I asked if the young employee had ever played any sports. He said he was on the basketball team in high school. I asked what position he played, and he said he was the starting guard on the team. I then asked how his bracket was going. It was early in the tournament, and he said his bracket was blown up by Kentucky losing to St. Peter’s. I said mine too! I said I was also a Badger fan, and they didn’t help my bracket by exiting as early as they did. We chatted sports for a while and eventually got down to the topics that needed to be addressed. I must say that I am partial to hiring athletes and folks who have been raised on a farm. Farmers understand the responsibility and hard work from young […]

I recently met with The Boss who was frustrated with a newly promoted manager. During our discussion, I found out the new manager was young and not very experienced. I asked how did this person become a manager if he was not ready for the responsibility? The Boss expressed that he had no choice, there was no one else he trusted to promote within his company. I then asked what qualifications did The Boss see in this person that caused The Boss to promote him? The Boss said the new manager was one of his top technicians and had an excellent attendance record. I asked if the person had ever been in a position of authority before? The Boss answered, “not really.” This scenario is happening more often than we’d like in today’s crazy environment where we do not have a sufficient workforce to fill open positions, including open management positions. We begin to promote new managers up the managerial ladder skipping rungs that are important for the person’s professional development. Back in the day, when an employee began to climb the managerial ladder, they began as a supervisor and next was promoted to an assistant manager. After several years, […]

As the challenges continue to pile up in business today, especially in staffing needs, I see organizations lowering their qualifications for new hires. This is done not because The Boss wants to but because The Boss has to! The latest unemployment numbers are telling us we have a 4.6% unemployment nationwide and in Wisconsin, we are looking at 3.2% unemployment. Those of us who are long in the tooth may remember doing business in 1998 when we were also at 3.2% and lower unemployment in Wisconsin. What does The Boss need to do this time around? Because organizations are hiring people who do not have industry experience and may not have the foundational skills desired by new employees, The Boss must do things differently to help these new hires to succeed. Training programs for their new employees and implementing a mentoring program will help the newcomers to assimilate into the company culture. Having a procedure for “onboarding” new people will also help. But above all, The Boss needs to establish SOPs in the workplace for those critical processes. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are an investment The Boss can make in the business and investment in all the employees. Developing an […]

I was in Canada fishing for muskies with my son and we were using surface baits when I saw this huge “V” heading for my bait. I immediately became excited and, in an instance, could see a large trophy size muskie hanging on my wall in the Man Cave. I watched the lure and asked my son to man the net. Then, in an instance, I pulled back the rod to set the hook and — nothing. In my excitement, I forgot everything I knew about the art of fishing and I set the hook before the fish bit the lure. I pulled the lure out of the water and my trophy catch was gone. It makes for a good story at the lodge, but I have nothing to show for my efforts. In the past few weeks, I have seen this happen to more than one of my client’s businesses. The Boss was working to land a huge account. He was getting excited and even planning what to do with the excess profits a large job like this could bring. The issue I saw in every case was the larger the job, the lower the profit margin. The Boss […]

I have to say up front that this newsletter is one of those, “Do as I say and not what I have done most of my career!” newsletters. When business is good The Boss is almost always in a good mood and it’s good to have him around. But when times are tough, The Boss can be a real pain! I had a client who was a specialty machine shop that made custom machine parts on demand. The Boss #1 was the founder of the company and was transitioning the business to his son, The Boss #2. My job was to coach The Boss #2 through the transition until The Boss #1 was convinced his son could run the place. Now the only thing more frustrating than having one boss is having two bosses, especially for employees who are trying their best to do their jobs in stressful times. So, coaching the employees through the transition was an added responsibility I did for the business’s sake. The transition went as smoothly as you could imagine and afterward, The Boss #1 did retire, sort of – the most a founder can retire, which means he only visited a few hours a […]

I received a phone call from The Boss who was struggling with a problem customer. I asked for more details and found out the rest of the story. The Boss’ company sells electronic equipment and provides technical support through the internet. Their salesperson sold a big job with a lot of parts and manhours. The customer paid for half of the job in advance — the standard for this industry. After a few trips to the customer’s location, the job was not completed because the technicians discovered several problems. Some were caused by the wrong parts being quoted for the job, and some were due to poor internet connectivity. The customer wanted the equipment pulled out and her down payment returned. The Boss wanted to keep the down payment and was asking my opinion. I asked, “Was it possible to turn this negative into a neutral or positive experience for the customer?” I understand that a positive experience was a long shot, but a neutral experience could be had if The Boss got involved. My advice to The Boss was for him to meet with the customer at her company and explain all that his employees had done, which was […]