I have a question about management style.

Lets assume you have a diverse staff that work in close proximity to each other. They bring to the table a wide range of experience and perspective. Some of them have a lot of background and some not so much. Some of them are very flexible in their thinking and some very rigid.

The lesser experienced people are more curious about why we do things the way we do. Some of the experienced ones are receptive to these questions and somewhat curious themselves but some of the experienced ones are more like a barnacle. Their calcification started early in life and layered more and more confidence in what what they took for granted as the fundamentals.

Ostensibly this diverse group of people come together for a common cause but in fact the thing they have most in common is the perspective of every-man-for-himself.

The experienced people sometimes are very protective of their turf. Sometimes this is because of a passionate belief in the righteousness of their methods. Sometimes the real reason is they don't want to help the newbies learn because they look at this as diluting marketshare and creating a competitor.

As cabinet shop owners we are top man on the totem pole. Our word is the word. We usually have the most amount of experience and because we were in on every phone call we think we know what is best for each of our customers.

Since we can't be everywhere at once we hire somebody to represent us. These shop foremen need to be able to navigate the diverse interests of all the people involved. The shop foreman has several constituents but of all of them the shop owner is the most equal.

So we send the foreman out to the shop floor with the authority to represent us. We have informed the crew he is our representative and if he says something they should assume it came from us.

What would happen if this shop foreman told the crew to do something but we immediately tweeted that he was completely wrong headed in his thinking and if we were so much smarter than him?

Would the crew listen to this foreman any more?

I would argue that the answer is irrelevant. The issue is that the owner doesn't know how to lead, doesn't know how to support his foreman, doesn't know how to train his foreman, doesn't know how to assemble a team that supports each other for a common goal. Until that's corrected it matters little if the workers listen to the foreman.

In his memoirs, Taichi Ohno (founder of the Toyota Way) wrote that in order to get a worker to write down a set of Standard-Operating-Procedures that was useful to his co-workers he had to first be convinced of it's importance. The key is getting people's self-interest aligned with the goals of the organization.

One time when I was waiting in a doctor's office I happened to pick up a coffee table book about the accomplishments of black women in America. One of the stories was about a school teacher who had instructed a lot of very illustrious military leaders. According to the story people used to compliment her all the time about all the famous leaders who spent time in her classroom.

Her response was that this was not unusual. According to this lady one-in-ten people were born a natural leader. What she was impressed with was a natural leader who could be lead.

This is the person you want as a foreman for your company.

The math, however, makes this difficult. To find this person you are looking for 10% of the 10%. Then you got to get this guy to stay down on the farm.

Since you can't always count on inspiration you need to put your focus on mitigation. You need to set up infrastructure and systems to guide people to the correct result. The culture of your organization is kind of like a featherboard on a tablesaw. The feather board will not of itself propel you to success but it can go a long ways to help everybody stay focused on the goal.

For cultural change you need buy-in at the top. As they say, a fish starts to rot at the head.

The example you give of overriding your foreman shows a lack of what business people call unity of command.

When I first started in this trade (early 70's) I was assigned as a helper to one cabinetmaker. He gave me my working tasks to accomplish, I learned how he did things, and as long as I worked under him I was expected to do things his way.

The shop foreman almost never came to me to ask what I was doing or why I was doing it that way, unless I was about to endanger myself or others using the machinery. In fact, about the only contact I had with the shop foreman was when he handed out paychecks.

The cabinetmaker I worked under did not talk to the owner unless he was asking for a raise. Everything he did was assigned through the shop foreman. Larger tasks were split up, with several cabinetmakers taking their cues from the shop foreman.

The shop foreman had the autonomy to hire and fire, assign work, address plant and machinery issues; he ran the shop. The owner sold work and was the face of the company. He would occasionally wander through the shop, but more often than not this was showboating with a potential client.

Haphazard management styles, while they lead to more flexibility for the owner, leave the employees questioning the chain of command and the foreman questioning his own authority.

If you do this too many times, you will piss off your shop foreman, who will quit, and you will be addressing future issues by having to look for a new shop foreman. This is what happened in the shop where I was foreman.

If this happens frequently enough, perhaps you should be foreman.

TonyF

At our best, we had a 6 man shop with diverse people, diverse projects, and diverse skills and styles.
We did not have a foreman, but this never seemed to be a problem except when two guys were heading for the panel saw at the same time. Since 1. They were adults and 2. They always had multiple things to do, this was never a problem.

When I handed out a job, we talked about it briefly, and I made my suggestions about how things might go. This was one way - me to maker. Then he was expected to come back after a bit (20 min to a day or more) with questions, concerns, changes, mistakes he found (they loved that), and conversation. This was mostly one way, the other way. I found myself more often than not saying - "You're the expert, you decide, I just don't want to see the time piling up" or "...see the scrap piling up". Or "See how things go. If they go well, then try your experiment and hopefully we will all gain by your success or failure."

What had happened was that I had coworkers that were as good as I - or better. They may not have the historical perspective, or formal knowledge, or charm and good looks, but they could whip hell out of a cut list and dance with the shaper.

I transitioned to the point where I did not have to be the one that 'ran' everything. These guys were successful parents, sons, neighbors, friends and employees. They took responsibility for their mistakes and could run their lives. Perfect? Not by a long shot. But neither am I.

This was so liberating for me that it took well over year to adapt to it. For all of us. But once it was in (informally) place, we were more productive, had more respect for each other, trusted each other, and worked together or independently without classic Dickensian supervision.

Eventually, the only vestige of a foreman we had was a shopping list - a clipboard on a nail - where anyone that saw we needed anything would write it down and it would appear soon. This did expand to include a separate wish list - products or tools or whatever that someone thought we could use. I made a solid effort to have my office person dedicated to procuring all these items as quickly as possible. "For want of a nail..."

David,

So let me get this straight.
You are saying that you were able to juxtapose diversity with proximity and not have unnecessary conflict?

Let me clarify.

For this to be successful they had to be good citizens and adult-like in their behavior?

We had some guys that did better with each other and some that did not do well with each other. I could mostly avoid trying to mix oil and water, or if not - all hands in one project- it was easy enough to hand out separate assignments so they did not have to share space. While there were one or two that could have been prima-donnas, they were not because everyone gets humbled in this work, and that attitude was not tolerated unless it was ironic.

If I did have a supervisory capacity, it was to cajole and humor and firmly guide them, threatening them with Dickens readings or opera on the shop audio. Or whup 'em bad and send 'em to bed with no gruel.

Well, you know, I got tired of trying to be the guy that changed them or saved them or whatever. I wanted the best. I needed the best, so why would I settle for less? Several of my employees went on to be teachers, a pharmacist, a doctor's aide, a business owner, and more. I could tell in 5-8 minutes if I needed to continue an interview.

Crew management has changed a lot over the years. I think back to the crews I had many years ago. These fellows were old enough to have parents that grew up in the Depression and lived through the horror of World War Two. This was a much different group than the millennials I work with today.

For the most part it comes down to situational awareness. People my age are two or three generations closer to our tree lemur ancestors. They are the ones that really had it rough. A tree leaf could be just a tree leaf or it could also be a snake. A shadow crossing the ground could be a cloud in front of the sun or it could be that bird again.

You see it all around you. Seventy years ago people all over Europe were standing for days in box cars as they we being shuttled to Auschwitz for the crime of merely believing in a different god.

The snowflake of today thinks that if he can't get four bars of cellphone reception or he has to live in a community with who people don't look like him that life is unfair and he needs to be protected. We see this on the college campuses and with the wannabee nazis and white supremists.

There are people still alive today who actually rode in those box cars. Tell them sometime how tough your life is.

Is all about mitigation. You have to think of management as being like a featherboard on a table saw.

A cattle car rider's story