Being a Vice President - Part One

Creating

Vice President

I am not an entrepreneur. I’m a doer who is creative within the doing. I am not a creator of businesses. I admire these people but would fail miserably if I had to work in their environment very long. Creative people live on the edge of risk, social norms, expected behavior and generally push the boundaries and often step over the boundaries. In Jordan Peterson’s 5 big aspects, openness is an indicator of creative people. Below is my score for Openness to Experience.

Openness to Experience: Very Low

You are very low in openness to experience, which is the primary dimension of creativity, artistic interest, and intelligence (particularly verbal intelligence) in the Big Five personality trait scientific model. Openness to experience is a measure of interest in novelty, art, literature, abstract thinking, philosophy as well as sensitivity to aesthetic emotions and beauty.

Your score puts you at the 6th percentile for openness to experience. If you were one of 100 people in a room, you would be lower in openness to experience than 93 of them and higher in openness to experience than 6 of them.

People with very low levels of openness to experience are very conventional, conservative people. They are not at all known for their curiosity or interest in novelty or change. They are disinterested in learning, particularly for its own sake, and almost always stick with what they know.

Individuals very low in openness to experience are much less entrepreneurial in spirit and much more appreciative of conventional employment (particularly if average or above in conscientiousness). They have almost no interest in creating new ventures, whether for profit, curiosity, or personal transformation. At least moderately high levels of openness to experience appear necessary to the formation and leadership of business and other forms of complex organization, although conscientiousness appears required for the attention to detail and process management that such organizations also always need.

I am thankful I am high in conscientiousness. This drives me to reduce chaos and install process controls that allow the organization to meet commitments. Consider me to be a leader of the bottom half of the balanced scorecard. People (learning and growth) and process. I will never be a Mary Kay, John Beasley, Alan Jones, Abraham Tanus, Carlos Castillo, John Powell, Dr. Bryan Jarrett, or anyone who created something from nothing. These people are the people who take the risk, make the sacrifices to lay the foundation for all of us to build our dreams upon by refining and grinding out the processes to continuously improve. It takes both types of people. It’s important to realize who you are and what is your role in achieving success.

If you are high in openness and a risk taker, this section will only educate you on what kind of person you should hire to lead execution in your business. You know, the mundane, daily, plodding of controls and the plowing and pruning needed to develop people and deal with the messiness of all our inadequacies. The things that I enjoy, and you equally could live without. We make a great team! But we both should limit our impact on the other.

Now you’ve been promoted to Vice President, an officer of the company. Congratulations, it isn’t easy, and the challenges are greater as your sphere of influence and control exceeds you experience. I was responsible for engineers, and I was a non-degreed doer. I was responsible for commercialization but never trained as a project manager. I was responsible for building manufacturing and distribution centers in China and Switzerland and had no clue what an EPCM contract meant (Engineer, Procure, Construction Management), I oversaw distribution in Asia and the US and never managed a warehouse. I was an expat in the French speaking area of Switzerland and didn’t speak French. Why do you think I was given opportunities to lead teams and projects that I had not demonstrated any competency to lead? Do you realize that most decisions that impact your life are made in a room where you are not present. Promotions, sales, decisions to commit to your company, opportunities and many more occur without your input. So why would a company take a chance on me when the salary and bonus structure would allow them to choose from a world of experience. I really can’t answer the why, I can only speculate on how I make decisions on employee’s future, who I buy from and who I associate with daily.

· I like the person

· They have a great attitude

· They are conscientious

· They are competent

· I have complete trust based on my history with them

· They have a teachable spirit

· They lead them self and others in self-evaluation

· They are other focused

· They have transferable knowledge, skills, and experience

· I have seen them energized in the fire and not run from responsibility

· People follow them

· People grow under their leadership

I often share the scripture in I Chronicles 16, 9For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.

Leaders are no different, they are looking for those with a perfect heart. When those conversations happen in the room, it is to your benefit to have the knowledge, skills, experience, and attitude. John Beasley shared with me in the 70s this mathematical representation of effectiveness:

You have an employee with a 9 in knowledge, skills, and experience and a 0 in Attitude. their effectiveness looks like 9+9+9 = 27 to the exponential of 0 equals an effectiveness of 1.

You also have an employee with a 2 in knowledge, skills, and experience and an 8 in attitude. Their effectiveness looks like 2+2+2 = 6 to the exponential of 8 and effectiveness of 10,077,696.

Who do you choose to lead your team? Most people underestimate the impact of a great attitude. Don’t be that person. Why am I spending time to discuss what kind of people that get promoted and what kind of people are effective. Because, above everything else you do as a VP, selecting the right people for your organization is the singular most important thing you can do to assure success. People with bad attitudes will kill your culture, your progress, and your company. Before you can lead with visionary leadership, be a champion of ideas and of people, you must make sure you have the right people on your team. And when you find you don’t, run to make a change and immediately cut out the cancer. My last boss at Mary Kay failed at every opportunity to demonstrate the behaviors listed above and his attitude was filled with pride and arrogance. I recall only a few weeks after he arrived, he called myself, our lean manager, and the packing managers into a room. He asked us who was the lean expert in the room. We all pointed at the lean manager who was a black belt in six sigma and a lean champion. He pushed his chair back and said, “I am”. He lost the team that day. It was a great day when the organization spit him out.

Visionary Leadership

?What does that mean?? CASTICO has placed the statement, “Where there is no vision, the people perish” on the walls of the CASTICO administration area as well as other locations.? Taken from the Bible, Proverbs 29:18.? The scholars believe it is a reference to where there is no prophetic vision or revelation from God, then people cast off constraints and no longer tie their behavior to God’s revelation or prophetic vision.? The scripture is drawing a connection to God’s revelation to man and man’s connection to that revelation which results in behaviors that align with God’s revelation and who they want to be.? God’s example in that he loved us, he gave his Son and God’s greatest commandment; to love God and love others.? Connection to this revelation or vision can lead us to become a person who practices these behaviors.? No connection will lead us to cast off any constraints limiting our behavior that would be imposed by the revelation.? Thus we can embrace the seven things that God hates and be free of constraints.? Just in case you’re wondering what seven things are:

Proverbs 6:16-19 - King James Version

16; These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:

17; A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,

18; A heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,

19; A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

?I see visionary leadership as the ability of a leader to describe the future state of the organization (revelation) and to inspire a connection of each person to future state.? In perceptual control theory it would be a beautifully crafted and specific image or state of who the organization wants to be.? And then the connection of the person to what the organization wants to be and an agreement that the person wants the same thing.

?Think about visionary leaders, Martin Luther King vision of a world where people are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.? John F. Kennedy vision of going to the moon, “not because it’s easy but because it is hard”.?? Or Apple’s desire to create something beautiful and Mary Kay’s vision of enriching the lives of women around the world.? When you connect to any of these visions you sign up for a way of behaving and being.? That’s what a visionary leader does.? Draws us, inspires us, and leads us to pick up the burden to be a part of something larger than ourselves.? And when you do not connect spiritually and emotionally to something, you are unconstrained by connection to something and you will follow the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and the pride of life…these lead to perishing and the loss of connection.? Selfishness leads to loneliness and that leads to the death of a fulfilling life.?

Can you be a visionary leader?? I have faith you can with critical thinking and the ability to paint the future with words and behaviors.? Embrace the artist in you…which is tough for us doers.

Idea Champion

Earlier I shared you could be the hero of your own story. When you become a Vice President, it’s time to be a hero of another person’s story. A reporter, promoter, cheerleader, investor, coach, mentor, publicist, and spotlight shiner. It takes a minute to understand the power and importance that are given to what you say, what you do, body position and facial expressions by the people in your organization. The Bible shares that there is the power of life and death in tongue. That is amplified by those in your organization. I started at the bottom, a janitor at Collins Radio in Richardson that became Rockwell International. I know what it is like to be less than in the eyes of people. My best friend, Kevin Sipes, graduated from Stephen F Austin with a forestry degree. Kevin is one of the most important people in shaping who I have become. His words over the years and his undying friendship made me feel valuable and confident. The foundation of what I have achieved in family, faith, and career. When he graduated, he went to work for a landscaping firm in Dallas, Texas, They put him digging ditches outside some corporate office. I still feel the emotion from Kevin as he described what it was like when people walked by and looked at him in the ditch. We work with and walk by people who feel this way every day. Amazing people. A kind word is like water in the desert.

Proverbs 25:11

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.

Developing a deep understanding of the power of your words will allow you to create a sense of value and appreciation in each person in your organization. It will propel forward key initiatives, inspire others to take risk, create something spectacular. Simple and practical ways to use your words.

* Approach someone and ask if anyone has told them they’re doing a good job today

* When something good happens, take a moment, and recognize the person who thought of the idea and the person who brought it to life. Shine a light, communicate up, call them over and tell your boss what an incredible thing they accomplished!

*Buy someone a Superman shirt (Samuel Gutierrez) and give it to them in front of the team

*One of my prized possessions is a lipstick made for me by our machine shop when I left Mary Kay. It made me feel valued.

Be creative. Mary Kay shared that a twenty-five cents gift given with $100 of appreciation was better than a $100 gift with twenty-five cents worth of appreciation. I cannot overstate the power of your words. It can build up or tear down. There is a poem I learned at some point in my career and it’s as true today as it was when I first heard it. Forgive my memory but this is what I recall.

As I travelled through a tiny little town

I saw a man tearing a building down

I asked the supervisor are these men skilled

The kind you would use if you had to build

The supervisor laughed and said, no indeed

For unskilled labor is all I need

I can tear down in a day or two what it has taken men years to do

And as I walked away, I wonder in life, what roll do I play

Be a builder not a destroyer. We all can think of an interaction with a boss or an executive that left us feeling undervalued and not appreciated. How good was your work that day? Did you share with a co-worker, spouse, or friend about how much the company sucked? Yeah, we all have.

Leadership of One allows you to have tough conversations but ultimately it is up to the employee to control their behavior and align it with who the organization wants to be. Do not try to control them externally, it’s a fruitless endeavor. Lead people to self-evaluate when required but look to and fro for the people who have a great ideas and champion the idea by freeing up obstacles and making it clear you want to see it happen. Just a few examples that I supported in my short time at Castico.

1. Gerado Trevino found a box forming video online that cut the box assembly time by 80% and required no capital investment. Edgar Arelleno brought it to life.

2. Diego Casas is working on an inline imaging system to measure as the process is running and will reduce defects to within the AQL from one of our top defect categories. Gerardo is setting up the programming and controls.

3. Chayban Ghabech found an inline viscometer that is used for measuring viscosity that we can use inline to monitor real time viscosity to assure we are in control.

These few ideas will have a dramatic effect on Quality, Service and Cost for the life of CASTICO. Great ideas that could have been stopped if I didn’t listen, see their value, and show interest in the ideas and the person generating them. I believe that problem identifiers are minimum wage employees no matter their role. From board room to the lowest position on the production floor. Problem solvers are worth their weight in gold. For example. I weigh 217 pounds. Gold today is $1711 per ounce. So if I’m a problem solver I’m worth $5.9 million dollars. And I have help save more than that over my career. As a problem identifier, I’m worth $7.25 per hour, no matter my title. The message is, surround yourself with problem solvers and champion their ideas.

Celebrate the wins. I shared with David Holl that we cut one cent out of the mascara cost of goods, and he said, “oh” and didn’t seem impressed but when I shared that we produced about 15 million units a year and the savings represented $150,000 per year for as long as we had this product line…he smiled. And I introduced him to the folks who made it happen. And I could see in the body language of the creators and implementers that they were proud and liked being recognized by the CEO. Celebrate what you want, champion ideas and you will get more of them. Accept them as part of someone’s job with twenty-five cents of appreciation and you will get less. What kind of leader do you want to be.