How Did We Get Here?

Written by Jason Haines

“While I made a living as a coach, I have lived my life to be a mentor, and to be mentored constantly! Everything in the world has been passed down. Every piece of knowledge is something that has been shared by someone else. If you understand it as I do, mentoring becomes your true legacy. It is the greatest inheritance you can give to others. It is why you get up every day- to teach and be taught!” -John Wooden

A couple weeks back I was discussing with a former coworker the current work ethic of people entering the workforce or a news position. The gentleman I was speaking with said that people coming into the company to work the front line came across as having no work ethic at all. I turned the discussion to the question of the work ethic, was it the new employee’s nature or was it the fact they really haven’t had any mentors throughout the years to teach them. Now before you start saying it’s the person’s work ethic and that is that, hear me out. There could be a much deeper-rooted issue that is in play here. So please continue to read and let’s talk about this further.

The biggest reason that I brought this thought up is because I used to think the same thing about peoples work ethic. But now I think there is a much deeper issue that is caused by other things other than just poor work ethic.

Work ethic must be taught and ingrained to people of all ages. It must be learned and continued through the years or it has the ability to be lost. Many times, we learn work ethic from a mentor; finding a mentor at any life stage and in everything that we do in life. Mentors don’t always have to be people that we know they can also be the books that we read or the media that we listen to or watch. A great mentor is someone who teaches us something and inspires us to do more with our life. A bad mentor on the other hand is someone who helps us fall into victimhood, holds us back, and doesn’t want us to strive to move forward.

When we find a bad mentor, this is typically someone who seems to be upset all the time, has a negative attitude, and complains about everything. Another group of bad mentors provide a negative influence on your life. Whether that is drugs and alcohol or any other bad habit, these people are horrible to be around, and yes that goes for family members who you would rather not associate with. Over the years I have been around these types of people, regrettably, and they are people who I have begun to leave behind more and more as I grow and mature. They are a time suck, and as many of us in Lean and the world know we cannot get time back. Now I am beginning to find people I can learn from and gain knowledge from.

I lost my way somewhere in life for a bit and decided that the people that I always looked up to were not who I wanted to look up to any longer. I do regret this today because those people meant so much and guided the way I worked and thought about things in life. Two of those people was my late grandfather and my father, who taught my siblings’ many things in life. With both my grandfather and my father around, I had two people who had an immense amount of knowledge. They taught me the value of hard work and let me learn on my own to teach me lessons I needed for my future. For that I am forever indebted and appreciate everything that they gave me. But it hurts me today, and since the late ‘90s, when I have witnessed an increase in people who were divorced.

I saw a lot of people that I grew up with that were being raised up in single parent families and the parents constantly fighting over who was taking care of the children. I felt sorry for these kids because I always had my parents and grandparents there to be mentors to me.  Many of these kids were almost left to raise themselves, and it has gotten worse today. But it can be changed because a lot of these kids are looking for mentorship and people to show them the way. I know I wouldn’t be where I am at if it weren’t for the people who were around me. These people are no different.

How can we get to these people before they get captured by the people with bad influence? At work there are many ways to get people on the right track as leaders, but there are a lot of times we don’t get that chance because we are too busy. The pace of the world gets in our road sometimes when we are leaders because we are trying to make both our employees and our managers happy. Usually pleasing the manager wins, and often we are busy because we haven’t gotten the proper training to lead ourselves. Which usually means we as leaders get frustrated with our workers that we had no time to properly train and get to know. We then start doing our job and theirs in order to meet the expectations of our manager. This cycle never ends until we change or something changes.

How can we change this? How does one become better mentors to employees while also prepping the future leaders of our company? Could this change be Lean management? Lean wasn’t just started to help companies with better quality and better efficiencies. Lean was also created to help train, teach, and mentor employees to be the promoters, maintenance, engineers, and leaders of the company. Many people only see the tools of Lean and think that is all there is, but there is a much deeper part of Lean that many people do not see. This is the part that starts training the future leaders through mentorship and caring for them as part of the team.

Lean helps train employees through TWI and Toyota Kata. These tools teach people how to think about what they are doing, how to do it, how to make changes, and thinking more deeply. This training and thought process teaches people at all levels and helps them become the next leaders and mentors in the company. With people mentoring one another they can find new and better ways to do things. There is also the needed support available for employees to see that someone is there for them and to provide guidance. Just like my father and grandfather, these mentors won’t always give you the answer on how to do something, but they will provide you the know how in order to have a good work ethic.

As I look back, I learned so much from my grandfather, and wish he was still here to let him know what I took from all those talks we had in the Christmas tree fields of his Ohio farm. He not only taught us but let us learn on our own by providing us the mentorship that he thought we needed. I always wished others had that, but the reality is that is not always the case. Therefore, I want to provide to others and give them the mentorship that I was given over the years. I hope I will be able to live up to my grandfather legacy and help others. Only time will tell.

Helping grow your business through process improvement!!