Manufacturers Alliance 5 Year Anniversary and Tips for Manufacturing Leaders

Our first official Manufacturers Alliance meeting was on 11th September 2013 at C&C Baseline in Wigan, with a group of ambitious manufacturing leaders looking to share ideas and learn from each other. 5 years later we have grown consistently and expanded throughout the North West and now have 5 peer support groups of 6-14 members. And what a privilege it has been!

Firstly, I would like to say a huge thank you to all our members. Thank you for opening your businesses and your hearts to the Manufacturers Alliance community. Without your openness and trust in us and your fellow members, we would not be where we are today. Without your passion and ambition, we would not be moving forward and building the strong manufacturing foundations this country needs.

Secondly, I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone that has believed in the Manufacturers Alliance and what we stand for. Straight forward, practical support for leaders within small and medium sized manufacturing businesses. You know who you are. Family, my colleagues and friends within the Manufacturers Alliance, and the many supporters we have across the North West. You have kept me believing in the cause and myself.

5 years has felt like a short period of time in some respects but there have been may lessons learned. And this is something I would like to share.

Why should you trust my tips? What do I know that you can’t read everywhere on the web, social media and in books? I spend a large proportion of my time with manufacturing leaders, some successful, some on the journey to becoming successful. So what? I have spent the past 5 years decoding and understanding what they do that makes them successful and what they do that hinders progress. OK? That could be useful? Having a lean background, I have a knack of getting past the bullshit and all the way to the root cause. Not the surface level stuff that people share with the rest of the world. The deep rooted stuff, where you need to build someone’s trust before they share this with you. OK? Sound interesting? Well, if you’re still reading, here goes. 

The list is not an exhaustive one or in any particular order. I am also not sharing any specific secrets of people I have met. More general business principles that work. Hope you find my ramblings of value. My tips are for manufacturing leaders of small and medium sized manufacturing businesses…

1.      Who are you? What I’m getting at here is, how self aware are you? Do you know your strengths, weaknesses, what motivates you, the impact you have on others? The pursuit of getting to know yourself should never stop. You should always be learning about yourself and becoming more self aware. If you are not on the journey, get on it. The number of people I meet who don’t understand their shadow of influence, how their behaviour impacts their team, is quite scary.

2.      What do you want? Do you know what you want? Not X turnover by 2020. What do you want? Is it a financial driver, a number? Are you growing the business to prepare it for sale? Are you growing it to hand over to family members or an MBO? Is it about purpose and fulfilment? Are you looking to make a difference in the world? Create a cause and feel a sense of purpose? This is unique to each individual. We are all different and we want different things. The problem is. We sometimes don’t know what we want, which is confusing. And even when we do, we don’t tell anyone. So, find out what you want and tell everyone you meet. The world has a wonderful way of making things happen when you do this.

3.      Where are you going? To help onboard everyone in the business, you need a clear vision of where it is you are trying to get to. Not easy when you’re on the hamster wheel, busy, busy, working away every day, but you and your management team need to take a step back and plan for the future. Get offsite and build it together and then meet regularly to review your progress. A trend I see, when I am speaking to people on the shop floor is, they have no sense of direction. They don’t know where it is you are trying to get to, so how can they help you get there?

4.      Why are you doing it? Simon Sinek has done a great job of bringing this to the attention of the world. If you don’t know Simon Sinek, google it now, you are 5 years behind the rest of the planet. The message is, find your why. At the root of all of us is our own why. We all have a reason or reasons for getting out of bed in a morning. Find the why for your business and align your team based on this why. Example, the Manufacturers Alliance why is to develop the knowledge and leadership skills of our members, so they can grow and transform their businesses. We don’t tell people what to do. We don’t grow the businesses. We facilitate, we coach, we support, we do everything we can to enable our members to do it for themselves. But your why will probably be different. Why is it so important? Sound a bit fluffy? This is at the core of human motivation. Your why. If you can find people aligned with your why. You will be unstoppable.

5.      How do you create value for your customers? Another great resource is the Business Model Generation book and the more recent Value Proposition book by Strategyzer. As above. This has been around for 5 years or more, so if you’ve not come across it, get googling. More fundamental that profit in my book. For me profit is an outcome from delivering a great service and good business model design. To deliver a great service you need to understand how you deliver value to your customers. Not sure? Get talking to your customers. They will tell you.

6.      How will you deploy the business strategy? This is something that sorts the wheat from the chaff. It’s all well and good having a great plan on paper but the real business skill is making it happen. Making happen in an effective way, where people are engaged and delivering results. I think part of the trick is focus. Focusing on a vital few objectives you would like to achieve for the year, rather than a wish list of 20+ that never happen. You also need to communicate key success drivers. What is it that is really important to the customer? Shorter lead time? Lower price? Faster response times? Find out and communicate this within your teams.

7.      It’s not about you Mr/Mrs Ego! Unfortunately, this is pretty common. The whole business revolving around the MD, CEO, Plant Manager, etc. When the penny finally drops, this has a tremendous impact on the business. What penny? Read the next tip.

8.      It’s all about people. Successful leaders understand that business success is all about people. Your people are your greatest asset and in most cases your only true way of differentiating from your competition. Particularly for the manufacturing sector as it is becoming more and more service led. You have to learn to trust and build your people to do a great job. The rest of it will look after itself. Biggest lesson in business for me and one of the best kept secrets.

9.      What is the problem you are trying to solve? This is about clarity really. I find that people come along to our meetings with problems to solve and a big part of the problem solving is actually understanding the problem. I have shared this just to let people know that you’re not on your own. Problems can be complex to understand and sometimes it needs someone else to ask a curve ball question to get you to understand what’s going on. First rule of problem solving is to understand the problem. How can you solve it if you don’t know what it is?

10.  Fail often. I think this is a mindset thing and some people are just averse to getting things wrong and being seen as a failure. I get that. I’ve been there and got the t-shirt. But I think as you become more of a learner and approach the world as a learner, you appreciate that failure is part of learning. And people who want to move at a fast pace developing something fail fast and often. Fundamental to change and improving things I’m afraid. If this is an issue for you, get someone to act as a sounding board and help keep you motivated. Ben open and honest with them about how you feel about failure. The start of the journey is admitting you have a problem.

11.  Be the best. People who do well in business, don’t do it by accident. It is by design and on purpose. And being the best is part of who they are. They are competitive and don’t want to be average. They are disciplined and never give up. They have a strong work ethic and spread the hard work ethic like a disease in the business. I love to be around people like this. It’s all normal to them. It’s just the way it is. But these are great people to learn from. Usually very honest and will tell you what they are doing. Mainly because they know most humans are not as driven to succeed as they are. If you are reading this, you are either very bored, or in the top 5% anyway. Not many people are doing it.

12.  Ask for help. Finally, I would say this was a perceived weakness of mine, but I am learning to embrace this as a strength. I must admit I was lead to believe that asking for help was a sign of weakness, so it’s taking me time to adapt to this but people who are getting on in business are doing this as a norm. Being humble. Admitting when they don’t know and asking for help.

I hope you made it to the end. If you did and you are looking for more tips from experienced people in the manufacturing sector, we have launched our own series of best practice videos. The focus will be on developing knowledge and leadership skills in small and medium sized manufacturing business. The videos will be short and in a How To format. Our first video below, is by one of our Chair People, Peter Hammond, who is also the Managing Director of Auto Marine Cables.

Thank you for your support over the past 5 years and here’s to the next 5. Let’s do what we can as a community to support the growth of UK manufacturing. If you share our why and want to help. Get in touch. And if you are a manufacturing leader that would like to join one of our groups, register for a free taster via the website: www.manufacturersalliance.co.uk