The New Manager: Reimagining Success For An Old-School Leader

Fresh from the Women in Manufacturing (WiM) Summit, I gained a new appreciation for building community, the important role of mentorship, and what success can look like when partnering with allies. I had the opportunity to connect with passionate, intelligent, and committed leaders across several manufacturing sectors over the past 3 days in Boston. The need to redefine traditional managerial roles to better align with contemporary challenges and opportunities has never been more apparent than now. Increasingly, organizations are becoming more age-diverse, and managers are faced with leading teams composed of individuals from different generations, each defined by different experiences, perspectives, and expectations.

In this edition of "Engineering 365", we're going to expand our horizons with unlimited resources, brain power, and creativity, to map out the future of the managerial role in our organizations. As a collective, we can help shape the role to better achieve long and short-term individual, departmental, and overall company goals.

Expectations are Evolving

"Only 20% of managers strongly agree their organizations help them manage people effectively." - McKinsey and Co.

Let's first understand why managers are so heavily scrutinized. Your business growth depends on the quality of your managers. Poor leadership from managers is the #1 reason for employee turnover. These individuals serve as the crucial link between strategic business goals and their execution. Reimagining their role involves addressing multifaceted challenges in workforce dynamics and industry shifts.

If your manager (or you, if you are a manager) were 20% more effective and/or productive, what would YOU be able to do in your role that you might not be able to do now?

This question was poised to the room of over 300 manufacturing leaders - let's look at some of the responses:

Key Insights from Managers

• Focus on Talent Development: They'd suggest managers shift the emphasis from task execution to fostering team development and leadership skills. Empower team members to take initiative so you can build that next layer of leadership.
• Improve Process Visibility: Enhanced managerial effectiveness could allow teams to better identify process inefficiencies and root causes, beyond daily distractions and challenges that arise. Too often, the little fires and "noise" are so loud/disruptive that they cannot get to the main issues within the facility.
• Strengthen HR and Shop Floor Relationships: Increased managerial effectiveness would enable HR leaders to build stronger ties with supervisors and managers, fostering trust and leadership development. There is often a disconnect between HR and line leaders/supervisors and spending more time together and walking the floor could be a gateway to understanding and solutions.
• Addressing System Inefficiencies: With new system implementations post-mergers and acquisitions, improved efficiency in management can streamline troubleshooting and reduce operational downtime and effort. The cumbersome processes bog down the team and with a 20% increase in efficiency, more time could be spent on improving and managing the changes.

The role of the manager has not changed in years, partly due to many other competing factors. For the first time in organizational history, four generations are working at the same time. Let's look at HOW it is changing:

Traits of Old-School Managers

• One-Size-Fits-All Communication: They speak to everyone with the same tone and style, missing the nuances and personalization that different team members require.
• Output Over People: Their primary obsession is pushing products out the door, often at the expense of nurturing individual talent and growth within their teams.
• Stuck in the Top-Down Rut: They cling to rigid, task-oriented methods, enforcing orders from above without fostering collaboration or input from those doing the work. No questions asked, this how things are and how things have been.

What's the secret to keeping a multi-generational team engaged and thriving? What motivates your 22-year-old technician is not the same motivating factor as the Baby Boomer-era Line Leader. How do you manage someone throughout the entire employee lifecycle? These are questions new managers have to wrestle with.

Expectations of the Reimagined "New" Managers:

• Personalized Engagement: Modern employees seek managers who tailor their approach to individual motivations and career goals, creating an environment where everyone feels seen and valued.
• Comprehensive Career Guidance: Employees expect managers to provide strategic support throughout their career journey, aiming for long-term retention and satisfaction beyond the typical 5--year mark.
• Meaningful Cultural Connection: People want to feel deeply connected to their company’s culture, expecting managers to cultivate an environment where everyone feels part of the company’s mission and values.
• Empowering Grassroots Innovation: Employees anticipate that change should be driven collaboratively, understanding that impactful innovations often bubble up from the ground level and are not solely dictated by the C-Suite.

Before we can find solutions to these multi-generational concerns, let's explore what is working well for managing the current workforce.

What’s Working with Multi-Generational Workforce Management

• Soft Skills Transfer: Generational knowledge sharing enhances team dynamics.
• Challenging Status Quo: Embracing the “why” questions from younger generations stimulates innovation and improvement. The new generations don't simply take orders for the sake of taking orders - they want to iterate and improve ideas.
• Focused Weekly Goals: Implementing practices from the book “Four Disciplines of Execution”, which supports strategic alignment through short, focused weekly meetings. One VP of Ops raises this question to each of her direct reports, “What are the 1-2 most important things that you're going to work on within a 1 week time period that will move you closer towards your strategy and goals?” They have an accountability board that is not just visible to the VP but to each of the direct reports – their peers. Looking at this from week to week helps to make the goals and strategies more palatable.

Areas of Opportunity within Multi-Generational Workforces

• Technical Buy-In Conflicts: There can be a divide between seasoned leaders who rely on years of experience and newer teams that bring in fresh, tech-savvy perspectives.
• Communication Barriers: Diverse generational approaches to communication can hinder collaboration. To bridge this gap, managers can implement flexible communication protocols that accommodate varied preferences, such as using collaborative platforms that offer both chat and video call options, ensuring everyone stays connected in their preferred way.

The time for redefining management in manufacturing is now, and the path forward requires boldness and flexibility. As we integrate fresh perspectives from a multi-generational workforce, the role of a manager must transform from rigid taskmaster to adaptable leader, capable of nurturing talent and fostering innovation. The insights and connections gained at the Women in Manufacturing Summit underscore this shift. A manager's success is no longer solely measured by output. It's about cultivating an inclusive and engaging environment where every team member thrives. By embracing these expectations and bridging generational divides, we can build resilient teams that drive sustained growth and innovation. Let's embrace this change with enthusiasm and creativity—after all, the future of manufacturing depends on it.

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