THE TRUE HEART OF AN OPERATION LEADER

In the times of COVID I published some articles about strategy and excellence and the opportunities and chances that COVID accelerated.

Recently I felt a strong urge to share my experience as Leader in Operation, about the adventure I went through as operation leader SVP and COO and the learning I took from it. A consultant and good friend of mine told me once to be curious to exchange roles and to execute what he moderates and teaches – now I try to do something he does and feel curious how it will feel.

We operation folks have some significant culture and leader style in common and those differ us of other professionals and executive. We need to live with contradictions, like technique/technology and people at the same time. We develop and drive strategies, lead from the top and walk the floor in one day. We plan operations for long-, mid- and short term and face the unforeseeable and unexpected in every moment, what makes us task force leaders and problem-solving experts. We are the last bastion to the customer – all issues in the product’s life cycle emerging on our shop floor, at this point your day looks different from the original schedule. We are in the middle between customer (sales), R&D and supply base – we need to know everything. We are the Expert Allrounder!

That you are really into it is when you are in a restaurant and study instead of the menu the accessibility of emergency exits and fire extinguisher and the order-supply process flow and the improvements you would do immediately get more attention as the quality of the food. ?

-- If you feel addressed – please continue to read – if not feel free to continue to read.

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What is driving me, why did I choose my life in operation which costs a lot of personal efforts? ?Here are my thoughts:

I studied Physics to understand the universe. The most fundamentals are applicable to business as well:

·???????? Newtons Principles: 1st - an object will not change its motion unless a force acts on it. 2nd - the force on an object is equal to its mass times its acceleration. 3rd - when two objects interact, they apply forces to each other of equal magnitude and opposite direction. Does not every change in business somehow follow these laws!?

·???????? Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Mechanics: We cannot know both the position and speed of a particle, such as a photon or electron, with perfect accuracy; the more we nail down the particle's position, the less we know about its speed and vice versa. How true is this when you try to predict your business!?

·???????? Einsteins Conservation of Mass-Energy: The total amount of mass and energy in the universe is constant. And the General Relativity Theory: The same laws of physics hold true in all inertial reference frames and that the speed of light is the same for all observers, even those moving with respect to one another. Take this as fundamentals in business – technology and people!

·???????? ….

I went into operations because of the slow pace at this time in R&D. Still, I see the world, the business, and my life with the eyes of a scientist – Understand the WHY holistically and learn by solving problems.

I love to lead and work with people. I used the word LOVE - a bond that often involves understanding each other's core values, beliefs, and life goals - as it fits the most. And empathy is the core value to lead and work with people – empathy creates win-win. In comparison to your private life – in business you give! The take is my personal satisfaction to see people grow. I strongly believe in – if my team members are successful and passionate – I am successful and passionate – valid only in this direction. It makes a difference when you create a family (culture) with your team and with team members. More about this later.

Only when you are dedicated, you are perceived as authentic, and only then you can influence people! In all my assignments I focused on life experience and personal development - once I chose an assignment because of my career and I regretted it.

The Mexican culture around death impresses me a lot – people move into a world after death if they are remembered by the living – my business lives aim is making people great and successful and maybe make them part of your private live - you get back that you are remembered. (Watch ‘Coco’ – the Disney Movie)

Collaboration with peers and supervisors, your board, your CEO – again empathy – at the end business goals are translated into what drives them to be successful in achieving. Understand them, build alliances to help to achieve – if you are successful, they are successful, so be successful.

Talk with your employees and ask them what brings them to work every day! Do they answer ‘I get up every day in the morning to achieve goals and objectives? Most probably not! Goals and Objectives are results of why we do what we do and how we do it. People get passionate when they can decide the What and the How and they are successful. Even more if you coach or lead them to these decisions and set them up for success – then they own it.

This might be a bit different in different cultures of this world and later I share my experiences in Eastern Europe, China, Mexico, and the U.S. And one in my birth country Germany. Assuming the country is small, and the culture is all the same – not really. The first move from TU Darmstadt to Bosch Reutlingen was fantastic as you do not get an intercultural training – in the Frankfurt region people clean the street occasionally and according to the need, in Swabia you must do it every week, best on a Saturday morning that all the neighborhood sees you doing so. What I would like to express is, first understand why things are like they are and then change them – society culture might take a moment longer!

A bit towards content:

Strategy:

The understanding of fundamental nature of business led me to work very deeply with the EFQM (European Foundation of Quality Management) excellence model – a holistic excellence approach based on strategy and direction, execution, and results – and I am deepening this later. As Newton described, every change causes a reaction – also resistance is a reaction! – I adore the power of PROSCI’s change management tools (ADKAR). It confirmed that yourself need to be led the change, the workshops, … - if you delegate it, how does your team know what you want and how do you communicate it? How will you be authentic with your peers and convince your board or your CEO what you do?

Processes:

There are many buzz words, Kaizen, Lean, Go to Gemba, … trust me, your production system needs to be your DNA, and it needs to be a holistic DNA and it need to include the whole operation. Otherwise, you and your team get confused! I was very lucky that within Bosch we developed our Bosch Production System (BPS) based on the (Toyota Production System). I was part in its first moment of initiation and the organization went through fundamental issues – not doing the right thing but doing things right. All learning is necessary – lessons learned and deployment in the organization avoiding making the same mistake again. The first time happened; the second time was a choice!

All what you do seems to be a PDCA Cycle (Plan/Do/Check/Act) in operation and equals cycles of ??Strategy/Roadmap/Cadence/Execution in your leadership team and Kaizen in the value streams.

People:

If found the 5 dysfunctions of a team and the ‘below the line – above the line’ culture as very powerful and a prerequisite before you go for an excellence model. An excellent model is an organizational approach – not your approach only. In Hungary our GM wanted to implement EFQM, we did all the workshops, the theoretical study of the model, … and failed as only half of the leadership team bought in. ??

In the Olympic Games people win gold medals as the lever their strengths – I have not seen that someone achieved a world record by improving a weakness. What is a very good tool is StrengthsFinder 2.0 – it helped me a lot to compose my team levering the strengths of the individuals but also of the team in total. ??

As I am still a scientist in business – I experimented a lot, got ‘mindset of organization transformation’ implemented in an organization and received a different result. I used the IGIKAY model with pizza and beer and moderated the session to find each of my team members’ purpose – an exciting experiment with a cool result. ?(Insanity – doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result works hardly)

What will come next:

A lot of why we did what we did, why it was successful and why we failed. There is no recipe for being a successful COO, SVP operation, … there are a view pre-requisites – dedication, experimentation, being and engineer and a people leader, understand your business holistically and be the chief problem-solving expert, ….

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-????????? Develop a sustainable strategy to achieve goals and objectives and have everyone on board,

-????????? Execution of the strategy and the physics to overcome,

-????????? The purpose of passionate and engaged people.

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Sources and References:

EFQM - https://efqm.org/

PROSCI - https://www.prosci.com/

Organizational transformation - https://qaspire.com/mindset-shifts-for-organizational-transformation/

IGIKAY - https://www.japan.go.jp/kizuna/2022/03/ikigai_japanese_secret_to_a_joyful_life.html

The five dysfunctions of a team - https://www.tablegroup.com/topics-and-resources/teamwork-5-dysfunctions/

Above the line and below the line - https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/you-above-below-line-how-effecting-your-business-julie-mclaughlin/

Strenghtfinder2.0 - https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/254033/strengthsfinder.aspx