Page 7 - March 2024 SRG Flipbook

Slippery Rock Gazette April 2024 | 7
Training & Education
Prune Your Tree
asking them to give me the keys to the Thrift Store on their way out.
Bewildered, they got up, gave me the keys, and walked out. Half our board resigned that night in solidarity. Those that remained, asked ‘now what’? The answer was simple – rebuild.
I padlocked the Thrift Store and put a sign in the window. December was its busiest month, and we were closed.
A week later I got a call from a lady curious about what was going on with the Thrift Store. I explained, and she volunteered to run the store. In a few short months she had far surpassed the best months before her taking over its management.
It turns out, her husband was a local contractor. He got curious about Habitat for Humanity and started asking ques- tions. He was so intrigued that he shut- tered his business and took over as our construction manager.
A number of people reached out about joining the board now that the clique had been removed, and I had no problem find- ing someone to take over as President after my term ended.
The moral of this second story: you cannot expect to build a great team if you keep your crappy players around.
If you want a fruit tree to thrive and bear lots of fruit, you need to keep it pruned. The same is true for your business.
Laying off employees is the lazy man- ager’s way to address downturns. If and when the time comes that you need to reduce your operating expenses to sur- vive, prune the deadwood instead. Actually, you should do one better – keep your organization pruned, and you won’t need to consider laying anyone off.
Rick Phelps
Principal – Synchronous Solutions “We help clients control the flow
of information and materials through their system to increase profitabil- ity, decrease process times, and reduce chaos.” Contact us at www.synchronous solutions.com .
Iam sure all of you have heard the expression, “You need to get the right people in the right seats on your bus,” That is – if you are going to drive your business to the places you want to go. But that is only part of the equation.
Equally, if not more important, is get- ting the wrong people off the bus. Too often, when we have the wrong person on our team, we default to “better the devil I know” mentality, thinking it’s better to have someone in the role than no one. This is simply not the case.
Sticking with today’s cliché theme – “One rotten apple spoils the barrel” is the better way to look at this situation. Having someone on your team that is not fully committed does not equate to only hav- ing “one seat on the bus partially filled.”’ It actually equates to multiple seats being only partially filled, because not address- ing the problem is causing multiple peo- ple to be less committed.
A number of years ago we were work- ing with a Rockwell Automation plant in the Carolinas. Business was down, so corporate mandated a 10% layoff across the division. At the plant where we were implementing Synchronous Flow, that equated to laying off 30 people. The GM of the plant pulled his leadership team together to explain the corporate mandate and what he intended to do instead. He was determined to not destroy the great workforce engagement that had been cre- ated by our implementation.
The GM asked each of his managers to independently give him a list of the 30 individuals in the plant, regardless of position or department, that they thought had not bought into the program, were problem employees, or didn’t otherwise fit where they were taking the plant.
When he consolidated all of their lists, there were just 31 names on it. Every manager knew which employees were not pulling their weight.
It was a union plant, so they couldn’t just remove the 31. Instead, they started enforcing the rules rigorously. Within weeks, the worst on the list had been ter- minated and everyone knew what was happening. Just a few weeks later the remaining problem employees had quit or been fired.
Rick Phelps
Synchronous Solutions
The managers were not the only people who knew who the non-team players were. The comments the managers received from those who remained were largely along the lines of “what took you so Long?!” The plant got a huge bump in productivity. Removing the 31 bad apples was equiva- lent to adding more than thirty-one addi- tional good ones.
The moral of this story: Getting rid of your non-team players will raise the game of those who remain and are committed.
If you want a fruit tree to thrive and bear lots of fruit, you need to keep it pruned. The same is true for your business.
Here is a second situation that illustrates another positive effect of eliminating the bad apples. When I returned from working with Habitat for Humanity International in Uganda, East Africa, I joined the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity’s board of directors. They were thrilled because they were having trouble recruiting replace- ments. The same gentleman had served multiple terms as president as a result.
In a year I was the chapter’s president and we started addressing the problems of the chapter – starting with the 21 of 23 fam- ilies that were in arrears on their mortgage payments. In the process, two key board members (they ran our Thrift Store, a major source of income for the chapter) took exception to what we were doing. In our December meeting that year, they declared if we didn’t do what they demanded, they would resign. To their great surprise, I accepted their resignations on the spot,
“A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it’s in hot water.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt–
Training & Education
Enhanced Programming Featured in April ISFA Fabricator Forum
The International Surface Fabricators Association (ISFA) will host a series of Fabricator Forums in 2024, the first of which will be held April 10-11 in Charlotte, North Carolina. These two-day regional events, formerly known as Industry Roundtables, include expert-led presenta- tions, peer-to-peer discussions and facility tours. Topics include silica safety, fabrica- tion techniques and tooling for porcelain and other sintered materials, using artificial intelligence to tap into growth opportuni- ties, employee engagement and company culture, and other business best practices.
Sponsored by Cosentino, the Charlotte Fabricator Forum kicks off at the compa- ny’s showroom. Attendees will tour the facility, which is designed to support, pro- mote and educate trade professionals by combining exhibition areas, workspaces and classrooms for continuing education. The forum’s first day will include four pre- sentations with discussions to follow each.
Day one’s agenda is as follows:
Silica Safety: Know Your OSHA Rights
by Joe Sine, Partner at Cohen Seglias law firm will overview our industry’s most significant occupational hazard. Joe is an expert in construction litigation, and he reg- ularly advises business owners, contractors and subcontractors about navigating legal- ities associated with projects and related claims, including contracts, construction defect cases and OSHA compliance cita- tions. Joe will cover the latest OSHA reg- ulations that safeguard workers’ health so that attendees understand the dangers of respirable crystalline silica, the mandates that mitigate exposure, and what must be done to be compliant and protect businesses from liability.
Formerly known as Industry Roundtables, Fabricator Forums are two-day regional events designed to create educational and networking opportunities for members to find the information and resources they need to overcome business challenges and build meaningful relationships.
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