In late September I was in Greeneville, Tennessee for the first meeting of a newly forming Manufacturer’s Council.  It was an honor to speak to this group representing the leadership in more than 15 local manufacturing organizations.  I had one hour at lunchtime to share on the topic of Accelerating Continuous Improvement. 

 

As I prepared for the presentation, in my notes pages I kept adding the words – “This is what leaders do.”  As I practiced the night before and the next morning, these words and the thought “what do leaders do to accelerate improvement?” kept flooding my mind.    Knowing that Accelerated Improvement is critical to the future of the organization is one thing – knowing how to do it is another matter completely.

 

After the presentation, I asked the leaders to each turn in their “gem of the presentation” - the most important principle, concept, point, statement, or challenge they heard.  Below is a summary of those “gems”.  “This is What Leaders Do”.

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• Leaders focus the organization on the vital few (1 or 2) critical business issues.

• Leaders create alignment of efforts by linking teams and individuals into the focus.  They create a magnetic field of “teamwork flux” and they “orchestrate” improvement.

• Leaders bring out the discretionary effort in associates by creating “want to” systems instead of “have to” systems. 

• Leaders fulfill two obligations when they ask people to do something.  They observe when it is done and they acknowledge it.

• Leaders stick to the focus by “stiff arming” distractions.

• Leaders define “what’s on the ‘y’ axis”.

• Leaders make performance visible by using scoreboards to turn measurement into feedback that is timely and specific enough to facilitate change.

• Leaders teach all associates about compensating, correcting, and preventing actions and about root cause.

• Leaders charge all associates with two jobs. --- 1) Do the job the best known way today. (best practices) 2) Find a better way to do it tomorrow.  (innovation)

• Leaders celebrate improvements and reinforce the behaviors leading to those improvements.

• Leaders know what to reinforce, who to reinforce, when to reinforce and how to reinforce.

• Leaders know how to “dance in the end zone” by following the 4 steps of reinforcement: What did we do?  Why is it important?  How did we do it?  Enjoy the accomplishment.

 

In this seminar we will discuss the 7 elements essential for leadership excellence.  I will  share with you what I shared with those leaders and you will be able to start your own gem collection and leave with a set of action items for personal and organization improvement.