I often joke that if I could harness the energy of young
children and sell it on e-Bay, I’d be the richest person in the world. So why is it, then, that some managers squelch
the enthusiasm of their employees who offer to drive internal improvement
efforts? Why not give them a chance,
within reason, to prove themselves and their ideas?
The other week, I had
the unique opportunity to meet with a young woman early in her career who was
seeking advice for how to convince her manager that she should be able to
expand the process improvement ideas she had implemented in her own work to
the rest of the group. She described
that she had reduced a roughly 2-day manufacturing prep process down
to 20 minutes, and believed that she could standardize her methods throughout the facility. ‘Wow,’ I
thought, ‘that sounds terrific!’
As our conversation unfolded, we discovered
that she needed to collect some baseline data on the current process duration,
then data on her method. She then needed
to translate that into the cost savings of saved time, which in a business that
is growing like hers, could mean delaying the hire of additional employees and
saving overhead expense. We also discussed how she would need to
estimate a basic timeline and hours for her implementation efforts, and how she
would need to be able to do all of that while still completing her regular responsibilities. She was willing to do the extra work to
improve the process independent of additional compensation, so that should be a non-issue for her manager.
After spending an
hour together and coming up with a plan, this woman went back to her workplace
and proceeded to pitch her idea, complete with the need for data
collection and implementation plan development, to her
management. She let me know how that
went a week later. Apparently while her
work is exemplary and management is very happy with her performance, they do not
want her to step outside her “box” (my word), and take on this extra
challenge.
Sigh.
Do they not realize
that companies pay consultants big bucks to do exactly what she wants to do,
essentially for “free”? As long as she
is still completing her regular responsibilities on time and with the high
level of quality with which she apparently already does her work, why shouldn’t
she be given a chance to make this improvement impact?
Now I recognize that I
do not know the entire scenario, context, or organizational culture
involved. However, this incident has brought up a few memories
for me of the growing-more-distant-every-day-past J when I was just beginning my career.
I recall stepping “outside the box” in factory training and encouraging my small group to perform a skit, rather
than just write on a flip-chart, when explaining how photolithography
worked. They were highly skeptical, but
agreed to do it. Later the Trainer told me that he had never before seen such a
creative explanation, and went on to describe our skit as an example to all his
future training sessions. That was a
good result.
Then there was the
time when I offered to take on doing the ergonomic assessments for my Process
Engineering group on top of my regular responsibilities. My mentor thought that I couldn’t
handle “more work” and discouraged me, but fortunately our mutual manager
disagreed and allowed me to do it, which I did while easily managing workloads. I was even selected to perform the assessment for the then Plant Manager (it
took all of five minutes, and was the highlight of my career to date at that time!). Again, ultimately a good result, but a bit
more challenging to get there.
Along the way, however, there have
been some other managers who did not allow me to try new ideas or make changes. They would say things like “No, you can’t do
that,” “No, we won’t try that here,” “No, that’s too different,” “No, that will
never work.” Sometimes I never got a
good reason, sometimes it made sense, but overall looking back, it seems to me
that if companies are not just paying lip-service to wanting to improve, they
would take full advantage of what an enthusiastic employee offers to
do! If the employee has the desire and the energy,
harness that stuff right up; it’s worth more than anything which can be bought
on e-Bay.
Let me tell you,
Managers of Enthusiastic Employees: If you find yourself consistently saying “No”
to people who want to try new things, fewer and fewer good employees will be working for you sooner or later. Give them a chance, even if it
means allowing them to change the practices that you yourself put in place
back in the day, because if you don’t – the good employees will
eventually leave your company and do something for someone else who appreciates
them.
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