Podcast: Leadership insights on coaching, reliability culture, and overcoming maintenance challenges
Below is an excerpt from the podcast:
PS: Awesome. Yeah, we like to talk about what went wrong. We like fails, I guess, around here. And I mean that half joking and also half serious. When I think of fails, I think of those internet videos, funny videos of people falling and hurting themselves, and I do think those definitely have a place in our society. But for us, we're talking about fails are all the things that can go wrong in operations and maintenance. And Joe, you offer your own fails up for critique. And we anonymously talk about your clients and people that you work with, but you offer failure points as a means of learning. But everybody loves a fail, and sometimes I think you learn more that way.
JK: You definitely remember them longer.
PS: Joe, one of your articles this summer addresses some important management tactics for times of failure. It's easy to be a manager when things are going great, but what about when things aren't going so well? How do you how do you respond? And you laid out a specific example in this article, and you got a call from a maintenance manager who had an equipment failure at his plant, terrible event. So it was a misdiagnosis by the maintenance tech that caused the failure, a bearing issue on a conveyor was misdiagnosed as a problem with the chain, and it caused eight hours of unplanned downtime. No good. So this maintenance manager wanted to know, you know, should he discipline this tech? How should he discipline the tech? You know, how should he react as a manager in the event, at the moment and after the fact. Joe, what do you think?
JK: I think most of this audience, if you're in a maintenance leadership role, you've been there, you've seen this experience, and this call that I've got hit a nerve with me, because I've done it wrong so many times. As a manager, something fails and you disappointed the team, the production team, the plant management team, Vice President team, you've disappointed everybody. You want to react to that, and a common reaction is, ‘Hey, I'm going to bring in that person and discipline, and that'll make me feel better.’ We’ve put the blame on that person for doing a poor job, and we'll move forward from there.
And that's what I did for years, I may say, decades. Probably not decades, but here's a question that changed how I manage these situations, and it's a question I asked myself, what would I do differently? If I assumed this person wanted to come to work today and do a good job, they wanted to do a good job, what would I do differently if I assumed the greatest of intentions? And that was very impactful, like I said, and the thing I realized is everybody that became a technician, they want to do a good job. They want to use their skills. They want the equipment to run well. But for some reason, on that particular day, something went wrong. Okay, so what's the right way to treat that individual, to lead toward the culture I was trying to create. The culture I was trying to create. I used the term a reliability culture. What that means is people do work efficiently. They do problem solving. We're structured in how we do work. There are work orders. We execute work; we plan. We kit jobs every. Everybody has a good understanding of how equipment fails, how to install a bearing, how to lubricate it. Just as an example, there's just alignment in the whole organization and giving discipline to an individual really has a much higher percent of chance of taking a big leap away from reliability culture.
So once I ask that question of, ‘Hey, what would I do if I assume this person wanted to do a great job today. I start thinking about other options, like, well, why don't I sit down with this individual and find out, what they learned? 99% chance they're going to feel horrible about this. Okay, so you don't need to discipline somebody if they already feel horrible. You can ask them to share that with the team. Say you have 20 technicians at your plant. What did they learn? What did they do? What are you going to do differently in the future? Maybe you can ask them to be an equipment owner. ‘Hey, I want you to own conveyors. I want you to own motors. I want you to own pump rebuilds because you learned this lesson. You have a great opportunity of advancing the culture instead of setting it back.’
And that took me a lot of years to figure that out. If you do go down the discipline path, play that out a little bit. You may feel better in the moment. You've fixed blame on that, but guess what the technicians are going to do going forward? They're all going to not make less decisions. They're going to make less decisions because they want to run it up the flagpole. ‘Hey, I'm going to ask my supervisor this. I'm going to ask for the engineer. I'm going to ask for management. You tell me what to do so I don't get in trouble.’ And that's exactly the wrong direction.
So I think it all starts with the one question, what if you assumed everybody came in today to do a great job, and something got in the way of that? And you will make better decisions. You'll make more progression towards your target state of a reliability culture, the engagement will increase. You've already paid the price of the eight hours downtime. Now, discipline is not going to bring that back. Now maybe you find people with the expense, you know, I'm trying to be funny. You fine people for the total expense of their downtime. No, nobody does that. But to me, it took me several years to learn this, 10-15 years to learn everybody's trying to do a good job. If you think everybody's trying to do a poor job, do the least amount of work that's possible, wants to do poor craftsmanship, poor precision, you're not a leader. You're not a leader. You have to change that culture, and it starts with the decisions you make. So this was a real example, and it inspired me to write that story. And I'm glad you asked a question about that, because it took me so long to learn that, and I look back at the bad decisions I've made early on in my career, and I said, ‘Man, I wish I could have had some of those back.’
PS: Yeah. it's often about culture. And like you said, the blame game doesn't really get at the issue or the root issue that's causing some of that stuff. And if they're part of a bad system, you've said this before, that's not their fault either.
JK: Yeah, you own the culture. I own the culture. And if they were in a rush. Say that person was given 30 seconds to make an evaluation versus 30 minutes because they were doing some other job that somebody else was yelling at them to get to quicker, bigger response down time, this equipment's down. Assume they were trying to do a great job or a good job, and I think it things will look different to you as a manager and a planner and a plant manager engineer.
PS: Definitely, there's a couple other things you brought up in that article too, in terms of how to deal with issues like this after the fact, and just a couple things that I liked. And one was using reflection and asking technicians to actually write an email or write down what they learn from the experience, what they could do differently next time. That might seem like a punishment to a lot of people, maybe, but I think it's a good exercise for anybody, and a learning exercise. And then the other point you made, really, was coach up or coach out. And like you said, you hope that people are there and wanting to do a good job, and you give them the opportunity, and you help them learn along the way, but it may not be right for everybody, and that's when it's time to coach out, I guess.
JK: Yeah, and Anna, that's a very important point is how many times has this happened to this individual, and if you've been coaching them for six months, and this is the 10th event. Yeah, that's a different response than this was a one off and what decision you need to make. But not everybody can function in your culture. Not everybody has the skill sets to be in your culture. Maybe you need to increase the talent level on your team. That is a very real reaction and a process I went down a lot. That was actually one of the things I think I did extremely well is built a strong team, and you've got to deal with that, but I guess, most of the time, these are cultural problems. And there are people that I labeled, Anna, I’ve got to be honest. There are people that I labeled, these weren't good employees, and then they'd have a problem, and then we start changing the culture, and three or four years later, they're great employees. So maybe they just needed to be in the right culture.
You can't be afraid to coach up and coach out, but you also need to be honest with yourself on the culture that you've created, and what's the right action to advance that culture. And it is all about culture. It is all about culture. It really is. And don't be intimidated by that. Don't be afraid of that. I like to say I learned this years ago is, how do you change a culture? Most people are just so overwhelmed by, ‘oh, culture change. Don't tell me. It's just culture change stuff. I don't have time for this.’ You change a culture one experience at a time. Create one experience today that is in line with the culture you're targeting. And then you connect the dots with people. You tell them why you're doing something, and you do that for six months or a year, the culture changes, one experience at a time. Create one experience today.
PS: That's good advice, I like that. So the second question I'm asking in our more personal part of the podcast is still related to team building, I think, and maybe culture, but really just in general, what do you think makes someone a good coworker or a good a good teammate?
JK: A good teammate is one that communicates well. You have honest dialog. A good teammate will tell you not only when you're doing good, but when you let them down. I just think that's so important to have that close relationship where you feel like it is a team. This person is going to support me when I'm in trouble, they're going to pick up the slack whenever I'm, maybe my mind is occupied with something at home. This person, without being asked, jumps in to support me. So I think a good teammate is somebody that I can bounce ideas off of. They can bounce ideas off me. It's okay to be wrong, as long as we learn from that. I think it's a person that is passionate, dedicated, willing to put in the work. Yeah. I mean, that's those are all probably stereotypical things to say about a teammate, but I think that's it. That's true. Somebody that will just be open, honest with you, candid, hardworking and supportive.
PS: Yeah, I like communication. I think that's a given. I think it's hard to be part of a team without that. And I think trust was the other big one I heard, in what you were talking about there for sure. I think what I have to say is probably related to maybe all the stereotypical things that you think, but I personally really like to collaborate and brainstorm with others. I've actually left jobs because I was just looking for more of a team atmosphere. So I enjoy that. So I really want to work with people that want to be part of a team. I've been on teams before where it's just individuals working separately, but not really together. So I think number one, you need to want to be in that collaborative environment.
Then, aside from some of the things you mentioned today, I think the biggest thing for me is just respect, I guess, respect for each other as human beings, respect for each other as professionals. We all have different talents and different strengths, and we're hopefully coming together on a team to balance each other out and do different things that are based on what we're all good at. And each is important and deserves respect, no matter where you are in the corporate ladder, so to speak, or where you are in your jobs.
And I found that even if you disagree with someone about something, and I think that's natural, no one is going to agree all the time, there's just ways to show respect for others ideas and thoughts, even if you disagree with them, that shows you're not close minded. One thing throughout my career, the thing I hear a lot, or it's some version of this: we've done that; we tried that it didn't work like, and when people are closed off to new ideas and whatever it may be, it might have not worked when you tried it before, but maybe a different approach, or maybe that was something you did 10 years ago. And so I always say, let's be open minded and forward thinking. And like you said, I do want that honesty and that candor and good communication from teammates, but there was always a tactful and respectful way to do that, I guess.
JK: Yeah absolutely. I'm thinking of an example, and I'll try to be short with this is. What was a powerful team I was on? Our plant, we divided up into five different departments. And I was at one time, I was one of those department leads. Well, when the five of us got together, I mean, we were candid. We were tough on each other. We really worked together great, but we were candid and pushed each other, pushed each other to higher and higher goals. But when somebody from the outside, say, a president at the company, or something like that, came down hard on one individual. We all locked arms, and you took on all of us, and that's being defensive, being a team, is you take criticism as a team, and it's not, this isn't something Joe did wrong. This is the team. And here's why that was important. Here's why I would have made the same decision. And it was powerful. It was powerful that I knew that they had my back all the time. So if I took a business risk doing something, and it didn't work out well. I knew they would defend me if I wasn't in the room. They would defend and say why Joe made that decision, and I think it was brilliant. So we were behind closed doors, we were tough on each other, but that brought us to higher and higher accomplishments. But we locked arms.
PS: I feel like we're coming full circle, because it in my mind, it's relating back to where we started this conversation. And when you're dealing with failures, and you don't want to play the blame game, and you tackle that as a team and take it on together. I love it. Alright, well, that will do it for this episode, Joe, thank you again for joining us.
Joe Kuhn
Glad to be here, and hopefully one person will take some action based on this session.
About the Podcast
Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast offers news and information for the people who make, store and move things and those who manage and maintain the facilities where that work gets done. Manufacturers from chemical producers to automakers to machine shops can listen for critical insights into the technologies, economic conditions and best practices that can influence how to best run facilities to reach operational excellence.
