Podcast: From burnout to breakthrough—how manufacturing leaders can turn New Years’ goals into real reliability gains

JK:  Well, great question. There's a lot in there. Should plants make New Year's resolutions? I don't. I never use that term associated with work. But like it or not, you're going to have new goals. You're going to have new challenges in front of the business. 100% of my 32 years in manufacturing, did I have goals that were new in the coming year? Yes. I think it's important, because there are natural headwinds in your business. You’ve got salary increases, which everybody likes. You’ve got natural inflation that comes in all your parts and pieces, and your equipment is all one year older, so you've got to get better every year just to stay even. 

I've given that talk so many times, and people can rally around that. That's just being honest. Now, when I comes down to setting goals, targets, I come back to the fundamental principle that I've talked about a lot is that every reliability tool is targeting waste. Reliability is all about waste elimination, the waste of downtime, the waste of labor hours, the waste of materials that didn't last their full life. It's all about waste. And so that any goal that you have must be linked to a waste that's in your plan, not something that management read in a book somewhere, but also not even from listening to me on a podcast. A book, article, a magazine, or podcast can stimulate an idea, but it has to be rooted in what is the waste at your plant. And that all starts with observation. 

So if you're setting a goal, you would need to have, I would say, 8, 16, 24 hours of observation of that particular facet, maybe you're trying to increase your predictive maintenance percentage. You're going from 5% to 10%, but you got to know where the opportunities are through observation. And one of the things I like to do. And this is a specific action. I asked my leadership team, say we wanted to go from 5% unplanned downtime, to three. I asked this question, what would have to be true on December 31 for us to be at 3% unplanned downtime? So work it backwards. At the end of the year, we're getting ready to celebrate. What would have to be true for that celebration to happen, and then that prompts a discussion of actions. 

Now regarding those goals, I always try to shoot 25% higher. And the reason I shoot 25% higher than the actual goal, say we need to be at so much of a cost per man hour, shoot 20-25, 20% higher than that. Because life happens. Unplanned events happen, and if an unplanned event happens in March, you don't want to just be making that excuse all year long. Leaders aren't paid for excuses. And I hate to be blunt, but you're challenged to work around those excuses, overcome those issues. That's maintenance. Nobody more than maintenance is challenged to do that. 

So I always shoot for a higher goal. I always sit down and with my leadership team and say, Hey, let's, let's spend an hour here on what has to be true on December 31 for us to hit this goal. Now I don't like telling the leadership team: here are our goals. I like for them to be involved in the goal creation. Now you're going to get, let's be honest, you're going to get two or three goals, maybe five or six from corporate. But let's have a couple goals of our own, and let's talk about those. What as a team, what are our actions are going to be to achieve those? So you don't want a corporate plan. You want a plan of your leadership team. You want a plan that everybody feels like they've been heard, they've been listened to, and they had input on the plan. So those to me, when I think about creating goals that stick, they have to be inclusive of everyone. Everyone had the opportunity to be involved and to pick it apart. I always shoot for 20-25% higher, because life happens, and they must be rooted in reality that we see in the waste in our plant. That's what I like to do.

PS:  That’s very good advice on goal setting and leaders aren't paid for excuses. I love that one. I just need to say that one again and burn that one into my memory. Looking back on your time in management, outside of goal setting, was there ever a time given the time of year, just coming off of the really busy holidays, was there ever a time where you and your team were starting a new year feeling stuck or burned out, and how do you find new energy for focus in the new year?

JK:  Yeah, that brings up some bad memories. Yeah, the one that sticks in my mind as a big event that drove some significant change in behavior out of myself and my leadership team was, it was an area called anode assembly. We were attaching a copper rod to a carbon block using cast iron. And that's the simple definition, but there was a lot of mechanical work and assembly going on. But from a maintenance standpoint, this system was 50 years old. It had all kinds of problems with it, and my staff and I, and the maintenance staff and the production staff, we were working long hours. I mean, every single day, work through Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving Day, work through Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day. And I mean, it was hard to stay energized, because equipment kept breaking down, breaking down, breaking down. 

We had been pushing this equipment very hard. Most people in the industry replace this equipment 15 years ago, and we're still trying to push through with this technology. But after coming back and fighting through that, and it's January 1 or January 2, let's say, sitting down with my leadership team and just saying, guys, we're better than this. We can't continue like this. This is the crews are worn out. I'm worn out. Mentally, emotionally, physically, everything is freaking worn out. And what that forced us to do is some bolder changes. 

Instead of just continuous improvement, we took on some bold things, and a couple of them that come to mind, where we had eight engineers that worked in this smelting complex. Well, we actually took two of them out of their areas of responsibility. So we had eight people and divided up the plant into eight areas, and everybody had one area. We divided those eight areas to six people, and then we freed up two full time reliability engineers, and we said, we don't want you to be focused on the day to day at all. We want you working on next quarter's problem, next the quarter after that, six months or a year from now, and stand outside of the trees and look at the forest and see what we should be doing. And these two people just killed it. I mean, they just did a great job. They just didn't get pulled into the daily fires that we were having. And it was unbelievable what they were able to accomplish. 

And nobody wanted to do this. All that everybody said was this couldn't be done. I had to get buy-in from production to say, hey, if you have an emergency today, our best engineer is not going to be working on that job. Our best engineer is going to be working on next month's problem. That's a bold thing to do, and when I did that, I asked for a 90-day trial. We're not going to permanently make this change. We're going to do a 90-day trial. And that 90-day trial is a great takeaway for this audience. If you want to drive a change, but everybody's been resistant of it, ask for 90-day trial. That way that person is going to give you another day in court to talk about the benefits of this. If you think a change is permanent, you're going to maybe put up your defensive walls. If you think a change is a just for 30, for 60, or 90 days, I like 90, maybe you're more willing to take that risk. And that was a huge one. 

The second thing we did at the same time is we divided up our work crew into planned work crews and emergency work crews before we had maybe a four-person crew, in an area, let's say it's the ring furnace. We had four persons there, and they were doing planned work. And then if emergency work came up, they stopped what they were doing, and one or two of them went off and did the emergency job. We stopped that all together. We, as a plant, in all the areas, we had a unplanned work crew of four people, and then everybody else was doing planned work. And the planned work to pull resources off the planned work, this was big, took authorization from the plant manager, 24/7. You may say, oh my gosh, that's going to be a lot of calls coming to the plant manager. I got zero calls. Zero. I've given this advice out several times. I've never known a plant manager to get a single call. What happens is that the emergency crew will work off a priority list. Instead of every emergency being number one priority, work off a priority list. They may work overtime, but we're protecting the planned work. We're going to be successful because of our planned work. 

Okay, so those were the actions we took. But it all was because we got tired, sick and tired of being sick and tired, if that makes sense. And sometimes that level of performance forces you into a corner to make more bold decisions. And so I look at that time, I said, oh gosh, I got a time where I was sick and tired, but it ended up turning into a very positive because we made these changes that just had a dramatic impact on performance.

PS:  Yeah, that's a really great story. And we've talked about the issue of separating planned versus emergency, and the idea of having to call the plant manager, and that you never got a call for that, which is always baffling to me, but what a great story, because it's really about how you guys discovered reliability and made that a focus and delineated between maintenance and reliability, and that you really needed both, and need to focus on both. So great story. 

Okay, so moving on for our second part of the podcast, we're going to stay with this New Year's theme, and we usually talk about a little bit more personal matters in this second part, but we're going to stick with resolutions. Have you ever made a New Year's resolution? Did you make one this year? Do you think it is worthwhile practice in general? And I'll go first here only because I guess I'm really not one who tends to do a lot of New Year's resolutions. My life is pretty full of high demand goals already. So I think I'm good. 

However, I was curious a little bit about the psychology behind New Year's resolutions, and as I suspected, I did a little research, and most of the research out there I read said that most New Year's resolutions that you make on January 1 fail, in general. Some of the reasons for this that they cited is that people make resolutions that are too vague, too ambitious, or rely too heavily on willpower. It's difficult to make really big, sweeping changes in one fell swoop and often in order to actually make those big changes, there are many little steps that need to happen first before you get to that point, a big, great change, which actually reminds me of what you were talking about in terms of how you're deciding goals that you might have for your plant. You've got to be out there observing and knowing what your waste is long before you're setting those goals on January 1 and deciding what you want to do. So you have to have some work put into that before. 

But the research also suggests that New Year's resolutions fail because people often aren't asking the why behind the things that they're choosing to do. So why do you want to go to the gym more or eat better or save money or watch less TV? Those are often what we make resolutions about. But you need more than just willpower to change something that might be hard for you. One of the psychologists in this article I read said the pain of not changing has to be greater than the pain of changing for us to really change, which made a lot of sense to me. 

But lastly, researchers were suggesting that this environment where you feel pressure to make resolutions forces people to make those goals before they're really ready to change. So I don't think you necessarily need an arbitrary date to make a change, but it could be a motivator for some people, and I think what I gathered from the research is, if you're realistic about your goals and you really want to make that change. But Joe, what do you think about New Year's resolutions? Is it something you do?

JK:  Great question, great and I love your analysis. They're much more scientific than mine. I would say, for me, the end of the year is a very reflective time, not only at work like we've already talked. But personally, how am I doing as a dad, as a husband, on my health? I tend to like say, ‘Well, this wasn't a good eating year. My nemesis is food. I exercise very well, but my nemesis is food, especially this time of year.

So I reflect a lot, and I think that's natural to turn that into a hope for the new year. But I have not been successful with New Year's resolutions personally. Work wise, I have been and this question is making me try to think through why that is. At work, you're forced to have goals, forced to have new targets, and you’ve got to change behavior because of that event. The pain of not changing is greater or less than I'm not sure which one, but then you change it, and I think that's why it happens better for me at work, where, myself, I'm just a one man vote, and I can change my vote. 

But I always try to have one on health, because I do reflect on how I'm eating, my age, what my blood pressure is doing, things like that, my target weight. But it's like you said, and I'll say it in simpler words, it's okay to come up with that. It's one thing to come up with a goal, but you’ve got to be emotionally ready for that goal. And if you just January 1, this just an arbitrary date. Sometimes that date would come to me where I was just very focused on my nutrition and what I ate and my health that may come on June 4 or something like that, just as anything else. So I have not been successful on New Year's resolutions for myself, but I do understand how it's a natural time, because we get together with friends and family and reflect on the year, and then, hey, here's a new start, a new blank sheet of paper. I think it's a great time, but I just haven't been able to line up my emotional needs to change with my math that says I need to change.

PS:  Well, and according to the statistics, you're definitely not alone. I forget the number. I should have written it down. I think it was 67 or 69% of New Year's resolutions, they said failed.

JK:  I bet it's in the 90s.

PS:  Yeah, probably even higher, maybe just the stress of the year too. Maybe it's not the best time to start, but you're not alone. But like you said, it is a great time to reflect. I hope everyone is thinking about their personal and professional lives right now and hoping for the best in 2026.

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.

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