Historian and leadership expert Bill Fournet eschews the notion that the pace of change is accelerating in business. But, he says, the pace at which leaders will be called to respond to that change is.
“Maybe 30 years ago if something happened geopolitically, economically, it would take several weeks. You could see it coming, but it would take six to eight weeks before it started affecting us,” Fournet says. “That happens now in hours or minutes.”
The biggest obstacle to overcome in these situations, Fournet says, is a complacent mindset.
Fournet, who founded the global consulting firm The Persimmon Group in Tulsa, Oklahoma, will visit Northeast Wisconsin Oct. 25 as the keynote speaker for Manufacturing First — the state’s largest manufacturing expo and conference, hosted annually in Green Bay by Insight, the NEW Manufacturing Alliance and First Business Bank. Fournet says his keynote address, “Lead for Tomorrow: How to Thrive in the Age of Disruption,” will challenge attendees to overcome complacency by developing “power plays” that will help their organizations respond at today’s pace of information.
“It’s like a sports team,” he says. “When you’re having to change or adapt your game plan because of what you’re seeing or get surprised by, you’re falling back on plays that you already practiced.”
Communication is key
Fournet says one key to combatting complacency is for manufacturing leaders to ask more questions and show more empathy. Not only does this practice create insights that improve their businesses, but it is responsive to generational shifts and workplace modernization efforts that help attract much-needed talent.
“We move so fast in the United States, versus Europe or other places. We like to jump to conclusions, and that’s where leadership is failing a little bit right now,” Fournet says. “Ask the questions to [understand people better], because once you do that and you start building judgment, then you can delegate more. You can become [unable to delegate] as a leader; you can’t take a technology-free or email-free vacation. It creates a lot of churn in the burnout space.”
Fournet has his own personal experiences with burnout, and he says manufacturing leaders face new stresses that cause burnout in the modern age, mostly in the category of what he calls “noise.”
That noise includes the frequency and pace of online communications, as well as the stresses around how to use them appropriately in different relationships. (“We’re using email as more of a weapon than a communication device,” Fournet observes.) How do your colleagues, friends and family members like to be communicated with: Text, email, phone, Snapchat? Fournet says remote work is also causing communications stress: Are you working right now? Where are you? At home or in the office?
“That’s a new level of overwhelm that’s wearing people’s brains out,” he says.
Delegation and improved communication with an empowered workforce are important, agrees John West, chairman of Fox Valley Metal-Tech in Green Bay — a company that has upped its incentives and rethought its training strategy to retain talent in the wake of what West says was the biggest disruption of his career: COVID-19.
In an era when flexible scheduling and the opportunity to work from home are increasingly attractive benefits, manufacturing has been at a disadvantage. An employee operating a $2 million machine can’t take their work home, West explains. But the company can offer a “4 10s” arrangement that gives an employee an extra day off each week. It can offer additional benefits and perks. And it can create its own customized training programs — these are not just a benefit to employees, he adds, but a necessity to the company as its pool of qualified workers shrinks.
“It’s always difficult to find good manufacturing people; they’re in high demand, but there’s [currently] not a lot of people continuing their education or coming out of the tech schools in those areas to meet the demand,” West says.
Needing to know what you need to know
While trades like welding and machining that are needed by Fox Valley Metal-Tech have somewhat standardized training components, there’s also the lingering question of what skills manufacturing workers will need in the future, and what jobs will look like as technology evolves.
“Today’s jobs are becoming more about decision making, problem solving and critical thinking,” says Kim Bassett, longtime CEO of Bassett Mechanical in Kaukauna. “Manufacturers need to invest not only in their equipment but as importantly in their people through leadership development, technology training, problem-solving skills, critical thinking, decision-making skills and more.”
Jobs are changing and employees need to adapt — especially around technology. Fournet calls AI the most disruptive force of our lifetimes.
“Originally, when some of the predictive analytics robots were coming in there were some pretty big disruptions and definitely some changes in the sector,” he says. “The AI piece takes it to another level, because it’s thinking more at a decision-making level.”
Meanwhile, the lack of understanding about how artificial intelligence will specifically affect work is a cause of stress. A new Gallup poll found that 22% of U.S. workers are concerned that technology will make their jobs obsolete — a seven-point jump from 2021.
“I think right now it’s scary for a lot of people, like what that can mean and even government control,” West says. “But if you take a deep breath, it’s an accelerated or higher level of automation. And in our industries, where costs continue to go up and availability of people goes down, doing automation is an answer.”
Fournet agrees, and he adds that automation is potentially an opportunity to rethink and transform our society.
“You have AI and robotics and automation coming in to reduce the amount of tasks people may have to perform, which implies than you either need to shift the type of worker you hire or the number or the focus of the workforce that we’ve had in the past,” Fournet says. This invites a bigger question: What do we do with our time in the face of our nation’s first major period of mass disruption since the Great Depression and World War II?
“We had manufacturing, agriculture; we had people making things, but we had a lot of small mom-and-pop businesses that made things directly versus a lot of what you see today, which are the national plants,” he says. “So that was a transformation in the way we worked. There’s also a technology change that affects the way we work and live for the next 60 to 80 years. The last one was the jet engine; this one, we believe, is the internet.
“The questions are going to be, which of these trends are going to start sticking and changing what our future starts to look like for the next several decades?”
Hear more from Bill Fournet
Register to attend Manufacturing First Oct. 25 at Resch Expo in Green Bay. www.manufacturingfirst.com
3×3 Leadership Insights
Insight asked three legendary Northeast Wisconsin manufacturing leaders to share their top three pieces of leadership advice for their fellow manufacturers.
John Davis, Chairman, Great Northern Corporation
Davis was CEO of Great Northern Corporation, the Appleton-based developer and manufacturer of packaging, shipping, merchandising and distributing products, from 2009-2022 and stepped into his chairman of the board role at the beginning of this year.
1 Manufacturing is a team sport. Team members have the opportunity to be at their best, and to be recognized for their contributions to the success of the team. Making a product celebrates the dignity of work at all levels in the process.
2 Innovation is happening every day in manufacturing. Product enhancements that address customer problems help grow the business and provide a competitive advantage. Process improvements that simplify the business can also make the work safer, more efficient and yield better quality products. Creative ideas from the team implemented through a collaborative process is contagious!
3 Provide sustainable options. Manufacturers have championed sustainability for decades. Inefficient processes, unsafe workplaces, wasted raw materials, and excessive energy consumption create a competitive disadvantage. Survival requires finding ways to reduce, reuse and renew resources. Now more than ever, manufacturers are improving products and processes to give consumers sustainable options that will make a difference.
Kim Bassett, President and CEO, Bassett Mechanical
Bassett has been the third-generation leader of the family-owned mechanical contracting, metal fabrication and maintenance business based in Kaukauna for the last 26 years.
1 Create a culture that attracts and retains the younger generation. Enhance your employment branding. Communicate your purpose and how employees contribute to the bigger picture. Invest in and provide learning opportunities. Make everyone feel welcome and engaged. Showcase your facility so that others understand that manufacturing isn’t a dirty, dingy or dangerous environment.
2 Stay up-to-date with technology and equipment. New equipment is faster, more reliable and more productive than older equipment. It’s also safer. Robots and cobots can help increase productivity and execute repetitive or more dangerous tasks. Smart technology is here! Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, data analytics and IoT are becoming much more prevalent — these factors improve productivity, through-put and quality.
3 Focus on cybersecurity in the plant. Implementation of smart technology is being hindered by cybersecurity threats. Ensure your equipment, machinery and infrastructure are protected and secure (not just in the office). Manufacturers need to focus on both information technology and operational technology. Vulnerabilities in machinery need to be evaluated and addressed to avoid “backdoor” access.
John West, Chairman, Fox Valley Metal-Tech
After a long career in engineering and manufacturing, West is phasing into retirement after 18 years at the helm of Fox Valley Metal-Tech — a Green Bay-based precision metal fabrication company specializing in commercial and defense applications.
1 Put the right people in the right positions. This is a cliché, but get all the right people in the right seats on the bus. No one person in a company of any size can do everything all themselves, and they can’t be an expert in everything. So build a good leadership team you can rely on.
2 Communication is critical. I’ve had, over the last three years, kind of a realization on my part that sometimes people are not hearing the same thing when you’re trying to communicate. Try to almost over-communicate. It’s much easier for people to be part of a conversation or add additional thoughts to the discussion. I have had to slow people down and say, “Why don’t you start from the beginning; I don’t think everyone in the room knows clearly what you’re talking about.” You need to help educate everybody.
3 Take accountability. Everybody on a management team has roles and responsibilities, and they need to be accountable for that. If you screwed up and made a mistake, be accountable for it — you’ll need help to figure out how to get it corrected.
