14 May 2008

Quest's "working team leader" initiative

Improving frontline communication across multiple sites.

Richard Cox, principal consultant of global management consulting firm Quest Worldwide, explains how a new initiative with German manufacturing company TMD Friction Group will improve frontline communication and help embed a culture of continuous improvement.

By the end of March 2008, Quest had helped TMD train more than 3 quarters of its 4,000 target audience in best management practices.

But TMD recognized the need to embed the continuous improvement culture more deeply – and saw frontline managers as essential in sustaining the change.

Working team leaders
Quest is now introducing the “working team leader” initiative to 9 target sites. Cox (pictured, left) says, “We couldn’t have started much earlier because this is a major change that threatens the established practice of many managers and supervisors.

“We’re now introducing a process to prepare, select and train team leaders in 5 factories – UK, Romania, Brazil, Mexico and Spain,” he says. The initiative will change the management structure at a local level where the traditional “police” supervisory role will be replaced by a leader working alongside team members for 80% of the time.

This working team leader will only administer and lead the team for 20% of their time.

Radical change
“You could argue this initiative is all about communication,” Cox says. Teams will spend the first few minutes every day with their leader discussing the previous day’s highs and lows, along with any concerns for the day ahead.

“It’s a fundamental communication process. Without it we’d have top-down, imposed communication. The way we’re doing it now is more involving and engaging.”

Cox recognizes this program of change is radical. “A company has to be prepared for it, but the payback is significant,” he says. “It provides the bedrock for a much sharper communication structure.”

Similar change programs typically take out 1 or 2 hierarchical layers. “That speeds communication,” Cox says. “Communication is a fundamental part of a leader’s job and this change program will make it more effective, faster and simpler because the company will have fewer layers.”

Keeping ex-managers as local experts
Cox says the working team leader concept lifts many people out of a traditional layered structure and places them in support roles. “You don’t get rid of them. To help the organization become more efficient you’ll need them in a support role – everything from engineering to logistics,” he says.

Creating support roles for current managers means people who have for years been grappling with delivering for the customer while improving work processes now have skilled help. These experts are people who were often promoted to manager because they were good at the work task, rather than being a leader.

“All of a sudden you’re accelerating the process of improvement,” Cox says. “That’s very powerful – the most powerful part of the change.”

Complex business case
“After we’ve done the training and embedded team leaders, senior managers often say, ‘Great, job done, tick in the box. Let’s now get rid of the people.’ I’d say it takes between 9 to 12 months before those changes are embedded and you should release people over that time very carefully and slowly.

“Hopefully, after a year you’re more effective, sold more products and your businesses is growing faster,” Cox says. As a result, the company may not need to lose as many people as they first thought.

Visual management in manufacturing – an extension of team level communication.

Helps managers monitor and evaluate the manufacturing process. It includes simple graphical explanations of performance indicators, but goes further.

Visual management gets the whole factory to a point where managers know immediately whether they are on plan, machines are working effectively and how well the unit is performing.

The approach uses simple signals, colour and shape to give clarity to communication. For example, marking a shaft to see instantly if it is rotating. Color coded production line lights indicate if it is available to run, running OK, stopped on a planned change or something has gone wrong. These alerts bring support staff to the point of need more quickly.Have your say
How do you improve communication across a manufacturing facility?

What do you think about creating a working team leader – while at the same time reducing the managerial layers?

Is it viable to move ex-managers across to support roles? The idea of “visual management” is an interesting one – how applicable might that be in other environments?

Discuss these issues with other comms practitioners by joining the Internal Comms Hub members' group on the Communicators' Network.

Other recommendations:
MCA platinum win for Quest Worldwide

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