Jim, Peter and I have a secret. Jim is James Geinke, president of Arandell Corp. in Menomonee Falls, WI. Peter is Peter Doyle, manufacturing manager at Action Printing in Fond du Lac, WI. Our secret is an exciting old way of constantly increasing the efficiency of a printing plant. Now, you'll read this and either forget it or be unwilling to try it. Well, maybe a couple of readers will give it a go. But Jim and Peter won't keep their productivity train in the station. They're ahead and you'll have to play catch-up.
The secret is people: respect, trust and confidence in their manufacturing colleagues. Both men have the willingness to measure and the courage to be measured. They hold themselves accountable for results and they expect the same from their associates. Measuring, accountability, trust and sharing are the keys. It's in the measurements that you show trust—sharing and openly and freely discussing the numbers.
Here's the way Peter puts it: "The ability to communicate the data collected is more important than the data itself. I hold a monthly meeting with all employees to communicate results. I am currently using 'old fashioned' overheads . . . I spend a great deal of time and thought preparing for these meetings. I feel that these meetings are the most important things I do. My goal as a leader is to improve my ability to communicate production and financial data."
Arandell Corp. gained an international reputation for its web offset paper waste reduction results. Every month, Jim called a meeting of the press crews at the end of each shift. The owner, F.E. Treis, the controller, sales personnel and all press supervisors attended. Those "old fashioned" overheads were used to display the results by press shift and crew over coffee and doughnuts. Measurement, accountability, openness and trust were obvious in every session. Jim talked the talk and walked the walk and the results, in the millions of dollars, were astounding!
What Jim, Peter and I know is that "people respect what management inspects." The measurements displayed on the overhead show what management inspects. They present mutual and individual accountability. Goals, benchmarks and means of improvement are on the open, interactive discussion table. Management, as well as the roll tender, has the raw courage to share their human vulnerability without fear. We know where we've been, where we are and where we want to go.
But today we're learning there's more to be done. How did the three of us select the accountability numbers we inspect? Were they the right values to watch? Are there more relevant numbers? How do we present the information on our overheads? As bar graphs? Pie charts? Knowing that each human perceives and processes information differently, how shall we optimize our presentations?
We know that putting the information up on a screen and enabling free-flowing dialog works. It emotionalizes the logic of the data, gets it into the right side of the brain where emotion and knowledge live, where decisions are made. It isn't the most efficient way, but it's effective.
We now think we know that 80 percent or more of our decisions are based on stories, conversations, pictures, sound-bites, parables, anecdotes, raw past experiences. They are not based on computer listings.
In fact, to date, in all humility, we must admit that we've blown a ton of money on computers and software programs in printing that are unused, can't be used and will not be used. One expert says that nationally we're spending $3 trillion a year on computerized data and $1 trillion of it—a third of it—is wasted!
That may be an understatement in printing. It wouldn't at all surprise me if half our expenditures on computer software and hardware, training, administration, clerical, etc., was unused and unusable by humans for decision making.
Computers are linear, two-dimensional, structured; human thought is non-linear, multi-dimensional, convoluted. Have computers failed us? Not at all. It is we who have failed in the use and our expectations of computational data. Does your calculator work? Of course it does. Will it make operational decisions? No. There is mystic and magic in people. Brains make unexpected synapses, perceive unexpected relationships.
Aha! The cartoon bulb over your head lights up. You express it aloud. "Let me piggy-back on that thought," someone says. Interaction. Emotion. Decision. Action. Productivity improvement. That's the flow, the continuum of reality.
Peter Drucker challenges us in The Post Capitalist Society. We now live in the Age of Information where our task is to make our knowledge workers productive. We cannot be constantly engaged with overhead projections in interactive meetings and at every level of activity for every shift. That's effective, but it won't scale up.
How shall we provide information in a context that fires up brain synapses in an infinite variety of humans toward a goal of constantly improving results in our printing plant? At all hours of the day and night? How are we to do this?
Racers, start your engines!
—Roger V. Dickeson
About the Author
Roger Dickeson is a printing productivity consultant based in Tucson, AZ. He can be reached by e-mail at Roger@prem-associates.com, by fax (520) 903-2295, or on the Web at http://www.prem-associates.com.&022;
- Companies:
- Action Printing
- Arandell Corp.
- People:
- James Geinke
- Jim
- Peter Drucker