Imagine you make fish fingers for a living…
Don’t laugh, it is a tough job I used to do it, I smelled awful after an 8 hour night shift cutting up blocks of frozen cod. The icy, sleety, wind from the North Sea was a positive boon when I walked out of the plant 6 in the morning.
Productivity was never where we wanted it, costs were high, product quality was dreadful and no matter how hard we tried we could never get the products on the supermarket’s shelves when the customer wanted them.
Apart from the smell, you’d feel right at home
The problems are the same and so are the solutions. Productivity is a staff issue, if your staff are more productive then your business will be more productive. And because productivity is a staff issue the solution is obviously more communication. If you let your workforce know how they are doing and give them some encouragement that will solve the problem.
Nearly every fish finger factory I have walked around (or shop or call centre) uses the same approach…
It normally looks a bit like this
Followed up with a some of this
Do the posters help?
Put yourself in the shoes (or wellies) of the man on the shop floor. What can he do to improve performance?
His reality is:
- Blocks of frozen fish that have been left out and gone soft
- A band saw that needs a new blade
- A job lot of dodgy breadcrumbs that the buyer got cheap
- A supervisor who is only worried about his cost target
And the management solution is a poster of a bunch of smug 20 year olds (who have never been anywhere near Grimsby in their lives) telling him to work harder and a graph to prove the point.
How would you feel?
Posters aren’t the solution
People need to know how they are doing, show them the numbers, but instead of the inane 20 somethings and snazzy slogans, how about publishing a list of things that have been done to improve the business.
This month we have:
- Added a sharpener to the band saw
- Renegotiated our supply of breadcrumbs
- Improved timeliness of fish block delivery
Than ask for suggestions. The man in wellies might have an idea or two to share.
If you enjoyed this post click here to have the next one delivered straight to your inbox
Images by Craig Sunter and 드림포유
Read another opinion
James,
I agree with your point about sharing improvements and asking for suggestions.
I just finished an article about storytelling… instead of charts and graphs and metrics and bullet points, spin a story that conveys what is expected. Stories are great teaching tools.
Annette :-)
Hello James,
As you know I work as a management consultant. One sign that I look for when looking for an organisation that does not work well is the posters that your refer to. At best these strike me as an internal marketing/pr (brainwashing) exercise. I take it to mean that management chose not to work on the real stuff (‘the product’ in this case the work context in its totality) and settled on bullshitting / brainwashing instead.
maz
Interesting that you use it as a “tell” Maz, I’d not thought of that
Hi James,
Some wise man, it may have been you, told me once that a manager should focus on answering one question at the end of each and every day and that is: What have you done today to make the lives of your team easier/better?
Perhaps, that’s what the posters shoud be about.
Adrian
Unfortunately it wasn’t me Adrian, or if it was I just regurgitated it, but it is a powerful thought
James