Topics—Actions
Empowerment—The Self-Organizing Supervisors
With a gentle push these supervisors structured themselves — by Greg Tippings
As always, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your newsletter*. Outstanding advice, suggestions, ideas, or whatever someone can draw from it to help managers work with supervisors, supervisors with team leaders, and everyone up and down the line. Your newsletter triggered this story, and I wanted to send it to you.
I used this process once in Irvine and I thought the staff was going to lynch me before it was all over with. I made some mistakes along the way, I'm sure, but wanted to find a way to get more accountability from the staff and at the same time focus on ensuring that the 'employee' knew who his or her supervisor was.
At that time there were approximately 16-18 supervisors in charge of around 300 employees on three different shifts operating six days each week. There was one Manager.....ME! After spending a few months in my new assignment it became increasingly clear that we had a situation known as: "Everyone in charge of everything, and no one in charge of anything".........(Except for ME!).
So I began to draft up a design that would separate some of the physical features of this 760,000 square foot distribution facility into functional areas of operation where it made sense, but then realized with our recently installed technology, that there were work groups within the facility who had no boundaries, and traveled the entire facility performing their daily tasks. Again, one of my primary goals was to establish better accountability and help the employees know who their supervisor was as much as possible. These work groups would need to be handled a little differently.
At that point I decided to schedule a meeting with the staff. I had already given them some ideas of what I had in mind. I tried to share my vision of what I was hoping to achieve.
The Supervisors' Plan
With their help, and several meetings, we finally came up with a plan that everyone seemed comfortable with. Now the twist......This new plan called for TWO Team Leader positions to manage floor operations and in the 19 year history of this 760,000 square foot warehouse there had never been more than one supervisor designated as the floor operations leader. It's important to note that these positions did not include a formal title or grade level change, nor any pay increase. The individual holding the position was at the same level as his or her peers except for a creative title that was written on the board.
At this crucial point in the process we did have some discussion of what types of qualities would best suit our potential Team Leaders. I really have to say that by that time this group had a lot to say.
Who Will Lead?
Although I didn't go through the formal process as outlined in your newsletter, everyone made their opinions clear. At the conclusion of that discussion they asked me a question, something like: "So have you decided who the people are going to be"? And I said: "No". "Well when do you think you will decide"? I said: "I don't think I'm going to. We've established what is trying to be accomplished and you folks work together side by side each and every day and I have faith that you will make a good decision. Hey....I always have veto power but I don't think that's going to be necessary". I asked anyone if they had any questions and then exited the meeting room.
Panic!
About an hour or so later one of the supervisors came out of the meeting room to my office and said: "Greg, we can't do this". I don't recall his exact reasons, but I sensed that they were uncomfortable with this responsibility as he also explained to me that the staff felt that I should make the choices. I told him that I would really prefer not to do that and to go back in to the meeting room and let everyone know that. I also suggested that they end the meeting for the day and reschedule as they saw appropriate to continue the discussion.
I honestly did not care how much time they took to get this done, as long as they felt that the right decision was made in the end and that everyone was going to be supportive of it. It is probably a good idea that I stop here and say that this facility for many, many years, had been managed in an extremely autocratic environment. All direction came from the top, all decisions from the top, with not too much influence from others. Not necessarily bad direction or decisions all the time, but the end result was a group of talented people who became accustomed to following orders and guidelines. So I understood why this type of exercise might be difficult for some of them to endure.
A Great Decision
In the end, they worked through it together and made excellent selections. Had I assigned them myself, the same names would have appeared as the initial Team Leaders. Had a name not matched, I'd have gone with it anyway. Heck, even if they struggled I knew THEIR best choices would have done well because the GROUP had invested in THEM!
*For the actual newsletter click on http://www.meridiangrp.net/news28.html. That newsletter is now an article: www.CompanyCulture.com/bestcandidate.
Meridian Group Services.
Company Culture • Motivation, Morale, Empowerment, Change • Leadership, Executive Coaching • Teamwork and Retreats • Problem Analysis and Solutions • Presentations, Keynote Speech • See www.meridiangrp.net • Email barry@ meridiangrp.net or call 415-924-8549
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