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How to Expose and Address Workculture Constraint

Sherrie Ford, Ph.D.
Principal, Change Partners, LLC


SAPICS Unlocking the Potential of the Supply Chain, 2001, Conference Proceedings

At the Plant Level, Deeper Than Supply Chain Theory or Theory of Constraints
This conference, as indeed manufacturing conferences all over the globe, addresses issues related to building an effective supply chain. Supply Chain Management goes well beyond the idea of answering the question: how can my factory perform better through certifying its suppliers? When executives at Honda claim that success in the future will not depend on Honda factories outperforming Ford factories, but rather the Honda supply chain vs the Ford supply chain, you can see what we mean.

The concept, likewise, of constraints, as in Theory of Constraints (TOC), drives contemporary strategic planning well beyond processes on the factory floor. Goldratt has now, in his Necessary But Not Sufficient, 2001, dramatically illustrated the impact of constraint theory at the distribution level. He deftly illustrates that everyone regardless of product or service has, in the business cycle, a distribution center—though it may not be immediately obvious. He shifts the focal point of managing constraints around shop floor monuments such as robots, to the more expansive vicissitudes of plants, distribution centers, logistics and ERP systems.

However, the fact that we now behold such vistas of strategic complexity does not rule out the fact that single factory is, in many ways, equally strategic as forming Honda-type customer/supplier alliances. We see the single factory – at the workculture level -- equally rich and important an environment for enhancing performance as is supply chain or constraint management at the ultimate, mega-systems level.

"The future belongs to those who can frequently re-organize high-morale teams around the needs of changing processes."(1) A simple statement of what now is received opinion about what today's factory workculture should be striving for. But we have yet to encounter a factory culture in America that has these characteristics ingrained nor have we found one at the outset eager to do anything differently so as to acquire them.(2)

At the same time, we have never encountered a factory eager to shut down.

We believe that unless the factory as a whole, from the human capital point of view, does not come to terms with the deep split between its wasteful structures of isolation and the financially redeeming structures of high-morale teams frequently re-organized around changing processes, the supply chain turns to mush.

Thus, the single factory is the focus of concern in this workshop.

Leveraging the Power of the Makers (3)
Managers talk too much to themselves, both at the factories where they work and the corporate meetings they attend – or professional society gatherings. Those out on the floor making product don't go to plant management meetings, corporate meetings, or to professional society gatherings. You'll find them in break rooms or union halls talking to one another, not to managers. Yet both managers and makers comprise the factory. Success or failure rests with their combined, not their separate, contribution.

So, how do managers learn to stop talking to themselves alone (outside the perfunctory mass meetings, the occasional sashay through the plant)? How to makers learn to look beyond the contract or the overtime? Here is a start:
  • Bring 100% of the workforce in groups of 15 or so through a process of inquiry about change: change they have been through, change they expect yet to go through, challenge whether their culture today will sustain change, change they would make if they had no restraints in authority or resources
  • Of the changes they would make, ask what do they agree are the five to seven central themes?
  • Of the five to seven central themes, ask what do they agree is the correct order of addressing each, so as to achieve the maximum amount of necessary internal change to withstand the external change?
  • Be sure that the sessions have a combination of managers and makers
  • Be sure 100% of the factory receives the combination of results from all sessions
  • Be sure you drive the future business strategy off of the culture's results in this process
Virtually every time we have executed this process, the underlying message that results from the data is some form of "The future belongs to those who can frequently re-organize high-morale teams around the needs of changing processes." (4)

The "aha!" here is that there is no deep divide except that which is persistently projected with ignorance and only out of habit -- and the lack of an alternative way to view how work gets done in a factory.

Step by Step (5)
Sitting in a workshop won't give you the keys to kingdom of high-morale teams, nor will trying to facilitate this process yourself – if you are part of the workculture – be of much use. But it will be educational and insightful to take a look at how these steps are sequenced, along with some frequently experienced phenomena that allow the alert consultant to discern what we call "legacy systems" in the culture to be observed. These legacies fascinate their bearers upon becoming aware of them; more importantly, by making legacies conscious, a factory can choose to evolve toward different ones. In brief, legacy systems are the unique, even eccentric beliefs and behaviors a factory acquires over time, to the advantage sometimes of the factory performance, but more often to the disadvantage.

Preparation for Step One (6)
  1. The committed plant manager (not the experimental one) and his or her direct reports forge a "working vision" statement – one that describes the key few differences that should be achievable within 18 months. Not the "five-years-out" kind of vision, but a working vision, whereby anyone can see the end in sight. This preparation benefits from outside facilitation, allowing the plant manager to be fully engaged in structured steps, careful not to drive a personal agenda too hard, yet in a position to influence the group.
  2. The plant manager and direct reports communicate with the entire plant – union presidents or other key officers in advance of others – and all department personnel. They ensure everyone knows ahead of time the purpose, place, schedule

Step One
Appropriate icebreaker. A classic one on cycle time reduction demonstrates how naturally high-morale teams come together around a changing process within no more than 15 minutes. It dramatically illustrates the whole point of latent unity about the proper relationship of a workforce and how it should respond to goals set by customers or forced by competitors.

Step Two
What changes have you been through in the last (usually ten) years? Chart every example given. Expect a combination of changes in management, union contract, equipment, working conditions, levels of employment, levels of job satisfaction, levels of stress, levels of expansion or contraction of work to be processed, and sometimes customers and suppliers. Probe for further information as you conduct this step, in freewheeling brainstorming style. Be alert for contrasts in changes (some perceive "we have better working conditions," while others say "working conditions have gone downhill.") This is legacy system material.

Step Three
Using structured brainstorming this time, and using prepared categories, ask What changes do you expect in the next three years, given your past? The prepared topics, as headers of flipcharts easily seen on the wall, side by side, are Customers, Suppliers, Competitors, Process/Product. Technology, Cost of Doing Business, Organization. Ask which header makes sense to start on. Hope and pray they say Customers, from which all remaining change should follow. (If they don't, then note where they say to start. This is a prime example of a legacy system).(7) Once they get the hang of it, they begin to see inter-relationships among the categories, and start adding comments such as "If suppliers change in X way, then surely our cost of doing business will change in Y way." This is the dawning of a systems-thinking consciousness necessary for high-morale teams re-organizing around changing processes.

Step Four
Ask Do you have the workculture needed to survive the changes you yourself foresee in the next three years. (The answer universally has been "No," to put it mildly. Typically there is a very emotional, hopeless, emphatic "No!").

Step Five
We had better define workculture together to ensure we're talking about the same thing. Using either structured or freewheeling brainstorming, draw out the meaning of "workculture" that those in the session have. Ask leading questions such as Think of what company in the world you most would like to work for. Why do you select that company? or Compare two places where you have worked. How were they different? How did you know they had very different workcultures? Fill one or two charts with as many nouns or phrases as the group can generate. This will be a key document from this point forward.

Step Six
Ask them to assume they have been named plant manager – toss them the keys to the building, so to speak. Referencing the unique definition they have just created as a basis, as well as the charted answers to all change questions posed thus far, ask now for ten changes from each one of them. If you were plant manager tomorrow, what ten things would you change in order for this plant to achieve the working vision? They write responses on index cards, silently, generating anywhere from 50 to 250 or more ideas.

Step Seven
All stand and read out their cards, one at a time, and toss them on a table, face up. When done, you tell them that many a suggestion program faces this crossroads: what do we do with all of these cards full of ideas? What if we just gave them to the plant manager and said Here is your answer . . .? Obviously not a strategic idea. So, we must reduce the number of items to look at. Thus, silently, each person is asked to take two cards and evaluate whether they are roughly about the same idea, or are they entirely different. On that basis, the goal is for all of the cards to be sorted into no more than seven categories, and no fewer than five.

Step Eight
The time has come to name these categories. It is important to keep every member of the group intellectually engaged and learning through out the process, thus continually assign tasks, such as Read out the cards now, or Go off and verify that each card fits this label, etc. Determine by deep consensus what each label for each category should be. By deep consensus, we mean only after lengthy debate and defense of individual ideas of what a category should be called should there be a final label, with everyone nodding their heads in affirmation. Watch all body language until you see full support.(8)

Step Nine
Despite the fact that we've gone from 200+ ideas down to seven, we still have too many options, and on top of that, there is no sense of where to start. The final essential step consists of everyone in the session with its mixture of managers and makers, understanding that not only can we agree that these are the seven issues related to adapting the culture. We can also agree on where to start and even whether all seven will require effort.

Ask the group to compare all possible pairs of the seven issues sorted, using the cards beneath the agreed-upon labels as a reminder that we are no longer using common dictionary definitions, but special ones based on their thinking and their examples. Of these two labels, which influences the other more? Draw an arrow from the label influencing, to the label influenced.(9) Continue this process until you have mapped all relationships of influence/influenced.

Step Ten
The group now knows and agrees; there are three issues which drive all others. They now know also, and are stunned to realize, that none of the driving issues has anything to do with Quality, Speed, On Time Delivery, Pay and Benefits, Machine Uptime, Working Conditions, Productivity or indeed many of the other features associated with a successful plant.

What they do know, and what all other sessions held that comprise 100% of their factory know in the same way: we agree on the issues, the influence and the result. If we effect change in the top three issues (unfailingly they will be synonyms for Management, Communication and Training), the remaining issues will be resolved without supplementary intervention.

Conclusion
That's the workshop. There is much more work to be done:
  • Align the data from all sessions
  • Heighten the focus on the three driving influences: the cards written that fell up under these labels hold the specific "code" for updating the culture, making it capable of leaving the past
  • Glean the legacy systems which are at this point not conscious to anyone
  • Point out features of high performance they may not realize they have
  • Point out features which they are proud of but which are probably destructive (such as poor suggestions systems or competing shifts)
  • Outline how the culture-wide consensus on direction for change can be parlayed into a business plan, with priorities, goals, milestones, and action plans that engage all of the workforce
  • Bring out the necessity from this point forward of making all future initiatives attach to the culture results; they must be developed as a solution for the driving influences, not resulting ones.
  • Give the essential counsel that "No company can blow up its entire past at once"(10)
But in any case, the dream is deep in the culture, to come out of the caves where they've been sent to live decades ago when trust was aborted and tasks isolated. The penchant for high-morale teams frequently re-organized around changing processes is unmistakable in workculture, if latent. This process is the first step of awakening.
1 Robert Hall, The Soul of the Enterprise, 1993, p.

2 We refer to 'factory' meaning 'workculture,' everyone who works at a factory. It doesn't count if the plant manager tries to implement teams and fails, or a department or shift creates a successful, high-morale team effort around a changing process. If the whole factory does not move toward the future in a team-based fashion, then we classify that as a constrained, non-competitive culture incapable of foreseeing its own endgame.

3 We borrow the term "makers" from Rosa Beth Moss Kanter's use on p. 282 of her World Class: Thriving Locally in the Global Economy, 1995, "Leveraging the Skills of the Makers."

4 We have facilitated this process in over 50 organizations, though not always in the early days of developing it, to 100% of the workforce. This led to the demise of promising strategies. Anyone left out of this process, predictably, has had no awakening experience, and lays in wait to trip the culture change efforts.

5 The following description is by no means exhaustive of the process, but rather highlights with slight annotation

6 This assumes the first time use of the process. Future iterations have a different set up.

7 For example, if they choose Technology as the starting point, because they are renowned for designing their own equipment, they have not understood a market's fickleness for technology and the unreliable consequences of betting the factory on internal metrics of pride.

8 We are describing brainstorming and affinity mapping. Next will come relations diagramming, all classic tools in team-based problem solving and decision making.

9 Sometimes the influence is felt to be only slight. Still, draw the arrow. Sometime the influence is felt be to equally balanced. Facilitate the group until they can determine one over the other. Take careful note of any tenacious "chicken and egg' situations – for they result from ripe legacy systems, causing a form of schizophrenia in the culture, often blinding elements of the culture to the mutual desire for the same forms of change.

10 Robert Hall, The Soul of the Enterprise.