Painting a Leader’s Vision or Dream - Lean Six Sigma Success

Painting a Leader’s Vision or Dream - Lean Six Sigma Success A good leader always paints and explains their vision very well. When I took over as head of a procurement division for an integrated paper company, there were three plants with over $500 million in purchases per year. I was to transform Purchasing into Supply Management with some Lean Six Sigma tools. Plant senior management, who were not supportive, decided to downsize my department at the plant where I was located from eight to four employees, starting from day one. The plant manager was not committed to the transformation attempt and actually wanted it to fail. I decided to do everything in my power to disappoint him and be a success. At the first meeting I had with the department team, two people actually started to cry. They just didn’t know how they were going to keep up with the work. This showed me that they were conscientious enough to care and feared being overwhelmed. I pledged that within six months, they would have so much spare time; they would be coming to me, asking me to give them a project to work on to move the business ahead. They all suddenly burst out laughing at my statement either out of nervousness, fear or what they felt was a preposterous statement. I was not sure what emotions were driving the laughter but I resolved to make it happen. I volunteered to take over buying of one of the major com¬ponents in the plant. Of course, I had no idea about the workload involved in the buying process. The next day, four file drawers of paperwork for the component were moved into my office. I rolled up my sleeves spent a week creating a database to help me manage the com¬ponent, which had no previous reliable information. Eventually a supplier helped me improve the database and dramatically streamline the ordering process. I then sat down with the team and explained what happened and restated my vision to dramatically reduce their non-value adding work. I soon found out that purchasing data was scarce or non¬existent. The current purchasing employees could not give me any good sum¬mary statistics and were so caught up in firefighting, transaction chasing and expediting, that confusion reigned supreme. No one could adequately explain the purchase-order process (the as-is process). There were no standard operating procedures. Undaunted, I rolled up my sleeves and typed purchase orders myself just to get an idea of what happened. Their previous boss had shown no such interest in the actual day-to-day work. As a team did a process map of the purchase-order process. We locked the doors to the department while we had process-mapping meetings. Then we all went on a data expedition, and since I knew some computer programming and could query from the company data¬bases, we started to compile our data. We discovered that we had approximately forty thousand transactions or buys per year. By using a Pareto chart, we saw that over 80 % of the purchase orders were under $200. The majority of our purchases were small-dollar items. Additionally, only about twenty people made about 90% of these buys. They were our super-users or power req¬uisitioners. We decided to concentrate on them and educate them about our efforts to transform the entire process. We designed a short-order purchase form for purchases under $1,000 that they could use. They participated in the design of the form. No inter¬face with purchasing was required for the form. The middleman (purchasing) was eliminated. The only catch was they had to buy from a list of our preferred suppliers. If they wanted to deviate from the list, they needed to get our approval. The team started to see the potential of my vision and the approach and enthusiasm and confidence grew. We did a new process map for the short-order form with the super-users participating. We created a manual and SOP for the super-users that included the preferred supplier list, contact information, and basic purchasing terms and rules. We posted a process flow map in the department for everyone to see. The result was our workload was drastically reduced, and the buyers didn’t have to worry about these small purchase orders. Our suppliers remarked that the error rate on these short orders was greatly reduced. We recognized super-users who had error-free months, and who worked well with suppliers. We eventually switched to purchase credit cards for these twenty superusers, which practically eliminated all paperwork. Finally, we had time for supplier rationalization or reduction-and-strategic initiatives. Again, we mined the data and found out that we had over 20,000 suppliers. With hard work and consolidation of buys, we got that number down to 209. We set up new preferred suppliers and greatly simplified the entire process from requisition to payment. We standardized payment terms, which greatly relieved accounts-payable’s workload— they instantly became our allies. In four months (not six), my employees had the confidence and trust in me to come to my office and admit that they had nothing to do that day, and asked what projects could they work on to move the business ahead. Most of this progress was due to using some simple Lean Six Sigma process improvement tools. The key element was articulating the vision well, reinforcing the vision with success and never giving up on the dream. The best part was that corporate gave us an award for the best purchasing department for the year. The vice president of purchasing, with plant senior management and the plant manager present, awarded it to us in front of the entire plant. A good leader always paints and explains their vision very well https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/good-leader-paints-vision-dr-thomas-tom-depaoli/ Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

Listen to your followers and help them

Listen to Your Followers’ Problems and Help Them. I once had an employee who was initially very upset that I took over as leader of the department. She thought that she deserved to be promoted and become the leader. She had more experience than me. She was very cold to me and resisted any initiatives that I proposed. Shortly thereafter, her mother became very sick and it got to the point that she needed caregivers. I gave her as much time of as I could and was very flexible with her work duties and responsibilities. She finally requested family leave for eight weeks and it was granted. While she was gone, I attempted to do as much of her work as possible and got a very good understanding of her duties, systems and techniques. I stayed late many nights and weekends working at both my job and hers. When she came back from family leave she expected piles of work awaiting her and very hectic weeks. She was surprised that I had kept up and completed almost all of the work. She came into my office and started to cry and I thought that something had happened to her mother. Instead she was grateful for what I had done and thanked me informing me that no boss had ever done anything so kind. I then suggested that we make a request to our information technology department to upgrade some for the systems that she used, and I was now familiar with by doing her job. We jointly filled out the request that day and it was installed in three weeks. Her attitude towards me completely turned around. Whenever there was a tough project she volunteered for it. She became the most loyal employee to me in the department and a friend. As a leader, if someone has a problem and needs help, especially when it is personal or family related, go out of your way to help them. Listen to your followers’ problems and help them. Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

Website Design and Voice of the Customer

Website Design and Voice of the Customer A major company that I worked for wanted to redesign their inter¬nal website. They assigned their best programmers and some marketing people to design the new website. The programmers insisted on putting all the latest bells and whistles on the website and convinced the project leader that these were necessary upgrades. Unfortunately they did not complete any Voice of the Customer exercises in the design of the web-site; they did not do any surveys or focus groups or figure out what was critical to the internal customers. They were too enamored with the latest website designs. The first preview or showing of the new website was a disaster that ended in chaos. The programmers were disheartened and did not know what to do. A senior manager suggested some voice of the customer tools to the team, and they quickly started them. Small focus groups yielded the best information. They gradually redesigned the website and incorporated many of the suggestions of the internal customers. The website was a huge success and many of its principles were reapplied to the company’s external website, but not without thoroughly testing the voice of the external cus¬tomers first. Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

Innovation Via Shopping Cart Reverse Engineering Works!

Benchmarking Via the Shopping-Cart or As Is to To Be Many organizations brag about their benchmarking efforts and how good they are at it. I once worked for a large paper company, and a lot of our spending was for pack-aging materials involved in the making of toilet tissue and paper towels. I was involved in materials management, plant scheduling, and packaging engineering at the time. Fortunately, all the people involved in these operations reported to me. We were also very fortunate that the plant manager had a materials background and was open to suggestions from us. At first, we went out and tried to get information from various paper institutes, but we found this data to be unwieldy, expensive, and not up-to-date. Then we just decided to use the shopping cart. We went out to various supermarkets and stores and purchased as many of our competitor’s products as we could. We basically dissected them and the materials that they used, looking to see what they had done differently than we had. They were using cheaper mate¬rials but had suffered no disconcerting quality drops. Over the years, we had not kept up with the advances in materials. In addi¬tion, the process to get new materials approved was unwieldy and required corporate approval. This discouraged almost all the plants from taking risks in the materials area. In other words the As Is was our materials that we used in our products and the To Be was our competition’s materials that they used in their products. We put a matrix together of us versus all the competitors and all the materials. We also showed the estimated cost dif¬ferential and savings on a one-year basis if we in fact adapted the most cost-effective material of our competitors. We were just striving for our competition’s To Be state! We could not believe the numbers, and we were shaking when we presented the matrix to our plant manager. Lucky for us, he brought it up at a staff meeting, and told all the department heads that they were to cooperate with our materials trials and experiments. He also told us to not ask permission from corporate for the trials and to just do them; sort of a Just Doits type project. If any flak developed, he would run air cover for us. I was fortunate to have an extremely enthusiastic people working for me. In addition, we got superb cooperation from our shop-floor staff. They knew our materials inside out. They were all very familiar with the As Is state! People are competitive, and when they heard that our competitors had made it work, their personal pride took over, and they wanted to make it work. It helped when we showed them the competitor’s product and the materials that they were using. Thyme literally tore them apart and examined them. Then they knew that this was not just us making up a plan and trying to achieve some impossible goals. They participated in the brainstorming to get to the To Be. We assembled a trial plan, started intense packaging-supplier visits, took shop-floor people along with us to talk with our sup¬pliers, and asked further advice on changing over to the new materials. Our suppliers were extremely cooperative in making suggestions. Many of them were in the plant on the shop floor when we ran the trials. They could see firsthand any issues we had, and they made suggestions on how we could improve the tests. We were stunned at how rapid and successful the trials were. We knew the brainstorming had paid off. Many of the materials specifications (As Is) had been in force for years and had not been updated, challenged, or changed. Let me give you an example—one that will make you just shake your head. Many of our corrugated boxes for toilet tissue products were placed in two-, three-, or four-color cases. Our marketing people had free reign to decide how many colors they wanted on their cases. All of the cases had barcodes on them, and when they went by our production counter reader or scanner, the reader counted them as one case. Obviously, it’s vitally important to have an accurate production count. Unfortunately, the red barcodes were extremely difficult for the reader to read, and often they were skipped or sent to an off-count conveyor. Bottom line, it hurt our production-count accuracy. We also knew that the only person who usually even saw the case that our prod¬uct was in was the stocker in the store—not our final custom¬ers. The cases were usually cut up, bundled, and recycled. Our plant manager soon convinced marketing that a one-color black case would be the cheaper, more efficient strategy. We were very lucky to have a plant manager, enthusiastic shop floor personnel and cooperative suppliers who understood materials, and supported our use of Kaizen tools. In the first year, we saved over $20 million dollars. Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

Treat People Like You Would Like to Be Treated

Treat People Like You Would Like to Be Treated Late one Friday afternoon I was working late in my Human Resources office. My phone rang and I identified myself and my title. The person on the other end of the line sounded frantic and wanted to order some cases of our products. I informed them that this was Human Resources and not Distribution but she pleaded for me to please help. She proceeded to list her order and what she needed. It was a list of about 15 of our most popular brands. I wrote it down and repeated the request back to her. I also gave her our fax number in Human Resources and requested that she fax the order to me. I would wait and let her know if I received the fax. I told her that I would put the phone down and go to the fax machine. I stood by the fax machine and sure enough, the fax shortly came through with the brands she ordered and where to ship it. I requested her phone number and said I would call her back shortly. I quickly walked over to the distribution center and talked directly to the shipping manager. I showed him the order and he recognized the person who requested the order. He put the order together immediately and procured a truck to rush ship it to the requested location. I then went back to my office and called her back and gave her the order number. She thanked me profusely. Subsequently the order arrived that night to the required location. After the weekend, I learned that the order was shipped directly to a marketing and trade show of one of our major customers that showcased our product. Treat people like you would like to be treated. Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

The Billion Dollar Boys

The Billion-Dollar Boys and Mega-Negotiations Story By Dr. Tom DePaoli I and a supply management colleague had been working diligently for a year to try and standardize MRO (Maintenance Repair and Operating) parts to include pumps, pipes and valves, electrical and operating supplies. We divided the storeroom parts into these four bucket areas. These were storeroom related parts for a major process chemical company. We used a market basket sourcing approach. We had conducted numerous strategic sourcing cross-functional teams and had worked hard to get our engineers to select standardized parts for our plants. These sessions were long and arduous. We had reduced the number of suppliers or OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) in many categories to one or two. Our goal was to gradually replace the existing parts as they wore out with the new OEMs and strive for standardization in the MRO arena. We had a systematic well thought out plan for doing this and had negotiated contracts with the OEMs and distributers. We were approximately 80% complete which was quite an accomplishment for the fifty North American plants. Then the company suddenly announced that they were in the initial stages of planning a five-billion-dollar expansion in the United States. The winning five plants had already been selected. Some of the expansion was to be entirely new plants and the others were major rebuilds. The capital expansion was to start in six months. We were faced with managing a major capital expansion and a significant spend in the MRO area. We met with the Vice-President of engineering and decided to have a strategy session with him and the five selected plant engineers. We decided to have a one-shot bidding meeting with our preferred suppliers in Louisiana. We had a very good idea about the dollar amount of spend in the various buckets for the expansion. The capital job estimates had already been done and approved. We had four bucket areas in MRO: mechanical, electrical, piping and valves and operating supplies. We already had cost plus pricing contracts for 80% of our MRO. We did however still have at least two preferred suppliers in almost every major component MRO area like pumps. I suggested that we leverage the hard work that we had already accomplished. We would announce the capital expansion at a preferred supplier meeting and give an approximate future dollar spend in each of the four buckets (areas). We obviously had a lot of leverage and many of the bucket dollar numbers were huge. We had fairly accurate data from recent expansions and the capital job estimates. We then established these ground rules for the bidding process: 1. There would be only one round of bids. We urged the suppliers to give the bid their best shot. There would be no second bid rounds. We did not have the time to manage multiple bids. 2. We announced that we would in many cases narrow down the areas where we had two preferred suppliers to one, unless we had a good business reason for keeping two. 3. Although we had negotiated some significant total cost of ownership savings in the current contracts, we were open to enhancements from the suppliers and distributers. 4. We told the suppliers that we would not accept their standard spare parts packages like we had in the past. We would challenge their typical spares packages but would be especially open to creative ways of them controlling and managing the spares at minimal or no cost to us. 5. OEMs could work with distributers to propose any additional creative services to provide us. Quite frankly we had no idea how this mega-negotiation process would work. Fortunately, we had done a lot of supplier consolidation before this process. We had not had the time to even predict cost savings or eventual outcomes. We just did it. As the bids rolled back in, it was obvious that our suppliers had done their homework. All told the cost and other savings amounted to 20% of the 5 billion dollars or 1 billion dollars! We were stunned. For the next year, I and my supply management colleague, had to endure the “handle” or nickname of “the billion-dollar boys”, whenever we entered a meeting. Yes, we were good and worked hard, but we were also very lucky. The fact that the company was spending that much capital at one time when we were transforming to supply management really helped our leverage and savings potential. drtombooks.com Author’s Biography Dr. Tom DePaoli, (Dr. Tom) is currently the CEO of Apollo Solutions (http://www.apollosolutions.us), which does general business consulting. He has had successful careers in corporations, non-profits, the military and academia. He has authored 11 books all available on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/author/tomdepaoli Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

Luck Helps or My E-procurement Software Installation Story I have extensive functional procurement and supply management experience. This attribute attracted an e-procurement software company to hire me as a sales representative and software installer. I went through a rigorous software boot camp and went to my first installation client. I was obviously very nervous and wanted to make sure that the client was satisfied with my performance and that the software installation went well. The client was a software company also but not in supply management. This was the equivalent of installing plumbing in a plumber’s house! They were highly critical of the capabilities of our e-procurement software and its limitations. I soon had a long punch list of aspects of our software that they were not satisfied with or wanted improved. Being new to the company I diligently sent every one of their requests up the chain to corporate development. I also made sure by phone call that development completely understood their request. The night before go live day I received the software installation disks from corporate. Much to my surprise the installation disk were version 6.0 and the client had only paid for version 5.0, I could not get anyone to give me any direction on what to do, and with the deadline fast approaching so I decided to install version 6.0. As I went through the testing I was relieved that the new software was up and running and stable. It had passed all the benchmark tests. I however was not looking forward to the meeting with the client the next day. I was sure that they would find even more issues that they wanted improved. I started the meeting and before I could get into the training plan, one of my client’s harshest critics spoke up, “Mr. DePaoli I want to commend you. I signed onto the software very early this morning and checked all the punch list issues that we had talked about and they were fixed. I apologize for being so critical of you and your company.” Although I was more shocked than him about these circumstances, I remained composed and just replied, “Great! I stayed up all night modifying the software to solve those issues.” What was amazing was that I said it convincingly and with a straight face. What had happened was that like a good soldier I had sent all these issues to development using the system required, and they had incorporated them directly into version 6.0 as a fix or as an option. Our client was ecstatic and within three months the client requested to upgrade to version 7.0. They specifically asked for me to personally install it. Luckily I was already involved in another major project and our vice president of sales assigned another installer to them that he said that I specifically recommended for them. They remained loyal customers for many years. Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

Know What Your Employees Do

A classmate of mine in the Navy Reserve was put in charge of a new concept Navy fuel unit that was to assist in fueling requirements during a war or national emergency. Members of the unit were all of different Navy rates, with little or no fuel experience, and had to learn all about fuel and how to fuel planes, ships, trucks, tanks etc. After the unit was trained the Navy decided to have a realistic war-like exercise at a Naval Air Station. During a twenty-four-hour period, the squadron would fly as many missions as possible. The sorties would be simulated by a computer and the planes would take off, complete the sortie and returned to base to be refueled, then immediately fly the next computer simulated sortie. The unit was divided into fuel teams for the exercise. The units would take turns fueling aircraft as then returned from their sortie, then the planes would take off immediately for the next simulated sortie. The planes were hot-fueled (and armed) and did not turn off their engines. My classmate could have just stayed in the command shack and watched the exercise but he had a different idea. He insisted that he inspect each team just before they went out to fuel the aircraft. After about 14 hours some men were visibly tired. When he inspected each team, he would “disqualify” one member for some reason, usually something innocuous like sloppy uniform, and take their place on the tarmac, directly helping fuel the aircraft and giving the sailor time to rest. The men knew the disqualifying reason was bogus and he was just giving them a break. After the exercise was over, my classmate had even stronger teamwork in the unit and each man knew that he clearly understood their work, mission and danger. Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

Lean Six sigma is Not Complicated

De-mystifying Lean Six Sigma (LSS) for Supply Chain and Purchasing Professionals Many supply chain and purchasing professionals are intimidated by Lean Six Sigma (LSS) and its proponents. Relax; it is just a disciplined approach to problem solving. It uses many tools that have been around for years and the tools have just been cleverly repackaged by consultants. Decisions are data based, disciplined and plodding. Without top-down commitment, it is doomed to fail. Make sure you secure this executive commitment, and better yet make participation a strong criterion for individual performance reviews (raises). Projects should be selected by ROI and since much time and teams are required for a project, they must return or save at least $300,000 to qualify as a full blown LSS project. Supply Chain and purchasing professionals must be involved in sourcing the LSS consultant. Experience is critical and a proven track record of project success essential. Get references and insist on examples of work. Use a fixed hourly rate and make sure all developed training and projects remain your property. You can try to make the contract performance based but many LSS firms will not agree to this. Make the goal to be self-sufficient internally within two years with all LSS training and projects. Some projects that have been done in purchasing and the supply chain are: inventory cost, part obsolescence prevention, lead-time reduction, backlogs, unexpected orders, customer service internal and external, cost of schedule changes, transaction flows, cost of return product, and supply chain optimization. Many of these involve process mapping which is a type of flow chart that illustrates how things are done and identifies areas of strength or weakness. LSS is not the only tool that can be used by supply management professionals for improvement. In my experience LSS should be used when the potential savings is great and you have some good data to analyze. If you do not have good data the LSS project will take even longer. If data is sparse, the Lean approach is much preferred which is highly visual, intuitive and does not require as much data. Always Lean a process before your use LSS. By this I mean eliminate any redundant steps in the process that can be easily eliminated first. Reduce the number of variables in the process. Try to understand the voice of the customer (VOC) clearly before your start process improvement. Remember if the customer does not really care or value a process step; ask yourself, “Why are we doing it?” Finally use kaizens for straight forward less complicated projects. The kaizen approach is usually done by the work team using the process and strives to eliminate waste in the process. The new kaizen improved process should then be quickly implemented. Supply chain and purchasing professionals must take the leadership role in LSS, Lean and kaizens. In my professional experience, the rewards of these approaches can be astounding. They do however require a measured and disciplined approach, and a commitment to not giving up! Dr. Tom DePaoli drtombooks.com Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

Stand Up For What You Believe In. Do Not Be Silent to Idiots or Insanity.

Stand Up For What You Believe In. Do Not Be Silent to Idiots or Insanity. When I was working for a large chemical company I was told to run the numbers to justify an inventory project that would write down inventory and put in place a new inventory software system. I ran the numbers many different ways and presented the best results that I could that were based on accepted accounting and inventory practices. My justification was subsequently presented to my vice-president. He called me up and told me to fudge or inflate the numbers so that the capital committee would approve the project. I told him that I could not inflate the numbers and use unaccepted practices to justify the project. I remarked that that would be dishonest and misleading. I also noted that we would lose all credibility especially if we wanted future projects. He went on a vicious rant and informed me that he was the expert on projects not me. The project was not proposed that year. Next year after the budget was approved, I was called into my boss’s office. He informed me that my position was not in next year’s budget and my position was being eliminated. Off the record, he was honest enough to tell me that the vice-president was responsible for the decision and that the vice president was personally going to re-propose the inventory project in the new budget year. Fortunately two weeks later I landed another positon that was a step advancement that paid me 40% more salary. Stand up for what you believe in. Do not be silent to idiots or insanity. Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

My Worst Boss Story

My Worst Boss Story What to do When Your Leader or Boss Dislikes You Story In the Navy Reserve I once had a boss (leader) who just disliked me and was not shy about reminding me that he disliked me. He also bragged in advance that he was going to give me a poor performance review. Obviously, this was very discouraging, but instead of wallowing in the unfair situation and acting like a victim, I developed a strategy. I decided to identify and complete three projects that no one had ever done before in the history of the Navy Reserve. These were very tough and time-consuming projects. They required enormous amounts of work and analysis. However, I completed them all just before my performance review. For the performance review an individual is always asked to submit their accomplishments. So, I submitted the three projects. At first, my boss did not want to include them, but I said that I would exercise my right to add a supplement to my performance review that would include the projects. He relented and included the projects in my performance review. The word of me completing these projects soon spread all across the command and other parts of the Navy Reserve. I was asked by an Admiral to attend a conference and give a presentation on the projects. My boss wrote the performance review, but his less than stellar words about me, just did not match or align with the accomplishments and first-time-ever ground-breaking projects. The Admiral, who invited me to speak at his conference about the projects, was later the head of the promotion board that promoted me to Captain. I like to think that my presentation on the projects helped clarify his and the board’s judgement about me. By the way my former boss (leader) who disliked me, never got promoted again. When you get a bad leader, never let it discourage you from doing your very best. Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

Take Care of Your People. Take Care of Your People. Take Care of Your People

Take Care of Your People. Take Care of Your People. Take Care of Your People The title of this article was the advice my Dad gave to me when I asked him what should I do as a leader just before I became an officer in the US Navy. Take care of your people. (he repeated it three times) People really value little things that you can do for them, but often their bosses or leaders don’t understand what is important to them. I once was in charge of a huge warehouse complex in San Diego for a one-month assignment. It was January, which is the worst weather month in San Diego. None of the ware¬houses were air-conditioned or heated. The temperature would fall to the low forties or upper thirties in the morning, and many of the forklift drivers were not used to this type of chilly weather. I managed to obtain some surplus sweaters for all of the forklift drivers to wear. We set them up in one area of the warehouse so that they could be used by employees when they were cold. I didn’t realize how appreciative the employees were of this gesture until three years later, when I returned in the same month for a similar project. I was told to report early to the conference room in the warehouse. Much to my shock, every warehouse employee was in the warehouse was wearing one of the sweaters, and they all greeted me with a standing ovation and a cake. I didn’t want to let them down, so that year I secured wool watch caps for them. I later wrote a book Broken Windows Management (available on Amazon). The whole one message or premise of the book was this: Prevention of disorder and actually fixing things that employees say are wrong; goes a very long way in establishing trust and credibility with management (also leader). If what they request is reasonable, give it to them. Management and leaders must be vigilant and constantly try to control disorder and fix the things and issues that employees’ value. These actions reduce employee fear of management and actually help gain trust. Trust is enhanced by quickly fixing things that employees want fixed. Unfortunately, many organizations have not figured out this simple axiom yet. Many companies, because their employees do not trust them, will never get enough credibility to execute broken windows management actions. Take care of your people. Author’s Biography Dr. Tom DePaoli, (Dr. Tom) is currently an independent management consultant, the Principal of Apollo Solutions (http://www.apollosolutions.us), which does general business consulting in the human resources, supply chain and lean six sigma areas. He founded his organization in 1995. In his career, Dr. Tom was a supply chain and human resources executive with corporate purchasing turnaround experience and lean six sigma deployments. He has worked for over ten major companies and consulted for over fifty organizations throughout his career. Some of his consulting projects included: information systems projects, re-engineering organizations, transformation, e-procurement, e-commerce, change management, global sourcing and negotiating. His industry experience is in the chemical, paper, pharmaceutical, Information technology, automotive, government, consumer, equipment, services and consulting businesses. He has been published extensively in journals, magazines and books. He the author of eleven books. His Amazon author’s page is https://www.amazon.com/author/tomdepaoli He has instructed at six universities in numerous roles. For more detailed information about Dr. Tom see his LinkedIn homepage. https://www.linkedin.com/in/drtomdepaoli/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/take-care-your-people-dr-thomas-tom-depaoli-1f Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

Praise People Who Do A Good Job Often

Praise People Who Do A Good Job Often By Dr. Tom DePaoli For more leadership stories see his book: Leadership by Storytelling on Amazon I ran a team of eight employees who did supply chain functions. When one of them did an outstanding job, I would reward them with some time off for the accomplishment. This time off reward seems to be the most popular with the team. I decided to expand the praise. I had a background in football coaching and we would put stickers on a player’s helmet when they made a good play. Since we did not wear helmets, I constructed a bulletin board with each individuals name on it. Whenever they did very well, I would put a sticker next to their name and run the stickers horizontally across the board. The prize for ten stickers was me buying them lunch. They all relished in the fact that I had to buy them lunch. I did limit the lunch to a particular local restaurant, but the banter by the whole team as a person was getting closer to a free lunch, was particularly rambunctious and funny. Praise people who do a good job often. Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

Listen to Your Followers’ Problems and Help Them.

Listen to Your Followers’ Problems and Help Them. I once had an employee who was initially very upset that I took over as leader of the department. She thought that she deserved to be promoted and become the leader. She had more experience than me. She was very cold to me and resisted any initiatives that I proposed. Shortly thereafter, her mother became very sick and it got to the point that she needed caregivers. I gave her as much time of as I could and was very flexible with her work duties and responsibilities. She finally requested family leave for eight weeks and it was granted. While she was gone, I attempted to do as much of her work as possible and got a very good understanding of her duties, systems and techniques. I stayed late many nights and weekends working at both my job and hers. When she came back from family leave, she expected piles of work awaiting her and very hectic weeks. She was surprised that I had kept up and completed almost all of the work. She came into my office and started to cry and I thought that something had happened to her mother. Instead she was grateful for what I had done and thanked me, informing me that no boss had ever done anything so kind. I then suggested that we make a request to our information technology department to upgrade some for the systems that she used, and I was now familiar with by doing her job. We jointly filled out the request that day and it was installed in three weeks. Her attitude towards me completely turned around. Whenever there was a tough project, she volunteered for it. She became the most loyal employee to me in the department and a friend. As a leader, if someone has a problem and needs help, especially when it is personal or family related, go out of your way to help them. Listen to your followers’ problems and help them. Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

Information-Based Negotiations - A Different Approach to Negotiations in Procurement

Information-Based Negotiations - A Different Approach to Negotiations in Procurement An information-based negotiation is a radically different approach to negotiations. It emphasizes deep knowledge of the supplier and their industry. It transgresses from some traditional approaches to negotiations. It is not the adversarial win-lose negotiation style with the emphasis on game playing, theatrics and taking full advantage of a supplier’s weaknesses. An information-based negotiation is not the win-win model either. Information or knowledge is power, but in information-based negotiations the procurement professional gains a deep understanding of the supplier’s industry, their margins and their culture. In essence this is an immersion or empathy with the supplier and their competitive landscape. The best way to describe it is that the procurement professional knows as much or more about the supplier and their industry as they do! In my book Common Sense Supply Management I state, “The very best piece of negotiations advice I ever received was to know the capabilities of your supplier, their industry, their competitors, their cost drivers, their margins and their capabilities better than they do. It requires a lot of homework, digging and flat-out work. You obviously cannot do this with every supplier only the most important and most strategic ones. It is a powerful negotiation tactic based on knowledge not histrionics. There is no glamour in the information-based approach it requires immense research about the industry, the supplier’s financial condition and competitive forces. Understanding their culture and their organization is critical. You are in essence trying your best to put yourself in their shoes, and mimic as best as possible their anxieties and fears about the whole process. The information-based approach is not for the faint hearted or those who do not want to persevere. It should only be exercised for critical materials or services. It requires ongoing market research and it will work better when executives are actually exchanged with the supplier on their site. The resources and commitment to pull off such an information-based approach are significant.” With the Internet the gathering of information for the information-based negotiations approach has been greatly facilitated. There are numerous industry reports, websites and search engines that can help the procurement professional. Nothing beats personal face-to-face contact and dialogue with numerous suppliers in a particular industry. They all have a fairly keen knowledge of their competitors which can rapidly improve your overall knowledge. Since many industries are oligarchic in nature, once you understand the top three or four players in the industry you have a real good foundation from which to start partnerships with your chosen supplier. I suggest the procurement professional consider using the Porter Five Forces analysis. Although this used extensively in marketing and marketing analysis, it can be invaluable to the procurement professional. This will provide a good start for industry understanding. Another good source for information about suppliers and particular industries are distributors. Often they are glad to provide information about suppliers and especially their customer service. Here is a general diagram of the approach to information-based negotiations that I have used: One additional tactic I have successfully used during the initial trust building phase is to mutually do supply chain process mapping of internal processes but with a twist. The supplier comes to your site and maps your processes, then presents it to your cross functional team to check their understanding. Then the procurement professional ventures to the supplier’s site and performs a similar mapping. Often this sparks a new creative exchange of ideas. The information-based approach has tremendous flexibility to cope with market and industry changes. Information drives decisions not emotions or one-upmanship. It requires the procurement professional to become the resident expert on a market and an industry. It yields much more significant long-term gains than traditional or even win-win approaches. Using this approach is one of the best methodologies for transforming your supply chain and developing true breakthroughs with your supplier. Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

A Transaction-Based Lean Six Sigma Success

A Transaction-Based Lean Six Sigma Success When I took over as head of a procurement division for an integrated paper company, there were three plants with over $500 million in purchases per year. I was to transform Purchasing into Supply Management with some Lean Six Sigma tools. Plant senior management decided to downsize my department at the plant where I was located from eight to four, starting from day one. The plant manager was not committed to the transformation attempt and wanted it to fail. I decided to do everything in my power to disappoint him. At the first meeting I had with the department team, two people started to cry. They didn’t know how they were going to keep up with the work. I pledged that within six months, they would have so much spare time; they would be coming to me, asking me what to do to move the business ahead. They all laughed at the statement. I volunteered to take over buying of one of the major components in the plant. Of course, I had no idea about the workload involved in the buying process. The next day, four file drawers of paperwork for the component were moved into my office. I spent a week creating a database to help me manage the component, which had no previous reliable information. Eventually a supplier helped me improve the database and ordering process. I soon found out that purchasing data was scarce or non-existent. Purchasing employees could not give me any good summary statistics and were so caught up in firefighting that confusion reigned supreme. No one could adequately explain the purchase-order process. There were no standard operating procedures. Undaunted, I rolled up my sleeves and typed purchase orders myself just to get an idea of what happened. We did a process map of the purchase-order process. We locked the doors to the department while we had process-mapping meetings. We all went on a data expedition, and since I knew some computer programming and could query from the company databases, we started to compile our data. We discovered that we had approximately forty thousand transactions or buys per year. By using a Pareto chart, we saw that over 80 percent of the purchase orders were under $200. The majority of our purchases were small-dollar items. Additionally, only twenty people made about 90 percent of these buys. They were our superusers or power requisitioners. We decided to concentrate on them and educate them about our efforts to transform the entire process. We designed a short-order purchase form for purchases under $1,000 that they could use. They participated in the design of the form. No interface with purchasing was required for the form. The middleman (purchasing) was eliminated. The only catch was they had to buy from a list of our preferred suppliers. If they wanted to deviate from the list, they needed to get our approval. We did a new process map for the short-order form with the superusers participating. We created a manual and SOP for the superusers that included the preferred-supplier list, contact information, and basic purchasing terms and rules. We posted a process-flow map in the department for everyone to see. Our workload was drastically reduced, and the buyers didn’t have to worry about these small purchase orders. In addition our suppliers remarked that the error rate on these short orders was greatly reduced. We recognized superusers who had error-free months, and who worked well with suppliers. We eventually switched to purchase cards for these twenty superusers, which practically eliminated all paperwork. Finally we had time for supplier rationalization or reduction-and-strategic initiatives. Again, we mined the data and found out that we had over twenty thousand suppliers. With hard work and consolidation of buys, we got that number down to 209. We set up preferred suppliers and greatly simplified the entire process from requisition to payment. We standardized payment terms, which greatly relieved accounts-payable’s workload—and they soon became our allies. In four months (not six), my employees had the confidence and trust in me to come to my office and admit that they had nothing to do that day and ask what could they work on to move the business ahead. Most of this progress was due to using some simple Lean Six Sigma process improvement tools. Lessons Learned 1. Be a hands-on leader in crisis situations. 2. Gather data before making major decisions. 3. Build trust by keeping to your word. 4. Avoid or streamline non-value adding work. Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

Leadership Is The Art Of Accomplishing The Impossible. So, What Is No One Has Ever Done It Before

Leadership Is The Art Of Accomplishing The Impossible. So, What Is No One Has Ever Done It Before I worked for a large company that had a large plant. The plant was separated by a major state highway that split the production areas from the distribution warehouse area. The company had put an enclosed tube with a case conveyor over the highway connecting the two highway divided facilities. The cases would right through the tube into the distribution center. The company was expanding and room was needed for two major production lines and more storage space. At first the company went to their local state representative asking for permission for the state to consider closing the highway and rerouting traffic. The plan was to put a new complete building the highway and add more production lines and storage space. Both buildings would now be connected to a new building in the middle. The state representative objected and cited all sorts of hurdles that had to be overcome to close the highway. He stated that it would be impossible and that local opposition might be fierce. We were however undaunted by his pessimism. I was directed to develop a plan for the new building, the layout and estimate the cost. We knew we had a very difficult task ahead of us. We developed blueprints for the building but I suggested that we create an interior model of the building and three-dimensional pictures of how the building would look when finished. We put together a presentation of the building in a small folding three ring binder. We contacted the state governor and office of business development to engender more support. The business development office was enthusiastic. Next, we built the interior model of the building to scale and put it on a large table in a large conference room. Then we invited our own employees to visit the conference room with the scale model, play with the layout and make suggestions. We received many helpful suggestions that we immediately deployed in the model and the building plans. The employees continued to give us unsolicited ideas. We then personally visited each house along the route that the highway was going to be diverted to and explained the concept and what the building was going to look like. We invited them to take a personal tour of the plant and most of them toured the plant. There were no objections from the home owners. Within a month the state business development office informed us that closing the highway had been approved by the state transportation department. Our next step was to get approval from corporate for capital funds. Capital money was tight that year, so we created a plan that only showed half the building and its layout. We did bring the plan of the whole building with us and the cost estimates. The capital committee was so impressed with the building layout and the work that we had done that they asked to see the layout of the entire building. They approved the money for the entire building. Yes, we did invite the state representative who said it would be impossible to reroute the state highway to the ribbon cutting ceremony. Leadership is the art of accomplishing the impossible so what if no one Has ever done it before. Lessons Learned 1. Do not give comfort to naysayers and pessimism. 2. Always involve people who actually do the work. 3. Create models whenever feasible. 4. Visit and personally talk to all the stakeholders. 5. Be prepared for good fortune. 6. Never reject any suggestions or ideas out of hand. Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

Always Always Walk the Process

Never neglect details. Walk the process. Do it yourself to learn how to do it. I had just reported into a new organization and was given a huge orientation packet with a three-page checklist. When I asked individuals how long it would take to complete the check-in process the answers varied from 4 hours to two weeks. There were four different types of employee groups but just one check-in process and a single type check list. Each new person had a sponsor. I asked my sponsor if I had to complete all of the checklist items and he replied yes I did. There happened to be another new employee reporting on the same day as I did, so we decided to partner up and do the check-in together. Both of us inquired about certain aspects of the check-in and orientation process and soon discovered that we got different and wildly different answers on the check-in process. As a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt I decided to document the check-in process along with my partner and record data on the actual process. We started off both with clipboards and I actually used my smartphone’s pedometer to record our steps and the time spent at each check-in station. We soon discovered that often the person who was supposed to check us in was not present to perform the check-in. We had to then come back when they were present. There was no coordination between check-in spots and much of the check-in requirements were rather unnecessary. Often a department head would just initial our check-in sheet. Some would just hand us documents to read later and sign the sheet. Some would update their databases so we asked to watch them do this process and we observed. Bottom line by walking the process we found out how inefficient it was and soon determined what stops were actually value adding or useful. Much of the check-in process was only relevant to a particular employee group (the organization had four of them). We both completed the check-in process in seven business days and presented our check-in sheets to our boss. We had at least an hour discussion with him about the process and recommended forming a kaizen team, which would have members from all four employee groups, to try and improve the process. He agreed to our suggestion and both me and my partner were appointed Kaizen co-leaders. We did a complicated process map and then greatly simplified it. We had instant credibility with the team because we had just actually walked and completed the check-in process recently. We brainstormed ideas to improve the process and again talked to all the department heads about their needs and concerns. After two weeks of work with the team and other team members walking the check-in process again, we reduced the check-in time to two business days or less for each employee group. In a year after putting much of the check-in process online we reduced it to one business day. More importantly, from a morale and first impression aspect to a new employee the organization appeared well organized and competent. Never neglect details. Walk the process. Do it yourself to learn how to do it. Lessons Learned 1. Always walk the process first hand and verify it personally not on the “word” of other people. 2. Challenge what others see as important and develop a criterion to judge importance. 3. Do not procrastinate kaizens. Implement the new process as quickly as possible. 4. Ask people directly in person about their needs and concerns. 5. Make sure safety items are clearly covered. Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

The Billion-Dollar Boys and Mega-Negotiations Story By Dr. Tom DePaoli

The Billion-Dollar Boys and Mega-Negotiations Story By Dr. Tom DePaoli I and a supply management colleague had been working diligently for a year to try and standardize MRO (Maintenance Repair and Operating) parts to include pumps, pipes and valves, electrical and operating supplies. We divided the storeroom parts into these four bucket areas. These were storeroom related parts for a major process chemical company. We used a market basket sourcing approach. We had conducted numerous strategic sourcing cross-functional teams and had worked hard to get our engineers to select standardized parts for our plants. These sessions were long and arduous. We had reduced the number of suppliers or OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) in many categories to one or two. Our goal was to gradually replace the existing parts as they wore out with the new OEMs and strive for standardization in the MRO arena. We had a systematic well thought out plan for doing this and had negotiated contracts with the OEMs and distributers. We were approximately 80% complete which was quite an accomplishment for the fifty North American plants. Then the company suddenly announced that they were in the initial stages of planning a five-billion-dollar expansion in the United States. The winning five plants had already been selected. Some of the expansion was to be entirely new plants and the others were major rebuilds. The capital expansion was to start in six months. We were faced with managing a major capital expansion and a significant spend in the MRO area. We met with the Vice-President of engineering and decided to have a strategy session with him and the five selected plant engineers. We decided to have a one-shot bidding meeting with our preferred suppliers in Louisiana. We had a very good idea about the dollar amount of spend in the various buckets for the expansion. The capital job estimates had already been done and approved. We had four bucket areas in MRO: mechanical, electrical, piping and valves and operating supplies. We already had cost plus pricing contracts for 80% of our MRO. We did however still have at least two preferred suppliers in almost every major component MRO area like pumps. I suggested that we leverage the hard work that we had already accomplished. We would announce the capital expansion at a preferred supplier meeting and give an approximate future dollar spend in each of the four buckets (areas). We obviously had a lot of leverage and many of the bucket dollar numbers were huge. We had fairly accurate data from recent expansions and the capital job estimates. We then established these ground rules for the bidding process: 1. There would be only one round of bids. We urged the suppliers to give the bid their best shot. There would be no second bid rounds. We did not have the time to manage multiple bids. 2. We announced that we would in many cases narrow down the areas where we had two preferred suppliers to one, unless we had a good business reason for keeping two. 3. Although we had negotiated some significant total cost of ownership savings in the current contracts, we were open to enhancements from the suppliers and distributers. 4. We told the suppliers that we would not accept their standard spare parts packages like we had in the past. We would challenge their typical spares packages but would be especially open to creative ways of them controlling and managing the spares at minimal or no cost to us. 5. OEMs could work with distributers to propose any additional creative services to provide us. Quite frankly we had no idea how this mega-negotiation process would work. Fortunately, we had done a lot of supplier consolidation before this process. We had not had the time to even predict cost savings or eventual outcomes. We just did it. As the bids rolled back in, it was obvious that our suppliers had done their homework. All told the cost and other savings amounted to 20% of the 5 billion dollars or 1 billion dollars! We were stunned. For the next year, I and my supply management colleague, had to endure the “handle” or nickname of “the billion-dollar boys”, whenever we entered a meeting. Yes, we were good and worked hard, but we were also very lucky. The fact that the company was spending that much capital at one time when we were transforming to supply management really helped our leverage and savings potential. Lessons to share: 1. Hard work and building relationships are sometimes more important than analytics. 2. Engineers do not like to be proven wrong on a decision 3. Luck also helps savings. 4. Pre-work is always better than afterwards cleanup work. 5. Endurance and persistence count.

Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

More Broken Windows Management Tips

More Broken Windows Management Tips (3) By Dr. Tom DePaoli See my book Broken Windows Management on Amazon for more tips. Find Out What Really Bothers Employees. One of the things that bothered my employees was the fact that many of the meetings they attended were totally disorganized and useless. Teach basic meeting protocol to people. Make sure meeting leaders have an agenda, take minutes and conduct the meeting in a professional manner. Have clear deliverables and explain the expectations of the meeting. Then enforce your parameters. Fix It the Right Way. Too often management takes the ideas of the employees to make jobs better and does a slipshod job of fixing them or just appeasing the employees. Why not fix it in the very best way possible the first time. Make sure that it never comes back or reemerges as an irritant to the employees. This tells the employees that management actually listens to them and wants to fix things permanently. Fix Parking Space Story. One of my stories that illustrate what's important to employees is a project that I did on employee parking. I had a project to reconfigure the employee parking areas and to see if I could get more parking spaces in the plant area. I managed to get 250 more parking spaces and the spaces were auctioned off and the money donated to charity. The employees were very grateful for the additional parking spaces which obviously made their walk to where they work much shorter and much more enjoyable. They also avoided paying for off-site parking. Do not underestimate employee concerns about parking and other issues. Solve them quickly. Fix Things in Real-time. Do not spend an inordinate amount of time designing systems and paperwork to fix things that can be fixed immediately. Cut through the bureaucracy and make sure that when the employee voices a complaint it is answered as soon as possible and in real time. Systems don't impress people, getting things done does. No one gets really impressed with a fancy work order system. Fluffy Recognition Doesn't Work. Employees know when praise is really shallow and not worthwhile. Stop praising peoples' tasks that are supposed to be part of their job. You would be better off fixing something in their job and making it easier for them to cope with. Praise certainly has its place. However, do not overdo it. It soon becomes discounted. Dr. Tom DePaoli, (Dr. Tom) is currently an independent management consultant, the Principal of Apollo Solutions, which does general business consulting in the human resources, supply chain and lean six sigma areas. His organization was self-founded in 1995. He retired as a Captain from the Navy Reserve. In other civilian careers, he was a supply chain and human resources executive with corporate purchasing turnaround experience and lean six sigma deployments. He has worked for over ten major companies and consulted for over fifty organizations throughout his career. Some of his consulting projects include: information systems projects, re-engineering organizations, transformation, e-procurement, e-commerce, change management, global sourcing and negotiating. His industry experience is in the chemical, paper, pharmaceutical, IT, automotive, government, consumer, equipment, services and consulting industries. He has been published extensively in journals, magazines and books. He is the author of eleven books all available on Amazon. He has instructed at six education facilities in numerous roles. He is active in supporting the YMCA, Wounded Warrior, and the prevention of the bullying of children. https://www.amazon.com/author/tomdepaoli = Dr. Tom’s Amazon author’s page http://www.apollosolutions.us = website of Apollo Solutions his business drtombooks.com = more information on Dr. Tom’s books http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dr-thomas-depaoli/0/736/6b3/ = LinkedIn home page https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/more-broken-windows-management-tips-3-dr-thomas-tom-depaoli Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

Some Tips for Process-Improvement Meetings

The most common and most egregious mistake that the various process-improvement team leaders make is not hav¬ing a meeting agenda. The agenda must be published before the meeting and distributed to team members. Team members need to anticipate what to expect in the meeting and what the intended results are—by this, I mean the deliverables. Minutes of each meeting must be taken and published before the next meeting. Minutes must be approved and/or corrected at each subsequent meeting. Always try to have a facilitator and a per¬son taking minutes. Maximize the visibility in the meeting; make sure all pro¬cess maps are visible to everyone. Insist that team members get at least introductory training in the methodology. Trying to train team members on process-improvement tools at the same time that you’re trying to improve the process is very difficult. If meetings last more than two hours, the leader is not organized, and the members won’t be able to function very well. Always set a goal of finishing at least two deliverables or mile¬stones for each meeting, and push to have them get completed. End the meeting with asking the members what went right and what went wrong. For more tips check out my book on Amazon: Kaizen Kreativity. https://amzn.to/33beOS3 Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

Two New Leadership Books Available on Amazon. Dark Side and Authentic Side. Interview with Dr. Tom DePaoli Author of Two New Leadership Books

Two New Leadership Books Available on Amazon. Dark Side and Authentic Side. Interview with Dr. Tom DePaoli Author of Two New Leadership Books Dr. Tom the titles of your new leadership books intrigue me, how did you pick them? I wanted two leadership books. One would explore the dark side of leadership and the other the authentic or good side. Unfortunately, I had more stories about the dark side and many were just awful. The authentic side stories are not as numerous. The stories are all authentic and real life based for both books. I myself or my colleagues actually experienced them. They are only slightly changed to protect the identity of some of the leaders. The dark side was maybe a little too dramatic. It does have some redundant and repetitious stories. This is not my fault or an editing fault. Dark leaders are not very creative. Many use the same tired and sorry tactics. However, the situations were even more dramatic and uncomfortable for the followers. Boogeyman Leadership: How to Turn Your Employees into Listless Zombies describes all too common leadership tactics that numb employees into becoming animated drones. I urge the reader to not read it from start to end but to jump around in the book. The other book Leadership by Storytelling: The Best Way to Learn Good Leadership Principles is peppered with uplifting and inspirational leadership action. Good leaders, who care, will learn much from the authentic stories. Both are available on Amazon. Why did you author the two books at once? I have been on the receiving end of much poor leadership in my careers. I worked in various organizations such as business, non-profit, the military and academia. Unfortunately, I experienced many more poor leaders than good. Much of the leadership training I experienced was ineffective. I learned leadership principles by observing good leaders. There was no shortage of leadership stories that I experienced. I decided on the storytelling method to give the reader true examples of leadership tactics. Knowing a leadership theory and executing it are two entirely different missions. Why the storytelling approach? It is the best way of learning and has many good attributes. Readers can relate to stories much better than prose on leadership theories. From my perspective, stories are also easier for me to write about because I and my colleagues lived and experienced them. Talk to me about Bogeyman Leadership: How to Turn Your Employees into Listless Zombies. The book showcases poor leaders and their tactics that inevitably failed. I strongly believe you should know what does not work first, so that an aspiring good leader does not waste time on such approaches. I really do not pretend to offer any silver bullet solutions to these poor policies. I define boogeyman leadership as the use of poor and intimidating leadership tactics whose purpose is to terrify employees and instill distrust, apathy and fear. The result is a zombie-like listless state. The book recounts many bad leadership ideas and illustrative stories to make sure the reader crosses these schemes off their leadership list. It is not a solemn academic book or a guide to great leadership success. Its purpose is to give examples of terrible leadership and management tactics, that I and others have experienced in their careers. I suggest the reader re-visualize their own bad personal leaders, that they have had, who have used the very same or similar defective devices. Unfortunately, these failed leadership ploys are becoming even more common, destructive and hurtful. I urge the reader to avoid these methods at all costs. Talk to me about Leadership by Storytelling: The Best Way to Learn Good Leadership Principles. The book provides some excellent principles of good leadership. The principles are illustrated with compelling leadership stories that reinforce the principles. I provide twenty-six principles of good leadership. It should be noted that one of the oldest methods of passing down knowledge is oral storytelling. Usually an ancient sage would be the keeper of the stories and passed them down to other tribe members. I highly recommend the storytelling method for leaders. The stories in the book are authentic. Each principle has a story to clarify the principle. The book has cogent illustrations for the stories. I urge the reader to gather leadership stories to share with fellow leaders and followers. I believe the growth in leadership abilities will be much stronger via the use of leadership storytelling. Why are there more poor or dark leaders? Much of leadership training is poorly organized and not very practical. Knowing all the theories of leadership is commendable but not useful in real life. Leadership training must be real life based, use role playing and scenarios to prepare a leader for leadership decisions. One of the biggest areas overlooked is integrity and honesty. Many would be leaders ignore it or downplay it. People will not respect or follow a leader with no integrity. Most dark leaders rationalize their dishonest behavior. Trust me, their followers will always remember even the slightest dishonest action. It is hard to teach an authentic caring for your followers. Many bad leaders put themselves on a pedestal and do not even make an effort to really know and respect their followers. My experiences in the military in leadership roles taught me to always take care of your followers first and never lie to them. I asked my father, who had spent eight years in the Navy for advice when I was about to become an officer. He said, “Take care of your people. Take care of your people. Take care of your people.” Your people can quickly tell if you are a phony. What distinguishes good or authentic leaders They get followers to trust them and keep building that trust. There is no one methodology to get a follower to trust you. Each person has a different lock to get them to trust you, and you have to find the right key. Honesty and integrity help the most. Selflessness also cements their trust. Many followers can forgive a leader who is not totally competent, but they rarely forgive a lack of integrity. I wrote another book Broken Windows Management (available on Amazon). The whole one message or premise of the book was this: Prevention of disorder and actually fixing things that employees say are wrong; goes a very long way in establishing trust and credibility with management (also leader). Management (leaders) must be vigilant and constantly try to control disorder and fix the things and issues that employees’ value. These actions reduce employee fear of management and actually help gain trust. Trust is enhanced by quickly fixing things that employees want fixed. Unfortunately, many organizations have not figured out this simple axiom yet. Many companies, because their employees do not trust them, will never get enough credibility to execute broken windows management actions. What is Your Favorite Boogeyman Leadership Story? Remember the book is organized in a manner that gives you a Boogeyman Leadership tactic or tip first that should be avoided if you want to be a good leader. Then the story shows the futility of the tactic. Here it is: Make Sure You Destroy Trust Do not keep your word. When you break your word make the lamest excuse you can think of and insist that you were misunderstood. Berate employees who do not keep their word and tell them it is not acceptable. Constantly praise your honesty and integrity as beyond reproach even though it is the exact opposite. Openly lie to your superiors whenever you can and blame your employees for any shortfalls or the missing of goals. Take credit for all of your employee’s good ideas and claim them as the result of your own brilliancy. Brag about how good you are with employees and customers to everyone and never be completely honest ever, in fact be evasive. Lie and exaggerate often. Story The department that I worked in did not receive a raise for three years. In the beginning of the fourth year, our leader promised that management has informed him that the average raise for this year would be five percent. The caveat was that instead of working ten Saturdays we would have to work twenty. Near the end of the year he announced at a meeting that “management” had decided that once again there would not be any raises this year after we worked the twenty Saturdays. I and most of the other people in the company left within the next six months. I then discovered from an upper level manager, who had also left the company, that management decided to use dishonesty, the five percent raise ploy, to help lower turnover and all the department managers knew about this ploy in the beginning of the year. What is Your Favorite Leadership by Storytelling Story? The book is organized to first state the good leadership principle. Then the story shows the result of using the good principle. Here it is: Listen to Your Followers’ Problems and Help Them. I once had an employee who was initially very upset that I took over as leader of the department. She thought that she deserved to be promoted and become the leader. She had more experience than me. She was very cold to me and resisted any initiatives that I proposed. Shortly thereafter, her mother became very sick and it got to the point that she needed caregivers. I gave her as much time of as I could and was very flexible with her work duties and responsibilities. She finally requested family leave for eight weeks and it was granted. While she was gone, I attempted to do as much of her work as possible and got a very good understanding of her duties, systems and techniques. I stayed late many nights and weekends working at both my job and hers. When she came back from family leave, she expected piles of work awaiting her and very hectic weeks. She was surprised that I had kept up and completed almost all of the work. She came into my office and started to cry and I thought that something had happened to her mother. Instead she was grateful for what I had done and thanked me, informing me that no boss had ever done anything so kind. I then suggested that we make a request to our information technology department to upgrade some of the systems that she used, which I was now familiar with by doing her job. We jointly filled out the request that day and it was installed in three weeks. Her attitude towards me completely turned around. Whenever there was a tough project, she volunteered for it. She became the most loyal employee to me in the department and a friend. As a leader, if someone has a problem and needs help, especially when it is personal or family related, go out of your way to help them. Listen to your followers’ problems and help them. Summary Leadership by telling stories is highly effective and much more practical. Understanding leadership theories is certainly important, but relating leadership stories to real world events and role-playing exercises based on the stories creates better leaders. Dr. Tom DePaoli Dr. Tom DePaoli, (Dr. Tom) is currently an independent management consultant, the Principal of Apollo Solutions, which does general business consulting in the human resources, supply chain and lean six sigma areas. His organization was self-founded in 1995. He retired as a Captain from the Navy Reserve. In other civilian careers, he was a supply chain and human resources executive with corporate purchasing turnaround experience and lean six sigma deployments. He has worked for over ten major companies and consulted for over fifty organizations throughout his career. Some of his consulting projects include: information systems projects, re-engineering organizations, transformation, e-procurement, e-commerce, change management, global sourcing and negotiating. His industry experience is in the chemical, paper, pharmaceutical, IT, automotive, government, consumer, equipment, services and consulting industries. He has been published extensively in journals, magazines and books. He is the author of eleven books all available on Amazon. He has instructed at six education facilities in numerous roles. He is active in supporting the YMCA, Wounded Warrior, and the prevention of the bullying of children. https://www.amazon.com/author/tomdepaoli = Dr. Tom’s Amazon author’s page http://www.apollosolutions.us = website of Apollo Solutions his business drtombooks.com = more information on Dr. Tom’s books http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dr-thomas-depaoli/0/736/6b3/ = LinkedIn home page https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/two-new-leadership-books-available-amazon-dark-side-depaoli/ Learn to lead by storytelling #leadership #leadershipadvice https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/two-new-leadership-books-available-amazon-dark-side-depaoli-1f Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

How to Save a Billion Dollars in Your Supply Chain Or “the Billion-Dollar Boys” and Mega-Negotiations Story By Dr. Tom DePaoli

How to Save a Billion Dollars in Your Supply Chain Or “the Billion-Dollar Boys” and Mega-Negotiations Story By Dr. Tom DePaoli For more Supply Chain stories see my books on Amazon; Common Sense Supply Management or Common Sense Purchasing. I and a supply management colleague had been working diligently for a year to try and standardize MRO (Maintenance Repair and Operating) parts to include pumps, pipes and valves, electrical and operating supplies. We divided the storeroom parts into these four bucket areas. These were storeroom related parts for a major process chemical company. We used a market basket sourcing approach. We had conducted numerous strategic sourcing cross-functional teams and had worked hard to get our engineers to select standardized parts for our plants. These sessions were long and arduous. We had reduced the number of suppliers or OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) in many categories to one or two. Our goal was to gradually replace the existing parts as they wore out with the new OEMs and strive for standardization in the MRO arena. We had a systematic well thought out plan for doing this and had negotiated contracts with the OEMs and distributers. We were approximately 80% complete which was quite an accomplishment for the fifty North American plants. Then the company suddenly announced that they were in the initial stages of planning a five-billion-dollar expansion in the United States. The winning five plants had already been selected. Some of the expansion was to be entirely new plants and the others were major rebuilds. The capital expansion was to start in six months. We were faced with managing a major capital expansion and a significant spend in the MRO area. We met with the Vice-President of engineering and decided to have a strategy session with him and the five selected plant engineers. We decided to have a one-shot bidding meeting with our preferred suppliers in Louisiana. We had a very good idea about the dollar amount of spend in the various buckets for the expansion. The capital job estimates had already been done and approved. We had four bucket areas in MRO: mechanical, electrical, piping and valves and operating supplies. We already had cost plus pricing contracts for 80% of our MRO. We did however still have at least two preferred suppliers in almost every major component MRO area like pumps. I suggested that we leverage the hard work that we had already accomplished. We would announce the capital expansion at a preferred supplier meeting and give an approximate future dollar spend in each of the four buckets (areas). We obviously had a lot of leverage and many of the bucket dollar numbers were huge. We had fairly accurate data from recent expansions and the capital job estimates. We then established these ground rules for the bidding process: 1. There would be only one round of bids. We urged the suppliers to give the bid their best shot. There would be no second bid rounds. We did not have the time to manage multiple bids. 2. We announced that we would in many cases narrow down the areas where we had two preferred suppliers to one, unless we had a good business reason for keeping two. 3. Although we had negotiated some significant total cost of ownership savings in the current contracts, we were open to enhancements from the suppliers and distributers. 4. We told the suppliers that we would not accept their standard spare parts packages like we had in the past. We would challenge their typical spares packages but would be especially open to creative ways of them controlling and managing the spares at minimal or no cost to us. 5. OEMs could work with distributers to propose any additional creative services to provide us. Quite frankly we had no idea how this mega-negotiation process would work. Fortunately, we had done a lot of supplier consolidation before this process. We had not had the time to even predict cost savings or eventual outcomes. We just did it. As the bids rolled back in, it was obvious that our suppliers had done their homework. All told the cost and other savings amounted to 20% of the 5 billion dollars or 1 billion dollars! We were stunned. For the next year, I and my supply management colleague, had to endure the “handle” or nickname of “the billion-dollar boys”, whenever we entered a meeting. Yes, we were good and worked hard, but we were also very lucky. The fact that the company was spending that much capital at one time when we were transforming to supply management really helped our leverage and savings potential. Dr. Tom DePaoli, (Dr. Tom) is currently an independent management consultant, the Principal of Apollo Solutions, which does general business consulting in the human resources, supply chain and lean six sigma areas. His organization was self-founded in 1995. He retired as a Captain from the Navy Reserve. In other civilian careers, he was a supply chain and human resources executive with corporate purchasing turnaround experience and lean six sigma deployments. He has worked for over ten major companies and consulted for over fifty organizations throughout his career. Some of his consulting projects include: information systems projects, re-engineering organizations, transformation, e-procurement, e-commerce, change management, global sourcing and negotiating. His industry experience is in the chemical, paper, pharmaceutical, IT, automotive, government, consumer, equipment, services and consulting industries. He has been published extensively in journals, magazines and books. He is the author of eleven books all available on Amazon. He has instructed at six education facilities in numerous roles. He is active in supporting the YMCA, Wounded Warrior, and the prevention of the bullying of children. https://www.amazon.com/author/tomdepaoli = Dr. Tom’s Amazon author’s page http://www.apollosolutions.us = website of Apollo Solutions his business drtombooks.com = more information on Dr. Tom’s books Learn how to save a billion dollars in your supply chain. #supplychain #costsavings #procurement #negotiations https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-save-billion-dollars-your-supply-chain-dr-thomas-tom-depaoli Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ