Some Broken Windows Management Principles

Some Broken Windows Management Tips and Stories

By Dr Tom DePaoli

For more tips read Dr. Tom’s Book Broken Windows Management available on Amazon.

Anticipate Opposition to Broken Windows Management. Many people think that spending money on constantly fixing the issues that employees have is coddling them. However, there are many other management theories or flavors of the month, that are used, and do not have significant results on employee morale or the bottom line. My thesis is that broken windows management is more effective than many other management theories. It does require immense attention to detail. The reason it gets more buy-in from employees is that it actually does something for them and they get involved in the fixes.

Be Relentless. It is your job to make sure that all the complaints are heard and solved. Make sure you persevere and remove as many obstacles as you can to making the workplace more tolerable and pleasant for your employees. If you give up, they will give up, and fall silent about their complaints. Complaints are like gems so treat them like gems. Make sure you learn from solving their complaints.

Build Their Empathy Intelligence. Get your employees out to other departments to understand their issues and barriers to doing a successful job. In addition to understanding of the department's issues; the employees may come up with ideas that make your department run better and create better interdepartmental cooperation. Make sure you give them a chance to learn and work with other departments.

Clean Up for CEO Story. I worked for a company where once a year the CEO would tour the plant. The activity of the week before his tour was hectic. Things that were broke or that were not cleaned for an entire year were scrubbed and fixed. This is the exact wrong approach to broken windows management. You must continually fix the issues that employees have and make sure that your plant is spotless and tour ready for customers at all times. Doing this only once a year sends a message to employees that they are not really important only the CEO is important. Make the employees the most important ones year-round.

Coddle Employees Not Top Executives. Broken windows management in essence creates an atmosphere where employees know that when they have an issue or complaint it will be fixed expeditiously. This builds a confidence in employees that when they have a complaint or an issue that it will be solved and not ignored. It snowballs and employees bring up more complaints and issues with the confidence that they will be solved and their leader will not ignore what they value as important for their quality of work life. Customer Tours of Broken Windows Management Success Story. One of the best ways to sell your product to a particular customer is to show them your facilities and how you do your work. I worked for a company that manufactured packaging machinery. They were very upset because they lost the sale of fifty machines ($500,000 each) to a competitor company. As a last step they urged the potential buyer company to send people to our manufacturing plant to just tour the plant. When the touring party arrived, the plant was in its usual spectacular shape, well-organized, clean and the employees were just incredibly positive and happy.  Soon after they arrived back to their home country; we got the word that they had changed their mind. They gave us the order for the fifty machines.  Broken windows management can be one of the bestselling points to your customers. Take full advantage of it.

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

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Getting Your Purchasing Team to have Passion for Their Work

 

Getting Your Purchasing Team to have Passion for Their Work

1.     Eliminate and reject non-value adding work. Often purchasing is the target of bureaucratic reports and busy work. Most process mapping reveals that  only 5%  or less of process steps are value adding to the direct customer (the one who pays for your product or service). Defend them and their work with a passion.

2.     Focus on what the Voice of the Customer says matters. Internal customers are important but final customer is the one who should drive your goals.

3.     Dramatically improve industry knowledge of a key materials or services. Purchasing professionals need to become industry experts not specialized materials or services experts.

4.     Drive to understand the business and what counts for profitability. Continuously meet with sales and engineering to understand the product and customer dynamics. It is incredibly important to understand what is most important to the customer.

5.     Do not overly specialize in a material understand your entire product and interactions.

6.     Metrics, rewards and goals should be somewhat based on the industry or market developments of your materials or services not just savings.

7.     Encourage professionals to become the main contact for a key supplier and manage the relationship.

8.     Constantly build leadership skills by delegating. Appoint professionals to run cross functional teams.

9.     Focus on metrics not theatrics.

10. Work on soft and people skills.

11. Become marketers internally and externally.

12. Get certifications and more professionalism

13. Creativity sessions and brainstorming

14. Meet suppliers on their turf often

15. Find their strengths and utilize them.

16. Social media skills

17. Presentation skills

18. Data driven decisions

19. Plan to have fun with exercises and events

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

Emotional Intelligence in Negotiations-Lead by Stories

Emotional Intelligence in Negotiations by Tom DePaoli

Purchasing and Supply Chain professionals must be aware of and strive to improve their emotional intelligence.   A definition of emotional intelligence is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically. Some would say that emotional intelligence is the key to both personal and professional success.

Emotional intelligence is especially critical in negotiations. I classify three general types of negotiations and I will try to discuss the importance of emotional intelligence skills in each type.

The three types of negotiations that are generally recognized are:

1.     Adversarial or the win-lose approach

2.     Win-Win where both parties win on certain issues or concerns

3.     Information-Based Negotiations where a deep understanding is obtained by both parties and often a strategic partnership can evolve

The adversarial approach requires some emotional intelligence but often degenerates into a shouting contest with great histrionics, intimidation and a brutal battle of wills. Since both parties are often acting, exaggerating and pushing their own agenda, relationship building or empathy takes a back seat to just one party getting its way or out bullying the other. In summary, emotional intelligence skills required are very low or non-existent.

The Win-Win approach starts with a discussion of the respective parties wants and needs. The goal is a mutually satisfying agreement. People are separated from the problems; a variety of possibilities are created and the results are based on some objective standard. There is a fairly strong commitment to empathy and no blaming is allowed. Both parties are involved in problem solving and there is a focus on each parties’ interests. The focus is then redirected to mutual interests or common ground. The objective is to be trustworthy but not totally trusting. This approach does require a moderate level of emotional intelligence skills from the purchasing professional. 

An information-based negotiation is a radically different approach to negotiations. (See Information-Based Negotiations: A Different Approach) It emphasizes deep knowledge of the supplier and their industry. It transgresses from some traditional approaches to negotiations but in information-based negotiations the purchasing 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 purchasing professional knows as much or more about the supplier and their industry as they do! Some would argue that this approach is highly analytical. Information drives decisions not emotions or one-upmanship.  However, the purchasing professional in essence becomes highly tuned emotionally with the supplier.  A deep mutual understanding of their competition, margins, challenges and constraints is mastered. Trust issues are quickly overcome and resolved. Trust becomes nearly total.  It requires the purchasing professional to become the resident expert on a market and an industry (just like the supplier). It tends to yield much more significant long term gains than adversarial or even win-win approaches. Using this approach is one of the best methodologies for transforming your supply chain and developing true mutual breakthroughs with your supplier. Below is my summary table:

Negotiation Tactic or Strategy	Degree of Emotional Intelligence Required
Adversarial	Little or none
Win-Win	Moderate
Information-Based	Deep

My conclusion is that a purchasing and supply chain professionals must not only work to develop their emotional intelligence skills, but realize its degree of usefulness and appropriateness in each different type of negotiations strategy.

Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com
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 My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ