by Lee Fried, on 01 Apr 2007 02:11 pm
The Journey
Quote of the Week
I had an interesting conversation with a leader that I respect on Friday about leadership participation. I have been coaching this leader through the Model Line work and she has made great strides since we began. Recently, this leader has become far more involved in the details of the operation that is under her in order to “seek to understand what is really going on.” She now spends many hours a week observing work, coaching staff and problem solving. She remarked on Friday that she has been blown away by how much she did not know about the work that she is responsible for. More specifically, she was amazed by how little cooperation there was across teams that reported up to her. She told me that six months ago she believed that she “did not need to know the work” she just had to have “technical experts under her that she could trust.” She also mentioned that it has taken a lot of discipline to spend time on the floor and to stay out of her office. It also has been hard on some of the managers that work under her because some of them feel that she is “micro managing” their work.
As we move forward with the Model Line work the role of all of the leaders in the organization is changing. Leaders need to know the work under them and they will need to have a strong understanding of the technical matters they oversee. Participation of leadership in the work is one first steps of cultural change!
“A lot of managers preach total participation, but don’t participate themselves. Total participation is fundemental for breaking through sectionalism and the tendency to sub-optimize.”–Shoichiro Toyoda