13. Low Stress, High Standards: How Systems and Leadership Reduce Pressure in Your Shop

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Stress is the thing nobody puts on the agenda and everybody is carrying. So we decided to pull it apart. Where it actually comes from, which parts of it you can control, and what to do about the rest.

Some of it you can’t touch. Future orders, economic swings, material costs and tariffs, a customer who decides to move work offshore or things like 9-11, 2008, and COVID.

But a lot of the stress inside a shop is homegrown. It comes from missing systems, undocumented processes, tribal knowledge, and plans that change in a random way instead of a controlled one. Delays equal stress, and most delays trace back to something nobody wrote down.

Then there’s the part that sits with us as leaders: Good leaders absorb stress, bad ones transfer it or create it. We get into staying calm when the floor isn’t, defining the what and the deadline clearly while leaving the how to your team, building a safety net that lets people fail fast and fix it, and why the middle manager is usually the most squeezed person in the building.

What’s Covered in this Episode

• (0:00) The printer, the door, and a stress story that still gets a laugh
• (1:25) What actually creates stress inside a manufacturing organization?
• (4:55) Everybody is replaceable (and what that should do to your priorities)
• (5:38) Check out the Hennig Workflow Automation System for high mix machining
• (6:28) Short commutes, no decompression, and carrying work through the front door
• (11:52) The stresses you can’t control: future orders, 9-11, 2008, COVID
• (14:22) Supply problems, customer shifts, and contracts lost to low cost countries
• (16:00) Healthy pressure versus destructive pressure
• (17:22) Why we created Hire MFG Leaders and why you should use it
• (17:50) Internal stress starts with a lack of systems
• (19:04) No standard work puts your leadership in permanent crisis mode
• (19:50) ERP, schedules, and notes good enough that someone can step into a setup cold
• (21:34) Changing the plan in a controlled way instead of creating chaos
• (23:20) Delays equal stress, and the customer who calls four times a day
• (28:02) Why calm leadership works the way a first responder’s calm works
• (29:53) Stress clouds judgment and delays the easy decision
• (32:05) Solve your customer’s hardest questions with Navu
• (33:18) Good leaders absorb stress, bad leaders transfer it or create it
• (38:37) Define the what and the deadline, then leave the how to your team
• (44:31) Why you should listen to the Raw Material Podcast
• (45:06) How different roles have different stressors
• (47:22) Using how people handle stress as your promotion indicator
• (51:50) The case for the middle manager as the most squeezed role in the building
• (55:03) What does a stable manufacturing operation feel like? How do you reduce stress?
• (58:54) Low stress is not low standards, and what a calm floor really looks like

Resources Mentioned

• Hennig Workflow
• Hire MFG Leaders
• Navu
• Raw Material Podcast

Connect with Jason Davis and Paul Barnes

• The Manufacturing Blueprint
• Connect on LinkedIn