11. I Thought Core Values Were Nonsense and I Was Dead Wrong

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I used to think core values were nonsense. White collar guys in stuffed shirts telling each other how great their culture is, and then you pull up their Glassdoor page and the place is a hellhole. So I skipped that part for fifteen years. I was dead wrong, and I’m fine saying it. That’s where the growth is.

We hung a QR code on the conference room wall and asked every single person here, not just the leadership team, to name three values they admire in a coworker. The words that came back got dumped into ChatGPT and came out as GRIT 3D. Growth, respect, integrity, teamwork, and then dedication, dependability, and detail in place of dark, dirty, and dangerous. Grit is the whole company. It felt like it was meant to be.

Then it got uncomfortable. Cutting 28% of the company. Finding out that when somebody lives your values and still can’t produce, that one is on me and not on them. Fifteen years in, I finally feel like a president at this company instead of an employee, and I owe it to a book.

What’s Covered in this Episode

• (0:42) The second half of my review of Paul Van Metre’s Precision Manufacturing, Precision Business
• (2:01) Why I wrote off core values as corporate nonsense for years (and why I was dead wrong)
• (4:27) Running through a word cloud exercise with our entire team and what it showed us
• (6:25) What GRIT 3D stands for, and redefining dark, dirty, dangerous
• (7:20) Why we downsized 28% at the start of the year (and how things improved)
• (8:27) Hiring for skill instead of character, and why it always ends the same way
• (10:07) Why we love SMW Autoblok workholding
• (10:48) A few examples of the ‘Peter Principle’ in play at Marzilli Machine
• (13:18) Swapping our shipping manager and our office manager—and both throughputs took off
• (14:11) The easiest way to make the Traction framework work for your shop
• (16:47) The personal win and business win I wanted to cut and why I never will
• (18:56) Why we created Hire MFG Leaders and why you should use it
• (19:26) Rating the meetings one to ten (and what the meetings brought to light)
• (21:46) What’s working at Marzilli Machine and what needs improvement
• (26:00) What’s next for Marzilli Machine?

Resources Mentioned

• Precision Manufacturing, Precision Business by Paul Van Metre
• The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt
• Traction and the EOS system
• SMW Autoblok
• Hire MFG Leaders
• ProShop ERP
• IMTS

Connect with Jamie Marzilli

• Connect on LinkedIn
• RawMaterial@makingchips.com
• MakingChips