Are You Leading Your Shop—or Getting in Its Way? | Ep. 56

[0:00] How long should a ball stay dropped before someone picks it up? Because somebody’s going to pick it up and run the wrong direction, whereas a person, if you’d given them another hour, another day, or whatever the right time is for that situation, and it always changes, what might you have learned from that person to say, you know, don’t pick the ball up at all? Or I’ve thought about this, and in some folks with less patience, especially when you have an environment of fast acting entrepreneurship, says, I don’t have time for you to wait and think, we need to act. And they’re missing a tremendous asset of a person over here who can bring the right answer as opposed to the first answer. Welcome to By the Numbers. Each week, we’ll explore the numbers that drive your business, from accounting and finance to operations and the exciting realm of mergers and acquisitions. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, our discussions will equip you with the insights and strategies you need to rein in the power of data to elevate your manufacturing company. Let’s crunch some numbers. Greg, welcome to By the Numbers. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate being here.

[1:18] Yeah. Well, I, you know, we’ve talked some, you’ve listened, I know you listened to the show some, and then we’ve had some online conversations, so it’s good to get you on here and talk about some stuff. Yeah. Not too far away in real life either. Yeah. Yeah. Close ish hour away, maybe something like that. We got it. We could have, we probably should have just planned to do this in person, but that requires more planning. Like I was telling you, our new old dog, had I gone down to pick that up, got a new dog on the farm. So excited about that. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. That would have been even better as if you’d have brought the dog to the podcast. It’s true. I’m not sure I can manage that. Our other two may make an appearance here in a little bit. We’ll see. They’re in the room. Well, they’re welcome. Why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself, introduce yourself, tell them what you got going on in the world. Yeah. Well, I’m a business coach and my real focus is helping leaders who feel like everything still runs through them, stop doing work that their team’s ready to own. So I’ve been in manufacturing for 30 plus years, a lot of decades, started my career in manufacturing after growing up in a welding shop, machine shop. That’s kind of what drew me to the podcast in some ways. My wife, Kirsten, and I have a small business where we have sheep. We have wool sheep in Southeast Kansas here in the hometown I grew up in.

[2:39] So that’s a little bit about me. Yeah. Hence the new dog, right? Sheepdog. That’s our goal. Keep those coyotes away from the chickens. That’s right. You know, helping owners kind of get out of the way is the way I’d probably put it, right? Because I mean, I’ve been an owner of a lot of businesses and I know I get in the way a lot. You know, I think in this industry, even specifically, it’s a real battle. And I think part of that, and we talked about it a little bit before we hit record, but so much of what got us to be a bottleneck was reward. Like we wouldn’t be a bottleneck if we weren’t hardworking, getting our hands dirty, making stuff happen. Right? Yeah. And then at some point that becomes your ceiling, right? And that’s kind of what we want to talk about today is like, you got to have that grit and that hard work up to some point, and then you got to get the hell out of the way, right? And that’s such an identity shift. Absolutely. My entire professional career, I mean, I’ve never been the smartest, I’ve never been a lot of things, but I’ve always been able to hang my hat on like nobody can outwork me. Yeah. Right? No one’s willing to outwork me because I’m willing to outwork them. That’s always been part of my identity, right? So then shifting from that is hard, absolutely hard. What I think it comes down to so much is thinking about what work really is.

[4:07] So we think, well, we have to do everything. So you’re doing everything that’s required, whether you’re, I’m standing up my own business right now. I get it. But you think you have to do everything because you do. And some things you’re built to do, you’re wired to do, and you feel good, you get energized by them. Some things you do, but they frustrate the crap out of you. Yeah, no, that’s such a good point because, yeah, especially in the, again, getting started, you have to do it all, right? There’s not, there’s just not even cashflow to have other people do things. And some of the stuff will drain you and you can’t, and then other, you know, you can’t even get through the day and then other stuff will just absolutely energize you to a point where you can’t go to sleep at night, right? And you keep thinking about it. Right. It’s like, well, this, they shouldn’t even call this work because you’re having so much fun. Exactly. And that’s different for everybody. Yep. Right. I mean, what, you know, and that’s, I think that’s one of the things, I mean, I’m already ran rabbit trail off of this whole discussion, but, you know, I think that’s one of the things we lose sight of too. You know, we tell, we tell owners to, you know, work on the business, not in the business. We tell them, we tell all sorts of things, right? And I think sometimes that line gets really blurry. It’s like, well, I think I am working on the business.

[5:29] Well, you know, why is that in the business versus on? But I think, you know, one thing that gets lost, so, so like, take me as an example. I came into the manufacturing world from a history in software and private equity, and, and I’m pretty good at running a company. Nine years ago, I didn’t know anything about the shop floor and, and I mean, today I don’t know enough to keep it running by myself, right? Yeah. But so what did I do? I hired the skill sets that I’m not good at, right? So in my case, I needed a good programmer and quoter and, you know, the shop leads and the, the machine operators and so forth. And I enjoy the business side of it. You know, we tell so many owners that maybe let’s, let’s take the traditional machine shop environment where a really good machinist bought a machine, started making parts, bought another machine, hired somebody, and they kind of grew, they grew a business out of something they were good at, right? It’s kind of the e-myth philosophy. If I’m good at it, I can, I’ll be a good entrepreneur of it. And then we start telling them, okay, quit doing those things and go do sales and do the quoting and, you know, do all the accounting and whatnot. But they don’t like that, you know, well, they can just as easily hire those things and stay on the shop floor.

[6:46] Yeah. Right. I mean, they can still be the best on, if they’re, if what they’re best at and what they enjoy the most that nobody can do better than them is doing the machine setups, then that’s where they should stay. And they can hire a business manager, they can hire a salesperson, they can hire an accountant, they can hire all those other functions that they don’t enjoy. You know what’s interesting about what you’re saying, Mike? And I think a lot of leaders miss this. It’s important to separate what people enjoy and what they’re good at. Right. And, and here’s why. Because often, and I’ve seen this happen, I’ve seen it happen with myself, that you get rewarded and you keep getting more work in where you’re good at. So you earn a living because you’re good at something, but underneath you’re not really enjoying it. It’s not what you’re built to do. So what I’ve seen happen is you, someone just says, oh yeah, I’ll do that. I keep doing it. That’s, that’s what I do. And they get more of that work and they’re getting closer and closer to burnout. Yes. When you learn that is when they hand you your resignation letter and you’re like, well, I thought you were having, I thought things were great. You’re doing good work. Well, yeah, but I’m burning out. But I’m not enjoying it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Delicate balance for sure.

[8:02] And it, you know, I think really, I mean, we see, we keep saying owner, but I mean, really it’s a all around leadership issue. Right. I know I’ve had, I mean, two kind of related things, you know, as I bought Hill and, and, you know, started formulating, you know, kind of my own management team, right. Built around me and, and what I needed and a lot of my current management team came off the floor. Right. Yeah. I didn’t necessarily, I didn’t, I don’t think I hired hardly any management in from the outside. A lot of it was just, and, you know, and, and in all fairness, several of them were here before I bought the company and they weren’t managers for the previous owner. And I don’t think they should have been. Right. Cause again, different owner had different needs. Right. You know, as I built my own team, kind of two things that have happened, one, there’s been a couple of them that have told me like they always, they always assumed that they would own their own shop someday. Hmm. Interesting. It was kind of their own goal, right. It was to work for somebody for long enough till they could afford to buy a machine and like just start their own little shop and well, as they’ve gotten into managing the overall business, two of them have said, man, I was a fool. I don’t want to do that.

[9:21] Like I, that’s, it’s too, it’s too much. I’d rather be on the floor. Yeah. Um, and then along the same lines, a couple of the managers that have been on the floor, you know, they, they’ve talked about how they used to look at the, you know, the management team and be like, man, those, those guys, they don’t even know how to work hard. They just sit in the office all day. Like, you know, it’s such an easy gig. They just come out here and tell me what to do and tell me I did it wrong. And now that they’ve been on the other side of that, they’re like, man, it’s, I’m so much more tired now. Yeah. Cause I’m mentally exhausted, not just physically exhausted. Right. I mean, hands down, my shop guys work, physically work 10 times harder than I work, if not more. But the mental exhaustion is the hardest part for me. It just draining, you know, versus the, like I can recover from the physical faster than I can recover from the mental. And I really appreciate how you said that because what you said, if I heard you right, was you separate out physically working hard from mentally working hard. But they’re, they’re both meaningful, real work. And sometimes what happens is people start to have this guilt or this judgment that, like you said, they look at it as somebody doing a different type of work and they think, well, you’re not working hard or you feel guilty because you’re not out there sweating and you don’t, it’s like, well, what do I have to complain about? You know, I’m sitting in the air condition. Real life today, five minutes before we jumped on here to record.

[10:51] I, I did a walk through the shop floor. One of my managers is out there, jeans tucked in his boots. We’re bringing in some new machines next week. We’re clearing out some machines this week. So we’re prepping those for transport. Like so he’s shoveling sludge out of a coolant tank. He’s climbing up and down ladder, like he’s, he’s dirty, he’s sweaty. He’s covered in coolant and sludge. And as I walked by, like, I feel guilty. Like, what can I do to help, right? Like, he’s like, nothing. I got it. You know, but, but you’re right. I mean, you can’t get that mentality out of your head of like, well, I’m not doing anything, like I’m just walking around looking at things. And what I found the best leaders are the ones, and this is what I work when I work with clients and do a small group, we talk about strategically and intentionally reassigning work. Yeah. So the challenge would be, and no, no judgment at all, cause I don’t know your situation, but you may be asking yourself, is that manager doing what he should be doing? Is that what is best for the company? Or is that just the comfort zone that he loves getting in there? And what he, what he’s avoiding is the harder work that isn’t quite as comfortable for him. Sure, sure, sure. But it’s harder.

[12:13] Fellas. Hey, well, I got you both real quick. So I’m really trying to drill in like our work holding options at Hill and all of our shops. Any advice? Mike, it’s as simple as RASRAM. As what? RASRAM. You’ve never heard of it? I have not. Paul, what Nick is referring to is the seven habits of highly effective work holding. That makes more sense. Repeatability, accessibility, scalability, reliability, adaptability, and modularity. If you want to find all of these principles in one catalog, check out the SMW Autoblock catalog. You can find it at smwautoblock.com. Thanks fellas. Okay. So we’ve talked about the problem that we all have to deal with, you know? And, and again, whether it’s the owner, a leader, whatever, like, yeah. So did, did Hank fall into his comfort zone there, right? Like, Oh, I’ll go, I’ll go get that machine ready to get hauled out of here. Instead of somebody else, maybe somebody’s waiting on a quote from me or, you know, whatever. What tips, tricks, ideas do you have to like help a leader know the answer to that question? Like, where should my priorities be? What is working on the business versus in the business? Like, how do I identify that? Well, what I, what I found is the, the best leaders are the most self-aware leaders. And as I was telling you before we started recording, one of the tools that I really love, it’s called the six types of work ingenious. And Pat Lynchoni, he wrote five dysfunctions of a team.

[13:48] That’s the latest tool, but that helps a leader. It’s the quickest way I’ve found for someone to become self-aware about how they’re wired. And they get really honest about in the phases of work. There’s six types of work that any project requires. Which one of those are you built to do? And which one are you, if you’re built to do it, you’re probably pretty good at it. And which, which type of work doesn’t, you know, just drains you, you had a working frustration. But also you’re probably not very good at it, but you don’t want to, you don’t want to admit it. So like some folks are not designed to finish the job. They don’t have tenacity. I do this for couples and it’s just, I’ll tell you a quick story. So we had a couple, my wife and I were talking to a couple, they were business owners and young couple getting started and we did the working genius assessment with them, did a team map, which I love to do. And she is invention. So, you know, having these great ideas, all work goes from wonder, which somebody sees a need for a change or a problem, and then somebody with invention says, Hey, I got some ideas. And then somebody has discernment that says, well, hang on, let’s think through this before we just jump and do it, let’s think through this idea. Then you make a decision and then you go into galvanizing, which says, let’s, let’s go, let’s get the team going.

[15:08] Then enablement is working together as a team, helping people out. And then tenacity is finishing the job. So you go from 30,000 feet down to land in the plane, spells a widget, you know, it’s an easy way to remember it. So she had invention and tenacity. So she had an idea and she wanted to go do it immediately. He, we found out, had discernment and tenacity. So we were talking through this and I said, well, how does this play out? What does this look like in real life? And she said, I have an idea and he shoots holes in it. He’s a wet blanket. And so we talked and he said, well, I love your ideas. I just want to make sure we can actually do them because I want to go do them too. And the level of respect that was introduced to their marriage, it was a game changer. She’s like, I had no idea. And that’s true for partners too. I mean, business partners. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. That makes perfect sense. I’m blessed to have the best business partner I could possibly imagine. And, and, you know, he’s also one of my best friends, which probably helps, but yeah, I mean, he’ll, he’ll, he’ll wet blanket things, right. And it’s not as a, no, we’re not doing that. It’s in a lot of ways, it’s just testing.

[16:23] I mean, it’s just challenging my entire thought process. Right. And then once, and, and very often, you know, one of the points he brings up like, well, that’s a great question. Let me think about it, you know, and you got to rethink things. And then, you know, I mean, I would say it definitely results in, you know, me making better decisions, you know, once I’ve been challenged, right. Right. But, and what I love about that is it sounds like you’re inviting that in. Yeah. So you’ve recognized that he adds value in the process. And when teams do that, where they, they look at, they know they’re working genius for everybody, they know team math, and they can say something like, and I don’t know yours, obviously, but they can say something like, Mike, we know you tend to have an idea and you’re ready to just go, you know, rally the team and get it going. But sometimes we’ve talked about this. You don’t think through all the details. We want to, we want your, we need him to come in. It’s his time to do that before we make a decision. And it makes your whole team better. And like you talked about when you’re, you’re starting from doing it all yourself, you, you sort of put this pressure on yourself that you have to do all of it. And it just doesn’t work that way. You need a team. Yeah. You know, I, I, I guess I kind of play that discernment role with my team quite a bit. I, I know listeners have probably heard me to say this before and I know my team all knows it really well is, but it’s, it’s kind of the opposite.

[17:49] So it’s not them bringing me things that they want to do. It’s bringing me things we can’t do. Right. I’ve been able to shift a lot of my focus to the, the things we can’t do. Right. Like, how do I, how do I help us clear hurdles? Right. Whether that’s needing to buy new equipment, hire people, you know, whatever it is. You know, one of the things they’ve all heard me talk about a lot for a long time is, you know, don’t tell me no, tell me how, right. So they’ll come in and tell me, Hey, we can’t quote this job or we can’t make this part or we can’t do whatever. Right. It doesn’t, we, we can’t hit this deadline. And it’s, you know, my, my response to them always was like, well, how can we? Right. Like, so it’s, it’s that same challenge. I guess it’s that same discernment to say, you know, here’s why we can’t, you know, the examples we’ve been using is like, well, here’s why that won’t work. But in my case, I’m saying, well, tell me how it will. Right. So like I’ve used with my team, I’m like, if, if you tell me we can’t make something, don’t come tell me that. Come tell me the only way we can make this is if you buy a $700,000 B-Axis lathe. Right. Cause we can do it, but there’s some cost to doing it. It’s more of a, it’s, it’s a challenge back to, to get them thinking like, okay, what do I need to go get for us to be able to do this thing I’ve asked us to do? And what I think’s fascinating about that is I assume you probably have in your team folks who are wired to do different things better than others, things that they enjoy, so when you give them that assignment, some of them probably they’re like, oh, I cannot come up with ideas.

[19:23] You know, that is just not me. But then you find out when somebody else who’s good at it comes up with an idea, they’re great at helping somebody else get all the details done. Right. Well, that’s absolutely true. If you recognize that as a team, it’s so much more powerful than setting it up as, well, I never have any good ideas and they always get the credit and they get the bonus because they came up with this new continuous improvement idea that we had to go implement and they feel like they’re outcast almost and they’re not as valuable, but you got to get the entire team feeling engaged to have retention. I mean, one of the hardest problems I’m sure your folks tell you is getting good people, keeping them engaged and energized and having them not have to reach, so you don’t have to rehire, you know, retention is such a challenge. Well, yeah, it’s hard enough to find people. I mean, you don’t want to have to find them very often. Yeah, right. You asked for tips in particular, and this is going to sound so simple. Once I tell you, Mike, but the idea of getting more specific with your verbs is so important because for example, when someone says, well, you need to own that project. Well, what does own even mean? Do I need to come up with the first idea? Do I need to go get the quote? Do I need to be the one who organizes the team? Do I need to go be the cheerleader? Do I need to be the project manager on the whole thing? When you, when you break it down to the specifics of what exactly needs to be done, then you start assigning people strategically based on that, you’ll find people are like, oh, I’m so glad I don’t have to do that part of it, but I love doing this part of it.

[21:05] And obviously that’s a good project management skill too, but it’s amazing how many people are like, well, you need to own the sales process. I worked with a client. I’m like, well, you’re trying to hire somebody to own the sales process. Do you mean design a new one or do you mean turn the crank and enter the data in the CRM? Right. Sure. Those are very different people. Yeah. Well, yeah. And then there’s the whole, I mean, like, I mean, just use the sales process, right? There’s, it’s not even that simple, right? There’s, do they need to be able to do the estimating too? I mean, now they are a customer, customer search. I mean, it’s, there’s so many things to a sales process, right? Yeah. And then you’re right. I mean, having the right team can own, you know, everybody can own their individual piece of that to get the right result. And, and I don’t know if this is true for you or not, but if you’re working for someone who, and I’m, and I’m thinking of my dad, for example, and he, when, when he was running his business and even growing up, he passed away last fall, but he, he wasn’t great at training and telling, he was a doer. Yeah. Like he knew he had a gut feel, he’d go get it done. And everybody else was like, well, what am I supposed to do here? And when, when you’re in that mentality where it’s like, go, go, go, just take action, but yet someone else needs to have a few more details to be successful. And they’re starting to ask good questions. You start getting some conflict, you know, and that friction comes in.

[22:34] But if you get down to specifics of, okay, specifically, what do we need to do here? Do we need to decide? Do we need to go think about it some more? Do we need to go gather data or do we need to make a decision and go? Right. That specificity is, has really been beneficial when I’m working with my teams and with my, my clients. So I don’t know that we answered the question. If we go back to like, what are, I mean, like, what are some simple signs that I’m doing stuff that’s, you know, that I shouldn’t be doing, right? That I’m the bottleneck. Yeah. Well, if you think about shouldn’t, that’s a, that’s a loaded word. So you have to decide what you, what you value. For example, use your example of Hank. Maybe that wasn’t what he’s built to do. Maybe that’s not what he’s designed to do, but that’s what had to be done in the moment. So temporarily just getting the job done may be the right thing. Sure, sure, sure, sure. But I think some of the signs of being a bottleneck is when you, when you zoom out big picture and you think, you know, I’m just not enjoying this at all. I don’t even want to come to work. Or if you have folks like your best person who used to be, be there 20 minutes early, 30 minutes early, now they’re arriving on time, that shift and noticing in your people, that change, it’s a good indication that something else isn’t going on.

[24:02] That’s a great point. Tell you another quick story. We talked about like six types of work engineers, Pat Lanchoni. He’s, he’s a guy who was the CEO of his company. You know, he founded it. He’s the owner and woman on his team came to him. They worked together for like 20 years or whatever. And she’s like, what’s wrong with you? And he’s like, well, what are you talking about? He’s like, you’re grouchy. That’s like, this, I can’t put up with it anymore. Something’s going on. That’s what led to them figuring out this framework. Because as it turned out, he was doing all this galvanizing. He thought he had to be the C, he was the CEO. So he was the guy who needed to, he should be doing it because of his title. Well, they found out that Pat has invention and discernment. He has an idea, he thinks through it and he’s ready to go, but he doesn’t want to be the cheerleader. And Cody on his team, Cody Thompson, he’s like, I love doing that. And immediately they said, well, you’re the chief galvanizing officer. And that’s what started this entire model where he recognized he felt like he should. And he was, he was great at it, but it, he, it was just draining him. So we look at those warning signs of maybe you’re not the bottleneck yet, but if you’re, if you’re dreading that work, you’re not as efficient as you, as you you could be, so you’re slowing the process down.

[25:30] I mean, I think everything we’re saying is probably going to make sense to everybody at this point. But I, you know, I’m trying to think of that, you know, I’m trying to put myself in the shoes of that shop owner that’s sitting out there listening to this and, you know, they’ve got seven, eight, 10 machines on their floor. They’ve got, you know, six or seven employees, something like that. I mean, what do we tell them? Right? Like maybe they’re, they’re right there, probably like financially, they’re probably right there at that inflection point where it’s like, I mean, I can’t go out and add $200,000 of payroll, right, to bring in these people. Like I don’t have maybe the, the staff on hand to just take quoting off my plate or, uh, take the, you know, I don’t have, I don’t have somebody to just take the accounting away from me, anything like that. Like, what do we tell, what do we tell that owner? Right? Like, because in my experience, that owner is probably sitting there, I mean, they’ve got 10 machines, they’re probably, you know, and seven, eight, 10 employees, whatever, you know, they’re, they’re probably sitting there at a million and a half to 2 million, 2.5 million in revenue. And they’ve, they’ve sat there for maybe years, right? And they can’t break that. Paul Van Meter and I did an episode, uh, I don’t know, a couple of years ago, where we talked about that, like kind of $2 million ceiling. Like there’s this thing that just blocks you, right? And, and it’s, you gotta get through that.

[27:01] You gotta bust through that gap, you know, to get to 3, 4, 5 million. You’ve gotten to where you’re at because of that grit and that hard work and that I’ll do it all in the 70 hours a week and, and all that stuff. What do we tell them? Like in this situation? I mean, it’s, they’re, they’re, they’re feeling everything we just said. Yeah. Like how do they get through it? The way I would approach it, first of all, is I wouldn’t be telling them anything because I’d lead with curiosity and I’d want to, I’d want to understand where they’re coming from and what they’ve done. So one of the questions that I would ask is, are they convinced that they’ve optimized the resources they have? Have they really taken stock of who they have on their team and what they’re built to do, what they’re good at? So a lot of folks will just assign work based on competency. Can they do it? Or availability, do they have the capacity? But that, that misses out on the making the best use of that. So first of all, it’s optimizing, you know, have, maybe they, maybe they’ve done that. And that’s part of, um, you know, that begs the question, well, do I even know who’s on my team? I know their names, but do I know what they really are good at? What they enjoy doing? And, and we talked about that assessment, that leadership clarity scorecard.

[28:22] That’s a first step. It’s like, do I even know myself? Have I ever slowed down to think about what I’m best at and what’s my highest and best use? Or do I just keep running? And then the other question I would ask is what are they optimizing for? And by that, I mean, do you stop and PM your equipment? Well, you should, but maybe you need to run it a little bit longer and put off that maintenance to get a single job done. So that would be a question I would ask them. It’s like, well, what do you, do you want to build for the long haul? Do you, do you want to break through that barrier? Are you good where you are? Do you just want to keep running hard and fast and burn out? And I said that kind of negatively with judgment, but if somebody wants that, that’s their choice as an owner. But just helping them think through it. I’m glad you said that. Cause I do think, you know, we, we do, we always need to caveat these conversations with, you might be happy right where you’re at, right? Like you’ve got, like, you don’t have to grow, right? Like if you’re stuck at 2 million, that’s not bad. Yeah. Right. Now, if you want to be at five, we need to fix, you know, we got to fix that. But if, if you’re happy right where you’re at, like you can just go ahead and like listen to a little bit more of the episode and then you can turn it off. When you’re trying to find equipment financing, Verdant Commercial Capital makes the process easy.

[29:41] With deep experience across six industries, including manufacturing, they tailor financing to fit your business, your goals, and your cashflow. Fast decisions, flexible options, and a team that really knows their stuff. When you’re ready to grow, upgrade, or innovate, Verdant is the partner to call. Visit verdantcc.com slash numbers or search for Verdant Commercial Capital on LinkedIn to learn more. Let’s go back to that, that example that you gave before and see if I remember it correctly. You’ve got a guy out on the shop floor and that’s what he loves to do. He’s built to do it. He’s the best at it, but he feels this pressure that he should go do something in the office, maybe. Is that kind of what you described? Yeah. I would ask, well, what’s driving that? I mean, do you, do you feel like you have, why do you feel like you have to? Is that best for the company or did you always feel like you’ve made it if you’re off the shop floor? You know, I, yeah, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll turn that around a little bit too. Um, you know, when I first bought Hill, in the first year I ran every job in the company. I mean, I was an operator. I mean, I tried to learn everything I can. The hurdles were phased, like everything you can. One of the things I found I really, really enjoyed was running the manual machines, delays and the mills.

[30:58] I just, I enjoyed doing it. I haven’t done it in a while. I mean, I found myself, I don’t know. I mean, it probably at most every couple of months, some days just being like, you know what, I’m going to go in the manual shop, I’m going to run something that we need running. Like, cause I just wanted to. Was it the best use of my time that day? Probably not. Yeah. Was there, you know, was there other stuff that needed my attention? Absolutely. But yeah, it’s, there’s nothing necessarily wrong too with just like, I want to do this and I’m going to. Let me ask you a question, Mike. Do you find it, and I’ll list, we can depersonalize it so it’s not too, um, too challenging perhaps. But do you think folks who are listening find it difficult to give themselves permission to actually do stuff they enjoy? Probably because there’s so much you have to do, whether you want to or not. Right. So I mean, you definitely are going to, I mean, I think most, I think most people in general, but probably especially the, the mindset of an entrepreneur is you’re going to, you’re going to feel guilty if you’re not getting done what has to be done and then change or doing something you just want to do. Yeah.

[32:13] And when you take that step back and again, we’re talking about what are you optimizing for? What do you really want? And if you really want to be there a month from now, you know, two months from now, six months from now and not burn out in the hospital, well, maybe it’s actually the best choice to take a breather. Yeah. I’m terrible at it. Well, I think all entrepreneurs are. You know, I go back to what you said too, about like really, I can put some flavor around what you said about really assessing what you already have. So I have a guy that was here when I bought Hill nine years ago. He had started here probably a year prior to that. He was just pushing brim basically. By the time I bought the company, he was a saw operator. Six months to a year into me buying the company, he stopped me one day when I was walking by and said, he really wanted to learn how to run machines. We got him on machines and I would say for the next, I don’t know, three or four years, five years, maybe he was a average machine operator, not the best, not the worst, could set up some jobs, not all jobs, could run almost any job, but really was kind of at his best as a machinist, right? Young guy, I mean, I think he’s in his thirties now, but not, you know, relatively young in the workspace. Through one of the local tech schools, we had, we had a chance to send people for machining training on their own to get their NIMS certificate.

[33:43] And he said, well, I’ll do that. Right. So he puts in, gosh, I don’t remember, probably four months of four days a week from four hours a night, you know, something like that. Wow. Gets through it, gets his, gets his certs, definitely a better machinist, but still had probably even there kind of reached his peak, but around the same time, he also started saying, I remember specifically the first thing he took on for some reason, we had kind of gone through this, say a month or two of, uh, we try to keep our chip hoppers separated by material type, right, for, for the scrap value and so forth, you know, so, but we’d gone through this couple of months where like we weren’t doing a good job of, you know, when we switched over from a carbon steel to 316, like change out the chip hopper and getting it. And anyway, he kind of took it upon himself and he created this like little identification system that like, it’s like, like a little color coded, like if you’re running this material run, you know, use this chip hopper. And it’s like, well, okay, that works, you know? And then because then we lost a saw operator and because he, he would often backfill the saw because he had, you know, done so much in the saw and he kind of got over there, hadn’t been over there in a while and saw that through the last few saw operators, we’d kind of lost some best practices and, and maintenance and, and, and like when to change a blade and like the settings on the saw and things like that, he created like some little standard operating procedures to, so that the next saw operator coming in would have best practices. And so fast forward, I have a, a good average machinist and that’s, I mean, I’m not, I don’t say that as a bad thing against him. He just, like he was fine, you know, there was, but not someone we were putting a lot of responsibility on.

[35:31] And you start watching what he’s doing, just kind of on his own. You’re like, he may not be of most value to us as a machinist. He’s identifying processes and improving them. So fast forward, you know, he’s, he’s now, you know, part of the management team as our lean champion. Yeah. And, you know, as I, as I described it to him a couple of months ago, you know, cause he was really trying to understand like where his future is. And I said, you know, really, I mean, if you stay on the track you’re on, you’re my chief problem solver, right? When I identify a break in the process, whether that’s in our tool room or chip hoppers or whatever the case might be, operating the saw, right? I need somebody I can say, okay, go make this good, document it, develop the processes, and, you know, and now that’s something we can train and educate on as we grow, right? So since that time, he has now tackled, I don’t know, probably a dozen projects and every one of those processes is better for it. Hasn’t hardly touched a machine in a year. He will jump on a machine. Like if, if something needs to run, somebody called in sick, you know, he’s like, oh, I’ll run that today. Yeah. He’ll jump on there and run that, that job out or whatever, you know, to your point of assessing what you have, if you didn’t pay attention to where he was finding enjoyment in what he does was improving processes, we needed him as a machinist at the time, not color coding chip hoppers, right? He was on his own finding enjoyment in fine tuning these processes.

[37:01] He’s now, I mean, he’s making much more money than he was and our entire operations are running smoother than they were. And you’ve definitely had a direct impact on the margin. For sure. But he’s not making chips, which is such a, here’s what I love about what you did. You paid attention and you invested in helping that employee be as successful as they possibly could. And then what I’m also hearing you say is you had the conversation with him. Yeah. You actually engaged in and understood, not just here, go do this, but you paid attention, ask good questions. And I think these are the takeaways for someone that’s sitting where you were. Assess your team, optimize your team, but it takes a conversation. It takes getting to know them. And it takes a willingness for you. That’s what you did is you repositioned him in a way that was better for the company long-term. Here’s what I also love that you said. You didn’t do it immediately and just say, well, you like doing this, so go do it. But we can’t afford doing it. You did it in such a way that built the business and you said, okay, this is where we’re going with you, right? And you’re painting a vision of what he could be and helping him stay energized and feeling like he was a valuable part of the company. But in the meantime, he had to do what he wasn’t best at because that was what the business needed.

[38:28] I mean, all those things that you just laid out is a great roadmap for anybody listening to just say, just go do what Mike did. What’s your guy’s name? Miguel. Yeah. So take Miguel’s example that you just did, Mike, and think who’s your Miguel? Yeah. Who’s out there doing something? Have you had a conversation with them? That’s a first step. I mean, I think that’s a great example of what to do. I mean, it’s certainly been impactful for us and for him. Like I now understand his career trajectory, right? And I think he does too. Blow it up into my situation where I’ve got, you know, five shops and four facilities, right? So what I’m able to do now is sick him on a problem. We solve it at one and then go implement it at all of them. Yeah. And how do you think Miguel feels now when you do that? When you say- Oh, he’s so much happier. Yeah. I mean, he’s happier, but also he’s got to be getting fulfillment and feeling like he’s valuable. You can bet when he goes home, he’s telling his family about how excited he was at work and his opportunity that he got to do as opposed to, what’d you do today? Eh, ran the sock. Well, you know, the opposite happened with him of what you talked about. You know, that person, you know, maybe used to be early, shows up late. You know, so it’s funny you say that because in his case, he was a chronically, you know, two to five minutes late every day, right? And six months ago, he comes and asks if he can have a key so he can get her early, get all the lights and the, and the air turned on every day so that when everybody else shows up, everything’s ready to run.

[40:01] Yeah. Right. So it’s, you know, back to what you said earlier, you don’t do that if you’re not enjoying it. Nope. Right. Yeah. You’re, you’re checking the clock. Hey, it’s Paul from Making Chips. If you’ve been burned by recruiters who don’t understand manufacturing, you are not alone. That’s exactly why we created Hire MFG Leaders. We’re not just recruiters, we’re current and former shop owners, and we know what it takes to lead in this industry. Whether you’re hiring your next operations leader, sales manager, or production supervisor, we’ll help you find someone who actually fits. Learn more at makingchips.com slash hire. Okay. Greg, as, as we start to wrap up, so this is something I’m faced with today that I’m, you know, trying to figure out. I know I have, you know, to, to like use the good to great example. I know I have the right people on the bus and I know we’re heading in the right direction. And we have been for a while, but I’m not sure I know I have, you know, now I feel like I need to start organizing the people on the bus a little bit better than we have been, right? So we, we’ve, we’ve been very entrepreneurial as a management team where we all just get shit done, right? Whatever needs to get done, we get it done. But that does, you know, that there can be all sorts of problems with that, right? The highest of high performers tend to do more than everybody else. That can start to lead to the burnout. You also do need some ownership of certain things, right? Like, Hey, you own this and you own this and we got to work together to solve it, but someone’s got to own it, things like that.

[41:35] So if I start looking at like roles, responsibilities and so forth amongst what I know is a good team, maybe I’ve identified those Miguel’s I’ve, you know, so I know what I’ve got, I know I’ve got the team I need to kind of go to that next step. How can I start organizing those boxes on the org chart, if you will, right? To say, okay, you know, this is this role and this is, here’s the responsibilities that fall in that. And in my case, where I’ve struggled is maybe it’s cause we’re so entrepreneurial, but when I look at the individuals that are on the bus and I do look at like, what are they good at and what do they enjoy? They don’t necessarily fit in one nice, neat little box, right? Like it’s not necessarily this person’s like the director of engineering because maybe they’re good at engineering and quoting, you know, or whatever. Right. I mean, I was, that’s just two examples. So any advice on like how to like really start to structure something now that is sustainable and like you can really build upon. Yeah. So when, when you think about, let’s just talk job descriptions or titles, what value do those add for you? Cause I’m, what I’m hearing you say is that you feel like you need those and I don’t disagree, but what value do they add? You know, I don’t know that they do for me or the organization, but I do feel like they, like the, the people that I’m trying to put that around, you know, those, those titles and responsibilities around, I do think it brings, brings them value because in a lot of cases, I know like they want to know like where, what is my lane? Like where, where do you expect me to pick up that ball versus somebody else? Cause if that person doesn’t, I’m going to, but, but if I pick up all the balls, all those one or two people done is train the other six. I’ll just let him worry about it.

[43:30] So the reason I ask that is often we’ll put together job descriptions and they work in the moment and then, then they’re obsolete because they’re not very flexible and they’re not dynamic. What I find works better is to, to set, to create an environment in which people, let’s just use working genius as an example, that you have a language in which people know when they need your discernment, they call Mike, if the, if that’s yours, whatever, when they need a, a person who will come alongside and help, they need somebody with some enablement and tenacity. That’s not a job description. That’s knowing your team. And then you have this nimble ability to bring in the right people at the right time and they, they have, they add value because what would, what would you want Miguel’s title to be? Is it really the title that you know, that you need to go make him your, your heat seeking missile on the biggest problem, right? It’s knowing what he’s good at, what he’s built for, and then communicating that in such a way that the team knows. That’s where the real magic happens. So like I’ll sit down in workshops and we’ll go through a working genius team map and people are just, you can see the light bulbs click on. They’re just like, I’ll give you an example close to home there for you. A company that had a former plant manager had moved to a different role.

[44:55] And the, the new plant manager came in with his team and they looked at their team map and they’re like, we’ve got a gap. We don’t have anybody with invention. Like we can’t come up with any new ideas at all. And I said, well, I’ll change his name. I said, have you looked at Brian’s working genius? Cause I had done it with him, the former plant manager who’s still in the organization. They’re like, well, he’s got inventions. Like, yeah, why don’t you just bring him into the meeting? Yeah. So, so that was when you think about the work to be done back to that idea of getting very specific, when you’re attacking a project and you know the specific work that needs to be done and what type it is and who’s really good at it, that doesn’t come from, I mean, I love process and structure. You’ve got to have some titles. You’ve got to have some, some job descriptions, but, but what, when it really works is when the team knows each other and you have this constant dialogue and this common language that you can be nimble and bring the right people in at the right time, as well as keep the right people out of a conversation. Yeah. Okay. Which actually is not too far from kind of the method I’ve been kind of taking, right? So. Yeah. Tell me more.

[46:12] Well, the approach I’ve been using, so we have a complete value chain process flow that we’ve developed and, and, you know, that we follow and have for years, right, it goes from receiving a quote request to sending an invoice, right? And every step along the way, what I had started kind of doing, trying to map this out is, you know, I’m, I’m looking at essentially the owner of every box and I’m looking at those with my viewpoint of people’s strengths and weaknesses, my viewpoint of what I think they enjoy and don’t enjoy, and their input of kind of the same thing, right? Like where do they see their strengths? Where do they see their growth? Where do they see the opportunity for themselves? And I think that’s part of the reason I’ve been struggling. Like I said, different people’s strengths don’t necessarily fall into some nice tidy little job title. Yeah. Where it’s like, you know, I mean, just take like the shipping process or something, right? So let’s, let’s say there’s 10 boxes in our shipping process, you know, from final inspection to printing the pack and slip and driving it over there, right? I mean, I might have three people that are best in those 10 boxes, right? Like this person’s really good at this box and this person’s really good at this box, but who’s in charge of the shipping process? Well, I’ve got three people that are all good at it. So who’s the person, right? That at the end of the day, it falls on. What I’ve kind of done is I’ve kind of taken that, again, I’ve mapped every box on the process.

[47:41] It just looks like a big, you know, process flow, right? Inputs, outputs, processes, whatever. Kind of done a, is it RACI or RACI chart? The responsibility, accountability, whatever. I’ve kind of, I’ve kind of applied that basically to every box, right? Here’s who’s responsible for it. Here’s who’s accountable for it. You know, here needs to be, this person needs to be informed about it. And if your name’s on that box, like you need to fully understand that part of the process, the one before it and the one after it. Absolutely. Yep. Right. And a lot of cases it’s the same person and, you know, they own two or three boxes in a row or something. I don’t know if I’m attacking that the right way or not. It sure sounds like it. So let me ask you this. What’s the real challenge here for you? I don’t know. Because if you were to describe to me everything you’ve done as you did, I would say, yeah, that seems like that ought to be working, like where’s the gap? Like what isn’t at the level that you would like it to be? And I do, I’ll hold, I do have one question, recommendation, but… I think the way I’m looking at it, I think the reason I feel like I need to put more definition around it is because, I mean, we are on a high growth trajectory, right? Yeah. Like I need my structure to be scalable, not only scalable, but sustainable, right? So I think in my mind, like it needs to be a little more structured than it is so that it’s got that scalability to it. But maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I’m just trapping myself in traditional norms.

[49:10] I don’t know. So I’d have a couple, couple of questions. The first one is, is there a regular communication process and are there, are there standing meetings in which people know that they communicate about it? Do they communicate it well? Do they feel like those teams or meetings are a waste of time or is that in place? Yes and no. I would say we’ve almost graduated out of meetings, if that makes sense. I would say our team communication has almost evolved past having meetings. Like it’s so fluid, we don’t need to sit down for an hour and a half and talk about it. Yeah. And I know that probably sounds a little pompous, like, I mean, there’s definitely value in those meetings, but you know, I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re already drinking water through a fire hose, right? So it’s the, you know, I even just like two years ago, I rearranged our entire offices where even just functionally, those people are, it’s kind of like the people that need interact are office next to each other, right? And then I removed myself. I used to be, my office used to be in the right in the middle of all of them and I removed myself to the other side of the building so that I wouldn’t hear, I wouldn’t interject, I wouldn’t, you know, put myself in the middle of things. And, and I mean, quite honestly, I think that collaborative environment of them all working on things and, you know, we’ll just sit there and say, Hey Tony, what’s going on with Bob, you know? And it’s just like, we, yeah, we really don’t have very many meetings. And you may not need them. You certainly wouldn’t need an hour and a half if you don’t need it.

[50:43] But my, is everyone up to speed? You know, like, you know, it sounds like they are. Except me, usually it’s me that’s not up to speed. Is that good or bad? It’s good. Cause they’re, they’re moving faster than I am. Yeah. So, so here’s based on an experience and here’s the experience in a system in which it was all mapped out, had owners, all that, that was great on paper. The real process was someone would take a sticky note after they get a call from a customer and they walk out the factory floor and say, get this done. Yeah. So I’m curious about if you have a culture of get shit done, which is good in some aspects, does it cause people to say, I know that’s what we’re supposed to be doing, but we all know we just need to go get it done right now. Yeah. I don’t know. That’s a good question. You know, I, I, like I have found, I have to quit asking. I, you know, in my case, I have to personally kind of quit asking questions on the floor about certain things, because, you know, even though this is not my personality at all, if I ask the wrong person the wrong question, everybody changes their priorities real quick. Cause Mike asked about it.

[52:03] Right. And that, and the awareness of that is so smart on your part because so many leaders don’t have that. Yeah. And then it, well, then it undermines my entire management team. Yes. Right. I mean, they come in, they go, why’d you tell so-and-so to, like, I didn’t tell them to pull off that job and run a different job, but like, well, they said that you said that job’s got to get done. Seen it a million times. Like it does need to get done, but I didn’t tell them to pull off what they were doing and do it instead. I was just asking like, when’s it going to be done? Right. Yeah. I seen it a million times. So I, I have really tried to pull myself out of that process. Yeah. So I’m still curious though, Mike, because so far what you’ve described, I’m not hearing any problems. Like I’m still not sure what, what is that real cause some, but I’m not saying to, to squash it, but rather there’s something there that’s really important to you and you know it, but I’m not sure we’ve actually labeled it yet. I guess if I really look at that question, I still feel like, especially a couple of the really key members of the team, like they want that clarification. I’m okay. Right. Like I’m, I see us progressing. I see us doing the things we need to do and doing them mostly right.

[53:24] You know, I mean, could we have done, I mean, absolutely. We could do stuff different, better, faster, whatever. But like, I am probably not as concerned about like where we’re going and the path we’re taking to get there as some of them are, and I think back to your point of like, you know, maybe some of the burnout and some of the, I love my entire management team, but there’s definitely a few that just are high functioning amongst that team, right. And take more responsibility and they’ll pick up every ball that’s dropped, which is great. I mean, you need that. Someone’s got to pick up the ball, but I guess I see the potential for burnout in them, right, and want to make sure that everybody on the team knows like which balls they need to keep in the air. Yeah, we’ll all step in and pick up the ball that dropped, right? I mean, that is definitely the culture we have. We are an entrepreneurial environment, but at the end of the day, like you need to own what you own and not leave it for someone else to pick up just cause you know they will. So, so here’s a challenging question for you. So when the thing that I’ve learned by doing this a long time, dozens and dozens of people, for example, a person who is wired to ask really good questions, wonder, and they’re wired to think of things at a deeper level and more nuanced than other people, like that they’re really, really good at that. They can be slower processors, whereas other people are quick to act. And we, you know, we love to talk about how good it is to have a bias for action.

[54:58] I get that. My question is how long should a ball stay dropped before someone picks it up? Cause somebody’s going to pick it up and run the wrong direction. Whereas a person, if you’d given them another hour, another day or whatever the right time is for that situation, and it always changes, what might you have learned from that person to say, you know, don’t pick the ball up at all. Or I’ve thought about this and in some folks with less patience, especially when you have an environment of fast acting, entrepreneurship says, I don’t have time for you to wait and think. We need to act. And they’re missing a tremendous asset of a person over here who can bring the right answer as opposed to the first answer. That’s yeah. No, I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s a really good point. That’s great. Actually, we should probably leave it there. Cause that’s actually a really good ending. I think to, you know, I think what you just said is, you know, reinforces like being observant. Again, knowing, like you said early in the conversation, knowing your people, knowing your team, knowing what they’re good at, and you know, this, this framework that you’ve laid out that we’ll make sure to provide in the show notes. Kind of, you know, would help you do that, right? Like put your team through that, understand this. You said the, you said the acronyms widget, right? Yeah.

[56:17] Understand where everybody falls on that spectrum, you know? And then, and then maybe like in answer to my question, like when you look at that value chain of a process flow and say, okay. You know, who’s good at it? Who enjoys it? Maybe, and maybe you don’t have anybody that enjoys it or is good at it, but someone’s still got to fill a box, right? Yeah. You know, but then to that point of like, it’s the observation, it’s the watching, it’s the paying attention. Like you said, you know, we did a good job with Miguel, right? Like seeing what he’s good at and then kind of feeding that passion, right? There are parts of that process that I’m still the bottleneck, but I think, you know, if you look at it from that perspective and you observe, you’ll probably get better recognition of where you and or any one leader is the bottleneck. And then you start to figure out like, okay, how do I replace that bottleneck? How do I either automate it or remove it or replace it? You know, whatever the case might be. Should open the door to, to getting out of the way. Yeah. And you know, that’s, folks can do that on their own. You know, that’s a good step, just like you’ve done. And what, like I was telling you, this scorecard that I put together is really an easy first step. Takes five minutes, seven minutes, maybe leadership clarity scorecard. And what it allows you to do is to see where you you’re missing, where your gap is, because sometimes I work with, they’ll come in, they’ll do that.

[57:39] And they’re like, I know my people inside and out, but we’ve got a communication problem or we’ve got an operating rhythm problem. And so, you know, some people listening to this might be thinking, and like you, you did even, you know, your people pretty well, maybe that’s not where you need to focus, maybe you need to focus in growing your team, maybe they’re good now, but so, so that’s just a tool that people could walk away with now and apply and get a little more insight, you know, just to understand, because like the saying goes, you can’t read the label when you’re inside the bottle, just an external assessment helps you or an external person coming in too. So we’ll certainly make that available in the show notes and so forth. But other than that, like what’s the best way to get in touch with you and maybe follow up on some of this? Yeah, that’s really the best way, leadershipclarityscorecard.com, three words, leadershipclarityscorecard.com is the best way. And as you know, we can hang out on LinkedIn and converse and talk and talk about our dogs and all that. Yeah, perfect. Well, thanks so much for coming on. I, you know, I hope people listen to this and, and, you know, maybe just think about some of the things they’re struggling with and maybe a little bit different viewpoint on how to solve some of those. So again, thanks so much for coming and look forward to, I’ll have to get up there to, to your place and meet your dogs.

[59:00] And our sheep, but I tell you what, Mike, let me thank you too though, because running a podcast, I know you’ve got folks in the background doing a lot of the work as well, but it isn’t easy to do this and you’re sharing what you know and helping out that up and coming generation of manufacturing and I appreciate what you’re doing, love what you’re doing on LinkedIn and all the different things. So I really appreciate you. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. And we do have a great team, so makes it, makes it even more fun. So, yeah. All right. Well, thank you, Greg. We’ll, uh, listeners reach out to Greg. If you can’t, if you don’t reach out to him, you know, reach out to me. I’ll put you in contact. Yeah. We’ll talk soon.