The Manufacturers' Network

Contact Kent Gladish:Email:  KGladish@TMAIllinois.orgLinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/kentgladish/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce you today to Kent Gladish. Kent is Vice President of Member development at the Technology Manufacturing Association. TMA helps small to mid-sized manufacturers in Illinois basically with just about everything. Kent has a unique background, with an undergrad in physics and also an MBA in marketing. Kent, welcome to the show.Kent Gladish: Thank you for having me. It's always good to be live here and looking forward to our near future.Lisa Ryan: All right, awesome. Please share a bit of your journey to what led you to TMA on that Friday afternoon?Kent Gladish: I graduated college with a physics degree and said, now what am I going to do? And I landed at a company called Video Jet in the Chicago area. If you open your refrigerator, you'll find little freshness dates on just about everything in your refrigerator. That company's grown from 150 people up to probably up to 3000 by now.But that got me into my master's degree to find my home and marketing and ended up at a small manufacturer in the Chicago area called humbler. They went through another recession lost my position there, but I had met TMA along the way. On a Friday afternoon, I was able to land the position, and whenever anybody tells you the cold call doesn't work anymore, well, it's just not true. It does. I joke about that because I wouldn't be sitting where I'm doing what I do, which I love to pieces.I like to say our Members manufacture something. They're not good at all the other stuff. You have to have the manufactures in northeast Illinois. When you think about all that stuff, health insurance, and 401k, and I need a freight forward or need to redo my floor, I need to redo my ceiling. I need to figure out covid. I need. I need. I need. I need.Big gigantic companies have all those resources. They join the small guys join an association to get access to those resources. That's why we're on this earth.Lisa Ryan: One of the things that I noticed and why I wanted to have you on the show is that you do such a great job talking about your Members on social media and promoting some of the good things they're doing. I understand that many came up because of covid and just really taking it to the next level with explaining what your member manufacturing Members are doing.Kent Gladish: I was making 60 appointments a month with our Members. Because I spend most of my time not in front of a computer, face-to-face with them shaking hands, etc., Covid hit, and my number of appointments dropped significantly. The marketing side of me said, why don't you start taking pictures of their brand or their signage and put that on LinkedIn. It's mainly because it's pretty easy and it's free, so that has become 225 times a year. I want every business day spotlighting one of my Members just so people are aware of small to medium-sized manufacturing.Because everybody's heard of Boeing and Deere and Caterpillar, but very, very few, very few people recognize that in manufacturing, 84% of the companies that manufacture in the United States are under 25 employees. 85% of the manufacturers and this under 25 employees, so really the United States' backbone, let alone northeast Illinois, comprises small companies. We don't hear about the small companies. We hear about the big companies due to the mass media.Lisa Ryan: And what are some of the things the success stories that you've been seeing your Members doing during these times to increase their business to communicate better to connect with their customers all of the above.Kent Gladish: My members have always been doing precision metalworking and plastics, and so when you find the precision, that's where the things that are booming now. We made a list here. These are things that I've been told are doing well binoculars, grills, weights, these are all things that people want in their homes because of covid. They want to buy them locally. I mean weights. I don't even know where weights were manufactured before, but TMA Members are now manufacturing barbells and weights because the lifters of the world, a year ago, went out to Dick's sporting goods and bought up all the weights. Of course, you don't just order a freight load of very heavyweights from China, so my story is getting crazy. That way, our Members manufacturers some precision-related things, and those precision-related things are doing quite well these days.I joke about springs because there are so many springs in all sorts of handheld kitchen devices. We're all cooking more at home, and so all of those spring manufacturers are crazy busy these days because we're buying up those particular goods. Medical Research devices, course medicine, and all things related to health or up and all of the tools they use to do their research are precision manufacturing locally. Those local manufacturers tend to be doing well, so manufacturing is pretty broad. If you go through your day and look at everything, you see it's manufactured by somebody somewhere, so all over the place.Lisa Ryan: You highlight so many of your Members that are doing pretty unique things that you've seen maybe with their culture or how they've reached out to people during these times - little things that they're doing that people are listening today might say hey that's a good idea, I can do that.Kent Gladish: The thing that I've been noticing it's the most progressive again in my world, which is northeast Illinois small to medium-sized manufacturers. Because I'm a numbers guy, 10% of my Members are under ten employees, and 10% of my Members are over 80 employees, so the 80/20 rule says there between you know 10 and 80, so that that's what I mean by small. But they're progressive guys focusing on their culture; they're focusing on their employees, focusing on millennials, and attracting millennials. They're skewing their websites, not necessarily toward a new business; they're skewing them toward new employees, so they're illustrating how cool they are; how they do their group hugs least that was pre-covid. But just doing unique things having flexible hours, focusing on the employees, dressing them in not just a Cintas uniform, but in something branded for the company, and celebrating their members. I respect the focus on their culture. They were the ones that were the smartest when it came to covid. They said let's shut down on Friday so we can clean Friday, Saturday, Sunday so they could be more efficient Monday through Thursday. The employees love that because they got a three-day weekend, even though they were working 10 hour days that could have occurred before, but it didn't, so covid created a benefit in that particular case.Lisa Ryan: And when you look at the difficulty of finding people, with so many jobs going unfilled, those little things like closing down on Fridays help. You're creating that culture that keeps them. The website is so important too. You can't go with stock photos of people who don't look like the people who are interviewing anymore. When that candidate is looking at the website, they're asking, "Do I see myself there?" These little things have just shown the real world.Kent Gladish: Our members' number one issue is largely unchanged for many years. They are trying to find skilled people. They have the work; they have the machines; they don't have the skilled person to run the machine to make the parts. I've collected 16 Members who had their best year ever in 2020. Sixteen of them are ready to go on second shift. A lot of this younger workforce says I'm not working the second shift. So they're trying to get to be creative to pay more to find ways to get them to work on that second shift but finding the skilled people.Kent Gladish: You told me you would ask about the best tip. I'm going to tell it to you now. I had a smart guy named Tim Roth. He works for Zeman manufacturing. What he does is he gets in his car. He drives to the local Starbucks, Burger King, Wendy's, whatever, and asks for the manager. He realizes that the manager at one of those retail outfits has to deal with customers, deal with money, and trust to open and close the place. He would ask, "How about a career in manufacturing? I'm willing to pay X. I'll bet you're making X minus something." He converted a handful of people that way.Trying to find local areas skilled people who can work with their hands have some math skills but don't know that there's a manufacturing career, because we all see Burger King and Wendy's. Still, we don't see all the small to medium-sized manufacturers as we're driving around. I do I get to see, and that's my purpose. There are ways to skin that cat.Lisa Ryan: When even changing the conversation regarding schools and bringing back tech programs and introducing manufacturing at a much younger age. You're right. You can look for people with that enthusiasm with that energy, and you can teach them the skills, but who would think about going up to drive-through restaurants and talking to the managers because of those little things good with numbers trustworthy. Those are, that is a great tip.Kent Gladish: At 100,000 feet, our society looks at you know every kid has to go to college. If you don't go to college, you're a loser. Blue-collar jobs don't pay much, which is all flat wrong. We know who the industrial arts teachers are in the local high schools who get it. It's inspiring because they will invite us in. I'm here in my late 50s have been asked to speak to high school kids at four high schools, and I'm not even the lead person at TMA that networks with that. I see the glass is half-full. Many young people are getting on the STEAM agenda. If you throw the arts into STEM, you get STEAM. Science, technology, engineering, math, arts gives you STEAM. It was just somebody who saw stem and said, hey, wait. You forgot the arts, okay. We've got a great set of high schools here called east and west Leiden that are graduating a whole crop of seniors, many of whom go off to college, but many of whom go off to a manufacturing career immediately because they get their credentials. In high school, they are doing machining and Labor work and whatnot, and then they go right out into our TMA members, making more money than their parents do.Lisa Ryan: Well, the nice thing about it too is they're not coming out of college with 10s of thousands of dollars of student loan debt either, and they're immediately making a nice living. Now, I remember back in my high school days, the kids in shop class or on wood shop or any of those were seen as the troublemakers. There was the kind of that whole stigma around that. We're starving for these people. Getting rid of that old mindset and looking at the new and the opportunities that manufacturing brings.Kent Gladish: I graduated high school in 1980, and if you could shift everything that I graduated high school, I would have been a machinist. I had excellent math skills. My dad had me work on the car on the weekends and in different periods. That's why I'm so passionate about it as I look at some of these young people. Even though I love my college situation - that was very important in my life - but my parents paid for my college. I was very fortunate that way, and it didn't cost that much back in the late 80s.We see this whole transformation of making sure that young people have tools to see what careers are out there to pursue them accordingly. My wife is in the High School System. Those tools do exist. It's starting to take hold. It's the parents and the rest of society that's got the stigma about blue-collar and so forth. But there was just a piece on LinkedIn just this morning. I don't even know who posted it, but they talked about plumbers' hourly wage, truck drivers. They were all doing very well financially. That's a misnomer, and manufacturing is much the same way. You've got to have your skills. You got to be good. You gotta get to work every day. You got to be on time or 15 minutes early.I work with a fair number of young people who get it, and it's fascinating to place them at a TMA Member and watch them go crazy.Lisa Ryan: So when you're at a high school, and you're talking to these kids, what are you telling them about manufacturing? What are you doing to light that spark within them?Kent Gladish: That's a challenge. I usually bring parts that I can hand to them and let them pass around. I like giving them a seat belt buckle because nobody thinks about the seat belt buckle they wore to get to school it's just a simple piece of metal that's been chrome plated. But a 100-pound girl in a 30 mile an hour impact all of a sudden weighs 1000 pounds, and that buckle has to hold the strap that holds her whole upper body without eating the steering wheel saves her life—that little buckle like a chrome-plated buckle. Then nobody thinks about that my member manufactured it. Oh, by the way, it never has any air pockets in it because that wouldn't bode well. I'll try to give them a little bit of shock and awe about automobile accidents to try to get their attention from the old bald guy talking.I often talk about how much money they will be making because I've heard too often that that's what they want to know, so I just come right out and say uh-huh. But I say it's a range, and then I hit hard by saying you got to get out of bed. You got to get to work early. It doesn't matter if there was a train. You should have been early and hit them pretty hard that way. Lisa Ryan: Are you using things like manufacturing day as well as an organization.Kent Gladish: We probably have 20; it could be 40 TMA Members that have their houses open on October 1 or whatever Friday is the manufacturing day in October. We promote that through all of our social media and our conversation, just trying to get our members involved in the Community. High schools tend to be involved. It's the high schools who get it.Not all the high schools get it; many of them admit they want all their kids to go off to college because that makes them look better, which is unfortunate. Manufacturing Day is a lot of fun to try to humanize the manufacturing world because I know we're all those manufacturing areas are in northeast Illinois. Still, nobody else drives there. They're all headed off to the malls.Lisa Ryan: I think we became a lot more aware of manufacturing this last year as the supply chain was so disrupted. Number one was the whole toilet paper scare, but then you also had all the stories of these companies that one day they're making beer, the next day they're making hand sanitizer. One day they're making plastic; the next day they're making shields. That opportunity to not only adjust immediately on the fly but, to be able to contribute in such a significant way to society is also a big thing.Kent Gladish: Thank you for reminding me of that. A year ago, I had a colleague who was connected to northwestern hospital. They said we need a million face shields now. I went out to the TMA membership, and I said, here's what they're looking for. Who's in? I got 20 members. Today, I have five Members who still manufacturer face shields because they pivoted. They were not plastics people that are metal people.Manufacturers know how to tool up, and they know how to make something with precision at the right tolerances, but inexpensively so they can make a buck. They pivoted, and that's what they're continuing to make as we speak. It was neat to be a part of that. Let's get a million face shields in here. I swear it was in five working days. I mean, it was something.Now there wasn't a shortage of soap, a shortage of some of the materials that we have today on those various levels. There's that silly story of weights. I am a weightlifter. I'm looking over the table there at my 55-pound bar made by TMA members. I assembled several of them because we came to realize in late March of last year, none of the sporting goods stores carry weights because nobody could go to the YMCA or their gyms. So, boom. We've got metal workers who know how to laser cut and water jet cut weights and so on, so forth, so several people pivoted that way.Brian Fleck at K-tracks is a TMA Member who is distributing weights because of that whole program. Thank you for reminding me of that.Lisa Ryan: Another great way to highlight why people should go into manufacturing and go into those programs, so that's terrific.Kent Gladish: Absolutely.Lisa Ryan: Well, can it's been a pleasure, having you on the show if people wanted to learn more about team TMA or to connect with you what's the best way to do that.Kent Gladish: The best way to do that is through email or LinkedIn would probably be the easiest, but my email address is KGladish@TMAIllinois.orgLisa Ryan: Alright, thank you again so much for being on the show today.Kent Gladish: you're very welcome, have a great rest of your day Lisa.Lisa Ryan: Thanks! I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers Network podcast. See you next time.

Connect with Rahul Sarkar:Email: rsarkar@chiketa-phoenix.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarkarrahul/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers Network podcast. I'm excited today to introduce you to Rahul Sakar. Rahul is president of Clarity Manufacturing Consulting and has 30 years of manufacturing experience reinforced by postgraduate education from the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Notre Dame. He has worked with a passion in the trenches, in the nooks and crannies worldwide to help small and medium fabrication and manufacturing companies win more bids, increase revenue and achieve operational improvements leading to greater profitability. Welcome to the show, Rahul. Rahul Sarkar: Thank you, Lisa. Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here, and I'm looking forward to this.Lisa Ryan: Great. Please, tell us a little bit about your background and journey. What led you into manufacturing and doing what you do?Rahul Sarkar: Well, I initially had wanted to become a teacher, a professor at a university, but I soon very quickly got into manufacturing. And I think the reason I have focused for the past 30 years and worked in small and medium manufacturing companies is that many years ago, my first boss, who became a business partner, later on, told me that if you work in a small, medium manufacturing company, you will learn a lot. You'll wear multiple hats, and boy, he was right.And so I have been, like you mentioned, all over the world, various companies, visiting and understanding what manufacturing is all about. And, you know, the other thing that has driven me is that the small-medium manufacturing companies are in so many ways disadvantaged. If you think of the two hundred fifty-thousand manufacturing companies in the US, 80 percent, 75 to 80 percent of that number have 20 employees or less. I mean, think of that, 75 to 80 percent have 20 or fewer employees. They're the backbone of the manufacturing in this country, which is about 10 percent of GDP. Right.But think of what the parts that have had to experience for the last 50 years, 50 years. And it is not getting any better. Profits have shrunk, their sales have shrunk. And that inequity is really troubling. I've made it my passion to understand what and why this happens to what can be done about it. And I hope to play a part in that.Lisa Ryan: Profit is certainly important for any business. And when you're looking at these small and medium manufacturers (SMMs) compared to OEMs and some of the big players out there, that's a big thing. So what are some of the ways that SMMs can increase their profits in those times?Rahul Sarkar: The answer to that is don't focus on profits. I'll explain what I mean by that. I think that mindset that focusing on the profits mindset has contributed to the sufferings and troubles of SMMs. Here's the thing. If you think of the large OEMs' profit margins, double-digit profit margins, easily 10, 15, 20 to 20 percent for if you're an Apple, you're 35, 40 percent.And the small guys are shrinking from double digits to single digits. And heck, if you are making five percent net, you're celebrating at the end of the day. So that squeeze has been brought about by the large OEMs and enforcing the smaller manufacturers. It's almost like you don't know what will happen because the OEMs make products know what they're where the revenues come from.They know democracy. They have a history and can make forward-looking projections. But for example, you are waiting for the scraps to fall off the table that the big dogs are dining at. It's the large OEMs that are squeezing the smaller guys for profit.And guess what happens if you think of the exodus of US manufacturing in the late nineties and two thousand who drove that? It wasn't the small-medium manufacturing companies. Large corporations had the resources to go over to Asia and set up shop there and look for manufacturers, look for supplies as some of the Tier one suppliers followed suit. But that assumes they don't have the resources to send people there. So they got even further squeezed. They had to drive the prices down even further to match offshore competition.How far do you go this? You run into negative territory. That is why if you think if you look at the statistics, twenty percent of businesses fail within the first five years, 50 percent of businesses fail for manufacturing companies. Suppose you think of what happens in year 10. So if I make it past five years, am I all good? No. Unfortunately, within twenty-five years, 80 percent of manufacturing companies disappear.So that's tragic. And that is where the focus has been on profits. But it has to be on revenue. You have to have a substantial amount of revenue before you start cutting and packing and making the reductions, trying to increase profits. And that's the mindset change that is really important in this case. So if you're not focusing on profits, what are some of the things that they can do to focus on their people? Focus on their culture because we know when they're doing the right things, the profits happen.Lisa Ryan: But what do those right things look like?Rahul Sarkar: If a company can focus on building revenues, for example, small, medium manufacturing companies, fabricators, job shops, they are getting requests for quotations. They may they're lucky if they win five percent, 10 percent would be an awesome number. How many actually look at why they didn't win the remaining ninety-five percent of the bids and analyze that and try to figure out what we do wrong and provide the proper training, provide the proper resources, and bring in all of the good stuff.And secondly, along the same lines of revenue, you have to think of other ways to privatize our manufacturing capabilities and make products.This is where the pandemic really proves the point because of the urgent need for small-medium manufacturing companies to jump in and really step up. They were able to help and help society in general and help people and first responders and all of that and help themselves realize, oh, my gosh, I can make a specific product like guards or whatever face mask that this.And I think that that lesson should be carried on. It shouldn't just be during a pandemic where we realize that, oh, my gosh, we would make a lot of money if you had products. We have to carry that thinking forward and not just wait for the scraps to drop off the table. Yes.But get a little more control of your own destiny by outside-the-box thinking. Unfortunately, that it's not a very tidy answer and you have to try different things.Lisa Ryan: One of the things to do with them being such a part of the pandemic and making masks and making all the things and seeing that they were part of this greater mission, seeing that they helped in the greater good of society. And we can actually take that message forward so that companies are reminded that no matter what it is that they're making, no matter what it is that they're doing, what are their employees doing to contribute to that greater picture, even if they're making a spring, you know. They're just sitting making the same pieces, parts every single day.But letting that employee know this spring goes into this piece of equipment that saves lives. The spring goes into this airline, this plane, or whatever it is to see that contribution that we make. Why is this job important?Rahul Sarkar: And the people aspect is something that gets so neglected. Let me explain. If you think of when a downturn hits, who are the first to go? Which item gets cut first? HR and quality and people get cut because if you think of your revenue as a big pizza. That's your revenue, and slices of that pizza are coming off. Those are your expenses and what is left behind. A little sliver of pizza that you have left behind is what you take home for profits right now. If you think of the mindset of, OK, what do you focus on? You have to focus on the biggest contributor to that expense item. Where is there a piece of good?You consume manufacturing. If you're in manufacturing, 50 percent of the pizza is goods and materials cost. People cost maybe 15, 20 percent if you have more of a slice, bigger slice. And that that is a problem that you need to address. But think to focus on the big, big problems, the big slices like materials. And that's why I recommend one thing, one mindset of thinking I recommend for all segments is the Pareto principle. It's the fundamental way of thinking.You always look at the big hitters; the Pareto Principle says that 80 percent of your effects are caused by twenty percent of the causes. Right. For example, 80 percent of your losses are driven by 20 percent of your products or three. Some of your customers had problems that, you know, take up 80 percent of the time of your people and so forth, if you think along those lines, what are the biggest contributors to my problems today?And you will have a mindset of thinking, oh, what can I do to help that, even from the revenue side of things? OK, why am I not what is driving those 90, 95 percent of bids away from us? Why did we lose that? Did we have proper training? Are our salespeople educated enough to gather information on the market, the market pricing, and accept what is not acceptable to mess up? Did someone bid to load it so that mindset will take a manufacturing company a long way?If you have to think of the way you look at a problem, you cannot. And that's why Benjamin Franklin said, what is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting the results to be different. That's insanity, right? For 50 years, we've been struggling. We've been struggling to have small, medium manufacturing companies make a decent profit. Yet nothing's happening. Nothing's changing because we are focused on profit first. Revenue first is what I say is we have to focus on that.Lisa Ryan: So, with some of the clients you've been working with, what are you seeing? What are some of the things that they are doing that are helping them put their people first? You know, specific examples of maybe some of the cool things or ideas that you've seen?Rahul Sarkar:  Companies that I have had success or seen succeed have treated their people as not line items but a part of the balance sheet. I think that is where it's. Again, it's a mindset. If you look at your people as expense items as opposed to assets. I think that's where I have seen. Just recently, I've been working with the company, and the leadership there is just incredible. And they understand the value of people and recognition and bringing having people that people have ideas.So many ideas. Trying to pull ideas from the people. The power of ideas is immense. And I think we see companies where the owner tries to do it all. You cannot do it all. You have to trust your people, hire bright young minds, bring them in. Don't slash your workforce. Many companies get rid of people and all of that knowledge and experience that you just collected over ten, fifteen, twenty, walk out the door. That's your asset which is walking out the door.Lisa Ryan: Now, when you talked about that company that you're working with, and you said they were a great leadership team, what makes them great?Rahul Sarkar: The the CEO, the company president. His attitude sets the tone. I've seen companies with terrible, terrible employee satisfaction situations, the leadership, and the top person in command. I think they set the tone. I have known this for 20 years. The fish rots from its head. I see this in so many places.And this company is such a classic example of how if you have the proper leadership, that is hands-on. He's running around the shop floor. He's cleaning up vehicles and showing the people that no job is above my level. I'm with you. I'm a part of the team. And we all have to succeed as a team. I think that mindset is so valuable. Appreciating the people. Walk around the shop, talk to people. Get to know them as people, not just expense items on your P&L statement.Right. I think that has a huge, huge effect on making people think. Why am I making this spring? If they know the why and they understand that, hey, my spring is going in there, and if I don't make the spring properly, I can end up making the team suffer. Leadership drives that team spirit, and that's, I think, so vital. Lisa Ryan: It really does start at the leadership. There are way too many companies that look at employee engagement and retention and that type of thing as an issue or somebody below them. And it really does start at the top. And when you said walking through the plant, giving your employees access, knowing them by name, knowing a little bit about the employees, because when that leader is walking through the plant and says, hey, Bob, how are you doing? Bob can be like, holy cow.Rahul Sarkar: Oh, my gosh, yes. That is so powerful. And this is another mistake companies make. They think, oh, I give financial incentives, financial incentives not to respect people, just that that high wage means so much. The recognition making the job meaningful. Why am I making this screw, or why I'm making the spring? Giving them all of that really makes a difference.And this is where I think it's encouraging to see more and more of an awakening and a realization. In fact, some of your guests on your earlier shows have been talking about things like that. And it's really encouraging to see that. And I'm hoping that this will spread throughout the whole small-medium manufacturing companies because they really need the help, and they are the ones that can help themselves.That's the thing that they have to understand, not the government, not some dole or something. They have to use their people's resources, their brains, the brains that they have in the companies use that.Lisa Ryan: Yeah, especially since we have such a shortage of skilled workers out there. You think with unemployment being at an all-time high right now are high for a long time, that people would be easy to find, and they're not. So it's those skilled workers that you need. So if you have good people working for you, it's really creating those relationships and saying thank you and recognizing your employees. And all of that is not an excuse to pay them less than market wage is still left, right?Rahul Sarkar:  That's exactly right. And Lisa, that the point you bring up about the skilled workforce gap? We've complained about this for 10, 15, 20 years. We've talked about the gap. Why do any good shop individuals go work at McDonald's instead of at the factory? That site that has to change, that really has to change. You have to attract the brains; you have to increase the wages you pay them.And this is something, in fact, just yesterday there was a poster of a Forbes article and I was like very, very encouraging to read that the someone is saying that someone is saying those words like it will cost you minimal to pay the person two dollars extra per hour if you think of the the the downside off of retraining and attrition. So that's a whole different topic.Lisa Ryan: Right, exactly. I know. And just as we move off that topic, I remember reading some statistics that said that by that time, when the employee walked in the door, you've already spent about sixty-five hundred bucks getting them in there on day one. So when you start to put that pen to paper, you can't afford to have that high turnover and just to look for these little things to make your culture a better place to work to people enjoy working there, then that's going to keep them, and it's going to increase your profits.Rahul Sarkar:  It comes profit comes. If you do all these things right, profit will come. So absolutely.Lisa Ryan: So if you were to think about your best tip from what you've seen or what you've worked when it comes to putting people first, what would that be? Rahul Sarkar: The power of ideas your people have been running, the machines have been making, the parts have been doing. Whatever you are having them do for many, many years. They have ideas that would blow your mind. And if you're about 15, 20 years ago, there was a book, The Power of Ideas or something. It was so profound. And then suddenly people stopped talking about it because everyone ran to the next big thing. In fact, they had the pie of ideas. Your people have so many ideas. Cool. Just make it easy for them to come up to you and talk to you and give those ideas and recognize them for those ideas, you know, and I think that's a tip that you can take to the bank really well.Lisa Ryan: Yeah. And especially when you have new employees come in that are seeing the world differently from you, whether or not they have experience in your industry or not. Listening to them and acting on the things they share makes them even more loyal and more committed to you because they feel heard.Rahul Sarkar:  Absolutely. And those new employees, new people coming in, bring in a whole different world view and different ways of thinking. If you've been in a shop, on a factory floor, you walk by that that that leaky oil pan or whatever leaky machine every day. And you don't think about a new person: Why is it leaking? How much is that costing? That's costing. You get new, fresh ideas. And that's, you know, absolutely like you just said, fresh ideas and respect and freedom to think and speak and be valued as an individual. That's so, so important.Lisa Ryan: When you talk about that leaky can that people walk by every day, it's also thinking about what your break rooms look like versus your customer-facing places. You have people in the office. The office is bright and shiny, and clean. You go into the shop lunchroom, and it's dark and dirty. And so these little things about just helping the environment for your employees to make sure that when that new employee, that prospect comes in, who might be joining your company, they're looking around going, wow, that they must care about us because it's clean. After all, it's bright because it feels good to be in that place.Rahul Sarkar: Absolutely. That is so, so vital because then people, the employees think, oh, they like you said, they care about us. And you feel like instead of just you walk into the lobby, nice, beautiful. And then you walk out of the shop. It's dark, and it's dangerous, oily. Its floors are slippery. It's like, whoa, you know, that's, and it sends a message, and they leave anyone who doesn't desperately need a job believe they don't want to work in there.Lisa Ryan: Well, you and I can obviously talk about this all day long and being on the same page. If people want to get a hold of you to connect with you and learn more, what's the best way for them to do that?Rahul Sarkar:  Email a call me on my website. My number

Contact Carol Cambridge: Telephone: 623-242-8797Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan from the Manufacturers Network podcast. I am excited to introduce you to Carol Cambridge. Carol Cambridge is CEO of the Stay Safe Project, an international conference speaker, and a workplace violence expert highly profiled for her expertise. She has often sought by the media for comments when tragedies occur. Carol has been interviewed by ABC, NBC, USA Today, CBC, and as far away as News Channel Asia in Singapore. Her career began as a communications specialist in emergency services and disaster preparedness with a Canadian law enforcement agency.Twenty-seven years later, Carol has taught over a quarter of a million people how to make intelligent, powerful, and life-saving decisions. When Carol is not speaking in training, she is at home in Glendale, Arizona, with the love of her life and three beautiful dogs. Carol, welcome to the show.Carol Cambridge: Thanks so much for having me.Lisa Ryan: Well, you have such a fascinating background and what you've been doing. So just share a bit of how you got started and how you ended up where you did.Carol Cambridge: Well, I came to the States several years ago. I was either overqualified or underqualified for absolutely everything. Not wanting to start working back into shiftwork, I realized a hole in corporate America, specifically manufacturing, the construction industry, and the electrical industry. I thought I have a wealth of information that can help people.And I think the biggest thing over the years that I've learned is that we don't necessarily have good critical thinking when it comes to emergencies and crises and dealing with people who are angry and disgruntled employees. I was able to translate what I had spent much of my career at that point, learning and translate that into a way that people were interested in. And it was beneficial to people.Lisa Ryan: It's unfortunate that with all the workplace violence and everything that we see that makes the news that this has become such a big part of your career. But when put in those types of environments, those types of situations, it's really good, especially in manufacturing and everywhere that people know exactly what to do.Carol Cambridge: That's right. And what happens and when I see a lot is that people think that they know what they're going to do in a crisis until that crisis happens.When their emotions are involved, they see people they work with or love that are involved in a horrific situation. We go right to that flight, and flight freeze brain. I see many people who think they know; they will swear up and down that they know exactly what to do. But when I do some of the experience training that I do, we find that people are shocked by their own responses, and they just don't react the way they assumed they would have.Lisa Ryan: So take us through the experience. When it comes to proving to people how they actually react instead of how they think they'll react. How do you bring that to life?Carol Cambridge: Well, there are a couple of different ways. In the workplace violence piece, I will throw it to the people when I'm doing training. I will say you are now part of this risk assessment team. I give them a little bit in the scenario. Then I'll say when you asked me the right questions in the right order, so to speak, and there's not exact rightness, but often what happens is they will think about protecting. For instance, the one employee instead of, oh, we have an entire plant full of employees.And you have to think about both of those. And most of us don't have that ability. We go to one specific area, so I'll ask them. They start asking me questions. I'll supply them with a little bit more information. And then we play out the scenario. And many of them are surprised because they'll put steps nine, 10, or 11 in front of maybe the first steps they should have done. For instance, let's say it's a high-risk termination, and this person has been dismissed.But there is fear, or there has been a threat that this person may come back into the plant, and perhaps this person has a history of owning weapons, and they're very familiar with weapons. And through the risk assessment that this person is becoming more and more dangerous. Suddenly, there are twenty-four hours into this, but they haven't shared any information with the people in the plant. And it's hot, and it's in the summertime. So, all of the doors are open because they don't have air conditioning in the plant.And all of a sudden, they realize they put all these other steps into place, and they perhaps spent a lot of money. But this person could walk through any one of those doors and start shooting at any time. So that's how we play it now with the active shooter.Well, it's more highly charged. Let's say we put them into a situation of a mock drill. We give all the proper warnings for people ahead of time, and then we put them in that situation where we dim the lights, and they will hear the sounds of shots fired. I don't use that weaponry. I'm not trying to scare anybody. But just the sounds, the dimming. It's the fact that they're told that there's a shooter and that they need to hide or get out of the room. We can plant people with disabilities, and we just watch what happens and.People typically will do absolutely everything wrong. They don't know where to hide. They all go up the same exits that they entered. They just do things that we're trained to do. And what we're prepared to do is how to respond in a fire drill that's stand up, walk slowly toward the exits, be kind to everybody.But in an active shooter who wants to be the tallest person in the room, not me, not you.And so they go out the doors without looking. I never say where the shooter is. The shooter could be outside. We have someone playing the role of an active shooter, and they'll have a Nerf gun. They can't hurt anybody. Most of the time, somebody who gets hit with it doesn't even realize they're hit with that Nerf bullet. But people come back afterward, and they'll say, oh, my gosh, I never thought to look at what exits we have in this room. I never thought I had an assumption. It challenges their assumptions. It challenges their biases.It challenges them because they thought they would have perhaps fought or gone after the attacker when in fact, they hit their automatic instinct was to hide. And none of those reactions are wrong. It's just what happens to us in a crisis.So through the debrief and the follow-up training, we do a second one, and they will see the difference in the room, and you save their lives. But they could also save their coworkers' lives, especially in a manufacturing setting, because you typically have so many, so many objects that could be used as weapons, where if you were in an office building, there wouldn't be quick access to those kinds of weapons.So people think through and start using those critical thinking skills in a little different way.Lisa Ryan: Now, the thing that comes to mind to me is as much as we both fly of being on an airplane and you hear that that safety announcement over and over and over again, you can pretty much do it by heart. You know exactly where the exits are. You know exactly what you're going to do. But until that plane is going down, you have no idea. And you think in a plant environment; we never or rarely have that conversation.So how in the world can you think about what you're even going remotely to come close to, what you're going to do?Carol Cambridge: So much of this comes in one ear out the other. When you shared that example of being on a plane, I think of my friend Jackie. And it was gosh, it was probably almost 30 years ago she was involved.She was on air Egypt that was hijacked, and she was shot. There were a lot of people killed on that plane. She was shot in the head. Thankfully, Jackie survived. And without going into her whole story, I remember saying to Jackie afterward, besides the fact that you thought this plane is going down or that you may be shot in the head, what was going through your mind initially when those hijackers first said that? She said, My first thought was that I don't pay attention to what the flight attendants say. I just thought because they were going dropping quickly, the oxygen all came down. She's like, what should I do? And so it was a real honest to the core answer.And I think what happens is we train situational awareness. And it's one thing that we don't typically train our supervisors or managers and we certainly don't train our employees. And that's why experiential training is so effective. It gets people thinking now. Is it on its total behavior change or a little bit more so than if I were sharing the story and listening to me?Because we know that they don't remember that, it's an experience that internally causes them some fright or friction. They're aware of that emotional response. They will start paying attention. We also do what we do when we go in and do this training in companies and manufacturers. We supply them with a video series. And this video series is small snip snippets. It's two to five minutes in length. It's something that they can use in their safety meetings to remind them.And there is a section on situational awareness and all these other things. It's keeping that on the top of their mind and so that it's part of their conversation. Now it goes away. But the next time we hear a media story about an active shooter somewhere, it raises that conversation to the top again. And people will think, gee, what do we do? What doors do we get out? Do we have a system for warning other employees, that kind of thing?Lisa Ryan: You stated at the beginning of their time together of that summer in the manufacturing plant with all the doors open, and you just released or fired that problem child of an employee. What do you think are the top things that most leaders do wrong when it comes to a termination? And then how do we evaluate the risk that goes along with that?Carol Cambridge: Great, great question. So the first part of that is that most leaders have a knee-jerk reaction. They have a problem employee, somebody who's made a threat, and they instantly want to terminate immediately.Manufacturers across the country are notorious for having several different locations. They could have five locations. They could have 40 or 50 locations across the U.S. But their human resource professional is perhaps in a different state. And so they want to do this termination. And so it's an operations manager or a plant manager that's handling the termination. They decide they want to do it right away. They do it without that risk assessment. They may know some information about this person, but they didn't even check with human resources. Had they done that, they would have found a history and a very serious history that would lead them to handle the termination differently.Leaders tend to react too fast. When they start doing an initial risk assessment, they forget that the situation is fluid so that the risk can change. My suggestion to people is always to send that person home for the day and suspend them if you need to for two or three days. Then the employee thinks, well, OK, I may have. I don't know if I was suspended with pay or without pay, but they're not in that panic situation. We don't know what's going on at home. We don't know what's happening at home is just as important as what's happening at the workplace.I'll share a story with you, and this company felt that they had done everything right. The manufacturing was a small manufacturer. It was a family business. They shared that this employee had been with us for 17 years. We knew the whole story. He's a good guy, but he'd just become very disgruntled, unhappy, lately, abusive towards other employees. We could handle the behavior anymore. I sent him home while drinking was a part of the problem. And this man had become an alcoholic over the years. And that particular night, he picked up the phone and called several of his friends, and he said, look, do me a favor, whatever you do, do not go to work tomorrow morning. Promise me you won't go.Now, he called several different people, leaving a message. Some of them he spoke to personally, some of them, he left a message. One or two of these employees contacted the person at home because she was part of this family-owned business. They called her about 11 p.m., and they said, this is what he said. She right away contacted the sheriff's department and made arrangements.They were only a plant that worked two shifts, day shift, and afternoon shift. They didn't work overnight. The sheriff came with their canine unit. They went through the entire planet looking for things, looking for bombs, any kinds of things that had been stored there. And they swept it clean around 10:00. And they did open up to let the early morning shift in. They hired some off-duty officers.Around 10:00 that morning, that former employee called and apologized and said, you know, I make these threats. I know what was wrong. I apologize. I shouldn't have done that. And so he backed off. Everyone in the seminar was clapping and giving her kudos, as I did as well because she handled it very well. But then I asked this question: What did you do with the other two or three employees who never called you about the threat?Lisa Ryan: Oh, wow. Bam, bam.Carol Cambridge: She said, it never occurred to me. I never thought about it. Wow. And I said, why do you think they didn't report this?So it woke everybody else up in the room, and they realized everything she did was correct. But here's what happens. We have one or two people making all the decisions around determination, and what I always suggest excuse me.What I always suggest is that we have a team of people I like to call it a react team. One of the suggestions I always put in place when I work with manufacturers is that you have a react team and what I call it, it's an acronym really - it's a rapid emergency action capabilities team.So whether it's a threat, a workplace violence incident that has happened. We have situations where people run over other people with a forklift, or there's an assault on the plant floor, or they've used a tool as a weapon to threaten someone. These aren't unusual. A team of people working together to handle a threat is a much better choice and not a large team.One manufacturer told me that they had a termination team, and I said, OK, that's kind of scary to me. What do you mean by termination team? He said, when we terminate someone, we have seven people on our termination team. Wow. That's such a bad idea because the person you're terminating, and I'm talking high-risk termination, right. Do you think they want to be blindsided by seven of their coworkers or seven of their supervisors terminating them about behavioral problems on the job?That creates a more hostile environment. When I talk about the REACT team, I'm talking about a team that helps evaluate the risk. The actual termination should have no more than two people in the room at the time because anything more than that seems like they're being ganged upon. The second part of the question, and do I have time to answer? At least I should.Lisa Ryan: Yeah. It's getting to the end. But it's still it's so fascinating that I know that I want to learn more.Carol Cambridge: Let me just give a few quick tips about evaluating. What is the reason? Is it narcotics? Is alcohol a part of the problem? Maybe they're not drinking on the job, but their behavior is a result of that alcoholism. Do they have a history of violence? Are they bullying other employees? Are they associated with a hate group that we're seeing much more of across this country right now?Are they not taking accountability for their behavior? So everything that happens to them, they're blaming on the company. They're accusing the supervisor. They're blaming another team member. If they have that preoccupation with blaming others, if they have this all or nothing kind of mentality, it's all this way, or it's all that way. They can't see any middle ground that's concerning to me, somebody who has an unstable personal life. So if we know they've just divorced or are in the middle of a divorce or a separation, we know there's a financial hardship.It could be that their child has been diagnosed with cancer just to keep up with all of their co-pays. They have had to foreclose on their house. They're going home, lose their security. All of these things play into the emotions of that person. And as much as we like to think, we leave those emotions at home, and we don't bring them to work.That's not what happens. So when you're terminating someone like that, we have to make sure that we provide some emotional stability for that person. And we don't want to up the fear because desperate people will do desperate things, and we want to avoid that. So the higher the risk.If they tend to provoke fear in other employees, for instance, all of those kinds of things we evaluate ahead of time and the more check, so to say that we put beside these things, the higher the risk of this person. And then often we need to bring in some outside help of a protection team. We may have to have law enforcement on-site, many different security protocols that we would then put in place depending.Lisa Ryan: It is the idea of sending that person home for the day and probably even with pay. As much as you hate to do it, at least something gives them some opportunity to go home and cool down and think about it. Small investment versus, like you said, a seven-person termination team. Holy cow. Yes. Oh, really? And also getting to know your employees, getting to see a few of your employees.And also, the thing that stuck out in my mind was the people who didn't report it of creating a safe enough culture that the employees feel comfortable enough if they do get one of those dreadful calls like that, that they know the people to get in touch with. They feel safe and comfortable in doing so. And that's certainly not something that's going to happen overnight. But these tips to just start paying attention to now are so critical.It's so true.Carol Cambridge: And I want to give you a shout out for the work you do, Lisa, because when you have a more engaged community within your work environment, a caring, engaged community, we see less workplace violence. We see more minor problems. Now, it doesn't mean that it's a bad hire.You can have a very good hire, or you could have a very engaging employee, a good scenario, and still have a problem because this person begins spiraling. And so you might not see it for seven years, eight years, ten years, 15 years. So as engaging and wonderful as your work environment is, you still need to have these teachers for terminations in place and security protocols that you can go to immediately.Lisa Ryan: So as we start to wrap it up, what would be your best tip for somebody to get started as far as doing that assessment and evaluating those risks?Carol...

Connect with Ray BrownEmail: Ray Brown@Escogroup.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ray-brown-23b65622/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce you to our guest today, Ray Brown. Ray is the President of Esco Group. Esco Group provides electrical construction, electrical engineering plant automation, Arc flash analysis, and electrical safety services to various commercial and industrial clients, primarily within the food and beverage manufacturing agriculture and municipal markets. Ray likes to say that they provide engineering construction services from seed to table. Ray, welcome to the show.Ray Brown: Hello Lisa, thank you for that warm introduction on Esco.Lisa Ryan: Well, it's so nice to have you here. Tell us a bit of your background and what led you to Esco.Ray Brown: You bet. You know it started in grade school. No, I'm just kidding. I'm probably one of the very few folks out there that this was my first and only job. I'm a graduate from the University of Northern Iowa up in Cedar Falls in 1992, with a CPA BA in accounting. Little did I know this was to become my life's purpose and passion. Esco Group and our family have over 300 employees. We're very proud of saying that this has been my only job, and I'm grounded. I have a great family. My wife was my high school sweetheart. We have over 25 years together and two wonderful kids - Ethan and Natalie. I'm honored to be on your show, Lisa.Lisa Ryan: Well, it's great to have you here. One of the things that we were talking about before we got started was this whole year that we've gone through with COVID and some of the effects that it's had not only on us but on our employees. It's bringing up things like depression and dealing with mental illness. It's a topic that many people are not comfortable talking about - they don't know how to talk about it.What are some of the things you've experienced? How have you worked with your employees this past year to help them get through all this?Ray Brown: Before we get going, I think, with like anything that we tack on Esco, you have to start somewhere, whether the safety or mental illness and, as I share, what we're doing at Esco. We don't draw a line in the Sand. This is where we want to be today. We focus on growth from one day to the next. One of the things I recognized for myself going through this past year, half of our workforce, we have around 300 employees, about half of those hundred 50 or so, give or take, actually are in manufacturing.Manufacturers continue to be super successful every day, navigating not just the Covid challenges but other manufacturing challenges. Half of our workforce is engineering office space, so they're all working from home, so we had a pretty diverse background this last year of folks that when you talk about what their new normal look like, that didn't change construction electrical construction professionals. They showed up on the job from day one lot much like manufacturing professionals out there, and then our engineers working in that hybrid model.There are a lot of different challenges around isolation, and that was me as well. I think there's a stat out there I share with the Esco family - one in four of us went through some depression this last year or continue to maybe suffer from some of that. I felt that one of the things that we started this year at Esco group, we have dynamic teams that help. I strategically partner with our three engagement teams, focusing on building mutual commitment and making it fun and around that flow experience. Then we have an employee ownership team that helps us share the principles of employee ownership, but the three-team that we'd like to call them partnering with them just this month of April and May as health or wellness month, so we're educating ourselves.One of the initiatives that we're just going to be launching is "Make it Okay" and wear a green shirt. We're going to get some things printed up. The shirts say, "Make it okay to talk about mental illness." We all have different challenges that we're going through. Understanding those challenges, whether they're at home or work, allows us to be the best for ourselves - the best teammates, the best employee-owners, and the best partners for our manufacturers that we support 27/7/365 out there. When we look at how we operate at Esco, we're simply an extension of the manufacturing process professionals out there.We were hopeful that every day we make their lives a little bit simpler. Being our best and talking about mental illness is a big part of that mission.Lisa Ryan: But on the other thing that it falls into, and I know you're a big proponent of the safety of your plant. Taking care of your workers and making sure that they are comfortable talking about that uncomfortable topic of mental illness and depression and other programs that you're working on with the Green shirts and making it okay to have awkward moments. But from a mental standpoint, people who are being taken care of have a better chance of keeping themselves and everybody else working there safe.Please share a bit of your safety philosophy and how mental illness and depression play into that.Ray Brown: On July 22, 2006, it was a beautiful early Saturday morning. I was spending some time with my fearless mentor for over 20 years. We were ready to tee off, and we got one of those calls that, as a CEO President, you never want to get. On that call, we learned that we lost a dear team Member to what could have been a very preventable electrical accident at one of our manufacturing facilities.We've always had an excellent safety culture. Probably six months before that 2006 incident, I was at another customer site, and one of our leaders was sharing our story with one of our customers. He said, "you guys at Esco are so serious. Don't take this the wrong way, but you're kind of like the safety Nazis. We're making sure you got all the proper training and ensuring that if you see a safety violation, you give those mornings out. Then we had this event happen. It's the things that you never forget.It is the life, but also the lives of those other family members, that change. He had three kids and a wife that unfortunately passed away of cancer. They'll forever be changed. Those folks at that manufacturing facility told ourselves a may not-so-true story on how we look at safety. We had to look at ourselves and think about things.One of the things I preach around Esco is the growth mindset and what that means. You have to take a look at failure and continue to learn from that and move forward. We want to embrace and look at the silver linings in any event that happened. No matter how tragic it is, we try to make sense of that tragedy and use it as something that can be used to enact change positive change for other folks.Employees will be a legacy for Esco, and hopefully, with that growth mindset in mind, it's forever changed Esco. We've tried to look at our safety program. It is the way we get up every day. Mental illness is a big piece of that. We talked about getting our employees home safely from home to work and back again, just recognizing that mental illness is a big part of that safety journey. Getting awkward is a big part of that. One of the things that we've done is the direct result of this.We had employees write letters to their family members as if a horrific accident happened. The spouses had to write a letter back to their spouses saying why they would be missed. It's called getting awkward. We talk about some super uncomfortable things. It was a pretty robust discussion. I still remember getting many personal notes from spouses. I think that's the first time I've gotten a personal note from our employees' spouses thanking us for taking that activity. Mental illness is a big part of that. Make it okay to talk about those things.This employee came into work super dedicated, coming into work early Saturday morning trying to get to a baseball game so get into a plant get the job done so I can go and coach that baseball game. Unfortunately, he did not make it to that baseball game. That family and Esco changed. The good part of Esco is that it is a family. Those three young kids graduated college. We still try to keep in touch with them. It's been a couple of years since they were at one of our Esco group family baseball games, but it did turn out to be positive for these kids. They are growing up to be three very successful adults.Lisa Ryan: Going back to the letter – that's such a powerful thing to do. Most people, number one, never think about doing it, or they think, well that's morbid. Why would I want to do that? But if you think about, and I talked about this in my programs a lot, we see the times that we say the nicest things about people during their eulogy. To have that conversation, and to be able to say all of those things that you want to say, but may never say, well, that person, still on the planet, what a powerful way to build a relationship, and let people know exactly how we feel about them.From a personal standpoint, I am just creating that it's okay in the workplace to have those difficult conversations. Kudos to you for doing many difficult and uncomfortable awkward things over there to make the plant better.Ray Brown: Thank you, Lisa. We learn a lot from not just our employees but our partners and manufacturing it as well. I think we've got a unique perspective. We can have conversations with the back office. C-suite folks also have great discussions with the plant managers. Engineers who make manufacturing happening, and then also the online folks. We are getting awkward. Knowing that it impacts all of those folks and their families, our families bring it home.Lisa Ryan: So what are some of the things that are going well for you? Even though some of them came due to tragic circumstances, what is still keeping you up at night?Ray Brown: Understanding that the employee experiences are ever-evolving. Like Esco, there's a lot of companies out there trying to figure out what is that new construction environment looks like for employee experience, health, and safety. What does the office environment look like for developing the right culture? When we talk about mental illness and safety, culture is top of mind. What's keeping me up at night is that we take the same approach as safety. Let's try this experience out, and let's learn from how that might look. Whether we're going to hybrid mode, we have to develop some new safety protocols for the plant. We take that growth mindset, and dialing in the things around mental illness and safety are part of that equation. Letting that natural evolution and keeping that conversation and discussion open, I think that's probably the most significant piece that I've seen. A lot of super-successful leaders this past year lead with a lot of grace and compassion. Keeping that conversation open to what that experience might look like because it's going to be different for each employee.The other important piece is that employees need to recognize that showing up creates a great experience for another employee. I don't know if we always put ourselves in that mindset. It's not about my employee experience, but if I know that tomorrow, I'm losing one of my best team members. Suppose they wanted to work in the office full time, and I couldn't offer some of that route or the in collaboration. In that case, I might have to look at that bigger picture on that growth mindset and have my employee experience evolve a little bit to make sure my entire team and my entire company are successful.Lisa Ryan: From a networking standpoint, what would be some of the things that you would like to learn from other manufacturers, and by the same token, what of your insights and knowledge would you be willing to share with your manufacturing colleagues?Ray Brown: We try to hone in on being a great partner. Efficiencies and product count. What are those essential things around collaboration teamwork that are drive success within manufacturing? We've developed a pretty intimate plant services model embedded in many of our long-term successful partners. In talking with some of the plant folks, I think we get focused on some of the financials. But what are some of those soft things that an integrator electrical construction company could be mindful of to continue to get better?Lisa Ryan: If somebody did want to connect and learn more, what is the best way for them to do that?Ray Brown: LinkedIn is a great opportunity to get connected. Or just my email Ray Brown@Escogroup.comLisa Ryan: It has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show today. Thanks so much for sharing your insight.Ray Brown: Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk with you and share the Esco story today.Lisa Ryan: I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers Network. See you next time

Connect with Theo EtzelEmail: Theo@TheoEtzel.comWebsite: TheoEtzel.comLisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guests today, Theo Etzel. Theo was CEO of conditioned air for 23 years. The company grew from $2.7 million in revenue to $55 million in sales at that time. He stepped down as CEO in June of 2018 and is currently Chairman of Conditioned Air, now a 60 plus million dollar regional organization in the residential and light commercial HVAC markets. Conditioned Air employs over 375 full-time co-workers and has branches in Fort Myers and Sarasota.Theo is the author of the book, Invest your Heartbeats Wisely, released in April of 2016. The book focuses on practical full philosophical, and principled leadership concepts for business and life. Theo, welcome to the show.Theo Etzel: Thank you, Lisa. I really appreciate being here. It's always a joy.Lisa Ryan: Great! Please tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to do what you're doing.Theo Etzel: Well, my background is that I'm a native Floridian. I grew up in Miami and attended Stetson University with a focus on finance and economics. That got me started on the business side of things by developing hotels for hotels' national chain and traveling around the country.Even into some entrepreneurial things after that. Developing an area franchise model for Ben and Jerry's in the Atlanta area. We were living there and did that for several years. We ended up selling those stores and having the opportunity to come to Naples, Florida, back down on the west coast.I took over a small air conditioning company, Conditioned Air, and applied sort of the entrepreneurial people skills needed at that time. It helped me grow the business. I would say that I didn't have any experience in the HVAC world specifically, but I certainly had business experience. I'm a people person, so I tried my best to bring good practices, good ethics, good people treatment into the company and learn the HVAC business as I went along. I wanted to build a team that could really help that process grow.Lisa Ryan: So you walk into this small HVAC company without any industry experience, and you're about to take it over. What were some of the things you did right off the bat to connect with the people who work there, develop that passion for the business, and build the culture you did?Theo Etzel: I think the first challenge that I realized that the company had organizationally was that the person in my chair previously had not been forthright and straight-up with the staff. My number one goal was to establish trust with the staff, which required a whole level of transparency of telling people what I was going to do and making sure that I did it so that they saw that there was consistency in word deed.Building the trust probably took the better part of a year to be truthful because there was skepticism. He's young. He hasn't been in our business before. What does he know? What's he here for? I mean, you have you know people. People will make up their minds a narrative to support their suspicions. If allowed to, and so that's where I do think in any organization, no matter what size.Terrific communications have to be the key, so you have to tell people what you're going to do constantly. Set expectations and carry through with those. Solicit input for what works and what doesn't work. Ask questions and respect their opinion doesn't mean you have to adopt it. But it means you have to communicate with them if you don't choose to adopt an idea that someone suggests. You do need to explain why we can't do it exactly that way.Lisa Ryan: So what would be an example of something specific that you did to build trust, as they saw that you were young, and they were skeptical. Maybe it was the leftover from the previous administration of what they experienced for them but was there something that comes to mind as an example of something you specifically did to build that trust.Theo Etzel: I think one of the first things we did was when I reviewed sort of some of the programs or things that have been in place, 401Ks, things like that that may have gotten trimmed, as it were. Some of the benefits had been reduced overtime over the last 18 months or so a couple of years from when I got there.I did sit down with people and really look at what matters to them. What did you have? What don't you have now? Why is that important? What are things important to you? We also looked at that we are competitive in recruiting with the current benefits package we have? What did we have? What don't we have now? I think I worked diligently to reestablish things that had been lost that were important to them.Lisa Ryan: Even sitting down and asking them the question that critical of what's important to you. Because you can make up stuff all day long as far as what you think that employees need but having those individual conversations and listening certainly sounds like it had a big role in building that trust.Theo Etzel: Yes. Fast forward just to current just by way of teeing off on that. The conversations are terrific, but I'm involved in a private school on the board of trustees now, and our head of school has an excellent way. When he showed up at our school and was new, he to sat down with the staff and did the individual questions, and several of the questions I thought were really key, and that is what are we doing currently that you like. What could we do better that you would like to see improved? What are the sacred cows that I might trip over?Lisa Ryan: interesting.Theo Etzel: So I don't know what they are. Would you tell me something that is known but it's not talked about, and then, and I thought this was key. What are you scared I'm going to do? That is a scary question, but it's a great question because it's an opening question. What are you scared I'm going to do? It's a vulnerability question. I think you're going to reduce our salaries. Or I think you're going to cut a lot of staff. Or you know I don't think you're going to invest in our development individually, you know education-wise.You know anything can come out, but it creates a tremendous amount of conversation and insight into the organization. While I didn't use those specific questions in my conversations, I always tried to find out what was important what was needed. That really reflects more on my style. One has a coach as a leader. Trying to build other people and servant leadership, which is if you're working with me. I don't want to come in and have to tell you what to do daily. If I'm micromanaging, I don't find any joy in that, nor do I find that productive at all.But what I will ask is, what do you need from me that helps you do your job better easier, more efficiently, and creates a better atmosphere and in the organization? If we can do that, it will set out to do that, and so, if you continually ask what that is, that leads to a lot of innovation, I think so.Lisa Ryan: Fast forward. You're going from the beginning of initially building that trust. You and I cannot have a conversation, of course, without talking about your open book leadership because that is so mind-blowing for people who would never consider showing their employees the actual books. I'd really love for you to walk through that process, maybe, starting with the philosophy that made you look at that process of implementation looked and what happened afterward with the employees.Theo Etzel: But that goes back to my premise that, especially for leaders, people in the organization are actually on the front lines doing the company's work. In our case, the technicians in people's homes or on a construction site or their installations are going into equipment in people's homes or our offices and businesses. They're coming in contact with the customer. They have to do manual labor. They have to do the heavy lifting on the front line.It can be a straightforward jump for someone if they wish it to be to go from here. I am putting in this complicated system to feel that he must be up in his office pushing dollar bills in his pockets and figuring out how to get them out of the Office every night. Because it's a natural thing to play with, it's an unknown. How much does the company make? They pay me, but how much does the company make? Is the company in good shape? Are we doing the best we can? Are we going to be around the right people who want to know some certainties so, interestingly, from the manufacturing world, The book The great game of business by jack stack focused on manufacturing? The plant was designed to be an open book plant. In other words, they put teams together. They asked for input. How do you do your job more efficiently? Here's the impact of manufacturing on what one more widget per hour means. They started sharing a lot of numbers. They got a lot of input on improving the system can do it better. People became invested mentally in the organization, so we took that model, and we modified it to fit our company.We started sharing with people. We started it as an education process. If you haven't done it, and people aren't used to looking at a profit and loss statement, you do have to invest time, and energy, and an education. We started with the expenses, and we made it kind of a game. Guess how much we spent on gas last month. Getting our vans to everybody's home. People's eyes bugged out when they heard how much the gas bill was or the insurance bill or training or tools that we buy or all those things that go into making up a business.We started with the income side. We would then do it every quarter, and we would project on the screen a profit and loss. Our CFO would go through the line items. Now the line items are grouped. Let's not kid ourselves; we're not showing everybody's individual salaries up there. We're doing things properly, but we're going to show how much is spent on health insurance. How much you spent on vacation time. You know each part of the benefits that we contribute to, and then all the things that make up our expense side. It's a very educational, very eye-opening thing, and then, if our feeling was if you share this information and you're asking for people to think about how to do things in a wiser, better, more efficient way to create more value for the company. You really need to share part of the profit growth that results from people pitching in and having a quote owners mentality, so we do that. They're part of a share program at the end of the year, and we divide up a portion of the profits. They get to see that their quote share values every month, and it's not. It's just a way to involve people, thank people, and always have people thinking about the greater picture.Lisa Ryan: When the other interesting thing that came out of this was it really helped with your retention versus people jumping and starting their own HVAC companies. Talk a little bit about that.Theo Etzel: If employees think in their mind, oh wow, he's up there stuffing dollar bills in his pocket. How hard can that be? I'll go down to the used car place, get a van, and through my sign on on the side of it? I can be their competitor once people started getting an education on what it takes to really make the phone ring what you spend on advertising. Some of these other components really add up in being a consistent business. It became clear to a lot of folks. I like what I do, and there they are providing career paths here, and that's something that goes hand in hand. If you don't if want retention, then you do need to. You need to have a way for people to accelerate move up or move around in the organization and tear down sort of silos that you plug somebody in. They say I quit. That's not healthy either, but it helped mentally prepare people to say I really like what I'm doing. I'm not taking my work home with me. I don't have to worry about payroll. I don't have to worry about some of the other things. It puts in perspective what the business climate is out there as well.Yes, it does help with retention, in my opinion, does, and I, but I also think it makes for a more satisfied workforce because one of the key things that happened after we started doing this. Very first meetings, several people walked up and said, thank you for trusting us with.So it was a huge step of trust to show them we have nothing to hide here. We're going to show you how we're doing.Lisa Ryan: It also helps them when we look at our employees from a holistic standpoint, and we're taking care of the whole person, not the person. That shows up at the plant or shows up at the job site.Lisa Ryan: But by giving people that financial education, there's probably a good chance that they could better with their own personal finances. They could take that same mentality into their home because they have a different level of understanding.Theo Etzel: Correct, I think you're probably right on that. I do think it's important along with that concept to look at the employee holistically, so we are always concerned about the family, what's going on in their life and offer programs to assist people that have situations that come up, as we all do and need some guidance on some things. It's an essential thing to stand behind folks that. Are you really on the team? We want to be supportive of that.Lisa Ryan: So what are some of the things right now, amidst the covid, and everything else that we're going through, but what's keeping you up at night.Theo Etzel: Oh, my, you know early on, people have asked me this question, and I said, I have to answer it this way, so well early on, when I wasn't too many months after I got to wondering, are we really going to make payroll on Friday. People owed us some money, so I knew Thursday, I'd grab the checks and make sure they paid us. We had a few weeks like that. I know the feeling of being stressed. Unfortunately, we don't have that to contend with now. But I would say it concerns in covid, but beyond covid, we travel so many miles on the road, and we put our people at risk, and obviously other drivers that are on the road, are at risk. I would say just the sheer number of miles that we drive. We emphasize the safety aspect of everything that we do. I never complain about anybody that says. I don't think this job is safe. I need help. We want to support the driving and making sure they're accident-free. That is first and foremost because that's huge exposure for us right from that standpoint. We want everybody to return home safe and healthy and be able to come back to work.On the covid side of things, we took extraordinary steps immediately to give personal protective equipment to people to be protected when they went in someone's home or to a construction site. We made sure that we could contract trace. We had to do the same thing. We had to have people work from home. We had to have people. Not only did we not have group meetings again for a long time, but those kinds of things also did it virtually and did it by video and video messages. Communication is the key, so you have to continually keep that going by whatever means available at the time.Lisa Ryan: When it comes to creating this network of industry colleagues, what would be something that you would like to learn from other manufacturing, HVAC industry professionals, and what would be your areas of expertise that you'd be willing to share with people who wants to connect?Theo Etzel: Oh well, thank you. I'm always happy to talk about leadership styles and company culture because I really think company culture is key to success. I think that having a solid team and that team atmosphere is just so key. Recognizing people. I always say catch them doing the right thing. Catch someone doing the right thing, tell them they're doing the right thing, pat them on the back and make sure you do that publicly so that other people see you congratulating someone or thanking somebody. I'm happy to talk to people about my experiences in those things in the efforts that we took to do that.As far as learning things, I am open to so many things to learn and love to do that. I enjoy listening to people talk and picking up on subtle things that they've had experienced, especially when it comes to employees, and gaining more efficiencies out of a process. Or how they got people to buy into a process when they had a large process to implement.Implementation of a change in an organization of something that you're used to a computer system, whatever it might be, and all of a sudden, they got a whole new system. Now I've gotta go this direction as many tears and gnashing of teeth come with things like that.I'm always a student of how to help get that done efficiently and timely, so I love stuff like that too.Lisa Ryan: If you could boil it down to your favorite leadership principle since you wrote a whole book on it, what would be your words of wisdom to leave our listeners with today?Theo Etzel: The most important thing that a leader can do is invest in their people. It's all about the team and the people. If I don't think if you are willing to serve people, if you're not willing to be transparent, if you're not willing to be honest with them, and expect honesty from them, then I don't think you're going to have a great culture in the company. If you show them respect and show admiration for the people doing the work with you, and your real team makes them and not afraid to lead the charge, and be right by their side when times are tough and admit when times are tough. For when you've made a mistake, and apologize, and say let's you know recover, and let's keep going. I think your culture will suffer from that. It has served me well in all my experiences, and anytime I didn't trust my gut on doing it that way, I'm just always regretted it, so it's just the best policy definitely.Lisa Ryan: Theo, it has been a pleasure to have you on the show. If people want to get in touch and connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that?Theo Etzel: The easiest way is to email me at Theo@TheoEtzel.com. You can always go to the website TheoEtzel.com and fill out the contact sheet there.Lisa Ryan: All right, well, once again, thank you so much for being my guest on the show today, Theo.Theo Etzel: Absolutely, Lisa, I always enjoy talking to you, and thank you for what you do.Lisa Ryan: You're very welcome. I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers Network podcast. See you next time.

Connect with Joe FritzEmail: jfritz@investmentcasting.org Website: www.investment casting.orgLisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce you to our guest today, Joe Fritz. Joe has been the Executive Director of the Investment Casting Institute since 2013. With over 35 years of experience, Joe has contributed to some programs, including the navy's Trident programs, the air force's joint strike fighter program, and Boeing 787 Dreamliner program. Joe holds degrees in engineering from the University of Connecticut and an MBA from Union College.Joe and I had the opportunity to work together in Puerto Rico at his association's annual meeting. He was also kind enough to let me bring my mom with me. We had a great time together. Joe, welcome to the show.Joe Fritz: Well, thank you very much, Lisa. We did have a good time in Puerto Rico, and it was a distinct pleasure meeting your mother and having you speak at our event.You were extremely well received, and I had many people requesting that we share the event's recording with folks on their staff to learn from you about gratitude in the workplace.Lisa Ryan: It was almost like back in the olden days when we used to have live events.Joe Fritz: It does seem like quite a long time since we've been able to do so. The pandemic last year wiped out every live event that we had, except for one training program that was conducted in February.Lisa Ryan: Share with us just a little bit about your background, and then we'll get into the details as far as what this last year has meant to you, your association members, and really what you hear in the industry. Tell us about you, Joe.Joe Fritz: That's a loaded question. As you can tell from your introduction, I have a solid military design background. That was really a big part of my career when I first got out of college, working through things until the end of the Cold War. When the Berlin Wall came down, I worked as a design engineer for General Electric in the naval ordnance division. It was like this bright young man better find something else to do with them without a Cold War to be building apartments for.I applied for a blind ad in The Wall Street Journal. Nobody ever gets a job on a blind ad. What they were looking for was an engineer with aerospace experience, an advanced business degree. A couple of my friends pushed me to apply for it, and I ended up changing industries completely, finding myself in the world of metals and material science.Since 1990, I've been working in the investment casting industry and parallel industries I've stepped out in a couple of times. Still, I became fascinated with technology and the science involved in creating precision metal components. Using this process for the point that I could actually say that I love the industry. Around 1999-2000, a business colleague of mine solicited my help in looking at and preparing his presentation to apply for the job that I'm in right now. I was I got very excited about this. Mike, this is the perfect job for me. He laughed at me, and he said, you know, the only differences, I know the Board of Directors, and you don't.In 2013, Mike picked up the phone, calls, and says, hey Joe, I'm planning on retiring. Are you going to throw your hat in the ring? After some discussions and a series of interviews, I found myself the Executive Director of the investment casting Institute. We're a 501 C six nonprofit trade association. We have approximately 265 Member companies throughout the United States and some international. Our focus is on bringing first-off benefits to our Members, especially the smaller members. We've got a couple of substantial companies. Still, the smaller companies are the ones that really derive benefit from working with us, so we offer educational benefits we try to work up discount programs to support them. We offer networking opportunities. A huge part of my job is bringing people together, facilitating communication, and the ICI has afforded me that opportunity.In addition to focusing on our Members, we also focus on the customer base. Our Charter aims to educate the customer on the benefits of investment casting versus other metal forming technologies. That's not to say that our role is to push investment. Quite often, people will come to me looking for a referral to somebody who can make an investment casting for them. When I look at their growth or speak to them, I go, you don't want to use investment casting. This is better made as a sand casting or a die casting, or a fabrication, depending on the configuration. We try to bring people together and make sure that they will be in good long-lasting relationships.Lastly, I view is the third leg of the stool of what we do. We have three legs on every stool that is sustainable. That's very important to us. We work with young people. We have an associated trade association. It's a 501 C three it's a nonprofit, the foundry educational foundation, and they work very closely with the schools and young people. Through them, we've worked to support their initiatives and have direct contact with the schools on our own. I can often be found talking to a bunch of high school juniors, and seniors, and sometimes junior high school kids as well as going to the universities, and it's very fulfilling when you put a spark, and they come and talk to you afterward that one thing to talk about the process, and the training, and education that gets involved with it.When you start passing out parts and components that show examples of what you can do with this process, it sometimes ignites a fever in some of the students, and that's a great thing. I've been doing this now, going out to eight years. There are kids that I met in junior high schools, and high schools, and in college, and they keep in touch with me and let me know what they're doing, and they're smart because they're learning how to network, right from the start, so there's some goodness there, and it's very gratifying to do what I do right now.Lisa Ryan: Now there are so many different ways to go in this conversation number one, I didn't know about your stalking your current job for 13 years. So, the other guy retired. That was pretty good, and succession planning was already in place. Still, I really like what you talked about the last time with sustainability and bringing new people into the industry because with all of the manufacturing manufacturers and manufacturing associations that I work with, that seems to be the main thing that they struggle with is how do you bring these new generations into the workplace.You not only starting earlier going into high schools and stuff but giving them that that physical component, something that they can hold in their hand-building those relationships with those people. I continue to keep in touch with you, so obviously, that's working. So how are you not only as a person but as an industry with your Members communicating that same philosophy as far as connecting with the newer generations coming in?Joe Fritz: First off, I'd like to point out that the industry clearly has identified that there's a need for sustainability. Every year we conduct a house business report. In fact, we're currently collecting survey results for our 2020 house business report. A year in review, but I can go, year after year, and I can tell you that the number one concern is attracting, training, and retaining new employees. We've seen in recent times, and when I say recent, and showing my age recent talking the past 10 years. But over the past 10 years, we've seen much greater difficulty in retaining those employees. I've heard stories of the from foundries where they've hired someone they show up late for the first day of work, and then they never come back again.I had spoken to one foundry. This is a very high-tech foundry - excellent benefits. They have over a 90% turnover of new employees in the first year; we've never seen before. Historically, you go back to When I entered the industry, you would get in, and you'd see people in going into companies new hires minimum of a two-year commitment, if not longer. But what's a very curious thing is that when I walked into my first investment castings boundary in 1990, I noticed that the majority of the people I was dealing with were my contemporaries or older Okay, but mostly my contemporaries.I don't want to say it's a sad thing, but the concerning thing is that I walk into a foundry today. Most of the people I see are my contemporaries. You would think that you see a lot more young people in the industry, so I've taken I personally have tried to sit back and try to understand what that is, and some people say, oh, it's the millennial phenomenon or its people don't want to get their hands dirty.We're becoming a service economy, and I hear all those comments the United States was built on manufacturing, and manufacturing is our future, but it's a changing and evolving future. So you take a look at what I've done is, I take a look at what's exciting these young kids today, and one of the big things is additive manufacturing. I go to every high school, and a lot of the junior high schools have 3D printers, and these kids are clamoring to those classes, and I think part of it. Because it's not just an academic thing, you can put things into play and build something. You can do it in class and combine some of your teachings involved with that. I think they get excited about that so.What I try to do, at least when working with these young people, is trying to make the connection because additive manufacturing is a significant part of what we do. Now some people view printed metal products as a competing technology to investment casting. In certain aspects, it is, but you print more than metal. You've print plastics, the resins polymers. There are all sorts of stuff that you can print. It all plays a role in what we do since the 1990s. For example, additive manufacturing was largely used for doing prototype work, where we would print a pattern instead of injecting a wax. Maybe I should give you a high-level view of how our process works in an investment casting process, which is also called the lost wax process. You start with a wax pattern that looks like the finished product with the same configuration of what you want to make and metal.You take that, and typically you take several of them, assemble them onto a wax bar or something that we call a screw, and build a cluster of parts. Then they take that, and they dip it into a ceramic slurry, and back it up with a stucco, let it dry, and then they repeat till you build a laminated ceramic Shell around all the waxes.Then they removed the wax you basically melted out. You fire the mold, so it becomes hard, and you bring it to a temperature that the metal will the metal easily. You pour the metal into the ceramic mold. If you break the Shell off, cut the parts so often, clean them up, and haven't finished the metal product. In normal production, you will build a metal tool to inject the wax into to make those wax patterns, but in prototype development. It's very costly if you've got to build a 30,000 or 100,000 or $300,000 tool to work on a design that's changing so. You would generally get a CAD file, and you would print back then. It was a simple stereo with the graphic pattern, and we call to replace the wax pattern and build the Shell around. You can make parts. The customer can take put them in their engine or their automobile or so forth.Do evaluations on it modify the designs, and so you get to the point that you have a stable design that you are willing, then, to cut metal on, and build a tool for that's work first got introduced to our industry, you look at it today with the evolution of the additive manufacturing technology, people are printing patterns for low-rate production. To replace waxes again, you're not going to build a tool for a run of 20 parts right, so it's still used for prototyping is used for low rate production.But what you're also finding is now, you can print ceramics, so instead of printing a wax pattern or a plastic pattern to dip into a Shell, some people are actually printing the shells themselves with all the internal passages right out of the chute. Now is this a disruptive technology? It's more of enabling technology because the process is slow. It's not suitable for high rate production, and it's costly, but there are many benefits from it? One of the things I try to do when putting the spark in these young kids is to show them some printed patterns, show them to transition, and let them know that it can lead to many things. It also helps when you talk about the opportunities, and the availability of positions, and the long-term prospects.I'll tell you I've seen the people who have entered the industry with high school degrees, who are now general managers, and Vice Presidents of companies because they've done what it takes they put in the effort, and they've done very well with it.Lisa Ryan: Now, in that have you reached out to this is reaching out to the kids but what about things like guidance counselors or teachers or anything, getting into the schools for things like manufacturing day because it's one thing to get the kids inspired, but we also need to change the conversation with the parents. With the guidance counselor's so that they're not so focused on the four-year college degree because, as you just demonstrated with somebody with a high school diploma, they could be running a plant as part of their career path.Joe Fritz: Right, and we do that, in fact, it doesn't stop with them, and also a lot of what we do to support the Integration of students, and keeping the students has also helped educate our members, and the foundry so it's a full stem to Stern, but we do attend the career days manufacturing days I had mentioned the foundry educational foundation they run an event every November which we attended support. I have personally spoken with career counselors and teachers in the schools I've been invited to speak at.I've also spoken with the not PTA but the various school districts that are looking to get back into some of the more basics, realizing that the curriculum we have today is really straight away from the trades history is great, I mean, it's a very different world case in point, I went to a school with our business administrator Nora gamba you've met Nora.Lisa Ryan: Oh yeah.Joe Fritz: We went there to talk to these kids at a junior high school in Jamaica Queens, New York, and we get there, and it's gigantic school. The kids were amazing. That was probably the most attentive group we ever spoke with them afterward, I'm talking with the instructors and some of the counselors there, and they were saying, well, we used to be a vo-tech school. But now it's basically reading, writing, and arithmetic, but we'd like to get our foundry back up and running. I go, you have a foundry, and they took me for a tour, and they have a foundry, and those kids are hungry. Right now, it's used as a storage area for props for the theater group. I know they're taking steps to bring that online, and we have offered our technology and our services to help them out in any way we can, so there I think there's a recognized need among the academic community. The very fact that we were invited in, and then they made a point of showing me what they want to do, but there. I think that there's an issue connecting with the parents.My father goes, you want to be smart. You want to get a college degree. You want to work with your mind and not your hands. My father first-generation American, and he had a vision for my future. I was somebody who always enjoyed working with his hands. There are many kids out there that do, and I think that part of my going to higher education was because it was my father's dream. I don't regret it all because I still get my hands dirty - mostly in my garage rather than in the workplace. Having a desire to manufacture and see things made is not something that is inbred into you. It's something that you learn. You either like seeing things come together, building things, making things, and design things, or you don't. That's something that has to be nurtured. I have seen the kids who really want to do this up, but my father wants me to be a doctor, but no, my mom thinks I should be a lawyer.I always ask what is it that you want to do because that's The key thing you have to appeal to their interests. You can't force them impressed upon anybody, and one of the things I always tell these kids I go, what is it that you love to do. Right pick what you love to do, and make that your career goal your career objectives, and, as the old saying goes, you'll never work a day in your life.Lisa Ryan: We look at from when your father was going was getting started, and he wanted you to go to college, so you could have a quote-unquote better life than he did. But unfortunately, we've had two generations of everybody going to college. Now, these kids are coming out with 10s of thousands of dollars in student loan debt for either something that they don't want to be doing because mommy and daddy told them to go to college or something that they can't find a job in their chosen degree so turning it around and saying listen. You have a stable job with something you love to do, working with your hands, great benefits, and very little debt that you will amass by going directly from high school to a tech school. It's directly into the trades like that, so it's just really changing that conversation that the one we talked about was two generations ago or a couple of generations ago where college was where you could. They don't want to say that you could actually get something from college, but there's so much competition now, and we don't have enough people.Joe Fritz: That is being exposed at that young age to say, wow, this is cool. I can work with my hands. This is what I want to do, and having mom and dad be okay with that. That's very true, but that's not to downplay the importance of college graduates. You need the engineers; you need the accountant. It would help if you had the marketing people. Still, the real main force, the key people that make this industry strong and great, are actually doing the people who have a passion for it, the people who focus on quality.The people trying to improve things, and hopefully, that's stem too stern from the person who was hired to push the broom to the guy who's running the corporation. Everybody would be great if everybody had that passion. But it's the people on the shop floor that really make things happen because they're the ones who are going to put quality into a product. They're the ones who are going to recognize when a product is lacking in quality before anybody else does so.Lisa Ryan: What are those what are you, seeing as far as so what some of your Members are doing you've shared what you've done to change that conversation and to attract people but are there some best practices that you've heard from your Members are they doing something else that unique that might be helpful to somebody tuning in today.Joe Fritz: Well, first off, one of the things that we see a lot of our Members doing

Contact Mauricio Barboza:Email: mauricio@joncoind.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mauricio-barboza-a6bb9558/Lisa Ryan: Hey. It's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network podcast. I'm really excited to introduce you to Mauricio Barboza today. Mauricio was born in San Jose, Costa Rica. He studied architecture at the University in Costa Rica and graduated with honors majoring in emergent manufacturing technologies. Mauricio is currently the director of business development at Jonco industries. He is responsible for identifying new markets and emerging trends, developing new business opportunities and long-standing partnerships, and building and expanding their client base to drive forward their company's profitable growth ultimately. These are fancy words to say he helps their business grow. Mauricio, welcome to the show.Mauricio Barboza: Thank you, Lisa, glad to be here.Lisa Ryan: So share with us a little bit about your background, and really what led you to Jonco, and doing the things that you're doing now.Mauricio Barboza: My background is actually in architecture. I went to architecture school, and I got a major in emerging technologies. I've always been passionate about the manufacturing industry about business development, product development, and, more so, Creative Problem Solving. That is what led me to Jonco. Jonco is a problem solver. Jonco industries is a multi-industry manufacturing and packaging company in Milwaukee.We have a wide range of capabilities from fulfilling from powder filling and chemical filling. We have a large format digital printing. We do a lot of cutting - whether CNC, and computer-controlled, and water jet, and whatnot. One of the fascinating things about Jonco that I was attracted to is adapting to change and how they have grown as a business. As a matter of fact, one of the most recent things right now, and because of the pandemic, is we're taking on a shift. We're allocating one for facilities, one of our warehouse facilities, to develop a fulfillment center. There's a major need for fulfillment centers right now because everything's everything going on with the pandemic. Everybody wants everything right away, so the need for a fulfillment center is out there.We're taking that shift, and that is one of what attracted me to Jonco.Lisa Ryan: In our conversations leading up to the podcast, we talked a lot about the pandemic and some of the pivots that you made in making one product, and then just overnight changing to something else, based on what the customers were looking for. So what did that look like before and after, and really how were you able to change so quickly?Mauricio Barboza: One of the fascinating things about the manufacturing industry right now is that everything changed. It's not the same as before the pandemic. It's never going to be the same it's never going to go back.The pandemic pushed the manufacturing industry to adapt and embrace technology. I love the fact that it pushed manufacturers and forward thinkers to embrace technology at a faster pace. When we talk about technology, there are really three big players out there.One is automation. Automation has been a while for decades. The biggest difference right now with automation and how things are moving is that it has become accessible. It has become accessible to smaller industries - from small companies to mid-sized companies. Think of it as a car. When cars came out, they replaced the horse. It was a novelty. Now, everybody's got a car. Similar things are happening with automation. Automation is just becoming available. It's easier to use. The interface is user-friendly, so it's one of the fascinating things that is happening right now.Another thing is that the digital transformation. Everything is shifting from paper and pen and all that traceability to digital to the Internet of Things. We're doing everything that we're doing on the computer, computer control, and how we monitor data and upgrade analytics from everything we can collect on the floor.The third piece is collaboration. One of the things that endemic has taught us is that we all need a backup plan. What better way to do it than to collaborate with your colleagues. You understand their capabilities to see them not as competition but as a strategic partnership. That's been huge. Those are three things that we're trying to push within our company.Lisa Ryan: So, give me an example of a collaboration that you had with somebody you may have thought, as the competitor in the past, and you were able to use the pandemic and partner with that person. What did that look like?Mauricio Barboza: I'll give you two examples. When I talked about collaboration, there are two venues: one is with companies doing similar things that you are, and the other is with universities, and using them as research and development, coming up with new things, and innovation.One example is in the sewing industry. We were affected, by a pandemic, because it is labor intense. When a team is out, what do you do? We've reached out to all Contracts owners or their contract manufacturing companies and build that synergy. When we're short, we reach out to them.At the end of the day, we're trying to serve the end-user customer. We keep our customers happy, whether we do it ourselves or we do it with partners. They're going to stick with us, and we're going to help each other out.In similar ways, when our competitors or strategic partners are at full capacity or one of their teams was out with Covid, they reach out to us and say, "Hey, can you guys tackle this right now?" Absolutely - if it was within our abilities.Lisa Ryan: That's such an important lesson for other manufacturers to pay attention to. There is enough business for everybody. We might not be thinking that right now because of just what this last year has led to, but you think about the future in those relationships those other companies helped you. You helped those other companies who are more likely to refer business to in the future because they've developed that relationship with you. Kudos to you for being able to step out and create those relationships for happening.Mauricio Barboza: Absolutely, and you're right. There's enough business for everyone. The most important thing that has come out of this is that a strategic partnership is looking out for each other. To try to grow together - learning from each other's mistakes and learning from everything-we have to succeed. It's been a great learning curve. It's been a great challenging time, but it has really benefited the industry.Lisa Ryan: What about the employees that you have working for you? One day you're making packaging, the next day you're making masks or seals, or you're just completely changing the product overnight. How were how did that work with your team and get the buy-in for that to happen?Mauricio Barboza: I feel that that staying fresh. It is well-liked by our people because it's not the same thing, every day, every week, every month. It keeps changing, so is that continuous growth is that the continuous learning process doing things differently. It's not every hour. Everything changes so often that it keeps us fresh in a way. That's very attractive to us for a lot of the people that work here.Lisa Ryan: It sounds like it's built into your culture. You're naturally able to make that shift when everything changes overnight. That was your business model, to begin with, because of everything that you do there.Mauricio Barboza: Adapting to change is at the core of our business. That's what we grow with the challenges and opportunities. When companies don't want to do something, we see that as an opportunity to help them out and grow a business and that division. I feel that our culture sees that. We champion the good stuff that is coming out of all those changes. We try to keep a good attitude.Lisa Ryan: What are some examples of working with your team - of acknowledging them, of sharing that good news, and positivity? How are you doing that in the plant?Mauricio Barboza: Well, we set up attainable goals, and we give teams tasks, and if they accomplish the task, we reward them. We have a program where if you go beyond what we have asked, we have this room that will collect things that we have gathered from other companies that you went to that room, and you can pick something. It keeps them motivated. We want to express our appreciation for them because we felt people were everything. As much as we've tried to embrace technology and automation, we really need to take care of people.Lisa Ryan: That's a great idea when you have things given to you from other companies because it's a really inexpensive way to reward the people who are working with you. Are there any other programs or things you're doing to keep that motivation going and keep people inspired?Mauricio Barboza: Continuous growth is one of the reasons they join Junko industries. They're not going to stay at the same place for a long time. We're going to train them. We help them grow. They can grow within the company at a swift pace because of what we do, which is very encouraging. That keeps everybody motivated. We have a set of tests. If you exceed those tests, you will get rewarded, whether it's an object, or PTO, anything that will keep them excited.Lisa Ryan: That's a great way of expanding the skill base of your employees. The ones that are looking for tasks, you can pinpoint them as your future leaders. They can grow with the company because it sounds like you do many that promoting from within.Mauricio Barboza: Sure, absolutely, and it is exciting. I mean, if you think about it, they're always asking us what's next. One of the newest things right now is this fulfillment Center that we're in the process of building a 300,000 square foot facility. We're turning into a fulfillment center with state-of-the-art software, and technology, and whatnot. It is exciting that they know they're working for a company that is willing to grow at the industry's pace, if not faster. Trying to take care of the problems is current, and we do our best at it. We tell ourselves that we are experts at becoming experts, and that's how we have done business since 1988 since we've been in business.Lisa Ryan: One of the other things that we talked about was that you have about 60% of your employees are full-time, and then you also use a lot of temporary workers. What are some of the ways that you manage that, too, to keep basically everybody happy and keep that turnover rate down?Mauricio Barboza: That's been a challenge with corporate. That's what has been one of the biggest challenges for us. Before covid, we could ramp a team in a matter of a week or weeks because of the Labor-intensive projects we have done in the past. Now that's different, and that's why we're shifting towards more automated stuff.  We push all of our employees to think of the company as part of theirs, grow within the company, and support all the operations we do and bring in.Lisa Ryan: It sounds like that's probably what one of the things that are keeping you up at night is dealing with that the change, the automation, and bringing in new people. What else is keeping you up at night?Mauricio Barboza: Well, I think the pandemic has told the industry that we need a backup plan. We can no longer be in business without having a backup plan. We need to adapt to everything that is shifting forward. If you are one of those companies or individual thinking that are just waiting for the storm to pass, waiting for this to be over so we can go back to normal, that's not going to happen. You're going to be left behind.One of the things keeping us up at night is having that backup. Automation is part of it. New technologies are part of it, listening to the industry, fulfillment centers, and move forward with the industry.Lisa Ryan: From a networking standpoint, in getting together with other manufacturing colleagues, what are some of the things you would like to learn from them? And what are some of the things the ideas or strategies you would be willing to share with your manufacturing colleagues?Mauricio Barboza: Sure, well, I will be willing to share all the ways that we have learned that failed and succeeded and how to learn about ways that they have accomplished. What have you done? What have you done wrong? What did you learn in the process? Because failures are actually good, failures help you grow. Learning from those failures so important as a company. If you can learn that from a different company making their own mistakes, it's even better.I'm willing to share our stories, how we have grown as a company, and our challenges. I would love to hear from similar companies.Lisa Ryan: The pandemic has speeded up a lot of the technology. It's put us light years ahead of where we would have been had it not been for the pandemic.Mauricio Barboza: I see that pandemic as a technology accelerator of the century. I mean, really speed up the process. It was going in that direction. It happened faster now.Lisa Ryan: If you were thinking about all the things that you've done in this last year, what would be your biggest piece of advice or strategy that's worked best for you, that might help someone else listening to this podcast today?Mauricio Barboza: Sure, keep up with what's going on in the world again. Bring him back. Don't get used to waiting for the storm to pass. Learn how to dance in the rain. We need to learn how to dance under the worst circumstances because that's what helps us grow. If you're one of those waiting for everything to pass, are you going to be left behind?Lisa Ryan: Mauricio, it has been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show today. What would be the best way if somebody did want to connect with you what's the best way for them to do that?Mauricio Barboza: sure, they can do it via email, whether my personal email or Jonco industries and to leave you my email addresses.Lisa Ryan: I'll put that in the show notes so that people can click. Thank you so much for being on the show today it's been great talking to you.Mauricio Barboza: Thank you, Lisa. I appreciate it.Lisa Ryan: I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers' Network podcast. See you next time.

Connect with John Millen:Website: www.MillenGroup.comLisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan, and welcome to the Manufacturers Network podcast, Live Edition, and we're excited to introduce you to our guest today, John Millen. Now, John is a benefit hacker over the last 20 years in the employee benefits industry. He became annoyed and upset that there were not better ideas to contain health care costs and improve benefits for employees, having been a victim of a high deductible medical plan himself. He decided to radically change the way health care plans are presented to employees, to employers.John is the Millen Group's co-founder, an independent benefit advisory firm located in Richmond, Virginia. And over the past two decades, manufacturing has been the number one industry that they've been able to improve. So, John, welcome to the show.John Millen: Great. Thanks, Lisa. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it. Absolutely.Lisa Ryan: Share with us a little bit about your background and what led you into employee benefits and particularly your focus on manufacturing.John Millen: Yeah, so absolutely. So my training from college was as an engineer, mechanical engineer. And in that field, you're solving lots of problems. Yes, it's about math and physics and all that stuff. But you're solving problems. And several years ago, I remember going through the process of open enrollment for myself. I picked a medical plan, which happened to be a very high deductible medical plan, thinking that's all I needed. I didn't have any advice. I just picked it because it was the cheapest and ended up learning the hard way that I picked the wrong plan in that process.And then, over that period, after that, you have a sting like, oh, my gosh, why didn't anyone tell me that it worked this way? We have provided different types of benefits for almost 20 years to small companies and big companies. I started seeing what was being communicated to employees from the front of the room, and I got irritated, and I got mad. I'm like, why are they not saying this way?And then not saying this? And it started from that. I wanted to fix the problem. I was tired of seeing other people get burned by different things. And there were some mistruths, not intentional people aren't bad people, but they just didn't know what they didn't know. After several years of that, seeing companies do things a certain way, we wanted to hack it in a good way. Benefit Hacker. It was very catchy. It gets people's attention, but it's like, hey, there are things you can do that you've been told may not be the right thing, especially over time.Everyone says, right, right. Who wants to sell insurance? Like I didn't go to college to sell insurance. And I don't love selling insurance. I love solving problems. And insurance is a mechanism. It's a risk mechanism that is always changing. So that's kind of what led me to this industry.Lisa Ryan: Right. And it's something that with benefits, it's always on our mind. I know for me, with my husband being furloughed last year for ten months, that was the one question that kept popping up is, holy cow, what are we going to do if he gets laid off and we don't have benefits and going to the market or using COBRA or whatever? So from my own experience, thank goodness our Christmas present was that Scott got called back to work in December, and now we don't have to worry about that anymore.But when companies are thinking about employees and, you think that, OK, well, employees, they're an asset versus a liability. But from our conversation, before we were talking about that, they look at their employees as assets, but they don't generally treat the employee benefits spend that way. So what do you see as far as the investment versus expense? Fascinating.John Millen: So it's a little thing I do when I get on an early call with the president or the CFO of a manufacturing facility, I'll just ask a simple opening question: Do you view your employees as an asset or a liability? And they kind of chuckle. They go, well, I have a few liabilities, but they're mostly assets, like, OK, we agree with that. I said, so then the money you're spending the three-quarters of a million dollars on your benefits for the year you're spending, do you view that as an expense or an investment?And it trips them up, and it's because they want to say expense. After all, it's an expense that comes off the top line. But you invest in assets. Right? So it's an investment. And the reason I talk about that is because so many people get it. Focused on the wrong thing, if you're spending three-quarters of a million dollars every year, what is the value you're getting from that? And sometimes the value is not very good.For the client we worked with last year, the money they spent was not like we're not maximizing the dollars spent. And so that pivots the conversation a little bit from insurance, like who cares what the deductible is yet to. Let's maximize it spent because it's a big dollar amount.Lisa Ryan: Well, not only getting the benefits for the employers themselves but just as a recruiting tool to get people on board, because when you have employees that are looking at you, that's one of the main things that the newer generations coming into the workplace right now are concerned about because they see how health costs can just destroy their family's finances. So just looking at they're investing anyway, making sure it's a good plan. But from your standpoint, also making sure that they're maximizing what that spend is.John Millen: Absolutely. And you said something just there. People are more aware because of covid probably right now their health care. They're more aware of, like, how much do I have to pay out of pocket? And you talked about retention. Here's a great tip that everyone can use right away, no matter what industry. But this is something we integrated with our manufacturing clients is tell the applicant upfront about your benefits. Don't wait until a new hire orientation. And I think it's a strange reaction.I get some people who are like; I don't want to do that. Like, well, is that because you have crappy benefits? But if you have good benefits, you should tell them if you have pretty crappy benefits, yet you may not want to say to them. So we started doing that where you take your benefits book, right, that you create and maybe it's just the first two pages of summary, and you show them these are all the different benefits we provide.You want to show them the cost if you don't want to. But that is a recruiting tool because I guarantee you they're thinking about it in their head. They're thinking, what are the benefits like? What are the benefits? And ninety-nine percent of employees will not have the courage to ask usually. And so HR professionals, recruiters are surprised. They want to see the benefits. What do we give? What do we offer them? That should be a part of the applicant process.Lisa Ryan: If you have a good benefits package, when especially when it comes down to they're looking at a couple of different employers to join, they have one employer who has been transparent and has shown them the benefits, and they're pretty good benefits, like, wow, this is cool versus nobody else sharing that information. So it sounds like it's certainly giving them an edge. Just the fact that they're providing that information and kind of setting in that employee's mind that, hey, this might be a pretty cool place to work.John Millen: Here's another thing that that I would highly suggest. How many times do you go to a website for a company and find out careers and says benefits and it says health insurance, dental vision, whoopty do like just having health insurance today is not good enough.You have to have a good health insurance plan. This is where the conversation pivots a little bit towards your spending half a million dollars or a quarter of a million dollars or a million dollars or whatever it is.Are we maximizing that because your health plan needs some tweaking, needs some updating? Not only telling them, showing them the benefits, but don't just say we have health care because some people find out that means a six thousand dollar high deductible plan with no other coverage will be an issue?Lisa Ryan: What do you think are the benefits that have the highest impact on employee attraction and retention?John Millen: So great question. Health insurance, right? Medical insurance. It's number one. It's the thing that can devastate a family more than anything. So definitely your health insurance package. But I would say to look at that is not just health insurance. It's your health care benefits. I mean that health insurance is Blue Cross Blue Shield, a three thousand dollar high deductible plan. That's the health insurance. But the health care benefits might be things you layer in on top of that bundled in there to make the plan a lot more robust.So definitely health insurance. But think of it, not just health insurance, but health care benefits. So what are some examples? What's been popular recently is telemedicine. We saw it kind of spring up last year. Hey, I can talk to a doctor over the phone or video at home.Why? Because you couldn't go to the doctor and has been around for a decade. This is not new, but it took that moment for the industry to get shaken that we've been talking about it for six years. So we will add cost or investment a couple of bucks a month for people into the medical plan, even though they may have it because it enhances the benefit and makes it so much better. There are other benefits you can add in there, whether it's first dollar coverage or different types of supplemental plans that can take the perceived value or the actual value of the plan from here to here.So not just health insurance, it's health care benefits, that whole little package, I would say that's number one. Number two: And this is going to surprise a bunch of if I told you, what are the three top benefits that you would ask for at an employer? What would you say were the top three?Lisa Ryan: You would say health, wealth, the health benefits of vision and dental, I guess, would be the top three and the three most popular.John Millen: But I would say you probably need to insert in their disability insurance.Lisa Ryan: Oh, yeah, I have mine. I have a friend who had a tree fall on her when she was riding in the Metro Parks, and thank goodness she had disability insurance. Whenever I think about canceling my policy because I don't want to pay the benefits premium, I think about what she went through and what saved her because she had a disability.So, yeah, I am all over that, and I've had my interest for, yet no one ever went bankrupt from a dental bill. No one ever went bankrupt because they couldn't get glasses, and so it's one of those just little nuances. Yes, you're going to have dental. Yes, you're going to have vision coverage. But sometimes what I tell them is, look, if you don't have employer-paid short or long term disability or both, maybe be making your dental vision partially voluntary or one hundred percent voluntary and give them a five thousand monthly benefit, because it's something that is not discussed.John Millen: It's not sexy. It's important.Lisa Ryan: When I see that Ramina popped in and said that she's been using her telemedicine for years for her parents, I mean, I think that that was one of the things that covid just brought in is I would have never thought that I could visit my doctor by phone. But the fact that you can't it's like that's just one of the many technologies that this pandemic has forced us into doing and making it normal and normalizing it because I just get my doctor on the phone and show him what's going on and it works.John Millen: So it's been interesting. That's right. A lot of the medical plans have it. We don't always bundle it. And external, we do it when the. So here's an analogy on most medical plans, you have vision coverage. Is it very good vision coverage, you get an annual exam as part of your medical plan, does it pay for glasses? No. Does it pay for polycarbonate lenses? No. So, yeah, there's vision in it.What I see, though, is some of the telemedicine plans, not all the time, need to be enhanced a little bit. And so that's when we say let's make it no cost, there's no fee ever. You can add your whole family. So these are just little things. Little tweaks. It doesn't cost a lot of money, but minor tweaks.Lisa Ryan: Right. And this is kind of funny. Romina shared that she has a friend of hers who's a doctor and can do that while on vacation. So, again, we're looking up. Not that we want to be working. Twenty-four seven, for goodness sake, because we do need to take advantage of those vacations. But it gives us so much more flexibility than what we used to have when it comes to our benefit. So what are some of the things that you're seeing that maybe employees, employers are missing when it comes to their benefits, some of the biggest mistakes that they're making?John Millen: So another great question. One of the things I've seen as a little bit of a trend, and it's going to sound a bit controversial. It's not mainstream as it's been around for the past 15 years. There's been this movement towards consumer-driven health care, meaning, hey, you spend three weeks researching that big screen TV at Best Buy, but yet you only spend five minutes when you need your knee replaced. You just go where they say there's a lot of truth in that, that we're not aware of the cost of health care because health care is not the same as health insurance.So that is a big issue that's trying to be fixed. But I would say over the past 15 years. There are some cases when employees will not be a consumer of health care. They will go where their doctor says, period.And I've heard for so long now, this is not all the time, but I've heard so long. And they say from the front of the room, next time you need a hip replacement, just go online. You can look at the costs. You can look at this.And I think I have five thousand dollars out of pocket, max. That's all I'm going to pay. I don't care if it costs one hundred thousand or six hundred thousand. If my doctor says this is where we're getting it done, I'm going to go there. So there are some cases where consumerism is not working. In some places, it is prescription drugs, outpatient testing, things like that. It's working. So here's what I would say is look at your employee benefits options.So some companies have one option. Some have to. Some have three, some have five and six, which I think is crazy. Ridiculous. Look at those plans and ask yourself, does it have prescription coverage? Because we're finding that prescription drugs are a third of the claims, and you can't get away from it on TV, see all these fancy ads. But prescription drug costs are going up fast. So if all you have are high deductible plans, meaning no prescription coverage until you hit your deductible, it's painful.And that's what's happening with the rationing of insulin. People are cutting back their insulin because it's so expensive, and it's causing people to die from it. So this is a straightforward little thing you can add now. Is it does it add more cost? Yes, but it's an investment. And I'll give you a quick story. I was talking last year, I got a call from one of my manufacturing clients, and they had a new hire employee from a different state that was going to work for them.And he had a bunch of benefit questions. So the HR manager called me. She said, would you mind talking to him? He's not an employee yet. He's looking. And I said, sure, I called him. And he told me he said, my prescription cost is two thousand dollars a month. Do they have any kind of plans that will help pay for my prescription I'm taking? I looked up the prescription, I looked at the plan.We had redesigned, we had added back in prescription coverage. And I said I said, Greg, it's going to be 40 bucks a month for the copay. Forty dollars a month versus two thousand a month. That caused him to move from North Carolina in, among other things, not just benefits, but that's a retention tool, and that's a big thing that's missing, is having good prescription coverage.Lisa Ryan: Wow. Well, so when you're looking at the fact that they're doing spending three-quarters of a million dollars on health insurance for their employees every year, what is the best way to get to maximize that spend?John Millen: So the first thing I would say is knowing your five-year cost and your five-year projection. What is it going to cost you over the next five years? I asked this question a lot. How much are you going to spend on your health care or benefits package over the next five years? And I get blank stares. I don't know not only what you are going to spend, but it's compounding because most of the time, it's going up to eight to 12 percent a year.So it's not just one plus one equals two. You're adding more on top of that. We show we show a potential client. This is what you're going to spend. They see seven million dollars. I say, all right, now it's perspective. You can no longer assume that eight percent renewals are good. I hear this a lot in our industry. I talk to a client. We just talk to our broker. And they said we got a five percent renewal, and that's good, and we should just move on.I don't think that's good because it's been five percent and 12 percent and twenty-two percent. It's gone like this. So I think you've got to look at the thought out into the future and say, how do we bend this curve down? I don't see a lot of that happening. I see a lot of reactionary things. Last minute. Here's your window, Lisa. We just got your renewal back. It was a 12 percent increase. I got them down to eight.I think it's the best thing you should take, not what does that look like five years from now? And can we try some new things.Lisa Ryan: So as we're getting to the end of our time together, what's your number one tip that you would give to people listening today regarding what they're doing with their benefits to make them better and to use it as an attraction and retention tool?John Millen: Wow. So, one, there are lots of things that I would say. From personal experience, working with tens of thousands of employees over 20 years is making sure that investment that you've created, that package that you're all of your employees understand, are educated about it and know how to use it. The biggest thing I see, especially manufacturing, right, John? We're running presses. We're running machinery. We're running porcelain tile. We can't stop what you need to give the employees time.It's some way to carve out 30 minutes or 60 Minutes one time of year and explain to them what they are, how they work, and what's right for them. This is how I tell employers you're spending seven thousand dollars a year on average per employee on their benefits.If they get paid...

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan, and welcome to the Manufacturers' Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guests today, Teresa Lindsey. Teresa is the CEO of Channel Products, a privately held Cleveland-based manufacturer of components systems and technologies for the gas appliance industry and beyond. Recently she's launched two new divisions of Channel, Spotted Yak, an engineering design firm, and Haute Door Life, an online retail entity, offering high-end curated outdoor living products. Channel has manufacturing facilities in both United States and China and a distribution Center in Europe. Under her leadership, the company's revenue has grown by over 100%; profitability has increased by over 1,000% the overall employee base has tripled. She has built a culture based on high levels of individual and corporate performance and charitable service. Teresa, welcome to the show.Teresa Lindsey: Thank you for having me, Lisa.Lisa Ryan: Well, that is quite a background. I'm so excited to hear about your journey regarding how you got to where you're at. We're going to talk about the culture you created. Please share with us a little bit about your background.Teresa Lindsey: Thank you so much. I had a different life, a unique life. Some might say somewhat disadvantaged by comparison to others. I grew up in a world that I didn't have an emphasis on career or education. I had to navigate my way through all of that into adulthood and took several different paths. There are many splits in the road in that journey, but I finally ended up manufacturing several years ago. I was going from General Motors into Haute corporation, a publicly held friction manufacturer. Then, after that, with the private equity firm who owned Haute and who owns Channel. Through that ended up at Channel, and the way it got here is unique. We purchased Channel; I was with the private equity firm. We purchased the company, and I came in for about six months to help them operationally. Let's see how we can improve things; let's improve morale. Let's dig into the meat of the company. We felt like it had good bones. Let's see what we can accomplish. During that time, we discovered that because it was a local company, we were busy on due diligence with several other companies. We missed some things, and so it ended up being not exactly what we thought we were getting when we purchased it. Let me say it that way. What ended up happening was an executive decision made by the private equity firm, the ownership, that they would replace the President. I was in that meeting sitting there with the owners, and I just felt it well up inside of me, and I just said, give it to me, I can do it. I can run this. I can fix it, and I can make that happen. That was nine-plus years ago. They took a chance on me, and they gave me a shot. They had no reason to do that or to believe that I could do anything I was saying that I could do. But they did. They believed in me, and here we are today. So that's my journey here to Channel Products. It's been a fun ride with many intricacies to it, a lot to overcome, and a lot to learn, as you can imagine. Many moments were growing moments for me, first times. Here we are. It's been fun, and I'm grateful I surrounded myself with people far better than me. That facilitated the climb.Lisa Ryan: When you were looking at the first days of Channel nine years ago, you don't have to go into the details as far as what you thought you were getting but didn't. Share with us the journey as far as the culture, the way it was, and some of the things that you saw as an outsider coming in that oh I can fix that. What happened with the employees? How did you finally get them to buy in - because we know this whole process takes time. It doesn't happen overnight. How did you take it from day one - brand spanking new off the street - to what you've created?Teresa Lindsey: I would say that that we're still on the journey. Culture is an ever-evolving thing. The word culture is thrown around so lightly. These days, everybody uses it. We use it all the time. To me, there's so much more than the buzzword culture that goes on in an organization.Unfortunately, when I first stepped in, it was a culture of fear and intimidation—lots of silos and a lot of breakdowns. I don't want to say infighting is strong, but dissension if you will. It was it was difficult. The culture mirrored the leadership, and the business mirrored all of that. It was walking into a great challenge as well as a tremendous opportunity. There was no place to go but up. To heal and to restore, we started to put into place concrete things.The first thing I did was I stepped in, and I had scheduled a meeting with every employee, all of them. I called it "school, the Pres," and I sat down with each individual. I had a list of five questions at the time. I asked them all the same questions. I took a few minutes to get to know them personally -tell me about your life, your family, where do you come from? Then I asked them very specific questions.One of them was, "We snap a finger, and you're me, you're now the President of Channel Products. What's the very first thing you change. What's the first thing that you think would have the greatest impact and make a difference here. What are you afraid of?" Having those conversations started to lay the groundwork for some much-needed change.From there went to work, facilitating several different things, one of the early things that I did was 360-degree peer reviews. I did them a bit differently. Rather than doing a survey, having people fill out opinions, and all of that, I listed every employee's name and put an ABC D or F next to their name and then yes or no. I handed that list out to every employee, and I said I want you to go through, and we had in a team meeting defined all of the attributes of an A player. I made sure that it was their definition, not mine. What is your definition?Here's what's interesting about culture back then. Everybody was listing A player attributes because it was almost like a finger-pointing exercise. "Communication is an A player," while they're looking over here at Sally, who is not good at communication. It was almost like that. Everybody was just frustrated. We defined 34-36 attributes. Then I rolled out the 360-degree review. It was for them to check to go down each name, are they in A player B, C D or F and then yes or no. If you started your own company today, would you hire them? It was very simple, very clean. There was a small comments section that you couldn't offer opinion or thoughts or complain, but what you could do is, if you mark them anything less than a player B or below, you could list up to three of those attributes that we had defined as an opportunity for them to work on. So no chance to shred somebody. I don't hear you're complaining but let's dig in.I took the results for each individual and put their name down A, B, C D E, F, yes or no, and then just put a number, and you got seven a's 20 B's, 3 C's - type of thing. As it stands, only two people would hire you, and the rest would not. I put those in an envelope, sealed them, and pass them out at the next meeting, which we at the time called one team meetings, now they're called Channel chats, and pass them out. Then the real facilitation began. As you can imagine, as people open those envelopes and pulled that out, they saw that they're sitting in a room full of peers and all those peers had opinions about how they were not necessarily an A player. There were only just a couple of people who were viewed as being very strong A players.That was a starting point. Then it was about facilitating. Okay, we are going to create a standard high in the company for performance. Today, we make it very difficult to get into our company - intentionally, it's by design. We're going to set the standard, really, really high, and then we're going to watch the fallout. Some people are going to make it. Some people aren't. For those of you who aren't going to make it, I'm going to help you transition into something that's an excellent fit for you. We're going to do this together because I care about you, and I want the best for you and your families. But this just might not be the right place for you going forward.That was the beginning of it all. Since then, we've implemented a number of powerful cultural things that we do and maintain That have evolved over the years into a very mature, very rich, and robust culture.Lisa Ryan: And for the people who had the three things that made them, not an A, was there some recourse? Did you offer them some training, some guidance support? I'm assuming that that meeting was probably filled with a lot of shock and hurt and all the other emotions that go along with that. When you're thinking you are "all that in a bag of chips," and you find out, well, maybe not.Teresa Lindsey: I will say that I had a revolving door after that. People in tears, people angry. Other people took a position of indifference, "whatever, I don't care." Because they couldn't handle the results, the only person who saw the results were the staff members who had a specific group of people reported to them. They didn't get to see everybody's results. If they had, say ten direct reports, they got the results of those ten direct reports to help coach and mentor them through that process and help them develop the skills where the gaps were.Lisa Ryan: It sounds like again, I'm going back to having that first conversation right off the bat before you even build that level of trust to have that in-depth conversation, so what was that process like? They were coming from command, control, and fearful environment. Here's this new person coming in - what's going to happen? What were some of the steps that you took to build that trust and to be able to have those difficult conversations?Teresa Lindsey: One of my very first meetings with them when the ownership introduced me to the workforce, I said to them, look, there's only one thing that matters here, and that's trust. I am going to trust you to show up every single day and give 120% of yourselves. That's my expectation. I'm going to trust you to show up here and give everything you have to be loyal, supportive of our future to our growth to their culture and what we have going on. In return, you have to trust me to make the very best decisions for you and this company. Some of it's going to feel personal but it's not. This is about us building a company, which we're all here to do. Everybody collects a paycheck here to do just that. It's about us building a company, but the way we're going to build the company is by building a culture. I was very clear with them that the only way to get to where we were going was that we had to blow up the culture and then reassemble it piece by piece. In those initial three months, I talked to them a lot about vulnerability. This is going to hurt. We're going to be vulnerable with one another. I was very vulnerable with them. I was also very transparent with them. It's one of my key beliefs as a leader. I believe in leading people in the managing process. We never manage people here. I don't ever let my team say all I manage them, or that's not true. We lead. Nobody wants to be managed. They want to be lead. We lead people and manage the process.The second element to that was stripped down vulnerability to rebuild that trust and so much so that. I put myself out there a lot of times and allowed for open comments and feedback on me. I would intentionally do that, so they could see me being very vulnerable. I believe in transparency.In my years of leadership here at Channel, I am hyper transparent with the people here. The only thing we don't share our people's salaries. We share everything else - we don't break HIPAA laws, but I mean, we share everything else. Whether it's the company's performance or making a tough decision like building a facility in China, I knew that I would have to change my workforce here as a result of that and downsize.I started telling them six months in advance. I started giving them a heads up – "Look, we're going to keep this many people, and I want all of you here. I need you to show me that you want to be here." Here are the requirements here the standards for that. This is how we're going to make decisions about who stays and who does not. This is not personal. It's business. I love all of you as if it is personal. We're going to walk through this together. I met with them more than once a month—every three weeks. I met with the entire workforce, reminding them, this is what we're doing. This is the decision we're making.The interesting thing about that is when it came time to sit down and have those one-on-one meetings with people to let them know who was coming with us to our new headquarters - because simultaneously, we were building a new headquarters - and who was coming to the new headquarters, who would no longer be joining us on our journey as a company. We brought in a firm to help us, transition folks. We gave them all the support in the world, the softest landing you can imagine. We gave them a heads up 60 to 90 days in advance. We had those meetings 60 to 90 days in advance of them having to have a replacement in a job. The firm we worked with actually sat me down afterward and said, "we've been doing this for over 30 years. Never in our history have we had people who have just been told they were exiting the company say through tears, I will miss Teresa and this company. This is the best thing that's ever happened to me. I'm so sad I'm not going forward with them, but I don't blame her. I could have done more. I should have done more."When you talk about transparency and culture, we have a very low churn rate on less than 2-3% of our people leave independently. If we're exiting someone, it's a different story. Most people come, and they plant themselves. It's for reasons, just like that, and that blowing up of the culture and rebuilding it is what has made us what we are.Lisa Ryan: So what's your favorite part of your culture, right now, out of all the good things that you've done.Teresa Lindsey: It's hard for me to narrow it down because there's so much that I love about Channel Products, our people, and who we are. I would say that everybody here is excited and focus and loyal about being a part of something bigger than themselves. That's important to me, and it extends throughout our organization. It permeates in many different ways, and it manifests itself in a lot of different ways in our culture. We go above and beyond for employees.We do unique things. We are a unique culture. We have all the normal stuff - a game room and a gym in our building. We're unique in the way we approach our people. They have the option to work four 10s and take Fridays off. We give them paydays off to volunteer every year. We have a program where they all year long get chips poker chips in exchange for swag and gift certificates and tickets and airlines stuff. We have a lot of different events throughout the year. We do charitable things throughout the year. Our people appreciate all of that, but they're fiercely loyal to just the company's vision and making it successful. We support people on the back end. We've had many people here who have been diagnosed with, unfortunately, life-threatening illnesses that happen when you have many people. I believe we reap what we sow as an organization. I had one associate who did not show up to work for over a year because he struggled with cancer and unfortunately passed away. I never took him off of our payroll. I kept him on our payroll to continue to get benefits to continue to take care of him, even though he was not contributing from an actual business standpoint. We've done that a number of times here for folks. I believe that when you're good to people, and it goes beyond, "we had a party for them and gave them pizza." When you're genuinely good to people and they show up, and they see those examples, and they show up every single day, knowing wow if I were in that situation, this is how they would treat me. This is what I can expect from Theresa in the organization. That goes a long way to creating loyalty and fostering teamwork and camaraderie and stuff so.Lisa Ryan: Well, and when you give your employees time off to do volunteer work, what does that look like.Teresa Lindsey: So we have our Channel cares portion of our organization, and we do some pretty cool philanthropic stuff. COVID obviously, last year was a bit challenging with those things, but we've done things. One example that I give because everybody loves it and other people have emulated it is that we took the entire company into four teams. We surprised them. They showed up that day, and we said, surprise, this is what we're doing today. We sent them out on limo buses. Each team had a limo bus, and $250, we bought them matching T-shirts for their teams and everything it was a competition for Channel chips. I mentioned our elevate program with the Channel chips.Employees had to go out into the surrounding community. They had three hours to do as many random acts of kindness that they could do. They just had to figure it out as a team and tell the driver where they wanted to go.Where do they go, and what are they going to do? And it was the spur-of-the moment. There are categories like who can do the most random acts of kindness? Who does the coolest, most unique thing? Who can bring back the most money? Who can just do genuine random acts of kindness without spending money? We had all these categories for winning, and that day they went out and did over in three hours. We did over 100 random acts of kindness - everything from coloring books and crayons to the hospital's children's unit. They took stuff to the fire department and the police department. They took Gatorade to construction workers. They stopped and paid for gas. They went to a drugstore, found a woman standing in line, and paid for her prescription. They had to take a picture of everything they did, verify, and text it back to us while they were out doing this. We were keeping trackback at the home base. One team took a picture around a woman in a dental chair - they paid her copay that day—so unique things.That extends over into the volunteer days. We allow our people to volunteer any place they want. There is a form they have to fill out and have signed. It's not a day on the boat. They have to go and give up themselves, but we pay them to do that. A lot of times, they'll get together as a department, or different people in the organization will pull together. We did shut down one entire day, and we paid all of our employees to go and work at the Cleveland food bank.We do a number of things like that as part of our philanthropic arm. We try to be unique rather than just cutting a check. I feel like anybody can do that. We try to approach it with maybe some more teeth and grit.Lisa Ryan: Right, so what are some of the things that keep you up at night.Teresa Lindsey: Thinking of how to leverage this wave that we're on as a company. I almost feel guilty saying this amid the challenges of a...

Connect with Scott Gauvin:Website: www.macresco.comLisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest, Scott Gauvin. Scott is a seasoned change agent with over 25 years of experience successfully helping organizations realize their potential.Throughout his career, Scott's focus has been on driving performance gains through organizational alignment and a progressive operation strategy approach. He has advised companies the world over and across a wide range of industries, including pharmaceuticals, biotech, consumer goods, medical devices, agriculture, packaging, legal services, banking, food processing, and industrial manufacturing. He holds a BA from the University of Massachusetts, an MBA from Boston University, and is a Six Sigma black belt. Scott, welcome to the show.Scott Gauvin: Thank you, Lisa. It's a pleasure to be here.Lisa Ryan: So share with us a little bit about your background and what has led you into the work you do, particularly with lean.Scott Gauvin: Early in my career, I worked for a manufacturer and got a chance to play in many different areas and learned a lot about some of the issues that plague manufacturing companies. I realized a disconnect between some of the changes we were creating and how we created that change. Throughout many experiments that went awry, we learned that one of the things we struggle with is implementing sustainable change.When we're implementing and practicing lean, one of the things that I've focused on - especially the last probably 10-15 years, is how to create change, but more sustainably. My focus is on the human element of lean practices.Lisa Ryan: That was one of the things that we were talking about a little bit before we started the interview because manufacturers are pretty much familiar with lean. Everybody, at some point, is doing lean. You mentioned that a lot of them are only doing about 50% of lean. So what are they doing rightScott Gauvin: Lean comes from the American executives' work who studied the Toyota operating model back in the 1980s. They've adapted it to their operating models, but there are two parts of that Toyota model: one is continuous improvement, and the other is respect for people. Many equate the respect for people as being nice to people. You should be nice because that's the right human thing to do, but the idea of respect for people isn't about being nice. The respect for people part is Toyota's operating mindset, which forms their culture.The respect for people pillar is about the mindset you establish. The focus is on the human element of change. How you're incorporating every stakeholder into the change equation and letting their skills, their talents, their knowledge, their experience transform the organizations. Manufacturers get this wrong because they focus only on the continuous improvement side of these two pillars, and they give lip service to the respect the people piece. They implement the tools and then focus on creating cost reductions or productivity improvements.Lisa Ryan: And why do you think they are they're thinking that? Do they perhaps feel that those soft skills are not contributing as much to the bottom line? Where is the disconnect?Scott Gauvin: I think it all comes out of what's driving the need. What's driving the executive is we've got to get our numbers up; we've got to improve our performance, and so, what are the tangible things that we can do that? We can see that we can affect those. There are many tools in the lean methodology that helped drive change that will ultimately reduce waste or increase productivity. The problem is that a lot of those changes aren't sustained. There's an industry week article floating out there that they did a study that suggested that as much as 97% of lean efforts fail to achieve what they set out to accomplish.Most start their lean efforts with the wrong purpose. They set out to reduce costs to eliminate ways to improve efficiencies; thus, they focus on the metrics instead of focusing on a holistic approach, which is a combination of the tools and the mindset in the culture around the respect for people aspect. The purpose is around the respect people piece. It's not about being nice. The purpose is to engage the stakeholders to create more value. That's why we're doing this continuous improvement thing.If we're focused on just reducing costs, that's got a shelf life that's not very long. This is why we often see a lot of clients who call us back to help them. It's because they've done lean, or they've had some lean initiatives they didn't stick to. The efforts aren't sustained, and so they're asking us to help them with another approach. What we're seeing, when we do an evaluation, is that there's a lack of understanding and implementation of the respect of people piece.Lisa Ryan: it's interesting because you think, with only two pillars, that would be 50% each. 50% of the time, we're focusing on continuous improvement, and then the other 50% is that respect for people. For the companies that are making that mistake, what would you say that their ratio is?Scott Gauvin: There are two kinds of organizations: there are organizations who have been doing this for a long time and have come around to understand what the respectful people piece is. They understand that it is a mindset shift. It is a cultural shift. It's the way we operate as opposed to. We do the continuous improvement side are the things that we do -the immediate needs. We focus on continuous improvement. For the average organization, it's like 98% continuous improvement tools and maybe a nod to the respectful people piece. There are very few organizations that I've been to that do a good job with the respect for people piece because it focuses on the mindset and the culture of the organization itself.Lisa Ryan: And what are some of the things that you advise your clients to start to do to get stronger in that respect for people aspect of lean.Scott Gauvin: It goes back to the mindset. One of the things that we do with our clients when we're heading down this path is when we look at why they are doing lean in the first place. What's the purpose of it? It's almost always to improve the operational efficiencies and reduce costs, in some ways. Then we migrate the conversation over to the people aspect because if they're people, they will be more capable of better buy-in. If the people were more engaged, the result would be the productivity improvement, the reduction of costs, the elimination of waste, and so, a lot of the conversation is around what are the right mindsets that the organization needs to adopt to have it be part of the way we do things as opposed to creating these events that almost forced the change to happen.One of the first things we do is an evaluation of what is the current mindset and what are the mindsets that we want to migrate to. Then we create a path to migrate from the current mindset to whatever that future mindset is that we want to have.Lisa Ryan: So does that start with an employee survey, or how do you figure out what the mindset is?Scott Gauvin: So the mindsets are usually dictated by leadership. Whatever the leaders think usually permeates through the rest of the organization. It's a conversation with the key leaders in the organization around what do. I'll give you an example: one of the questions that I ask when I sit down with the leadership team is, "On a scale of zero to 100, what percentage of the employees at this organization come to work to do their best every day.? The executives usually will come back somewhere between 25 to 80%. That gives me a sense of where their mindset is in terms of the employee. I start to describe to them that they should think that the answer to that question is 100%. Now, what they'll say to me is, "Oh well, but I can tell you the guy. I know the guy that doesn't come to do his best every day." I explain to them is it's not about that guy, it's about your mindset. How do you see the people in your organization? Because if you see that only 50% of them are coming to do their best, well, then guess the decisions you make, how you resource, the policy decisions you make, the change process, and the changes you make. Because now you're making changes, based on the 50% of the population is trying to get one over on you. That drives all kinds of waste in itself. The first mindset shift has to be with the leadership that everyone comes to work every day, thinking that 100% of the people are coming to work to do their best and if they're not doing their best. What is it that's getting in their way? What can I do to remove those barriers? That's one of the first ways that we do an evaluation; it's a conversation.Lisa Ryan: It sounds like it could be a difficult conversation if you run into a leader that comes up right off the BAT and says only 20% of my people, and that's how they're seeing it that's such an interesting perspective. How do you have that conversation and get that leader to start thinking it's not my people it's me.Scott Gauvin: It's not my job to necessarily change their mind it's my job to create the environment that hopefully inspires them to reconsider their approach. What they've been doing isn't working, so they want to do something different. I'm proposing a new approach. If you change your mindset, you change your thinking; you change your approach because if you want to change the outcomes, you first have to change your mindset; changing your mindset will then drive a new set of behaviors. Those new behaviors we can then form into new habits those new habits, then ultimately create the outputs are the results are the outcomes that we're looking for. It's a process if they have a better path to get to those outcomes, well then they'd probably be pursuing it, and so there are occasions when I've had an executive say now I'm sticking to my guns it's only 20%, and what I'd say is that I can't help you. If you're not willing to change your mindset, we're not going to change behaviors. If we don't change behaviors, we can change habits, and if we don't change the habits, you're going to get the same outcomes that you've always been getting.Lisa Ryan: Well, so when it comes to mindset changing, what is the very first thing that a leader listening to this podcast may do to get started.Scott Gauvin: Thinking about what is the intention behind the behaviors that they're engaged in. Why are they making that decision? Are they making that decision for something that is for themselves, or are they making that decision for something beneficial to those around them? That's the first challenge you can use to evaluate do you have the right mindset or not if the if it's so that I can get my numbers up that I can look good or so that I can achieve my goals if you're saying a lot of me and my or I the chances are you've got a tainted mindset. If you're saying to help my team to help my people to make it more effective to get more their voice into the conversation to utilize more of their skills and talents and knowledge and experience, well, then you're probably on the right path. There are degrees there that you can look at, but the first thing would be to look at yourself and evaluate the behaviors you're engaging in. Are you doing those things for your intrinsic reasons, or you're doing them to help others around you.Lisa Ryan: It reminds me of going through sales copy or speeches, or whatever and doing "I" surgery on it when you're removing all of those "I's" and looking at the needs of that customer that prospect to that audience member. It sounds like that is a good beginning step for people is to do some "I" surgery.Scott Gauvin: The other thing I always come back to in these change efforts, we always talk about getting buy-in. I think leaders can improve their odds of success by getting better buying, and buying is a combination of creating clarity and listening. If you want people to buy in, first they've got to understand what they're buying into and why leaders don't do a good job of creating that clarity. You're on a need to know basis, and right now, you don't need to know. That doesn't work for any change effort. The second is listening. People need to express their concerns, fears, and disillusionment of whatever the changes they need to be. They need to have a platform where they can disagree debate it out. Once they've had that moment that they can have that conversation, and their voice has been heard. When we've had that conversation and talked about why they don't like the idea, why do they don't want to change, there's a much greater chance that they will commit to that change, even if they disagree with it because they understand what the change is for and their voice has been heard. They've been at least able to express their concerns or their reservations about the change. That's another thing that leaders could do if you want to increase your change success and create better by creating clarity and listening.Lisa Ryan: Creating that safe environment for people to express what they like what they don't like. I tell people in my programs to become the master of the poker face. No matter what that employee tells you, no matter what that person in your organization tells you, your only responses, thank you for sharing - even though you want to say no, that's not right. But that safe environment is being okay with whatever employees say. That sounds like that has a big part of getting the buy-in that we need to move forward.Scott Gauvin: The other thing that we often see is that people shy away from it because they're afraid of the conflict that might arise out of that. Like you were saying, you have to have that poker face. I don't think it's a bad thing to say. I'm not sure I agree with you on that, and here's the reason why.Those conversations are the richest because if we shy away from the conflict that might create. It's okay for us to have differences of opinion. The differences of opinion create the platform for us to share. If there's one thing that I would tell people, don't shy away from the conflict. That's just a difference of opinion, and it sometimes involves some strong emotions. But what I would say is don't have a poker face manage your feelings around it so that you don't retort back or don't just be dismissive about it, but have the conversation. The conversations have the richness and opportunities you can debate because I know I'm not always right as a leader in my organization. I'm not going to admit that to my team always because we don't want to say that we're wrong but, but allowing yourself not always to be right as a leader is a powerful thing. People have different knowledge that they're bringing to the situation, so allowing that conflict to bubble up and have the conversation respectfully, of course, is valuable.Lisa Ryan: When, in the beginning, you said that respect wasn't about being nice and that clarification of the fact that when you're nice is when you're conflict avoidant. People aren't necessarily feeling safe because I don't want to hurt their feelings. But respect comes from the opportunity to share a difference of opinion and still like each other, or at least be polite to each other at the end of the day, right.Scott Gauvin: Right, and we have a workshop that we often run. It's a primer workshop for a lot of the change efforts that we do. We always run this workshop before we start any new lean effort. It's called conflict is the root of all waste, and the idea behind this this this workshop is that a lot of the waste that we see are the symptoms of unresolved conflicts. If we got good at engaging in productive conflict respectfully, not only are you creating that environment of respect for people, but you're almost encouraging it. We're saying we want to have the conflicts to flush out what is underneath all of these ways because the reason why a lot of these wastes keep coming back on people is because they're dealing with the surface waste and not the underlying current that's driving the waste in the first place.I often equate it to my lawn. The lawn comes up, and it looks beautiful, and then all sudden, I start seeing the weeds. What do I do? I mow the lawn, and the weeds are gone. My lawn looks beautiful, and then two weeks later, we get a little bit of rain, and two weeks later, the weeds are right back. What we often do with our lean activities is mow the lawn. We knocked down the problems, but they just keep coming back because we haven't addressed the fundamental root. That's the root of that waste, which is that unresolved conflict. If you're practicing respect for people, you're willing to go at the root, not just cut the surface waste.Lisa Ryan: Now that is a powerful explanation of getting to the root of that. We're getting to the end of our time together. Scott, what are some of the ways you serve your clients and the best way for people to get in touch with you.Scott Gauvin: Our practice revolves around three key pillars, one is helping organizations develop strategies to grow their businesses, and so that then leads into the operation components, where we help organizations with their lean efforts. And the third piece is around the culture organizational development piece. What we find is that they're all three are connected if you. If you've got a good strategy, then that strategy can inform where you're going to operate and support the way you operate. You need to have a good culture, and so we help organizations where those three meet.The best way to learn more about myself or my organization is to go to our website macresco.com. There's a ton of information about our models, our approach, and there's a way to contact us right there.Lisa Ryan: Well, wonderful, Scott. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and insight when it comes to lean and that respect for people it's been a blast catching up with you.Scott Gauvin: Thank you, so it's been a lot of fun.Lisa Ryan: i'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers' Network podcast. See you next time.