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I will be presenting a series of articles relating examples that influenced my career during my 40 plus years in management. Some helped my career some were setbacks. While all may not be relevant to you, my hope is that they may spark an idea that will lead to advancement in your career or help you to avoid mistakes along the way.
Georgia Pacific was very supportive of our hometown community. The United Way was a large contributor to the philanthropic needs of Crossett and the surrounding area. The company had whole-heartedly supported their annual drive, but it had been going downhill and the drive had not met their goals over the past several years. They were having trouble getting volunteers to help with the drive and no one wanted to be Chairman. The board called a special meeting of some of the community leaders and simply said; "if we can't find a leader and sufficient volunteers we will have to disband the United Way fund".
I have always supported the concept of the United Way and I didn't want to see it fail. I knew the company felt the same way, so I volunteered to serve as Chairman. I felt with the right leadership we could have a successful campaign. The first thing I did was to enlist some key people I knew had the leadership abilities and influence in town. These included the publisher of the newspaper, the general manager of the radio station, a couple of innovative enthusiastic home makers, a manager of the electric utility who was respected among the business community, and representatives from each of the 3 mills in town.
The first thing we did was set a budget. It was intentionally set higher that the previous years' budget, which had not been met. Our rationale was to convey to the public that the committee had confidence in our success.
The next order of business was to erect a huge thermometer that charted our progress toward goal. We then held a town meeting featuring a band and speeches by community leaders. It wasn't a huge crowd, but we got great coverage from the newspaper and radio.
One of the past failures had been the length of the campaign. The solicitors didn't feel any sense of urgency and tended to procrastinate, in fact a lot of them didn't finish their solicitation. So the committee decided to shorten the campaign to 10 days. This was not a unanimous decision; a lot of people thought it could not be done in that short amount of time. I knew it would take a lot of planning for this to work and that's what we did.
On kick-off day everything was in place, all of the volunteers had their assignments, and were well versed on the urgency of completing their jobs within the time frame. Our committee created some publicity stunts to rally the town for the upcoming drive. We held a parade down Main Street, a car bash where we charged $1.00 for a sledgehammer blow. Even the children were involved. They set up lemon-aide stands throughout town. By doing this we generated a lot of great publicity. The newspaper and radio ran a series informing the public as to how the fund would be used to benefit the community. Therefore when the campaign started there was a lot of enthusiasm building, it was quite amazing to see the turn-around.
The first day of the campaign was a huge success. We took in pledges that amounted to 27 percent of our overall goal. I knew then that it was going to be a success. However with all my enthusiasm I didn't realize just how successful this was going to be. We made our goal in the first 6 days and by the end of the 10-day campaign we had pledges totaling 147 percent of our goal. That was the most money ever raised for a United Way drive in Crossett.
Even though it was not the reason I took on the Chairmanship, this was a huge boost for my career. My boss was a great supporter of the United Way, and he was delighted with the success of the campaign. I received complimentary letter of congratulations from the vice president of the Crossett Division, Mr. Bill Norman, and to my great surprise another very nice letter from Mr. Bob Pamplin, the President of Georgia Pacific. My point here is you can gain recognition by participating in community projects.
This next example of recognition turned out to be the turning point of my career. It was my first production job and provided me the opportunity to prove I was up for the task.
The tissue mill had been in operation for over a year, and while the paper machines were doing quite well, the converting department was struggling. They were not meeting their budget and had not turned a profit since start-up. They had consultants and corporate engineers from our other mills trying to help, but it just didn't come together. The manager decided to replace the converting superintendent. When I got wind of this I asked to have my hat thrown in the ring for his job. I had always wanted to get into production and from my perspective this was a great opportunity. I had been studying the operation and felt very confident that it could be turned around.
Before I even knew that I had the job, I developed a plan of action. The first day I took over I began to implement my plan. I met with the key people and asked for their input. Equipment down time was one of the major problems of the department. I felt the maintenance supervisor was very competent but seemed to be a bit lethargic in the execution of his duties and it pretty much permeated to his crew. The previous superintendent was a bit autocratic and began to micromanage those who worked for him. The maintenance supervisor was one of those people and he didn't like it. I think he basically waited to be told what to do before he responded to a problem; he just was not taking any initiative.
I had concluded that this man held a very important key to the success of this department, and I needed to cultivate him. I had established a solid relationship with him and he eventually became my confidant. I asked for his advice on a variety of issues, not all maintenance related, and he was very helpful. Maintenance people see a lot of things that the production supervisors don't see, and I got a lot of insight from him about some of our problems. But the real benefit came as his confidence grew and he began to creatively and enthusiastically solve his maintenance problems, again it permeated to his crew.
I established a measuring system to track our downtime on a shift-to-shift basis (we worked 3 rotating shifts 7 days a week; days, swing and graveyard). Within weeks we started to see a substantial improvement in downtime, which of course meant increased production.
On the production side, I established a large blackboard showing the previous shift's production. I placed it in a very prominent position so when the shifts changed, the oncoming shift would see the production from the previous shift. I didn't say a word about competition, but the workers picked up on it and the contest began. They each tried to improve upon the production of the previous shift. They didn't always do it, but I made sure when they did I was there to congratulate them.
The third month after I became superintendent we made a profit. To celebrate I held a good old Southern fish Fry for all the crews. They had each contributed to that profit and I wanted them to know that. Eventually we reached a plateau where it became more difficult to set records and the competition kind of fizzled out, but the production didn't. We ended up with a very good year, considerably above budgeted profit.
This is where I first developed the philosophy of team management. I inadvertently practiced this in this my first production job, and didn't realize what it was until I started reading about it several years later. I saw that by giving each employee ownership and responsibility and then following it up by providing support and recognition, inevitably success would follow. Later in my career I took on a monumental task of trying to educate an entire work force of about 2,100 people to use this management philosophy.
I must say I really enjoyed this experience; it was the most rewarding job I had held thus far in my career. I really thrived on the challenge of working toward goals that could be very accurately measured, and where success or failure was tangible. I also appreciated that no one was looking over my shoulder watching my every move-I was given the control to make a difference.
At one of the corporate meetings someone asked me how I accomplished this turnaround? My answer was simply this, "I didn't; the people did. I merely provided the support they needed to get the job done." And that's a fact!
In conclusion on my discussion of recognition, I would like to make the point that by far and away the best way to obtain recognition is your job performance. Make the extra effort to perform above expectations.
My next article will be discussing EDUCATION and the important role it will play in your career.
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