The Supervisor Transformed

by Jamie Flinchbaugh, co-author, The Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean

In a lean transformation, a lot of focus is placed on transforming senior leadership up to and including the CEO. This is proper effort.However, whether effective or not, the CEO has had to lead transformation before and will again. But what position in the organization changes more than anything? I propose the most dramatic change is to the role of the front-line supervisor. 

First, I see a major problem with how companies and the HR plans that support them deal with front-line supervision, starting with selection. As Lean Learning Center partner Andy Carlino says, "we take a super-worker and make them a supervisor." However, as Andy points out, those are drastically different skill sets. We assume a good employee is a good employee. But the skills and even the attitudes that makes someone a super worker are different than that which makes someone a good supervisor. 

Traditionally, the role of the supervisor would center around tasks such as attendance and pay management, workforce direction, and discipline and rules enforcement. Of course, a good supervisor would ascend above these tasks. However, job expectations, training, appraisals, and promotions would center on tasks centered on workforce control. 

In a lean transformation, a new role emerges. The primary cause of this is that the workforce is engaged to a new level, engaging not only the "hands and feet" but also the "hearts and minds" of every employee. Instead of simply holding people to the minimal requirement, it is about opening up the education and empowerment of the employee base, from top to bottom. With that in mind, the first-line of employee engagement rests on the shoulders of the supervisor. And therefore, the role must change to support it. 

The new role of the supervisor focuses on skill sets such as engaging employees in improvement instead of direction, facilitation of decisions making instead of just providing it, coaching on new skills instead of leaving it to training. These new skills require that we rethink the selection of supervisors, the training of them, and the support given beyond. 

Perhaps we need to rethink what appears to be the universal solution for preparing supervisors for lean transformation: 4-8 hours of generic lean training. How unoriginal. Yes this is what I see in 9 of every 10 lean transformation efforts. What should we do instead?

1. Make the training of supervisors more specific to their role, including specific expectations and skills that they should master. 

2. Change role descriptions and expectations

3. Start aligning your systems from selection and hiring to promotion to these new standards. 

4. Engage a process to mentor supervisors so they can continue developing these news skills.

You can also find Jamie's blog posts at LeanBlog or follow him on Twitter. 

Comments

[Jim Fernandez]

Is this right on or what. Right on target Jamie.!!

For many years I was an electronic technician. I could fix anything electronic. And I was a great instructor for the electronic apprentices. I was so good at my job that the company decided to make me a supervisor. I quickly found out that fixing machines and fixing people were two very different things. It took me many years to learn how to be a good supervisor. I’m sure you have heard of the “Peter Principle”. It states, In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of Incompetence. It’s very true except I would change the word “every” to “most”.

Currently I am a Lean Manager. I work in a manufacturing plant. We have three Lean Champions; myself, one worker and one supervisor. We three go through extensive lean training. The supervisor has had great success implementing lean. In order for lean to be successful in other parts of the plant I have to ask, plead, beg and spend many hours of my time trying to get the other supervisors to allow me to meet with them and their workers. In manufacturing any time spent not making product is time spent, not only not making money, but actually loosing money. So it is difficult to find the time to do lean projects. However, the one supervisor who is our lean champion is able to schedule his work around lean activities. He is able to schedule his workforce to get the manufacturing done and he still finds time to have his workers participate in lean events.

My point here is at my facility the front line supervisors are the ones that make lean happen. Actually the front line supervisors could make lean improvements in spite of upper management. I know that sounds crazy because we have always heard about how important it is to have management support for lean. But I’m convinced that if the front line supervisors were holding lean events and making progress and upper management had never heard of lean, upper management would be very happy. They would be saying, I have no idea what your doing....... just keep doing it.

[Paul Todd]

This posting is missing a critical topic, which coincidentally is sometimes referred to as the "missing link" in lean. The answer to this dilemma was organized in 1941 as Training Within Industry. The five needs of a supervisor were (and are) defined in TWI as:

Knowledge of the work
Knowledge of responsibilities
Skill in Instructing
Skill in Improving Methods
Skill in Leading

[Marie Provencher]

I now am that Supervisor I have 80 employees who report to me. But I try and plan my day around making lean happen. I get no support from the other two Supervisors, but when they announce my promotion I received a lot of flack because they remove one Supervisor from first and moved him to second and made me Senior Supervisor. I had turned the floor around to follow the lean vision the upper management gave me without any help from any of the other supervisors.Like you said They would be saying just keep going.
Now I'm stuck because I have no idea how to get the employees on the same page as me and train them to step up. I keep telling them it's all about empowerment of the people. If you have any suggestion on how to work with the people I would love to hear about it. Do you have any reading to suggest?

[Tim McMahon]

Great post Jamie. There are a couple of other thing that are worth mentioning for organizations working on lean transformations. First, this is a key group to win over for the transformation to stick so much emphasis should be placed on training and implementation of lean at this level. Second, not all supervisors will make the transformation through to the new role. They may not have the skill set for the new role. Many can learn and do convert successfully but some can not. Management must have a plan to work through this as they always need to consider whether the right people are in the right roles.

[Jamie Flinchbaugh]

Thanks everyone for great comments.

To Paul, you are correct. I did leave that out. TWI is a powerful method to develop front-line supervision. I did leave it out on purpose though. First, and I know you'll probably jump down my through for this, but I don't think it is the only way. Second, if the organization is having the right conversation about how the role of the supervisor is different, what they need, and how they can get it, then in the right circumstances they should end up on TWI. Thanks for bringing it up.

To Marie's question, I'm not sure I completely understand the situation. Actually, I'm sure I don't completely understand it because that would require direct observation and engagement. Anyway, based on my understanding, and books that might help, I would suggest The New Shop Floor Management by Suzaki, which is a classic for teams in a lean environment. A more recent book is The Toyota Way Fieldbook, written from the perspective of the Group Leader. You can see a review of that book here: http://www.theleanlibrary.com/the-toyota-way-fieldbook/

[Mike]

Marie--I would recommend the book Ten Steps to Empowerment by Diane Tracy. Great introduction to leadership, delegation, team building, etc. The book is organized in bite-sized chapters which also make for good group study and discussion. I've successfully used this book to introduce the concept of empowerment. You can find it on Amazon in paperback.

[Paul Todd]

Jamie, of course I should have realized you had a purpose in leaving out TWI, just didn't want others to miss the plug.

One unfortunate element of the current economic times which drives home your point is the number of talented lean experts now unemployed. As long as lean is a separate activity done by the Lean Promotion Office, corporate trainers, black belts, or consultants, it will eventually be cut out as a cost savings. It must be incorporated as a core part of what supervisors (and managers) do on a daily basis.

[Jamie Flinchbaugh]

Great point Paul. I think that if people do need to layoff temporarily, maybe take your "lean people" and put them into key roles, like supervision, and let them prove their message. I think the lean office should be a rotational assignment at best anyway.

Jamie

[Kevin Yamada]

As always, an enlightened perspective by Jamie. Allow me to dove tail onto his article with my thoughts about the "new" supervisor in a lean environment.
- Since the days of TQM and quality circles, the supervisor was often the neglected, "middle child" when it came to change initiatives. To get their buy-in, upper management would read the prescribed "book" to provide them with answers to the what "it" is and why they needed to do "it". The labor force would then be trained on how to work in a team. However, at that time, no one gave too much thought about how this might affect the supervisor and his/her role in the transformation.
- Ideally, I agree that it would be a good thing to eventually relinquish the "new" supervisor of the day-to-day mundane tasks and let the team "manage" themselves, but realistically and unfortunately, I have rarely seen this happen even in Shingo plants.
- Depending on who I'm speaking wtih, I tend to avoid the term "empowerment". It is frought with mis-interpretation and mis-perceptions.
- I do not see anything wrong with 4 to 8 hrs of "generic lean" education (!) as long as it is provided in conjunction, AND in sync, with "new" skill training, such as, communication, time/project management, understanding financial fundamentals, coaching/mentoring, A3-type problem solving, conflict management, statistical (dare I say Six Sigma?) application and analysis, and public speaking/presentation skills.