Spelling it Out
© David Burton 2007
Spelling it Out |
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I ran across a memo that I had sent to my staff at a division of a small engineering
company several years ago. The message seemed to be as relevant today as it was then. In a shortened and edited
version, here it is.
Attitude We function as a group. If anyone falls down on the job, everyone suffers. There is no such thing as “I did my job - I’m done” until the total end product is finished. If anyone feels that the money he’s being paid does not entitle the company to eight hard and honest hours of his work, then he’d better start looking for a job elsewhere. If you don’t feel an obligation to yourself, the people with whom you work, the company from which you accept your pay, and the customer that pays for and receives the products you make, then go somewhere else - you don’t belong here. We’re too small a group to be able to carry dead wood. If you can’t carry your share of the load, then go where the load isn’t so great. We can argue up to the point that a decision is made. After that, I expect everyone to abide by the decision and to do his best to make the decision work. I will not stand for anyone ignoring a directive from the head of our division, from me, from a group leader, a team leader or a program manager. I don’t want to hear: “We can’t do it.” “We haven’t done it that way before.” “I don’t have the time.” “I haven’t enough funding.” I want to concentrate on only one thing - “How are we going to get the job done on-time, within budget, and to specification.” Effort As a bare minimum, I expect everyone on the payroll to work eight hours a day. That doesn’t mean just being here eight hours. Too much of our day goes into bull sessions, watching someone else work, extended lunch hours - you name it. I’ve talked with each of you about the plans for growth in our division. I’ve told you that if and when that happens, you get first crack at moving up the ladder. BUT, that isn’t going to be handed to you without your putting in the effort. If you think you can manage a group of people by just putting in an 8-hour day, you’re kidding yourself. The opportunities are going to be there for those who want to put in the extra effort and who are willing to learn to manage other people. From now on, I’m going to insist on several things:
We can’t afford to produce a design that costs 3 times as much to build as we budgeted. We will view all our product developments as design-to-cost developments. If we get into a design and find that building it is going to cost too much, then we’ll take the time to design in the necessary cost savings. Right now we stand to price ourselves out of business. For obvious reasons, we can’t afford to underbid on proposals. On the other hand, we can’t competitively bid on work by just basing our costs on brute force approaches. We’ve got to be creative enough to find the low-cost way of doing a job, and that means a lot of thinking, planning, keeping up with or ahead of the state-of-the-art, and by hard-nosed scheduling. It’s easy to write a proposal and cover your ass by just inflating the costs. We can’t win those proposals. It takes a lot of skill and effort to generate a proposal that minimizes the cost and the risk. A lot of the work we turn out requires expensive talent to assemble, align and maintain. That kills us because it means that we’re overpriced, but what may be even more important, it means that we have to commit scarce, highly talented manpower to jobs that less skilled and less costly people can be trained to do, if we give them the right documentation and if we take the time and effort to show them how to do it. That has to be a real goal for everyone. We can’t be concerned about providing job security by seeing to it that no one else can do the job. You may guarantee that as long as the job exists, it’s yours, but you’ll eventually price the job out of existence and guarantee that you can’t put your time and talent to more profitable use. I’ve talked a lot about planning and reporting. All too often that’s meant slapping something together to keep me and management off your back. Don’t bother! That’s worse than doing nothing because you’ve wasted your time and our time. When you do something, do it right. If you can’t, then face up to it. Tell me and we’ll find a way to do it right. We’re a small group. Each of us has certain strengths or specialties at which he’s good. Each of us has areas at which he’s not so good. If you try to do something all by yourself, you’re stuck with your weaknesses. If you involve other people who are strong in the areas in which you’re weak, then your weaknesses are unimportant. If you can design but can’t write, we can get someone to write for you. If you put together designs, but can’t visualize assembly problems, we can find someone to identify the assembly problems and suggest ways around them; but you’ve got to be willing to let other people contribute. Some of us go into design reviews with the attitude that we need to defend the design. The idea is not to criticize a design but to suggest ways to make it better. Some of us go into a design review and we keep our mouths shut because we don’t want to be criticizing a friend’s design. Is it better to let him turn out a poor design than contribute to making it a good one? Meetings, Reviews, etc. The function of meetings, reviews, etc is to provide information and solve problems. Problems are solved by people presenting completely divergent points of view and discussing (arguing) pro’s and con’s. If everyone has the same point of view, there is no need for a meeting. There will be no decisions “by committee.” The committee will present suggestions recommendations and alternatives, but the final decision will be made by whoever is in charge. We will run meetings efficiently - we will cut out the bull and the chitchat. Reports, plans, and estimates only serve a purpose if they help to get something done. Paperwork for paperwork’s sake is less than useless. Historical data is useless unless it helps to accomplish something in the future. Everyone makes mistakes. Successful people make them once; the average guy makes them twice; the idiot makes them three times or more. We don’t have room for idiots. When we make a mistake, I expect us to learn from it and not to repeat it. We need better documentation on everything we do - again, not for the sake of building up a mess of paper. Putting things down on paper means that other people can plan ahead. It forces you to think ahead and anticipate problems. It gives us historical data on which to base forecasts and to price and schedule jobs more accurately. It gives us a record to see if we’re improving or standing still. Because we’re a small group, just about everyone around here is a manager of one sort or another. Some of us are lousy managers and may never be good ones. Some of us just don’t know how to manage well because there’s been no training; some of us have stumbled along until we’re not too bad. We are going to provide the training and guidance to help those who want to be managers to acquire the skills that can make them good managers. It’s unfortunate that success is perceived by whether or not one can move up to be a manager - and that’s plain stupid! Not everyone will be a good manager. If anyone finds out he’s not a good manager, either because he just doesn’t have like managing or because it requires a set of talents that he doesn’t have - so what? Success doesn’t require you to be a manager. It does, however, require you to be the best you can be at whatever you do. Bringing in New People As we grow, there are going to be new people on board. We already have a few. We have the following choices:
Up till now, we’ve spent too much effort on trying to keep people happy. Well, I’m not happy and I know many of you aren’t. The only way to create a satisfying environment for everyone is to start running our division in a businesslike fashion, to become and stay profitable, and to grow. This means the business comes first and personal preferences second. That is the way I’m going to do things. That is my responsibility and for what I’m paid. I’ll try to accommodate to individual situations whenever possible, but only when it doesn’t adversely affect our group‘s performance. From now on, I expect each of you be responsible for maintaining budgets and schedules. There will be no design innovations because they are nice or better unless ‘better’ can be done within current budget. Always, it should be kept in mind that it is our intent to make money on each project. We are not a non-profit organization. I don’t want to find out about overruns as they are occurring. Potential overruns will be identified before they occur and will be avoided. If you plan well enough and far enough in advance, then there will be very few overruns. If you can’t do that, then the responsibility for controlling your work will be taken away from you and given to someone who can. If you want to be given the privilege of managing yourself and others, then you have to accept the responsibility to the company that goes with it - i.e., making a profit. If you manage a program, then you must manage the whole ball of wax - even if your discipline is in one area, you still must be responsible for everything associated with the program. That means keeping track of scheduled events, milestones, budgets, reports, design considerations, etc - the whole works. When you look at a task and try to reduce the costs, that can’t be done just by saying, “I’ll do it in 80% less time.” You’ve got to think about it, plan it, and find a way that really results in less cost. By and large, we have a very competent group of people here with a lot of talent. But, to date, I don’t think that we’ve made the best use of this talent. From now on, I want to make the best use of the talent that we have. With more attention to the planning effort, with better control of where we spend our time, money and resources, by bringing in people to fill in the gaps in our competence, and by honestly and conscientiously trying to work as a team, we can be successful. I cannot do all of this by myself. If we succeed, it’ll only be because each and every one of us puts in the extra effort to make it happen. All I can do is to try and help everyone here make the best use of his time and talent and I’m willing to put in whatever is needed to do this. I’ll work with you; I’ll get you help where I can; I’ll let you go as far as your ambition and your talent can carry you. To be fair to everyone here and to the company, though, we can’t afford the luxury of keeping anyone who isn’t carrying his share of the load and I’m going to be hard-nose about this. I’ve worked with all of you long enough to know that each and every one of you has the talent, albeit in very limited areas of specialty in some cases, to contribute to our success. Whether you want to put the effort into making our group successful is up to you. Don’t worry about what you can’t do or what you might not do well, just concentrate on those things that you’re really good at. Be honest with yourself, though, and accept advice and help in those areas in which you are not so good. Over the next few weeks, I will take time to sit down with each of you individually to answer any questions you have about what I’ve just said, about any suggestions you have and to talk about what I expect from you and what you want from me. |
| 10 December 2007 {Article 26; Undecided_06} |