The "Hidden Knowledge" Factor

I have loved factories ever since I was a little kid. My first memory of being inside a factory was a 5th grade class trip to Christiania Spikerverk in Oslo, Norway. This was an old fashioned, dirty ironworks where everything from rebar to nails were made. It was smoky, dirty, and loud. Huge piles of scrap were melted in enormous pots over gigantic furnaces. Long,  red glowing ribbons of semi-solid iron snaked across huge factory floors. Presses hammered away incessantly, making all sorts of nails by the millions.


Later in life, I was fortunate enough to work for a wide variety of manufacturing companies and to visit even more. My jobs, most all in domestic and international sales and marketing roles, have taken me through companies making everything from automotive service equipment to aircraft components, and most recently to custom molded plastic parts for medical and automotive use. Better yet, I have been fortunate enough to have walked the enormous 747 assembly line at Boeing, seen magnesium billets forged into F/A18 landing gear at Alcoa, walked next to the Kawasaki motorcycle test facility outside of Kobe, Japan with bikes screaming past at more than 120 mph, and seen vast manufacturing halls in China filled with lines of women painting faces on plastic dolls. Truly, I have been lucky!


I have always believed that my ability to successfully sell and market products was due, in large part, to the time I spent time in the factories themselves and what I learned from the people who worked there. I got to learn the story of making the products, rather than what I wrote about the products in the marketing pieces. Getting close enough to molten aluminum and magnesium to feel the hair on my arms grow brittle, and talking with the people in the shiny, protective suites taught me not only about the product, but about the many processes that went in to making incredibly complicated jet engine components. Watching workers sweating in front of plastic presses, or on assembly lines on hot summer days taught me how work flowed throughout the factory, and how even small things could cause a significant impact on production.


In my experience, there is too much distance between those who make the products and those who market and sell them. Sales and marketing people tend to spend their time in their offices, while the factory workers spend their days on the floor. There is little, if any interaction, except when the sales guys or the executive management team give factory tours. All too frequently it seems that information flows only in one direction, from the offices to floor; and when the direction does change, it's because of production problems.  


At one of the facilities I worked, I was told by the owner's son that I had better stop my daily walks through the factory. When I asked why, I was told that I was the only one on the senior management team that walked the floor and that his father, the President and CEO, didn't like it. Returning from an overseas trade show one day, I found a check on my desk for "Services Rendered". Hasta la vista, baby.


I find this kind of attitude to be completely counterintuitive. What better way is there to instill pride in those that work in a factory than to tell them exactly how much the customers like the products they make? I thought that if I could tell them how important what they did was, and how positively it impacted what I did, we would all improve together, and it turned out I was right. I found that once the manufacturing staff had a better understanding of where their product ended up, they took a significant greater amount of care and pride in what they produced. Not because their efforts made my life easier, but because they now felt that they had both impact and value  on events further downstream.


Thinking back on events like this, I have come to the realization that there seems to be an extraodinary opportunity lost by not more closely involving those "that make" rather than just "those that sell". I think one of the keys to organizational success is to motivate those that do the actual production, and make them part of the story. Make them believe that what they do impacts positively, not only on their own company but that of their customers as well.


Conducting a facility tour becomes a much more enjoyable and exciting experience when the ones making the product speak glowingly about what they do and how it impacts their own company, and that of their customers than merely stand in the background turning out widgets while a suit does a dog and pony show.


What works for you?