How to become a plant manager - my Advice

okay folks every once in a while i go off script off maintenance and reliability to answer a viewer question or comment today from a subscriber i'd love to hear your thoughts on how to become a plant manager perhaps your personal journey uh and suggestions for aspiring leaders you know folks my uh jobs that i've had in my career you can find on linkedin you know just go there list it out okay uh what i chose to do for this video is share some of my key lessons i learned during those roles and all of this i'm going to have on my brand new website links below get on that website look under docs documents and you'll see this um script that i'm actually uh making this video on uh you'll you'll see it there so uh no need to take notes you can just listen this is joe from lean driven reliability bridging the gap between best practices that you know you should be doing that you hear about in seminars and magazines but can't quite figure out how to do in your culture this is for you there's no single right path to becoming a plant manager ask 10 people you're going to get 10 different roadmaps okay but it's critical that you learn lessons along the way to make you successful you know and i've listed five categories here uh that i'm going to go into uh where there's lessons under each one number one is people in a plant manager role you need to get results done and accomplished through other people so you got to be great at evaluating talent growing talent developing talent i spent about 30 percent of my time with people one-on-one growing okay 30 percent of my time i did that you got to be great at team dynamics building the team sponsoring the team you know you make tough decisions on people uh i thought i did this pretty well you you have a team that you're trying to put together sometimes you have an incredible talent but they're an individual contributor they do great things as their own but as a team they're not a good team member you need to make some changes there that's that's good and they're going to be tough you know you got to be open to influence you got to drive candor in the organization not telling the boss what he wants to hear what she wants to hear candor you guide and you delegate delegation is a key skill of a plant manager and number and the last thing under people you're not going to be the smartest person in the room you do not want to be the smartest person in your room you want to have your staff be more developed in certain areas of the business than you behaviors of a plant manager you got to win the bureaucracy battle this is the emails and meetings that can consume your life and take you off your agenda of driving change you gotta have a process to intimately know reality what's the real world not what's going on in your head um chalk circle observation right don't just believe all the kpis you got to take risk i love the steve jobs quote from apple today's dogma or today's rules today's culture was written by people no smarter than you take risk anticipate anticipate that's a skill to see opportunities before other people see them as opportunities see problems before other people see them you got to be optimistic engaging and charismatic leaders instill hope so plant manager you're the hope distributor h-o-p-e uh you gotta have a disciplined process for getting things done uh other videos i talked to in my book i talked about the a3 process two i use all the time uh you got to be able to execute a plan given overwhelming obstacles everybody's got challenges you got to be the person that can work through those challenges and get things done you got to sell your accomplishments seek out diverse experiences you know you can't it's very difficult to stay in one location and then accelerate up to a location manager role everybody does something well if you're part of a you know 10 location try to get to a couple of those everybody does something well you need to learn it you get better with diverse experiences maybe even have to leave the company to get that diverse experience you know read read you know you got to learn from others people that have done the job before they write it down in a book just like i have we write it down in a book learn those lessons be a uh just a vivacious reader you know audible get on audible while you're going to and from work network you know seek out candid feedback get a mentor and champion get a coach these people when you're 25 30 35 seek out people two levels higher in the organization that may be 50 55 60 and have them become your champion become your coach go to linkedin you know play around on that get connections go to conferences your plant manager opportunity may not be at your current company maybe at another one your resume i'll tell you if you're in manufacturing you know the best degree is a technical degree like an engineering degree which shows your you have systemic problem solving techniques and your database that's great also people look for an mba knowledge of the key business levers because you're you know this is all about making money unfortunately or fortunately in that in today's internet world where you log in online it's so easy to screen people out so if you get a you know a thousand people apply for a job you can just say i only want people with an engineering degree i only want people with an mba and that takes that from a thousand takes it down to maybe 14 something manageable so unfortunately um those are two of the ideal candidates in in our characteristics of somebody that is a candidate to have a technical degree in the mba but that does not have to be the case i do not have an mba but i did go to some courses uh for on finance for non-financial people uh from accredited accredited organizations like university of michigan or vanderbilt uh just a week-long course my company paid for got me those little check marks i can put by my name that attract people in an internet world you're not hired specifically for your resume those are just screening methods you're hired because your boss thinks you can get things done and and take the organization to a new level performance so you gotta hit hit results hard in your discussions in your and in your resume now i also you know i know i went through a lot of things here but what are my top four accelerators you know if i could just tell you four things that gonna accelerate your career what would they be number one read and have a continuous learning plan read read read i'm telling you most people will be too lazy to do it my son on audible used to go through a book a week imagine what you can accomplish and learn in a year consuming a book a week number two take risk you know you're going to have to take calculated risk you know if you want to change the rules you got to push the limits of the rules take risk number three get a mentor and a coach folks i can't stress this enough you know on my website that's one of the services that i offer is to be a mentor and a career coach for you so take a look at that uh number four uh accelerator is move companies change locations get that diverse experience to strengthen your resume strengthen your uh skill set by going to other locations last recommendation i have is you know create a grid go into excel create a little grid of your skills and behaviors rate yourself you know the ones you want to have as a plant manager all these plus whatever you may want to add to the list and rate them one to five you know get inter external feedback find a buddy get a coach to give you a feedback on all those characteristics or skills and then have a countermeasure in place if you have you know rate them one to five five being really strong core expertise of yours one being you're pretty weak in it what are you going to do about the ones and twos now that doesn't mean you go out and take a one and you're gonna go to school and con convert it to a five but you gotta have a plan here's an example i'm a mechanical engineer electrical things i'm not very good at so i when i build a team i'm looking for electrical expertise to help close that blind spot for me knowing your strengths knowing your gaps doesn't always mean you're going to fix your gaps it means you're going to counter measure your gaps okay again i'm gonna post this on my website you got the link in the video below go to that i'd love to see a lot of people uh check that out it's posted under documents folks begin your journey reliability it's really not that hard hopefully i'm making a little simpler for you here if i can help you out in any way send me a comment back on this video send me a message in linkedin send me an email on my website you'll see that i give a free hour of consultation no sales pitch just talking to you about your situation free hour talk to you later joe out

Channel: Joe Kuhn

Views: 4,654

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: reliability, reliability engineering, reliability and maintenance, maintenance best practices, reliability best practices, reduce maintenance cost, leadership

Id: quUCPqD_1oA

Length: 9min 43sec (583 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 09 2020