After my story about a 1970's learning effort IMHO in which I participated
(...... Only through building trust, caring for each other, collaborative
thinking, engaging our minds to look at the whole system, and some dumb
luck did we begin to care about the plant. WE more than doubled capacity,
reduced manpower needs by 40 per cent, and decreased consumer complaints
by a factor of 6. ****When I moved to a new job, this effort stopped along
with the improvements and original ideas we implemented........)
Jack Patterson asked in L.O. 1547
>Does this last comment mean that learning stopped at that company? Who did
the >learning you or the organization? Sounds to me like the reason for the
improvement >was through your efforts.
(Jack, it was a plant of about $150M in size, out of a $20B company.)
Sadly enough it did mean that the learning in this half of the plant
stopped for over 2 years. Remember that I mentioned this was the late
1970's and at that time these operators were not allowed to gather as one
whole team to discuss how to make their part of the plant run better. (To
meet meant overtime and after all, there was no need to get them together,
the engineers were the ones who solved problems in those days.) I would go
into work early and catch the person on night shift and listen to them at
shift change to catch clues as to what might be going on in the plant and
what they were doing to "keep it running" in spite of itself. And, on day
shift, I'd spend about an hour with that operator quizzing them for their
ideas for cause and remedies. For any one systemic problem, it would take
us two months to a year to discover a solution. (We also worked on
simpler, linear problems but got so good toether that we could get them
usually in a day or two. Part of our team fun was to set a maximum time
frame for finding the root cause and developing a solution on linear
problems. Since I was not a boss, this was not threatening.)
After I had gone onto another job, the operators had no one to listen to
them, integrate their input, ask questions of them, examine the system
(100 critical variables, six small unit operations) and make up
experiments with them. About 18 months after I left, the plant manager
realized what had been going on and hired an eager beaver young engineer
with native curiosity who could speak English (as opposed to Engineer)
with the operators. In about a year, the neat inventiveness returned to
this part of the plant. Ironically, I returned to the plant as the manager
three years after he had arrived. I mentioned to the other engineers that
I had worked with the operators in the same manner as this one engineer
and I thought it was really a good way to round out their personal
learning.
Only one of the six did not get the hint. Productivity went up 23 per cent
in 18 months. We slashed consumer complains by a factor of two. Plant OSHA
recordables were zero for two years after being at 6 per year prior to my
coming in.
I am not a hero and not trying to portray that. In my sojourn as an
engineer and later as a manager, I stressed learning. I asked people
everyday what they had learned. If someone told me "nothing", I replied it
was too bad they were wasting their life staying stagnant. I believe many
in our society (including college educated folks) have turned learning
over to a few "chosen" folks. I sensed some of that going in on the Pay
for Learning conversation and wanted to emphasize learning needs to be
paid for by an organization. If not, just automate every single thing. It
will run with a little maintenance attention. It just won't improve.
People should not be paid to just make something run.
Says my sister, the college professor, Dave this doesn't pertain to my
work. Says she, I can't automate my job. I asked her if she was learning
how to teach material faster, with more relevance, integrated with other
departments as a system for learning, and with more joy in learning by her
students. She said no. She has a certain amount of material to get across
and she does not have time to learn how to improve all of those things.
Besides, today's students just don't care. You see, my sister's management
(college administrators) have apparently automated her job with a robot.
They are paying her for doing, but not learning. She is the robot. We have
artificial intelligence systems that maybe could teach the course material
this well. (By the way, she does research on the side to get rid of the
boredom. Sounds like my reason for being a learning engineer.)
Frederick Taylorism helped have people hang up their brains at the gate
and leave their heart in the car (thanks, Fred Koffman). Thanks to our
interpretation of Taylorism, we threw stuff away for years. Only the
educated elite were allowed to learn at work. Do we believe people should
be paid to just show up and do their job? I thought that is what came out
of our failed experiment with Taylorism.
I was telling my story to show what Team Learning contributed to the
operation in which I worked. Deming said - pride in work, joy in learning.
People were bored in this plant. As soon as I could get them involved in
the learning, they argued, smiled, sketched, made gadgets, etc. All in the
name of fun to make it a better place to work (Yup!! It wasn't even
externally focused.) We just got better and better.
You see, as an engineer I did LEAD the learning effort. However, tt was in
the operators all the time. I left, a new engineer came along. He also
brought out what was in the operators. If no one will bring it out,
nourish it, teach people how to do it, team learning will not happen very
easily if they have been treated like a robot for years. WE have
generations of bad, non-learning, habits to get rid of. WE have
generations of not listening to each other. WE have generations of a
pretense of listening. These habits won't just go away on their own. WE
need to help them go away.
Have a great day and fun life!!!
-- Dave Buffenbarger dwbuff@aol.comME turned upside down is WE!!