Leader to Leader: Jim Solberg, Part 2

Foreign Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us here. JLC Media. This is a series that we're doing right now, podcasts, leader to leader. And today we are very fortunate for the second time to have imposed on someone's time and willingness to help us learn more about leading in a learning organization. And this particular gentleman, as he'll tell you in a moment, sense of experience, really understood the need to develop a series of processes and methods to make sure that people really could learn what they needed to learn in order to accomplish what they wanted to accomplish. Really important stuff that's been stolen a long time ago from a number of great gurus in leadership in our country and in Europe and actually also some in the Asian environment that kept saying we need to learn how to change that which we must change. Learning was everything in all the environments that are out there, almost irrespective of the cultures. So today we're going to talk a little bit about that and I hope you guys will enjoy looking for some takeaways. As you know, those of you that listen to us, please feedback. I get a bunch of verbal feedback from neighbors and whatnot that listen to our podcasts and I get some written feedback also. So feel free to think about what you're learning, what your takeaways are so you can give them to us. So with that said, I'll start with you, Colleen. Tell us who you are and what you're doing here with us today.

Sure. My name is Colleen Sullivan. I've worked with the Jorgensen Learning center for over 12 years and I've had the pleasure of working with senior executives such as Jim, who we have on here today. And it's a pleasure just to have you on the show again. I think the last recording, hopefully everyone out there listened to it already and if you haven't, please go back and do so. You can hear some master stories that Jim shared with us with some great takeaways and direct application of some of the things that he's lear learned in his leadership journey. And it's just a pleasure to be here today with you.

That's great, Jeff. Give us your two cents again. Who are you and what you doing here, brother?

Okay, worked for Ford Motor Company for 35 plus years, all in manufacturing, mostly project management in the beginning and then manufacturing operations at the end and built cars and trucks and then moved into things that make noise and are dirty and nobody wants to do like engines and transmissions and stuff like that. That really makes things move in the transportation business. So had a wonderful career Enjoyed my job every day, and as we talked before, treated it like I was able to learn something every day that I worked.

Beautiful. Thank you, Jim. Really glad you're here. So, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to set the stage, and I'm going to turn to Jim and Colleen, and they will mostly have the conversation, the two of them trying to think about the right way to set this up around learning. So I had the privilege of leaving the United States and traveling to Europe and the Middle east and the near east to do some presentations on conversational leadership, the work that we do. And I came across the fact that in some of these cultures, the leader is not called leader. They're called depending upon the language, but the one in Western Europe you hear the most is maestro. Now, when I hear maestro, I think about an orchestra leader, which is really interesting, because if you go hear a concert, you don't even notice the orchestra leader. After a few minutes, the group is playing and they're making music. And at the very end, you may get a flowery bow, but that's about the only next time you'll see that particular person called maestro. And in those cultures, which are all about learning. I was a violinist, and I never got to sit first chair because I wasn't good enough to sit first chair in the. In the orchestras that I played in. However, that first chair was a big deal because it was like the maestro and first violin watched over everyone to make sure they had what they needed in order to perform together effectively. Maestro, leader. So today I'm going to invite all of you to be listening to understand some of the key components to the leader, the maestro in an organization, so that each of you. Each of you can say, that's for me. That's a takeaway that I can use. Now, Jim, what we do now is I'm going to pivot to Colleen and then to you. And the setup was. Put a lot of time into thinking about the setup for today, and I want to make sure it landed on you guys. Well, Colleen, what did you hear me say? What did it mean to you?

Sure. What I heard you describe as a story, kind of giving a little context about learning and a leader and making that comparison to a maestro. And so you encouraged everyone. Today, we're going to talk about the key components of what does that mean and what does that look like to be a maestro and to be a leader. And at the end of this, as we always do, we encourage people to be thinking about what is some sort of a practical application of Some of the components that they're learning about that they're committed to doing at the end of our podcast today.

Thanks, Colleen. Jim, did you hear anything more or different?

Well, everything you talk about then kind of rolls back through my filter of work. And one of the things when I got into level in the organization where I was, instead of just doing things, I was responsible for the results and had to guide the team is we get stuck too much in my mind on being a leader or being a manager. And many times you get in front of people and they say, well, you got to be a leader or you got to manage this. And there's really no way not to include both of those leadership roles. And, you know, you talked about a maestro might even be a better way of describing how you blend that. But, you know, managers have. Have the connotation of being not all knowledgeable. They know how to do everything, and if you just do what the manager says, you're going to be successful. And leaders have these. This perception with, with people that, well, you just follow me and do what I do and, and you'll be great. And the truth is that there's a hell of a lot of work that's involved below that in terms of getting an entire organization to be pieces of both of that and then have the technical knowledge to be able to accomplish whatever you're supposed to do. And so your leader, manager person is responsible for putting an organization on a path to accomplish the goals of the business. Period.

So that is really a wonderful sentence to put people on a path, a path that would then create the desired goals of the system. Is that right? That I hear you correctly?

Yeah. And, you know, depending on what business you're in, the path varies widely. But how do you get an organization to move as one and not be stifled by. Do it, like I said, to do it because you're denying the contribution of the people that are participating.

I love it. I love it. Jimmy. Colleen, what are you thinking?

Yeah, I like how I was talking about, you know, there's a point in time in your career or in your pathway where you're focused on doing the work, you are the worker. And then there's a point where you cross over and now you're responsible for producing the results and moving business forward in the desired direction. And I'm also hearing a lot of talk about the management versus leading and how there's an appropriate time for each one of those. And yet, and I think I heard you say this, Jim, was. It's almost like you need to know when to focus on the attributes of each one of those. Right. You're doing them simultaneously and sometimes maybe you need to manage a little bit more depending upon the situation, and then flow back into leadership and leading. So I heard you talk about kind of the dual hatted role of a leader.

Yeah. And sometimes those role switches aren't so obvious. But in, in my career in manufacturing, everything can be measured. And so you measure time, you measure money, you measure quality, you remember, you measure throughput, delivery and so on, so forth. So when some of you have very quick indicators and something falls off the wagon, you know it and you know how to go address that. And sometimes it's a remedial quick fix and sometimes it's a systemic issue that you have to take on. And so those require different approaches. But in trying to solve problems.

One.

Of the things that rolls out a lot that we've talked about before, Ray, is problems are good because the lack of results gets the organization to focus on what is required to satisfy the customer. And so people, depending on the environment you as a leader, manager create, you get these people to participate. And the participation is basically set up by, or the amount of participation is set up by the environment you create in your business. And so the traditional manager might get less participation because they typically say, well, you know, I did this before and I know how it goes. And so if you just do these three things, you'll be fine. As opposed to saying, well, this is the issue, things have changed. Let's figure out what changed and let's get together and get this resolved. But you don't then give the, the team endless time and energy to solve the problem. You create the urgency. You still have to have that. So it's, it's not like you can, you can say we'll just go down this single path. You have to keep focus on the business all the time. You're modifying whatever you're doing.

I love it. Yeah. So I'm going to get you to talk about one thing. I have two things ready to go for you. This is the first one. So problems are opportunities and you've heard this before, Jim, and I know you have, Colleen, if the fire is burning, put the fire out. If it happens again, pay attention. If it happens a third time, this is an opportunity to look at the system, not just the fire that's burning. Otherwise I could retire as a fireman that goes around and solves all these little issues and problems through my management lens. Let me just tell you what to do to Put that fire out. And Jim, you teed this up really good that a problem is an opportunity. It is not something to be, oh, we got to get rid of this. Yes, you do. And it's an opportunity to learn. Colleen, what are you thinking?

Oh, I'm just hearing this, recognizing that, you know, problems are an opportunity to learn, not necessarily an opportunity to throw somebody under the bus or to find fault. And the other big piece I heard is a system statement around 1.2.3 dots, right? One times an event, two times as interesting. But the third time that fire comes up, how can we pause to look at. Is this a systems issue, not just necessarily a quick fix?

And we've heard that our whole career, haven't we, Colleen? And that some people are like, I'm really good at firefighting. Yep, I know you are. And we need to talk about something more. What. What does this rise for you, Jim? What are you thinking about right now?

Well, the. You know, my education is engineering, but I never engineered anything. I ended up engineering people. But engineers have endless solutions to problems that generally focus on not having to think very much. And so we had, during one of our cultural changes in manufacturing, we had the eight discipline form or the seven Y form or something like that. And so say the widget broke, and then you say, well, why? Because it was green. Well, why was it green? You know, you keep going with the why to try and get down to the bottom. And your role as a. As a manager or a leader is to have that same discipline in terms of focusing and diving down, but not punishing people for that, but getting their contribution. And, you know, the nice thing about doing that is you get unexpected resolutions from people that you didn't think were deeply involved or might have a slightly different view that has merit. And typically we don't. We pick out somebody to blame, and then we tell them to fix it. And they may not be equipped to have a total solution. They'll get you 30%, and then you're back in the. In the ring for the third event, and you kind of start over then when you realize you missed it. And the whole deal problem being good is that it gives you the opportunity to have a new focus. The reason you have a problem is because you missed something originally. It's not because somebody did it. Sometimes people do things on purpose, but that's very rare. But you've got a hole in the organization someplace for whatever you're trying to do, and you need to plug it. What's the best way to plug it? Well, it's how do you get a team to put it together? But then again, you can't let the team drag on for a month. Tell you a story. So we're launching a new vehicle in an assembly plant, and we had to shut down production because we had a problem and we couldn't ship the cars. And so world headquarters has a vast staff of quality control experts. Some of them are statisticians, some of them are this. You know, they have very good skills that we use occasionally and so on and so forth. So they decided, well, yeah, well, let's. You know, we decided we had to shut the plant down because we couldn't build, and we had to get a quick answer. So they offered to help. And so they are giving us the help and saying, well, yeah, you know, we can't really build anything. And so we're going to do. We're going to take this back to the office and we're going to look at this, and so on and so forth. And so I got up on the blackboard and in the meeting room and I said, okay, here's our average cost per shift, base salaries of employees. That's like, at this time, it was like $250,000 a shift. Okay. And then here's the lost profit in units not shipped. Put that number up. Because we were building SUVs and trucks. So that was a big number. There's another gazillion dollars. And I said, okay, now you tell me why you can't sit in this room and run your team together and get us back online. Because I'm going to lose about $500,000 today to the business because shut down. And I can make it up eventually, but I'll have to make it up on overtime. And that's a 50% premium on this cost. And it's. This cost is totally lost. And not mentioning the supplier interruption and so on and so forth, transportation costs that are all hidden from you guys. So what do you think about getting to work right now? And it. It wasn't. I was being kind, but it wasn't an option. They were going to stay there if I had to lock the damn door and weld it shut. And you have to get people to understand the ramifications of their business, regardless of their expertise and how they can contribute. Sometimes it's a push and sometimes it's a pull, and sometimes it's a team effort.

Okay, so really good story. And what you did as maestro in that particular environment is you helped them understand what would happen to the system that you led. If they went back home and came back with a solution 10 days later and how, that was absolutely unacceptable. So there was a piece here where I'm sure if you asked them individually, well, do you think this is going to be expensive? If we let you go back and play with this idea or play with the solution, they'd probably say yes. But it took somebody who could see the whole system and pull that together so they had a visual view of that. That is a distinction. Helping people with a view is a distinction between the micromanager and the maestro. What are you thinking, Jim?

I didn't put it in exactly those terms, but we are a business and we need to achieve acceptable results for the customer. We'd already made the decision that our product was unacceptable to the customer because of a problem we had. And so how do we get back on track quickly? Helpers don't have urgency.

You gave them something. In the book you mentioned, the Senge book that you mentioned a few minutes ago, he talks about creative tension, not emotional tension, which comes from blame and making people wrong and, you know, all that kind of stuff. Creative tension. This is where we are. This is where we need to be and help us get there together. That is so beyond the micromanagement place. And I have to, as a former micromanager, I understand why I did it. Somebody put me in a leadership position. I didn't know. I couldn't spell it last week. Now I are one, and now I don't know what to do right. So all I knew how to do was the job. I left. So I made sure anybody wasn't doing the job. I left the way I did it, I went after them. Micromanagement was unable to be that maestro who pulled together the different aspects and facets of the system to give them a new look. Colleen, how did that story land on you?

Well, you did fine after we put you in the recovery program from our managers. Ray? I must say I did.

I was in recovery for a long time. I had to go off site into a clinic.

Oh, my gosh. You know, I think it's just that sense of. Because what I heard you say was. And Jim, this absolutely resonated with me with your story. It's the ability of the leader to help people see the bigger picture, see that what it is we're trying to achieve. And also you talked about intended and unintended consequences. And I think once you brought it down more, not only that shared vision of what it is you were going to do, you took it down to the tactical piece. And that was, you know, hey, the numbers. The exact numbers. So they could truly have an understanding of what was going to happen. And so. And it's a different way to go about it. Right. Once you create it, you created that picture first so people understood. So you didn't have to weld the door shut, because I think other people might have started with the welding of the door, and they would have welded it shut and said, we have to do this. Come on, let's hammer through. Without explaining to people and connecting to the bigger picture, which was exactly what you did beautifully.

Yeah. So the note that I dug up from 20 some years ago was creative tension. And so you relate the vision with the truth and then dramatize the issue so they can't be ignored. That doesn't mean you scream and yell, say that again.

Say that again.

You dramatize the issue so they can't be ignored. And that's the creative tension that you have to set in there. So in that situation, I was managing the process to get to the solution, but I was leading them toward. They can't get out of this. They got to do it.

Yeah, yeah. We can't kick this can down the road anymore. Otherwise we won't be here anymore in six months. So how do we figure out how to solve this problem now? And so those of you that are listening, we've come to the end of this podcast, but the next podcast is going to open up with this question. Jim, how did you go beyond micromanagement into true leadership? Because that is a question that all of us that have played the role of formal leader have had to deal with. Well, mostly some of us ended up retiring still, you know, micromanaging the world. But the people that had the most that have the most impact, they've got to get to that space. So that'll be our next podcast opening, and I would like to just reinforce what Jim and Colleen just did. The idea of systems thinking is to see the whole and see the complexities and interdependencies that are unfolding. It's not for everybody. There are some people that can sense it, recognize it, feel it intuitively, but we need the real Maestro to be able to help people see the whole and recognize their role in resolving issues and problems and how their role and their. Their behavior impacts others. Let's do a quick checkout. Biggest takeaway from this one, Colleen.

Sure. I think I'm going back to your opening statement about key components of leadership. Right. And comparing that to the Maestro piece And I wrote down a couple times, Jim, what you said. And in just sharing your stories and your experience, you mentioned multiple times getting the team's contributions. And I can't tell you how much that is a key component of leadership. When you recognize the value of the contributions to your team, that's recognizing it's one thing. But how often do you create the space so they can share their thinking? And you mentioned that multiple times. So that was a big, huge takeaway for me, and I'm out.

Yeah. I don't always find Jim so appealing to talk with, but obviously he's made the space safe for people to say what's on their heart, and that's a critical component of this. Jim, what's your biggest takeaway from this conversation you had today?

Well, you know, I haven't looked hard at this kind of stuff for a long time. And I'm getting back to, you know, the engineer in me says, you know, I need this knowledge. You need this large. I need to practice this process. I need to do this. And the thing that was most rewarding for me in my career was not the accomplishment of making a widget, but it was getting the team to make widgets. And so you move into this teacher, salesman, leader, manager, kind of a role that blends together as opposed to what we were educated for, what we thought we wanted to do when we were younger, all this other stuff. And Lean manufacturing was this huge thing in the auto industry. And as soon as Toyota came to the US and told us the quality here was not good, they brought the whole industry up, and then we copied some of their processes and moved on and made things better. And so managing the process is probably the biggest challenge that you can ever have, because you've got to put all these pieces together, the orchestra. And since I'm a drummer, I keep the beat. There you go.

Are you out, brother?

I'm out. Thanks.

So there's a piece here that Jim is alluding to that listen to your favorite piano player, jazz player, orchestra. There's an aspiration. They all have an aspiration to please the customer. In order to do so, they have to pay attention to what they do as they interact with the whole, believe it or not, music is a conversation. And the best performers I've ever worked with in my life listened to the other members of the team. They just never stopped listening. And they added. Added to that, I'll close with a Miles Davis story, which I told it on another podcast. Charlie Hancock was a piano player that played with Miles Davis, and they were playing. I believe it was in Germany and it was the piano players break. So Charlie started playing, then did everything. Not like they ever rehearsed it or not like anyone expected, right? Miles Davis had lots of opportunities. You could say, hey, what's wrong with you? Hancock, stop that. We're going to start over. It stop it. Take two. He could have done a lot of things. What Miles Davis did is took what was from Charlie's position, an incorrect set of things that he played on the piano and made it right. He actually shifted his response to what was played on the piano so that when Miles started to play his part, it matched what Charlie was doing. It is dangerous to make people's thinking and performance wrong public Ladies and gentlemen, we're so grateful for you to be here with us today. Thank you for joining us at JLC Media. I hope you enjoy my friend as much as I do. He's magnificent. And Colleen, the way you listen and confirm and truly respond respectfully to people on these podcasts and those of you listening, that is a leadership skill set. The ability to acknowledge, confirm you got what they were saying and respond respectfully. Critical component of leadership is probably at the heart of building great teams. Ladies and gentlemen, be well. It is the holiday season and if you're listening to us during the holiday season, happy holidays. Hope you enjoy them and we look forward to seeing you next time. When Jim starts off talking about how did I get beyond micromanaging into another space, which is more like the mysterious goodbye and thank you. Sincerest thanks for listening to this episode.

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