A633.6.4.RB - Circle of Leadership

Does this happen in your organization? 

The vicious circle for leaders is observed in my organization by attempting to put out hot topics in inspection. Inspection hot topics are trending problems in inspection that need to be addressed throughout the organization. Quality management will be notified about a problem, for example, when addressing a service bulletin then revision needs to be added. The hot topic comes out by management to state that everyone should know to put the revision with the service bulletins. The point is proven by management with a reference to a training document. Inspectors talk about the referenced training document, the said training document has never been seen before by any inspector. The confidence level is lowered because of set standards, training records, that no one is aware of.

 What are the effects on the organization?

            The inspection cells in my organization have a hard time trying to decide on what action needs to be taken with nonstandard problems. Inspection cells then ask other inspectors what they think they should do in circumstances to share the blame if it is wrong. The inspection cells are demoralized that they will make a decision and are going to be wrong, then another hot topic is going to come out and prove them wrong.

Create a new circle that would promote strong followership

            A set standard training for all inspections needs to take place of the hot topics. The training can be decided on by managers and experienced cell leaders. The circle could look more like inspector informs management of a problem, problem is confirmed by management, problem is taken to experienced inspection, and the problem is solved and put into training records. This circle involves more inspection. Being involved will not demoralize inspectors, it will also be a reference for the future. Being able to look up a solution instead of being proven that it was the wrong decision, would be a motivation and a sense of accomplishment for inspection.

References

Obolensky, Nick. Complex Adaptive Leadership: Embracing Paradox and Uncertainty. Gower, 2014.

A633.5.3.RB - Reflections on Chaos

The chaos exercise revealed to me that a leader can manage or lead. A manager and a leader can be the same person with different hats. Managing an organization or group of people can be done by taking part in each action and decision. This may be an effective way to run an organization but the manager will be run ragged by the time the day is done. Every decision and action carefully planned out by the manager takes a lot of time. However, in the end it will be exactly how the manager wants. Inevitably, when something goes wrong, it will only be the managers fault. Employees will resent not being asked for input and will start to be callused toward helping the manager. After a time, the employees will let the manager fail because they resent the position.

A leader, on the other hand, lets people make their own decisions. While giving objectives and clear boundaries, a leader gives the freedom to act (Obolensky,2014). Even though it may look chaotic, a leader needs to weather the storm and see it to the end. One of the key differences is the feedback(Obolensky,2014). If the leader can organize positive and negative feedback while keeping in mind the psychology of who they are talking to, the leader can effectively give feedback. Employees all have different personalities and psychology. Some employees need just the facts while others need reinforcement that they are doing a good job.

 After reading about the chaos exercise, I found myself relating the chaos to my toddler picking up toys. If I tell her what toy to pick up next, it will eventually get done but I had to give all the direction. If I let her do it, she will learn that you have to put the lid on the puzzle pieces before you can put it away. This is the same for leaders. A leader can micro manage all the details or can let employees do it. With clear objectives and feedback, both employees and toddlers can be more effective.

The main thing I learned from this is clear objectives. Without any objectives, employees will come in and do a job and leave. There is no progression for employees who have ambition and free will. There is a waisted potential if there are no objectives for employees other than just do as much as you can. On the opposite side, micro managing won’t work as effectively as freedom to act. The freedom to act combined with skill will not give clear objectives and what is left is a frustrated employee.

References

Obolensky, Nick. Complex Adaptive Leadership: Embracing Paradox and Uncertainty. Gower, 2014.

A633.4.3.RB - Changing Dynamics of Leadership

Why do you think the shift in leadership is occurring?

Many organizations are growing by leaps and bounds. Therefore, other managers are asking themselves, “what are those companies doing to be so successful?” Leaders are seeing the need for a shift in management style. Without change, a company will continue until oblivion. Companies that are growing by leaps and bounds utilize all their employees.

Employees are no longer the lesser people who can’t read and write. With the even higher standards of high schools, everyone has a better understanding of the world around them. Employees are now educated and have higher education’s past high school. Everyone and anyone can now be a leader without being a boss or manager.

With all the employees being more educated, diverse leaders are being challenged with what’s next. What is the next big thing. People continue to want new and better. Leaders are challenged with providing new and better but don’t always know where to go with new and better. Workers can now be relied upon for ideas and self-reliance because of education.

Do you think this is indicative of what is happening in your organization?

My organization is slowly changing leadership rolls but is having a hard time. My company is moving toward utilizing their employees more. Unfortunately, employees are still not being used for large scale decisions.

Employees are being used for improvements to current productions. Employees are expected to improve their working environments like routers, processes, and tooling. We are not being asked about the larger scale decision such as what projects to evolve. Some of the reason that my organization doesn’t fully utilize their employees is because of a high turnover rate, seeing workers as equals, more of some middle up ideas. 

The turn over rate at my organization is higher than normal. With a large amount of locally competing aviation facilities, there are a lot of employees coming and going. With high turnover and my company always growing, it is hard to establish who needs to be involved in progressive projects. There are also 7 different shifts for employees to be on. With positions needing filled or trying to train new people, managers and leaders have a hard time trying to utilize employees for leaders.

Oligarchy is a trend of clinging to the past hierarchy of top down leadership (Obolensky,2014). Getting into a polyarchy style of leadership takes “humility to grasp the fact that you do not yet understand enough to have the answers and then to ask the right questions….” (Obolensky,2014). Leaders need to know when to stop making assumptions and start asking employees questions. However, asking questions about someone that a leader doesn’t know is uncomfortable. How does one ask for advice from an employee that you are supposed to be leading? “Subordinates need to challenge in order to be able to follow, and superiors must listen in order to lead” (Obolensky,2014).

The growth of my organization is coming more from the middle up. The sales managers and R&D engineers are dictating where the company is going. Sales is leading  most of the meetings without consulting anyone else. The acquisition for growth in my organization is mainly bidding on contracts or trying to impress customers to give us their business. Sales will not bend on the current way my organization does things. For example, inspection tried to get the customer to fill out a standard workorder form. Sales refused to have the meeting to discuss the ideas because it’s too much of a hassle for them to convince customers to use the form. Every single customer has a different work order and some of them have multiple types of work orders. It makes training new inspectors difficult when all the customers do something different.  With this type of dictatorship towards the growth of the company, it is hard to utilize employees for ideas.    

How would leadership dynamics have to be altered to accommodate and promote these types of changes?

            Leadership would have to open up discussion and listen to floor leaders. This could be implemented through cell leads. The leads can be a hand- picked group of leaders who can take in all the suggestion from employees and take the ideas to management. This type of change also promotes leads to be the example. This type of strategy is a step toward utilizing all  the employees, leads are floor employees, trusted by other employees, but have a large voice in the direction for growth for management. 

References:

Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex adaptive leadership: Embracing paradox and uncertainty. Farnham: Gower.

A633.3.4.RB - Complexity Science .Mull.Brandon

Reflect on your own organization's strategy, how has it evolved over time?

The main strategy for my company is to increase size in order to handle more work and incorporate more processes to decrease outsourcing. The strategy has evolved to continue to grow and improve on the processes. The company is also trying to grow in the spectrum of customer in order to incorporate the military. This evolution in strategy is a reflection on how the company empowers its employees to be more responsible with less managerial overhead.

“Organizations are moving from a machine type organization which can be ‘run’ to a more fluid organic type of organization which runs itself’(Obolensky,2014). By challenging its employees with more responsibilities, my organization wants to have a self-reliant employee. An example of this strategy, to evolve with the computer age, with a program to assist the employee to show them what part is needed to be done next in their area. With this program, the employee knows what’s t next and doesn’t need a manager to be over their shoulder handing them the next part.

Discuss each stage of development how feedback and strategy formulation have changed over time

            The development of strategy formulation has changed in my organization by working with customers and competitors to improve the process. A recent project worked with a close competitor to improve the process of a part. The competitor shared how they completed a process and through R&D got the process approved by OEM to be standard practice in the MM. My organization had the resources to get the process to be standard by doing the research and proving the process worked.

Consider the next steps in your company's evolution and describe what it will look like in 10 years

            The next step on the company’s evolution will be handling larger parts and doing more assembly work. Engines are continually getting larger. My company is only able to handle the smaller parts but, in the future, we are planning to work on larger parts. With the aviation industry retiring the small less efficient engines, the industry will have grown with the size of the new engines. Larger parts require a lot of space and larger machines to work on them. My organization is acquiring larger machines and work space to comply with the demand of larger parts.

The evolution of assembly in my organization is going to be a large step in the future. The current process is that individual parts will come to my organization to get an overhaul. In the next 10 years, my company has the plan to start taking whole engines and overhauling them.

Where will you be in the next 10 years?

            Within the next ten years, I hope to be the lead inspector or mechanic depending on the evolution of the company. In 10 years, I will have adequate experience to be looking into the crew chief position. I will need to take on more responsibilities and have more field experience with employees. I am already taking steps to get to my goal by taking more responsibilities and being the lead example of my team.

 

Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex adaptive leadership: Embracing paradox and uncertainty. Farnham, Surrey, UK: Gower.

A633.3.3.RB.Complex Adaptive Systems. Mull. Brandon

CAS and P&G

Complex Adaptive System is “a dynamic organization where teams are formed, perform and then disappear as the need arises” (Obolensky,2014). Through these team’s complex tasks can be completed. The CAS teams at P&G were tasked with the goal of making existing products more appealing to customers. One of the CAS teams thought of putting jokes and sayings on to Pringles (Sakkab,2014). This type of CAS team was specifically used for getting customer interest back on its existing products.

Though this type of CAS was effective the ideas soon ran out. When the market shares went from $118 to $52, P&G decided drastic changes needed to be made (Sakkab,2014). The newly appointed CEO, A.G. Lafley challenged the bricks-and-mortar R&D infrastructure (Sakkab,2014). Instead of the old “here, have some more money for innovation” Lafley challenged the researchers for “half of the ideas come from our own labs, and half would come through them” (Sakkab,2014). Instead of replacing the 7,500 researchers, Lafley wanted to use them differently with new ideas coming from outside the company or as he would say “proudly found elsewhere” (Sakkab,2014).

Identify what you believe are appropriate actions to move your organization forward

For my company, getting ideas from the brick and mortar R&D is not cutting it anymore. The present state of mind is that new repairs and product ideas only come from R&D. Only new ideas that come from outside of R&D, the floor worker, is continuing improvements, CI. The CI’s that are on the floor are only improvements to existing processes or fixtures. When R&D does come up with a new process or fixture it’s never precise. In my inspection group alone, the last 4 fixtures had to go back to R&D for updates at least 2 separate times. One of which still isn’t fixed after the 4th time back to R&D. A way for my facility to move forward would be to outsource our fixtures, it may be costly, but it will be done right the first time. The outsourcing of fixtures to a high-grade plastics or 3D printing company would be a new way forward.

The moto for my company is “To inspire to be the best and constantly raise the Standard” (StandardAero,N.d.). The company wants to have better TAT for products. For my company to grow, an inspection CAS would be ideal. The team would go into cells that have a mass of incoming part. The team would focus on the quicker parts to reduce the work load off of the specialty inspectors.

Why strategy, why now, and how could this discussion positively impact your organization?

            My organization could positively benefit from what Martin Reeves talks about “bigness” (Reeves&T,2014). Organizations have the mentality that they must have more bodies on the floor to get more work done. When in fact have more high-quality people will get more work done than having more low-quality people. Having more bodies doesn’t improve work flow, it creates more problems. 

References

Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex adaptive leadership: Embracing paradox and uncertainty. Farnham, Surrey, UK: Gower.

Sakkab, L. H. (2014, August 01). Connect and Develop: Inside Procter & Gamble's New Model for Innovation. Retrieved April 04, 2018, from https://hbr.org/2006/03/connect-and-develop-inside-procter-gambles-new-model-for-innovation

StandardAero. (n.d.). StandardAero about us. Retrieved April 5, 2018, from http://www.standardaero.com/Engines.aspx

Reeves, M., & T. (2014, December 22). Martin Reeves: Your strategy needs a strategy. Retrieved April 04, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=360&v=YE_ETgaFVo8

A633.2.3.RB - Butterfly Effect_MullBrandon

Complexity Science and Theory in Organizations 

All organizations have a level of complexity. Some of the different types of complexity are Imposed, Inherent, Designed, and Unnecessary (Obolensky,2014). Those types of complexity can be broken down again into simple and complex(Obolensky,2014). With each type of complexity, a leader can overcome these types of complexities by “putting them in their place” (Obolensky,2014).

The imposed are the laws and regulations imposed by an outside source (Obolensky,2014). Imposed laws are set by the FAA and must be maintained. FAA inspection and quality assurance have audits to check for compliance. This type of complexity is the type that organizations can’t get away from. There will always be laws and some form of regulation that needs to be adhered to, especially in aviation. This is a form of simple complexity in that it can be organized and dealt with.

Inherent complexity is a type of complexity that organizations can’t get away form (Obolensky,2014). This type of complexity can be simple or complex. The weather is an inherent complexity that is both simple and at times complex. There is no circumventing weather and you can’t always manage it. Aviation also has a lot of inherent complexity in its regulation. Regulations for aviation can range from machining tolerances to required licenses. These tight regulations are rules and regulations that are inherent to the aviation community. This inherent complexity is simple.

Designed complexity are chosen changes to the organization(Obolensky,2014). These complexities are simple.  Examples of designed complexity are integrating a new policy or changes to a menu option. This type of complexity will happen often in growing organizations. Designed complexity should be well thought out and planned changes. They should not disrupt flow to the organization or at least keep it to a minimum.

The last type of complexity is, “Unnecessary complexity, it arises from growing misalignment between the needs of the organization and the processes supporting it” (Obolensky,2014). For example, this type of complexity can be seen when a leader puts the needs of sales before production. The sales team needed a way to view if the customers part has been quoted, so a change was made in the system for sales to quickly view the quote. This update to the system slowed production, adding additional time going through menus to make changes to routers and necessary repairs. The update was addressed with the organizations manager and the update was removed. A completely new menu was made for sales to quickly and effetely view quotes. Once focused on unnecessary complexity it can be easily dealt with.

Butterfly Effect

The butterfly effect is when a small action has devastating results. The theory is, “Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a tornado in Texas” (Obolensky,2014)? It is not a question that is easily answered. Small actions or changes on an individual can have a large effect on the organization.  A small change was made in Yellowstone park trying to improve the game population, to start hand feeding the elk(Sullivan,2011). This change greatly increased the elk population but through the unforeseeable effects, “butterfly effect”, the trout population diminished(Obolensky,2014).

Small Changes Yield Large Results

Small changes in an organization don’t always cause cecotrophy. Small changes can have a large positive effect, more regulatory meetings and engineering requests. In my organization, quality inspectors would have a monthly meeting to go over changes and future plans. The meetings were a great source of information for the inspectors, but some questions and concerns were forgotten throughout the month waiting for the meeting. The meeting constancy was changed to weekly, instead of monthly. With the meeting being weekly, a problem with the inspection criteria of a rotating part issue was brought to the meeting instead of being forgotten. The criteria of the inspection was too intense and vague for a critical area. Inspection was determining these rotating parts not serviceable because of surface staining. Through the use of the weekly meeting, the inspection leaders got together with engineering and determined a tool was needed to detect this surface damage. A digital scanner was brought in and is now in use for this surface staining. The company can now repair these critical rotating parts because someone was frustrated with the inspection criteria and brought it to the weekly meeting.

Another small change was a new menu added to the system called engineering request. This new menu came because of the need for router modifications. The routers needed additional information and the only way to modify them was to have an engineer go into the router and change it. The process was that an email was sent to engineering explaining the problem and telling them what needed to be added. The email was sometimes answered but it could be easily forgotten or sent to the wrong engineer. So, a menu was made that anyone in the company could make a suggestion for router modifications. This caused such a “butter fly effect” because different shifts were processing parts differently, and in some cases were doing it the hard way (Obolensky,2014). New routers emerged with better direction and parts are now being processed a lot faster.

Complexity Theory For You and Your Organization 

Some of the implications of complexity theory for me are not to making the problem harder and more complex. Complexities are a part of leadership and can be dealt with. Trying to resolve a complex situation by making it harder is not the correct way to be a leader.  The complexities for my organization are inherent and unnecessary. It is hard for leaders to see the ramifications of their actions for the future, but through swift action can be managed.

How Can You Use This To Drive Improvements?

Leaders can use complications to grow and learn. Leaders need to be challenged. If a leader is not challenged, they won’t get outside of their comfort zone. Driving improvement means adapting to new situations and over coming complexities with diversity. 

Reference:

Sullivan, T. (2011). Embracing Complexity. Harvard Business Review, 89(9), 89-92.

Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex adaptive leadership: Embracing paradox and uncertainty. Farnham: Gower.