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| Turbulence in
the Workplace A manufacturing company in the southeast was experiencing a great deal of turbulence with their employees. Managers were seeing symptoms including increased employee resentment of the management group, complaints of unfair practices and favoritism, aggressive and non-teamwork behavior on the production floor, declining business measures, attendance and call-in violations, and excessive turnover of newly hired employees. These problems called for an aggressive intervention. Cornelius & Associates was brought in to help. We interviewed employees, held small group meetings by shift and department, and held a series of work sessions with the leadership team. Supervisors and managers rated themselves using the Front End Alignment Team Self-Assessment. As a result of their findings, the leaders committed to work together to solve the problems they had been unable to address previously. Within six to nine months, they were showing remarkable progress toward getting the plant on the path to success. Shift teams were organized, communication meetings changed from gripe sessions to work sessions, employees began to take pride in their work again, and business measures improved substantially. We're Not Communicating The fourteen-member leadership group of this consumer manufacturing company watched helplessly as business conditions worsened in their industry. They realized they were in danger of losing their bread and butter customer base to other more efficient plants within their own company and also to outside competitors. They were perplexed by their inability to garner the talents, skills, and excellent work ethics of their employees to combat the declining workmanship quality and customer returns. They were facing a crisis and called in Cornelius & Associates for assistance. A satisfaction survey of employees cited poor communications as the number one issue at the facility, despite the fact that they were constantly attending meetings, exchanging emails, putting up posters, and holding shift meetings. The Front End Alignment Team Self-Assessment helped the leadership team realize that they were indeed busy talking but had not really been communicating effectively with each other and with their employees. A communication matrix developed during the leader team retreat revealed a very complicated array of communication attempts in play that were often conflicting, sometimes redundant, and generally focused on the wrong things. Using the survey results as a guide, they prioritized their key business activities and set up a new culture for communications in the plant. Cross-functional Ad Hoc teams were set up to identify and solve their quality issues. They were able to involve the crewmembers in face-to-face discussions with their customers, mutual goals were set and achieved, and they were able to procure several long-term commitments for their products in crucial markets. Leaders in the Wild West The new plant manager soberly reviewed the leadership situation at his west coast facility. He was looking for a way to get his line supervisors and associate managers to take personal responsibility for their leadership styles and their workplace behaviors in a climate of declining business demand. Employees stopped by his office to welcome him to the “wild west” and to wish him luck with some members of the leadership team who had been there for several years. He needed a proactive plan to address these leader behavior issues and decided on a two-phased plan: (1) He would use Cornelius & Associates’ Teamwork Leadership Style Range Survey (TLSR©) to diagnose and fix the individual leader style and behavior issues, and (2) He would implement the Front End Alignment for the leadership group as a team.
Heal Thyself First Cornelius & Associates was contacted to help a well-know service industry leader organization with disturbing trends in their highly specialized work teams. Teamwork was breaking down, there were daily outbreaks of squabbles resulting from different interpretations of what their customers wanted, and they feared they would not be ready to effectively manage a large multiyear contract that had just been received. After a few interviews with the employee teams, Cornelius & Associates was able to demonstrate to the organization that certain behaviors and actions taken by the management group were the precipitating causes of many of the workplace symptoms. The Front End Alignment was the intervention tool they decided to use in order to properly align the beliefs and behaviors of the leader team with the stated values and mission of the company. The 20 managers agreed on the leadership culture they wanted and implemented action steps that would make it happen. The chronic workplace problems began to disappear or diminish. The organization was successful in providing superior service to their new customer because of their renewed confidence and invigorated leadership team.
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