There is one big advantage I’ve gained through management training that I didn’t even recognize until recently. Having worked for decades for large corporations, I had the misfortune of attending many training sessions that could be called “flavor of the month.”
You’ve likely experienced this if you’ve worked for a big company. The CEO takes a long-distance flight across the country after reading the latest hot management tome. It might have been “In Search of Excellence,” “The Competitive Advantage of Nations,” Total Quality Management, the Lean Six Sigma of its day.
The CEO returns, hires the author and a string of consultants to train the entire corporate workforce in this latest technique to improve customer service, create a winning strategy or reduce costs dramatically. I personally suffered through an endless string of training sessions thinking, “What am I doing here? Why am I wasting time? What are they thinking?”
Sinking in
Unbeknownst to me those lessons were getting through — they must have somehow buried themselves deep in my subconscious. Today, I find myself using these principles as I advise businesses looking for help with growth funding, product development, cost reductions and productivity improvements. I thought I was just warming up a seat in the training centers. As it turns out, I was picking up that knowledge all along.
I draw on this collective mashup of tools to help manufacturers see how they might reduce costs through process understanding, increase repeat purchases by improving customer service and reducing wait times, improve accounts payable turnaround, evaluate competition, find partners and new markets for their core capabilities, and so on.
You may have experienced the same thing I did, or you may have provided some of this training to your employees, but through the crush of daily business activities have not been able to fully put the ideas into practice. The principles these thought leaders of their day provided have withstood the test of time in manufacturing. They work. They are simple. They are needed now.
Future benefits
Grants are available to provide training to manufacturers today. There are more cost-efficient ways for companies to put this knowledge in the hands of their people. There are, for example, online courses and customized certification training that can be packed into one or two days.
We know our greatest asset is our people. Let’s invest in our most important asset with training that can help drive your company’s top and bottom line. Who knows, maybe someday one of your employees will be sitting in the corner office, leaning back looking out the window and thinking how grateful he or she is that someone took the time and made the investment that helped put them there.
