Latest / The Manufacturing Blueprint / 13. Low Stress, High Standards: How Systems and Leadership Reduce Pressure in Your Shop
Transcript
- speaker-0: I remember one of the people I work with and he was so stressed and he got up. We were in a meeting, got so stressed, had to go to the printer to print something out, it wouldn't print, and then it started printing out blank paper. I got so cross, went to storm out, hit the door so hard, walked into the door because he had to pull the door because he thought it was gonna push. Nearly broke his nose. And yeah like sometimes like we shouldn't laugh because stress is real and stress is a killer. But at the same time, c it can be funny, right? Everyone knows that person who got out in her in a rage, got into their car and reversed into someone else's car, right? Yeah. speaker-1: Welcome to the Manufacturing Blueprint. This is the show where manufacturing leaders, shop owners, and operators come to sharpen their thinking, strengthen their teams, and improve the way work gets done. From leadership and culture to systems, strategy, and execution, we break down the blueprint used to build high-performing manufacturing organizations. No fluff, just straight talk and real conversation. Real lessons and real results. Here's your host, Jason Davis. Hey guys, welcome back to the Manufacturing Blueprint Podcast, the podcast where we help manufacturers build better businesses through practical leadership, operational excellence, and real-world solutions. I'm Jason Davis along with my co-host, Paul Barnes. So whether you're a shop manager, supervisor, engineer, or someone working on the production floor, this show is It's designed to give you ideas, strategies, and lessons you can immediately apply to improve performance, reduce stress, and create a stronger organization. Paul, how you been, buddy? speaker-0: I'm doing not too bad. How are you? Yeah. I know you've been busy the last week or two. speaker-1: Yeah, I have been I have been busy. There's been a lot of stress. There's been a lot of stress in the business, a lot of stress outside the business, and I think that's a perfect lead in to what we're gonna be talking about today is, you know, what actually creates stress in a manufacturing organization. And and we'll get to a lot of the topics, but yeah, for me outside of the organization has probably been some of the more stressful times having that that transition going from a a ⁓ senior in high school to a college student, you know, working through that and just handling all the emotions that go with that. I've probably, you know, been a little more secure than mom has been, but y you know how that goes, so speaker-0: You just enjoy it when you can. speaker-1: Yeah, I I think that's it. That's it. So that's gonna be a point I think that we could probably touch on later is that while work is important and there are stresses that come, like the the life outside of work honestly is where I think our most important impact should be and that's, you know, with our families, impacting those lives that that are closest to us is really the number one goal for us as humans. Yep. speaker-0: We all get stressed. I get stressed a lot. In fact, I think I was just made to stress. But at the at the end of the day, we have to keep it in context, right? It's not life or death. And we need to remember there's a lot more important things in life. Yeah. Than work. Although it does consume a lot of our daylight thinking and sometimes our restless nights when we should be sleeping. But that goes with the responsibility. speaker-1: And and I don't wanna be like too much of a downer in this intro here, but my wife and I were talking we were listening to a message from Jonathan Evans. He's a pastor and he used to I guess he was a football player and then he was a chaplain for the Dallas Cowboys and he tells the story about there was a a player who had previously played for the Cowboys and he passed away and they had a moment of silence. Right. The thing that struck him was that that twenty seconds was the moment of silence and they were honoring him. But guess what they did as soon as that was over? Like the game goes on, right? And so it's like, you know, even somebody that's high profile professional sports athlete, now sure his family is going to feel that pain and that loss for a long time, but like the rest of the world just went on. You know, it's like it like it, you know, it just keeps going. So that's something I think is important for us to remember. speaker-0: You see that a lot, especially in big corporations. Mm. There's people in there who've been there a long, long time and it becomes their life. It will c totally consume them. And they may feel like they are central. They may feel like they're holding the whole thing together. But you know what? The day comes, they either leave or they retire. Or because of stress, they're just like forced out of work because they're ill. But you know what? Big corporations will say, Okay, who's next? Put someone else in that role, right? Because at the end of the day, shareholders don't hold no affection or affiliation to a person. You gotta keep it in contact. speaker-1: Yeah, totally true. One of the things I remember my dad telling me long ago was that everybody is replaceable. Now, some are more difficult to replace than others, but every single person in the organization is replaceable. That's me, that's you, that doesn't matter, top to bottom, they can be replaced. There's somebody else out there that can do your job. So again, I think that's gonna be, you know, as we talk through this whole process and we talk about stresses, I wanna make sure that kind of that emphasis up front is like, you know, that we make sure that we are putting focus on the things that we need to be putting focus on that are most important and that's our family, that's our home life. And that don't let the effects of stresses at work come into that home life. That's that's very critical. If you're looking to increase your spindle up time without adding any headcount, check out the Hennig Workflow Automation System. I've seen it, I love it. It's a compact, automated pallet delivery solution that lets you work ahead of your machine so your shop never stops. You can load up to 40 pallets with material, fixtures, programs, and just let the workflow cook. A Henning Workflow is designed for high mix machining, works with a wide range of machines. And even with a hundred and twenty five pound payload on top of a three hundred millimeter pallet, yet still takes up less space than most competitors pallet automation system. That means more production, fewer manual changeovers, really just a practical path to high profit lights out machining. Learn more about the Hennig Workflow by visiting Hennigworldwide dot com slash workflow. I think that kinda leads us into that the first segment we want to talk about is, you know, the stresses that we can't control, right? There are stresses and there's gonna be stress at home. Like sometimes it might be the opposite. Sometimes we're gonna bring home stress into work, right? That that happens. I mean, we've all been in situations probably where there's maybe there's financial stress at home or there's, you know, maybe an an aging parent or a death in the family, or ⁓ even marital problems or child problems. I mean, all these things can happen and we can bring those stresses from home in to work. And so we gotta, you know, be aware of that. But really the the stress that we can't control, there's there's always an uncertainty in manufacturing. There's always uncertainty in our lives. And, you know, I I think we can we can kind of talk about what what are some of those like things that we can't control. speaker-0: You're right. You're talking about home home stresses and home pressures separating them even from work. Sometimes some people live really, really close to their work. And sometimes people think that's really good because of a short commute. But what happens then sometimes is you don't have a filter between work and home. And sometimes it's good just to have some downtime. I I wasn't really planning on talking about this, but it's the way the conversation went. Back home, whenever I was living at home, I had like a ten minute commute. speaker-1: depression. Yeah. I'm the same. speaker-0: And sometimes you just get out of work and you can just arrive home and you're still stressed or you're still tense. Someday I could arrive home and you're like a coil spring, right? And and you're just thinking, I need to take a long drive home just to kind of give yourself some separation, just to protect your your family, either wife, kids, parents, whatever, even just for your mental state. Because it's important too that especially in management positions that you can compartmentalize those stresses and those emotions and those fears because as much as you don't want to bring your work home with you at the same time you don't want to bring your personal life into work either. And you need you need to be able to detach from that a little bit so that you can still work in life with balance, right? And show that maturity in your decision making and your emotions. Right. Not always easy. speaker-1: Yeah. No, but you're you're totally right. I mean, I'm I'm in the same boat. I work eight minutes from work. I I get home and most of the time I just want to go hide for ten or fifteen minutes. Like I just need some time to like, you know, not answer questions, not, you know and it probably feels rude because it's like, Hey, I just got home and now I wanna like be by myself for fifteen minutes. But the reality is I think in my situation I'm doing that because I want to be more engaged at home, disconnect from what was happening, get reestablished into my new environment. But that can come off as, you know, kind of the opposite, you know, well, you know it speaker-0: hard and you're a parent, you've been there, I've I'm a parent, I've been there. It's a case of you get through the door. I don't know. We're less ⁓ it sounds like we're going down personal counseling here. speaker-1: Yeah, we are. That's okay. That's okay. speaker-0: But I know times where I've like came home from work, right? And you get through the door and there is there's your wife and she's like, Here's a baby. She's cried all day. Take her I need thirty minutes. And you're standing there and you've just come in from like working for like ten hours and you're stressed and you need decompression time and then all of a sudden you've got like a screaming child and it's I don't need this. Yeah. But that's speaker-1: Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy! speaker-0: That's quite a dangerous thing for your personal life, for your family, for your kids and everything. And I would say if you've got a family, if you do live close to your work and if you do have a high stress job, you need to have a conversation with your partner or with your family and say, Do you know what? Some days when I get home, I'm gonna go and lock myself in the bathroom or the bedroom. Yeah. Or the office or the garage, right? Or just go down the garden and you just I need twenty minutes and I think sometimes if you have those conversations, your partner or your wife supports or respects that, right? And can recognise at least on occasions where you are stressed, they can at least provide a little bit of support. Can they hold out an extra twenty or thirty minutes to give you some downtime? Because w th we all need it. Maybe not every day, but there's times where we need it. speaker-1: Well, I think that's the balancing point because there are days you need it, being able to have that conversation up front, recognizing, hey, this is important for me and and you and us. And that happened on occasions twenty, thirty minutes, not every single day you're gone for three hours. Like, you know, if you just come home, disappear for three hours every day, there's probably an underlying problem there, right, w that needs to be addressed. There's something else going on, not just that. carry over stress from work or and not getting it out on your way home. So I think that's that's a good that's a fair point. speaker-0: But some level of stress is to be expected in normal, right? I think that's the emotion that we all have experienced. If if you're telling me that you're a business owner or manager or supervisor and you're never stressed, I think that calls into question all your business is performing, right? Right, yeah. Right? Is your business really pushing? Are you ⁓ ambitious? Are you growing or is it just perfect, right? speaker-1: Maybe that's utopia and that's that's where we that's where we all want to be. But no, I think that that's a perfect lead in to like thinking about or talking about the stresses that we can't control, right? Because for me, like things that you can't control is future orders, right? I mean, obviously we have plans in place, right? We have we have things that we're doing to help protect that future. But like you think about future orders or economic uncertainty. I mean, who expected COVID, right? I mean, I'm just thinking about over my career. You know, there was like nine eleven was a huge economic change in the world, right? We did a lot of aerospace components and you know, pff immediately like there was just a huge shutdown in flights. Obviously the loss of life is so important and something that we want to remember, but just from an economic standpoint, that was very unexpected. ⁓ seven, ⁓ eight, ⁓ you know, here we had the banking crisis, ⁓ the housing crisis, that was a huge change. COVID happens, like that's a huge economic impact. Those are things that especially going through them, there almost has to be stresses, you know, that you're dealing with because your business will probably not remain the same. Now, I will say there are some people that like I think back to COVID and and I had a friend who had a friend, my friend is an accountant, and his friend or his one of his clients caught him just panicking. And, you know, most of the calls during that time were like just complete panic sessions anyway, probably. But his issue was he's got And it was like speaker-0: What? I wish he had a phoned me, I could've helped. speaker-1: No, I like, yeah. So his situation was he was like kind of like a sc I'm gonna say the word scavenger where he was just buying resale stuff all the time. Like he was that was just his he was just good at it. And one of the things that he had bought like three years earlier was this big bottling line, manufacturing line. And once COVID happens and the whole hand sanitizer thing wa nobody could get hand sanitizer, he was like, Hey, I have this bottling line. He pulls it out. adapts it for hand sanitizer and was shipping hand sanitizer and was just I mean, you know, like I said, I mean he calls I've never heard of anybody calling the accountant in a panic because I just have too much money and I don't know what to do with it. I mean he was bringing in like a ⁓ a million over a million dollars a week in the hand sanitizer and it's just like holy cow but again I would say so. I would actually wouldn't I don't know that I would mind that stress. speaker-0: No. But that one I could live with. Yeah. speaker-1: But that's it. I mean, so future orders, economic uncertainty, those are those are parts of it. Obviously, I think we've got I mean, there's going to be some unexpected problems that happen, right? Even though you do all the things right and you have everything, documentation and all, there can be i issues in your organization from ⁓ unexpected problems or parts or maybe a lack of supply of materials or customer behaviors. I mean customers customer shift, right? You may have a a good running, solid customer that's twenty percent of your business and they decide to make a shift in their business and go a different direction. I mean, I know I've experienced multiple times where losing contracts because they've gone to China, ⁓ or I've experienced losing contracts because they've gone to low cost countries. So there are definitely some some of those things in there. So I but I think some of that is healthy pressure or healthy stress too, right? Because you gotta have you need a little bit of that to kind of keep you focused, keep your edge. speaker-0: You're right. You're you're thinking here about like what what you can control and what you can't control. And sometimes if you're a smaller business, you could be heavily impacted by even like the material cost changes, right? Exactly. Like a like you're in America right now, so you're to blame for all of this. What about like all the all the tariffs, right? And all the price fluctuations. That's right. That's right. So you call you guys call it aluminum, I call it aluminium, but either way, whatever way you want to call it, right? The prices are volatile and sure. speaker-1: Yeah, totally. speaker-0: Changes of that. How do you how do you quote work in advance and then whenever you go to manufacture your costs are far higher? And some of these cause stresses and a lot of those stresses we can't control but we can learn how to manage and deal with. speaker-1: Sure. Yeah. That's a that's part of it. Yeah. And I I think for each of us we need to have we kind of like a little bit of stress in our lives, I think, because that continues to drive our desire to perform, right? Because we we we have that desire, I think that there's like a balance there. I think it's good for us to have some healthy pressures versus having some destructive pressures, right? That healthy pressures I would I would align more to like that desire to perform, the desire to want to do a good job, you know, striving to do the best job you can. And then I think there's some destructive side of that could be, you know, having ⁓ being egotistical and dem so demanding that, you know, you you you don't give your employees and coworkers the the the bars so high they can never see improvement. They can never get reach that, you know, there there's a balance between being a good leader to where you can help bring them along versus beating them down, right? And having to be on top and those kind of things. So I think that's, you know, some of those stresses that we just we can't control. But Ultimately, you know, like we kind of talked about earlier, we're not promised tomorrow, right, as humans. And we don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring for our organizations, but really the best operations they're preparing for those times instead of panicking when they come. And that's that's the balance that I think we've gotta that that's the balance that we've gotta strike. speaker-0: Hey, it's Paul from Making Chips. If you've been burned by recruiters who don't understand manufacturing, you are not alone. That's exactly why we created Hire MFG Leaders. We're not just recruiters, we're current and former shop owners, and we know what it takes to lead in this industry. Whether you're hiring your next operations leader, sales manager, or production supervisor, we'll help you find someone who actually fits. Learn more at making chips.com/slash hire. speaker-1: So while some stress is unavoidable, a lot of it can be created internally. And so that's one of the things I want to talk about next is where the internal stresses of your organization can come from. For me, I think one of the the first places I look is the lack of systems, right? That lack of a system definitely can create stress. Lack of systems creates uncertainty. And so that's why we want to make sure that we're focusing on having a system. to help you I mean it could be something as simple as helping you to remember to the the things that need to be to get done, right? Because if we're trying to remember to do everything, like we're not going to get it done. And I'm thinking about a very small organization all the way up to a large organization. Whatever the responsibilities are, we need to have a system that helps us make sure those things are done, those things are performed, those things are accounted for so we don't end up missing something and then now there's stresses. But There's a lot of a lot of things inside of that system. That's kind of a a basic overview, but maybe we talk through some of the systems or some of the things that that you guys have and I'll talk about some that we do that will help us to reduce those stresses from a day to day basis. speaker-0: You're right. And not having those standardized systems in place just causes stress. It it kind of forces your leadership or your management into a permanent crisis management mode, if you rather have it like that, right? Rather than having leaders' standard work and the standard routine that they go through every day, you've got this crisis mode where something goes wrong and you're always continually reacting because there's no standard procedure and your employees don't have a standard to follow. It turns into like a constant reactive scramble and it just consumes your time and then it ultimately takes away your control, which then increases the stress level. And then that stress then will translate throughout the rest of your team. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, I think I think you're right. And and some other parts of that is like like I think for us, you know, having an ERP system is really critical because we're able to give, you know, we're able to build schedules so the team knows what's coming, what's coming next, then kind of look ahead in some of their downtime and say, Okay, well I know this job's coming. I'm reading through the notes, which is another big part of it, making sure that we've got standard work that's happening, we've got processes that we're following to start up our shift. to end our shift, to start machines, to turn off machines, like starting a setup, finishing a setup. So that way we're we're making sure that everybody is doing the same thing and that we're ⁓ within within a window, right? Within within some parameters, because that way if somebody's out sick today, in fact this just happened. We're rolling along. I've got somebody's in kind of in a little bit of a in depth setup. He ended up having some things happen and he wasn't able to come to work today. And then he's already scheduled off for the next day. Like so he's gonna end up missing, you know, two days. Well, I can't just have that machine not run because it's a pretty important product that we're that we're building for a a new customer and it's a new product. And so fortunately with our processes, with our notes, he was able had to be was able to bring somebody else in, step into, you know, take a few minutes, figure out where we're at. And then can go through the rest of the process. And so I think that's that's a really im important aspect because as we have changing priorities, we need to be flexible. We need to be able to let our team work within the parameters that we're setting, but also make sure that we're holding them accountable for those things. speaker-0: Yeah. So yeah, and you've you've said it there, right? It's it's really the change for you that that creates the stress. You said there at the start about your MRP system, right? If you have an MRP system, you've got a plan, you've got a schedule, at least you've got a priority and a set sequence in what work you're going to do. Yeah. Where the stress enters in is whenever that goes wrong or there's the change in plan, right? And sometimes that's unforeseen. So whenever we're talking about our standard process. speaker-1: Right. speaker-0: processes is how do we ensure that we set a solid plan and how do we stick to that plan through solid preparation and and accurate planning, right? And then if we do have to change, how do we do that in a standard controlled manner? Not in a random manner that creates chaos because that amplifies your stress levels. But even if you have got a consistent plan, how do you adapt and change that plan in a controlled manner? And that's just what you've described there, right? Even with an absentee. if there's someone out of the business. Well, what's your standard process for handing over a process? Or yeah, if you've got a gap in training, how do you facilitate training there if you haven't necessarily got a body system? And you can still create standard processes even to manage that chaos. And having that allows us to control and manage the stress in the business. speaker-1: Well, and I want to say too, I mean, by no means are we getting it a hundred percent right, but I think that's the most important thing to for people to understand is you're you're probably not gonna get it a hundred percent right. But if we can make these start to make these little adjustments, it's going to get better. And by doing that, it's going to make really cause less stress. Because if we're dealing with tribal knowledge, if we're dealing with inconsistent processes. If we're dealing with missing tools, if we're dealing with material issues, information issues, all of these things ultimately create delays, right? And delays to me equals stress. Right. A perfect example. I've got a I was actually talking to a customer this week. They were telling me about another vendor that they were working with. And the vendor had some some pretty big issues. It wasn't really their fault, but regardless, it was something that they were having to deal with. And that customer was talking to them, having calls them three to four times a day. Like it was a really, really important product that needed. Now great. I mean, I get it. That's what they need to do. And that's what the customer felt like needed to happen in order to help that vendor get across the finish line. But then I started thinking about, I was like, man, if I have to spend three to four times on a call, that's a lot of time. I'm not able to solve the problem that's physically going on on my floor. And that's like so there's a balance there of like where where's the balance of like, you know, I need an update, but I also need you to fix the problem. I don't want to spend two and a half half hours on the call with you every day. So I think it's it's finding that balance. But again, to me, delays, if they weren't delayed, they wouldn't have been in that situation. So to me, delays equal stress right off the bat. That is like to me, that's like, you know, that they go hand in hand, no doubt. speaker-0: Gonna I was gonna say they're at least they're only in a call, Jason. Wait until some yeah. Wait until one of your customers says I'm coming on site and I'm gonna stay there for a week 'cause I wanna see what's going speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. Well I'll I'll I'll tell a story. I'll I'll tell a story about that. Now ⁓ so that did happen to me years ago. ⁓ but it it turned out really well for me. So the way it the way it happened is I had a customer who was dealing with a large ⁓ an extremely large global OEM and the product that the OEM was needing was not getting delivered. So they were having the daily calls with my customer. And my customer says, ⁓ well, we're waiting on this component at D. And that was true, but they didn't really mention the whole point of like, hey, the reason why that we're waiting on it is because we didn't do what we needed to do and give them the amount of time that they really like they they was they put us in a bad situation, but it was fine, right? I mean, they needed a scapegoat. I don't mind that. So they send one of their guys in. He sits in with us like the first day and and I remember this vividly. We get to the end of the day and we're kind of having like this debrief meeting and he was like, All right, man, I'm gonna be totally honest with you. I don't even know what I'm doing here. You guys are doing fine. But we've told this our customer that we're gonna have somebody on site until the parts deliver. And it was gonna be like another four, four weeks probably before that was gonna happen, just because of the way all the processes went. And that was the best that was gonna happen. And he said, So I'm gonna be here for another four weeks, but I'm gonna just can you just set me up in an office and you guys do your thing? And so that's essentially what happened is he came and he worked here, but he just kind of did his own thing and he knew we were doing what we needed to be doing. But that ultimate customer said, You gotta have somebody on site. Now, fortunately, I'll say for me, that was kind of an awakening to to see that happening and and it wasn't really a problem for us. But if we were in the wrong, like that would have been painful to have somebody on site standing there over your shoulder watching your every single move, every single day. That would have been miserable. speaker-0: It's funny. I I have just your talk in there and I and I know it's slightly on topic and slightly off topic, but I'm just going through my mind now is all these like stress stories. I'm I'm seeing in my head pictures of my old managers and people I work with in stress solutions. I remember one of the people I worked with and he was so stressed and he got up and we were in a meeting, got so stressed, had to go to the printer to print something out, it wouldn't print, and then it started printing out blank paper. I got so cross. Went to storm out. Hit the door so hard, walked into the door because he had to pull the door because he thought it was gonna push. Nearly broke his nose. And yeah. Like sometimes like we shouldn't laugh because stress is real and stress is a killer. But at the same time, c it can be funny, right? Everyone knows that person who got out in her in a rage, got into their car and reversed into someone else's car, right? Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah. Well, I I think there's an important part that really, again, we weren't really planning to kind of go this direction, but I think the important part is how you're managing that stress because we're all gonna fall into these stressful moments. You know, as a manager or as a leader, you remaining calm is one of the most important things that you can do, in my opinion, because people in the organization are gonna look to you, right? And if things are going crazy and your hair's on fire. their hair's gonna be on fire, right? But if the place is burning down, you know, I I don't know if you I mean one of the things you're always taught, like if there's an emergency, everybody remains calm. You know, have you ever been in a situation where you've seen the fireman or an EMS or a police officer come to a scene and they just bring an extreme sense of calmness, right? They they have their bags and they're walking up. In my mind I'm thinking like, why aren't you grabbing your stuff and you're running up as fast as possible? And you're like just frantically moving. But what has been trained is that calmness. And when somebody who's who's injured or somebody's who who's in a situation that's that's, you know, not got a great outcome, that calming spirit, I think, is really important. They see that emergency worker and they see that that calmness that they bring and that helps bring them down a little bit. I think some of that same truth falls through in our organizations where if There are some crazy things going on around us, but you can keep your head about you, keep a level head, be calm, be consistent, then other people around you are going to see that and not hit the panic button as well. But if you hit the panic button, then they're hitting the panic button, and you can't have 15, 20, 30 people all hitting the panic button. speaker-0: And the difficulty is that stress clouds your decision making. It clouds your judgment. And in that time, whenever you get worked up or you're getting stressed or you're just getting like angry and frustrated with what's going on, it actually it clouds the right decision. And sometimes the right easy decision has just to be made, right? You ha you have to make a decision. There's no point just throwing your hands up and saying this whole thing is a disaster. You still have to find a way forward. But sometimes our emotion Blind us actually just to what the easy thing is to do next. And sometimes that delay with the stress just holds us back. And as you said, that translates then through your whole team. It's hard, but it's hard. speaker-1: You need to go lock yourself in the bathroom for fifteen minutes. Sometimes you need to. Sometimes yeah. You're like just just give me give me ten or fifteen minutes. speaker-0: I had this in work this week. There was an accident in work. Now no one was hurt, nothing like that. But I just went down and I looked at what was going on and I looked at what was happening. And I was just so frustrated. I was getting angry, right? And I know I shouldn't have been. But at that point I just said, guys, where's our leadership? And at that point I said, I I said to the the supervisor in that area, I said, You take over for a moment and I just I I walked away for five minutes because I was gonna I was gonna explode. Because I just couldn't comprehend what people were doing. Yeah. But yeah, like I I mean, I'm not saying that that's not a good thing. I'm not saying that to be funny. It's not. But at the same time, sometimes our natural emotions you just Yeah. Whenever you're out of a situation, sometimes people do things with the best intent. But you go down there and you see all this chaos that it's created and you're like, How are we even in this position? But it's important that you just take take take a breath, relax. Where did it go wrong? And again, if we're talking about our standard processes, where in our process field that allowed us to get into this position? And how did we as management, because I'm management as well, how did we not see that breakdown in process to prevent those things happening? Yeah. speaker-1: Right, right. Hey folks, listen up. You know that manufacturing buyers don't ask simple questions. They're asking about product compatibility, materials, specs, lead times, application fit, and they want answers before they even talk to sales. That's where Navu comes in. Navu adds AI chat to your website trained on your own content so visitors can get reliable. Accurate answers in real time. It helps buyers find the right product, understand the right application, and take the next step without forcing your team to answer the same questions over and over. And setup is simple. NAVU works with your existing website. It connects with tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Slack, and gives you visibility into what visitors are actually asking. See what your website has to say at Navu dot co slash making chips. That's navu dot co slash making chips. Well, I think, you know, from a leadership standpoint, well, like we said, your behavior can directly affect the stress level of others around you. And that's really the third topic that we were gonna talk about. And I think some of the other things, obviously there's the portion dealing with the events around you, right? So there there are there are things that happen in your environment. Like we talked about earlier, it's the delays, delays causing stress, stress causing you to react in certain ways. But ⁓ there's other aspects of that, I think, that are we need to talk about in if leaders having a struggle to let go of things, leaders having the micromanaging effect, or they're the ones that are kind of pushing down the stress ⁓ upon other people. So we gotta be careful. Like there's gonna be stress that you have to deal with outside. But as a leader, make sure that you're not the one that's causing that stress. You have to be the one that's helping to develop the processes, the procedures, the systems to help prevent that stress on others in the future. You know, I think you've got, you know, kind of like I was talking about earlier with like a if you've got an overbearing manager, that employee can have just a fear of making a mistake, right? And they're just terrified that like when you walked out on the floor. You t you recognized you were at that point and you said, I have to step back. Now you've been in situations where you've seen that manager just flip the switch and keep digging, you know, or maybe they didn't flip the switch and go the other way. They just kept raging and it gets out of control, right? And then what does that do for employee morale? That is just just really starts to to take it down into the negative direction. So I would say one of my key points for this is good leaders or even good. Great leaders absorb the stress, right? And bad leaders will transfer it, or bad leaders will create it on others. And that's how you can really tell the the the organization is going in the right direction and how if that leadership is going in the right direction, and if you're being a good leader, are you absorbing that stress off of others? Here, let me take care of that. Here, let's fix this, let's move, let's change this to make it easier on you. Or Are you transferring it to them because of the demands that you're putting on people that are unreasonable and the demands that you're putting on your entire organization is just creating the delays, creating the problems and therefore creating stress for everybody? speaker-0: So what's your secret? I see you as like a big s stress sponge for everybody else. I've never seen you stressed. What does stress Jason look like? Yeah. speaker-1: I don't know. It's it's probably a combination, right? It's a combination. One of the things that I'm very fortunate, I'd say one of my God given abilities is the ability to be present in whatever moment I'm in, right? Meaning that if I'm at work, I can not think about the things going on outside of work and I can focus on work. But as soon as I leave, I can not think about work and I can focus on wherever I'm at if I walk into the house. If I go somewhere with my family, if I'm there with my friends. It doesn't matter. I can for the most part, I can shut off what is happening in the other parts of my life. Now, that's not always good, right? There is some ⁓ real benefits to that, but there's also some downfalls to that because it creates situation where it's it's like I said, it's not it's not always positive. But speaker-0: Good though that you can compartmentalize it like that. And I guess everyone's everyone's different. I'm a driver and I get things done, right? I drive intensity of the business. And sometimes that's a risk for me because that's a real threat. Because sometimes whenever things don't move like you want it to, don't move as fast as you want it to. You can get stressed or wound up or tension about why things isn't going to your plan, to your KTM, your schedule and where you want to be. And the stress levels can quickly build up. So how do we how do we deal with that? How do we or why do we find it so difficult to deal with? speaker-1: Yeah. Well, I think for me, I just try to be really patient and know that, look, we're not perfect, right? I'm not a perfect leader and I don't have perfect coworkers and that's okay. And for me, if I have people around me that I know and feel like want to do a good job and are giving their best, and we are making steady progress, I have to be okay with that. Because if you think about organizations like The organization should have a long term outlook. And what I want to see is are we better in the next three years than we were today? Now, I definitely don't want to have like baby steps over the three year period, but I'm okay with baby steps over a three month period or a six month period. So that way by the time we get to that five year, that ten year, we're making very good strides and we've come a long ways from where we were. But what I think is really important is that we've got to just constantly be making improvements on the organization, not being okay with status quo. So be patient, but also demand some movement. And that's where I fall. speaker-0: Being specific about the what within the business, if you can understand exactly what the goal is and define that clearly and be able to communicate that clearly, I think that can help alleviate a lot of our stress because the people that we're relying on the business to achieve those goals, they understand exactly what it is we're trying to achieve and then setting the deadline for that. So when should that be done? And even setting clear deadlines or even maybe several deadlines on the project. stops us getting maybe so stressed, but it also stops us transferring stress to the team because we're not constantly checking up, constantly like micromanaging. Is this done? Is it done? Is it done? Give them a deadline. That's right. Manage it appropriately as well. So then we're not putting that unnecessary burden or the pressure on the team. And sometimes not even defining the how. If we tell them how to do it too much And we're micromanaging that, then when they deviate from our how, it puts them under more stress. And then we have anxiety and stress because they're not doing it the way we want. Even though they might get to the same outcome that we need, the method just might be different. Yeah. Right? It's like watching people on Excel. I sit beside someone and we're talking about numbers and they're working it out. And I'm like, don't do it like that. Put in this formula. And and and you're just no, don't interfere. Their number is gonna be the same as my number. Their formulas might be different, right? The format might be different. Doesn't matter. It doesn't need to be done my way. Sometimes the how is not important. It's it's that outcome. Again, being able to establish what good looks like. What's what's the metrics? How do you know that you're on track or off track? Again, yeah. Thinking about a long term project, you don't want to arrive at that end, go, well, at that set date and realize you failed it because then stress is through the roof. But being able to measure that at set intervals. Or being able to measure success daily, whether that's in your first past yield or in your scrap rates, and being able to control those so you don't hit the end of the month and then look, whoa, look at our scrap costs for this month. It's about being able to see them daily. And those little clearly defined rules, agreements, metrics allow us to control our stress, but also our expectations of the team, which also in turn then protects the team and their stress levels. Yeah. speaker-1: Absolutely. And that that touches really on the balance between accountability and trust. Right? Because you you want your team to be accountable for their what they're doing and the improvements, but you also need to trust them. I had the exact same conversation literally not more than three hours ago in that we're working on a pretty big project and one of the guys came to me this morning and he had an idea, like we're really kind of stalled out. We're we're in a really big project, but we're stalled out waiting on some other things to happen before we can really take the next step. And I didn't love the direction we were going, but he came up with an idea that was able to kind of make some good improvements that will tide us over till we can get to the really big step that's coming. But I had asked the team to, you know, take it upon themselves to kind of move. We kinda had some some of the framework down and I said, Okay, look, you guys go ahead and work on this. Well, when they come back to me, the overall thought was in the right direction, but the application was not what we had discussed and not what we had agreed upon of as as a team. And so now I've got to find myself balancing like, do I go ahead and say, no, we're gonna back up and we're going to do it like we had talked about doing it, or do I let them proceed? Because it's a pretty like you have to find that balance and decide when you can intervene and when you can't, right? They're doing their Excel spreadsheet, let them do it. Right. They're working most ERP systems or MRP systems You can get to the same outcome three different ways, right? And I do it one way and you do it one way. And like I'm not gonna tell you how to do it. We're gonna get there together. I've been there. But like there are gonna be times though, like there's something on the floor that ⁓ we've had in a previous podcast. We've talked about I want them to get there and I'm gonna try to help them get to the way I wanna do it. But ultimately I'm gonna let them decide as much as I can. But there's gonna come a point where it's like, okay, no, that's not the direction we need to go. I'm ultimately gonna make the decision, this is what we're doing, and then it's on my shoulder. speaker-0: Yeah. But I th I think you're only able to do that because you've built yourself a a safety net, if it's okay to do that right. You've given people enough rope and you know how long that rope is. It's the length of time that you know they've got to do that. And if they're not doing it by this point, you're gonna have to intervene. You've allowed yourself that safety net, that little bit of protection that allows you to manage your stress levels and where the business needs to be, but gives the team time to develop it. And that's so important. There's a saying about failures. I don't know what it is, but it's about like accelerating your failures, right? The quicker you feel, quicker quicker then you you improve and you fix the problem. So yeah again, it's about when you've got that safety net, it's about allowing the team to feel quickly and to feel as often as they can because every time they feel you're taking that as a learning moment. And then if we can f if we focus then on fixing the problems and not the blame, within that safety net constraint, speaker-1: Uh-huh. speaker-0: That protects you, it protects the business, and you don't have to transfer that stress. And then ensuring that they know where they're where they need to go to get help. So if they are struggling. And then sharing the risk. You you talked about it there as well. You I'm feeding off what you were saying there. It's about sharing the risk. You were talking about a team working on. Sometimes we have a tendency to give a project to an individual or a person. Sometimes with that, becomes a lot of stress or pressure on them because they have to be the person to know everything, to find everything, to develop. But if they can share that even as a small team or as a focused group, that also shares that. It gives them a sounding board and accountability within the team. So some of those things are are helpful. speaker-1: Yeah. Manufacturing isn't always polished, and neither is raw material. Jamie Marzilli gets into the real, raw side of manufacturing, leadership, pressure, mistakes, technology, growth, and building a manufacturing business from the ground up. No buzzwords, no sugar coating, just raw conversations from the shop floor. Check out the Raw Material Podcast, part of the Making Chips Podcast Network. We've covered the the stresses we can't control. We've talked about the lack of systems and how that can create stress. We've talked about your leadership and your delegation and control. And this really brings us to how different roles have different stresses. Right. So just like you're talking about, if you put a team in charge of it, their stress is different. Now there's gonna be some stress to perform, but their stress can maybe that stress is spread out. You know, if you've got I'm just being statistical about it, if you've got a hundred percent of stress. Right. Do you want to have 10 people having 10% of the s each of that stress, or do you want one person with a hundred percent of it? Right. And it might be a better to spread your team out. But also, I mean, there's going to be times where you don't want 10 people with their hands in it because you need somebody to take charge and you need somebody to make those decisions. Maybe that's you, maybe that's somebody else. But each role, you know, you as a leader, you have to be aware that. How many people you're putting into these roles and what their stress levels are going to be, how can they handle those stresses? How do they react under those stresses? Because we all react differently. And so you're going to naturally find maybe the first project you do, you put 10 people in it. And then you realize which ones can handle it and which ones can't. So that next project, maybe there's only eight people involved and you've got three of the people involved have more accountability or more. responsibility because they can handle the stress and you start to weed out, maybe not weed out, but you start to lift up those people that can hand speaker-0: more. I think it's really important there. You you use different words, right? You you talked about stress and you talked about accountability. Mm-hmm. And sometimes we mix up those two things. Sure. Sometimes we get stressed, which is which is the emotional reaction to the responsibility and being accountable for doing something. Whereas we don't want people to be stressed in business, right? Because people's mental health, well being, all of those things are impacted by stress. But at the same time You pay managers, you pay supervisors at whatever level to take responsibility and to be accountable. And at the same time, you must hold them accountable. That's also a balance. I don't know how you guys manage that, but it is difficult at times because sometimes people will get stressed. But at the same time, you can't remove all responsibility or accountability from them. Yeah. Because that's their job. That's what you're paying them for. So I guess that's important. How do you find People that can deal with that and can handle that and can handle that responsibility. Yeah. But not let it affect them as stress. speaker-1: Did not expect it to to come to this part in our talk, but I feel like I've hit kind of a light bulb moment that, you know, in previous conversations we've talked about how like your best operator may not be your best setup person or your best setup person may not be your best manager, right? We all have different roles and the concept of promoting from within versus hiring from the outside. But as we're talking through this, you know, one of the things that I think I'm gonna probably start to really be aware of differently is as we go through projects, who is handling that stress, who is handling that accountability, because that's going to be a really, really good indicator for who's ready to move to that next position. Especially as you think about somebody that becomes a lead, somebody that becomes a manager, somebody that has responsibility for other employees, that person can set themselves apart in projects on the floor. dealing with the things that they're dealing with. So you think I think like operators, set up people, like they're they're dealing with deadline pressures. They're dealing with changing priorities. They're dealing with like tool issues, those types of things where and then maybe your quality team, they're having to balance like inspections versus production flow. You know, there's the difficulty there. You've got managers or supervisors, right? They've got their goals that they're trying to hit, their deadlines. They've got schedules that are trying to organize and the outputs they gotta get done by the end of the month. And then from an ownership standpoint, maybe you got payroll, you've got future work, you've got outside responsibilities, right? So everybody has this different level. And it's almost like at some point, when you're at the bottom, if you're able to prove that you can handle the stresses of that job, you can take the next step. And once you can prove that you can handle the stresses of that one, you can take the next step and so on and so forth. You know, I've never really thought about it in that concept. You know, we give people what they can handle and the more they can handle, the more we give them, and that's really related to how they handle the stress. speaker-0: Yeah. It takes a steady hand to hold a full cup. That was an old saying that I used to hear, right? It takes a steady hand to hold a full cup. And sometimes whenever you're running a big business, you need to hold it steady because the repercussions of a of a ripple. So who do you think out of all those people that you talked about, who carries the biggest stress? Who is the biggest stress department in your business, right? What level speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. I'd have to say, I mean, I think ownership does, right? At the end of the day, from the standpoint of I think about myself personally. I feel like and I know that's I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm like you put me under pressure, right? ⁓ speaker-0: Speak personally, right? There's people listening to this us in your shoe. speaker-1: Absolutely. I think for me, what I have to think about on a daily or weekly basis is I'm not just thinking about the customer. I'm not just thinking about the product that's going out the door. I'm thinking also about the individual employees that are here. I'm thinking about their families. I'm thinking about, you know, their spouses and their children and their extended family. You know, if you employ fifty people, well, you're not responsible just for fifty people. Like 'cause, you know, many times you think, okay, well, as the head of a household, I'm responsible for my household. Well, if you're the head of an organization, you're responsible for that organization. And that means not just the fifty employees, but their spouses and their children. So there very easily can be hundreds of people relying on you for decisions that you're making. every single day. And you gotta know that those decisions that you're making, you can't just make decisions based on what you want. You can't make decisions based on ⁓ sometimes you can't make decisions based on what might be the fastest way to make cash because that's not always the best decision for the organization long term, which again is what benefits those hundred, two hundred, three hundred individual lives that you are really being responsible and accountable for. speaker-0: Very true. I'm gonna challenge it and I'm gonna give you another thought. I would say the most stressed people, mm-hmm, in my opinion, or for what I see, is those middle level managers. Yeah, sure. So who's your shop floor manager? And the reason I say that, I I'm looking at it at a different angle is you, whenever you're carrying or your business owner or whether it's a director of a big company, yes, they have top level responsibility. Mm-hmm. But whenever their frustration or whenever they get stressed or whenever they get angry or disappointed about what's happening on the floor, who gets it? Who gets it in the ear, right? Who gets it whenever the shop floor isn't performing? Yeah. It's the middle managers. Yeah. And at the same time, who is it then that has to go and relay that to the guys on the floor? Mm-hmm. And then the guys on the floor, they're not happy, right? They want more money. They feel like they're overworked and underappreciated by the boss. speaker-1: Right, yeah. speaker-0: And the middle manager gets it that direction. So he's getting this way, he's getting it down. The guy in the middle is in is in a thankless job. Yeah. But it just goes to show you and if you if if you think about that being squeezed in both directions, it it's not fun. And I know a lot of us will have already been there. Think about it in when you get into a crisis management, right? You're not there for the day. You're off on a business trip. You're out meeting customers, doing whatever. But the guy running your shop, one of your machines breaks down. Who feels that stress? Because he knows you're coming back and you're expecting him to hit the targets, but at the same time he's relying on other people hitting those numbers. And that's hard. That's not easy. That's not easy to be there. And in my role where I run and roll out a lot of projects, I'm continually changing things on people. And change brings stress. So people see me coming. They get stressed when they see me coming. speaker-1: That's right. It's like a reac a natural reaction. speaker-0: Just do because I'm coming with all the energy of tomorrow, right? And they're just thinking, I'm trying to get done what I need today. And this guy's coming and he wants to change things. Yeah. And that's hard. And there's these there's supervisors, managers there that are doing what they have to do to meet today's targets. But at the same time, they're trying to implement the change and the vision that comes from high level management. You know where you want your company to be in two or three years. And so you're setting out strategies, projects. You're rolling out new MRP systems, whatever it is. But those middle managers, they're still trying to survive the day, keep your customers happy while changing and shaping your future. That's hard. That's hard. Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah. Well, yeah, and you're right with the ⁓ middle manager aspect because I think the other pressure that hits them is they don't always get to make all the decisions, right? Because they're being told what to do somewhat. They're getting the bottom pressure as well, but like they don't necessarily have the freedom to do things like they want to. So that puts them in you know, that can handcuff them a bit. So I think that's important. aspect that if, you know, depending on what position you're in, is have those conversations to, you know, let's talk about what our opportunities are for improvements to make those jobs easier. Because if you can reduce the stress on the middle manager, you're probably reducing the stress on your other employees and also at the top. And all this wraps into our final point, which is what a stable operation feels like. Like you said, I think now we've we've discussed on what it feels like to be unstable. what it feels like to be stressed, but now we've got to talk about like what that looks like and how we can, you know, make those make those little steps to move forward. speaker-0: Yeah. Just connecting the last point with this one, Jason. If you're looking at a stable environment, that middle manager is generally the person who maybe has the most people reporting to them. Mm-hmm. And they are the people there that connects that floor to senior management. And that role is really, really critical. And if you don't have the right person in there, you will never have this stable environment. They are the the middle manager is the people who helps your shop floor operators with their stress. Whenever they're stressed out, who talks to them, who coaches them through it, who picks them up whenever they're having a rough day? It's a middle manager. Yeah. And sometimes senior management doesn't recognize that enough and maybe spend enough time supporting the middle manager on the emotional stress side of the business. We can just lump that pressure on. But if we're talking about what does a calm environment feel like, I think that's where it needs to start. How we can support that middle management. to enable them to coach, to spend time, to be empathetic with the shop floor staff when they're struggling. speaker-1: Yeah. I think you're you're you're spot on with that because that's a very, very important role in every organization. But where it is a real challenge, you know, it's kinda like you've got to be good at multiple things because you probably not only need to be good on the personnel side, right? The personal side, the personnel dealing with the employees aspect, but you also probably need to have some type of especially manufacturing, some type of mechanical knowledge. You've got to have some ability to help work through some of the problems, you know, like some of those problem solving skills. So I mean you you need a lot of experience, you need a lot of skills to be able to to really operate as that middle manager. It's a very tough role. It is a very speaker-0: It's tough role. Tough role. But if we're talking about stress, how do we take away our stress? How do we reduce our stress levels? How do we run our business better to reduce the stress for the for the middle managers? How are we doing that? We go out onto a shop floor and it's well run. People are relaxed. What do we see? Why are they relaxed? Why is there lower stress levels? Is it because they're not pushed? Is it because we're not hitting enough volume? Or is it that we are just in control. Right? What is it that you used to say? Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. I don't know. There was an old say. There was an old there was an old say speaker-1: No, no, no. Slow is smooth and smooth as fast. You might have said it right and I you might have said Yeah, slow is smooth and smooth as fast or something. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'm getting it wrong. I don't know. But you're you're a hundred percent right. speaker-0: There you go, right? Did you I w I was saying I said it two or three different The concepts there, right? The concept is that when you go onto your shop floor, just because things is low stress and running smooth doesn't mean you're not efficient. It doesn't mean that you're not getting the throughput. So correct. It's focusing on how do we contain that in stressful environment, how do we eliminate those things? How do we do that problem solving? And what does control and order and discipline the process? What does that predictability and reliability and repeatability look like on the floor? How do we create that environment that allows people to come to work every day, perform their standard work, their standard operating procedures? How does it allow that middle manager to perform their leader standard work and everybody to go home having a good day hitting your numbers? That's the goal. speaker-1: Yeah. Well, that's the that's really a difference between low stress and low standards. Right. So where you've got to find the balance is the amount of stress and the amount of standards. And I would say, you know, by increasing your standards, you're going to be reducing your stress. Right. Because if we're able to define our processes, we're able to make achievable goals, we're able to really start, you know developing things in our our operations that just finding one thing to improve at a time over the course, we're gonna have more predictable schedules, we're gonna have better communication internally, and all of those things collectively are really going to pull down our stress because I think we've probably all been in a meeting before. I know for us, we we'll have a production meeting and there have been times where there are late items after late items after late items. And it's like Then you have to spend time to go develop a plan to all right, how do we get back on target? Right? What is our recovery plan for this product or that product? And if you can go into a meeting, I'm just thinking about one thing. If you're if you're on schedule with your product and you go into a production meeting and everything is pretty much on schedule and you don't have any fires to put out, well, how much less stress is that walking out just by being on schedule? Like that's to me is a huge Step. So really focus on trying to get yourself on schedule with your products. Now, there's a lot of things we could probably have a whole nother episode on on that, but really work on getting yourselves on an accurate, achievable schedule, defining those processes, giving yourself achievable goals, and that's gonna help us increase our standards and lower our stress. speaker-0: Yeah, you're right. You summed it up good. The atmosphere should feel calm, but our standards should be exceptionally high. That should be the target, right? And I guess if we're gonna have some closing thoughts on this, we're looking for I would say be proactive in your maintenance, right? What's gonna cause chaos is unexpected downtime. So be proactive, be on the front foot, document your standards, always know what you're gonna do in every situation, have it well defined, know where to do it, have business continuity plans. Be organized. And CAM systems. Build in your capacity for recovery if you fall into arrears. Yep. Good planning as you documented. That's that's what it's about. Visual order, cleanliness, if you're talking about your five S, your housekeeping, clear boundaries and expectation. And then discipline becoming that daily habit, knowing every day where everything should be and having the team well drilled. That's what speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: allows you to sleep at night knowing that tomorrow I'm set up to have a good day. Why? Yeah. Because everything's exactly as it should be. And when you know that it's as it should be, you're set up for a good day. There's no better place to be as a manager. That's right. speaker-1: That's it. You're reducing that stress. So so yeah, today we covered, you know, the stress that we can't control, talked about how the lack of systems will create more stress, how the leadership and delegation and control directly affects the stress, ⁓ different roles experience different stresses, and then what stable operations feel like and how we can reduce some of those unnecessary stresses. But at the end of the day, manufacturing will probably never be stress free. But we can do these things to help reduce it. So that's it for the shift of the Manufacturing Blueprint Podcast. If you found value in today's episode, we'd appreciate you following the podcast and leaving a review and also share it with somebody else that you know that's in manufacturing. So every follow, every share or recommendation helps us reach more people and continue bringing more practical content focused on leadership, operations, continuous improvement, and building a better manufacturing business. So Until next time, keep improving, keep leading, keep challenging the status quo. The best manufacturers aren't standing still. They're always looking for ways to improve. So we're giving you the blueprint. Now go build.