Solution delivered by our Consultant

Matrixx Solutions provided one of their experienced Consultants to support the steel company’s Works Manager and his leadership team.  

The company already had an Operational Excellence improvement programme ongoing. However, they needed an injection from our consultant, to help embed these new ways of working into the organisation.

The Matrixx consultant quickly built a strong rapport with the Works Manager and his team, and spent time with each of them to understand their aspirations and challenges. It was clear they all had a strong desire to continually improve performance, but it was also apparent that changes had previously been made, but were not sustained. So the challenge was to work with the Works Manager and Shift Managers to systematically embed these new ways of working. This would require behavioural change: their own and that of their workforce.

It was agreed that our Consultant would use a train-the-trainer approach: firstly training the Works Manager on specific “Steps for Success”. The selected “Steps for Success” included such things as: Daily Standups, Problem Solving, Standards Implementation, Workplace Improvement and Visual Management. These were the elements the leadership team believed to be most essential to improve their performance outcomes. The Works Manager then trained his Shift Managers, who then trained their own teams.  

Throughout the training, the Matrixx Consultant performed a number of roles: firstly, using their expert knowledge of the subject matter to train the Works Manager. Secondly, working with the Manager to identify existing habits and behaviours (their own and others) and to identify specific strategies to firmly embed the element. Thirdly, the Consultant performed a coaching role: observing and providing feedback to the Manager on his delivery of training and how he engaged his leadership team with habits and behaviours. The Consultant then provided coaching support to the Shift Managers as they engaged their teams.

One critical component of the coaching was helping the Works Manager and Shift Managers to effectively engage the people working for them. Also, to help them surface “simple decision rules” as the precursor to changing behaviours. This led to some great changes, with the workforce taking real accountability for improving their own performance.  

In one case, after being trained on a number of the “Steps for Success”, a shift team took it upon themselves to deal with a long-standing issue.  

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The team used walkie-talkies to communicate with each other around site. However, over the years a number of suboptimal habits had become entrenched, which were founded upon several “simple decision rules”, including: “If I leave my walkie-talkie on the charger, someone else will take it and I won’t have one when I need it” and “If I hide my walkie-talkie, at least I’ll know where to get it from when I need it”. The outcome of this was that walkie-talkie’s were routinely becoming flat, hampering site communications. In addition, routine maintenance was not being performed on the radios, because no one could find them! The radios were designed to be intrinsically safe, and failing to properly maintain them put people at risk in hazardous areas. Because radios were being hidden and not maintained, the team actually ended up having to buy more radios to replace the lost and broken ones.

The Shift Manager and his team discussed these “simple decision rules” and concluded they had a choice: continue operating this way, or change. Fortunately, they all agreed that change was necessary. They collectively agreed to tell themselves a new narrative: “If I leave my walkie-talkie on the charger, at least I’ll know where to get it from and it’ll be ready to go”. The team also put in place new ways of working: setting up a properly organised workbench that could charge twenty walkie-talkies at a time. They created a new standard for themselves, showing “what good looks like”. They also made the maintenance routines visible and used labels to identify when maintenance had last been completed.  The final thing they did was to hold each other to account, so that someone didn’t slip back into their old ways of working.

This simple change was transformational to the shift team. They had fully operational and fully charged radios all the time! This inspired them to go after other problem areas too.

The Matrixx Consultant also supported the Works Manager and Shift Managers in creating a culture where leaders actively engaged with the workforce to verify outcomes and identify further improvement opportunities.

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Business Outcomes

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Testimonial

"I just want to thank you for all the great work and support we have received since we launched our Operational Excellence programme. For me, it's come at the right time, especially with the launch of the Shift Managers. There's so much we can develop together, ensuring we build our learnings into the foundations for our future.

I would like to extend special thanks to you (Roger Wilcox) for being extremely helpful with our Shift Manager development. On behalf of the Shift Managers, thank you!" _{Gary, Shift Manager}