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Lonely Lies the Head that Wears The Crown

This is an old adage, which may be true generally but does it need to be true in your organization? As we grow up the organizational ladder does it need to be true that we get lonelier and lonelier? Actually it should not be. In fact if you are feeling so, then there is something seriously wrong with your team building or team adaptability. That does not mean you become pally with everyone around. You need to keep the organizational hierarchy intact and also work with a strong cohesive team.

How you do it generally depends on your style but what it does require is

Identifying potential candidates who can shoulder responsibility.

Grooming them to take on additional work

Give them power to execute, and be responsible for their actions.

Correct them if they make errors

In short, build up a system that demonstrates leadership at all levels.

New Job Jitters - Your First Day At A New Job

Job changing is a common phenomenon now a days. Most persons do it quite often. It might be by changing organizations, changing to different locales within the same organization or in the smallest reference may be changing departments within the same location. Anyway when ever you change your place of work and consequently the regular group pf people you work with, this may be called a new job.

Ask anyone who has changed his job, right from the novice with a one job change to a veteran with several, all will agree that the first day at the new place of work is always somewhat jittery. It starts right from the time you probably get up and realize that today it is a new job. I have gone through a few smaller ones and one major one.

How did I go through it all? Simple ... by preparing for the new job. It is not easy. You are as apprehensive as the persons who are going to be your future colleagues and team mates. Both have a certain degree of uncertainty. So the best thing is to make the situation as comfortable for as possible for both. This means the following:

Do homework about the possible job content and standard expectations.

Be as presentable as possible and try to ease others as much as you put yourself at ease.

Listen, listen and listen still more. Prompt others to open up and do the talking. You have to learn as much as you can within the shortest possible time.

Do not try anything drastic in the first few days. Keep the systems as it is and be observant about what is going on. Every system may have been good in its own context but may have lost effectiveness as the surroundings and conditions change. Instead of unsettling it without a plan, what is required is to tweak it to the present relevance but gradually, or at least until you have understood all the qualifying conditions and their impact.

Be participative and involve others. Ask for suggestions and promote decision making at all levels. Do not allow decisions to be pushed up.

Very soon you ease into your new job, and become as confident as others in the demands the job puts on you.

The Power Of Dreams

Have you ever felt you wanted to do something with full sincerety and in full earnest? If so I bet you live it and dream it all the time. So much so that you start going into micro details. You break up the activity into smallest parts possible and evaluate each one carefully. If required you break these into further parts till it becomes unbreakable anymore. The analysis and possible outcomes are so carefully and thoroughly done that there is practically no situation unexplored. You are already half way to success.

You go to bed with it in your mind and probably in your subconscious state think about it. It becomes so much integrated to your life that this becomes a mission for you. With so much dedication can you ever fail? No you cannot. Thats the power of dreams.

To achieve something in earnest you need to dream about it. It must kindle a passion and your whole mind and soul must be set aflame with it. Thats why today, most creative and innovative companies provide their employees some precious time to dream. They fully believe that the dreams of today are the realities of tommorrow.

Has Manufacturing Lost Its Glamour?

Today a young person just out of college has a wide variety of career options. Even twenty five years back, parents in India used to coax their children to opt for one of the two widely accepted streams i.e. Engineering or Medicine. And Engineers who graduated invariably opted for a manufacturing job. The opportunities in other sectors were much lesser, to the extent that it was perceived if someone chose anything else other than these two, it was because of not getting an opportunity and not by choice. Manufacturing offered a steady job with a steady income good enough to subsist with an average lifestyle. During those times the opportunities for spending were limited, and whatever spending was required was amply covered by an average person’s salary in the manufacturing sector. Gradually during the last twenty years or so, with globalization and introduction of international technology and products in India the cultural scenario went through a sea of change.

With multinationals entering into India in practically every area of operations the options for a young talent opened up many fold. Obviously what other functions gained, manufacturing lost. I say manufacturing lost even though there has been a significant growth in all sectors, because with the increase in number of choices proportions coming to manufacturing decreased.

But why did an aspirant’s options shift from manufacturing. Is it simply because of the simple law of equal distribution or is there something else? Maybe it is a combination of both and some of the reasons that I could come up with are enumerated here:

Manufacturing has always been considered a tough un-glamorous job. The scene that gets conjured in the mind is that of a hard worked and exhausted person with grease and muck covering his dress and body. Maybe this is because of personal experiences or because of the way it is projected by the media.

Salaries in the manufacturing sector are not as much as that in other sectors, especially in software. There is a perception that the salaries do not measure up to the effort put in.

Manufacturing is a collaborative effort. Lots of people doing their bit of the job to contribute to the complete whole. In this scenario it becomes much more difficult to identify and compare talent. So quite often the ingenious employees do not get a platform to showcase their abilities.

The change in manufacturing content is not as dynamic as some other areas like software, interior design etc. A person continues to do the same thing over and over again for a much longer time. In project oriented jobs, each project provides an opportunity to enrich one self and learn something new.

Due to the very nature of manufacturing jobs, shifting from one industry to another, for example from automobiles to steel making involves a significant paradigm shift. Most often it may not be possible, and even if someone does so, the acquired skills of the previous jobs may not be required in the new scenario.

Some of the newer professional options have a halo created around them which attract more talent to these.

Because lots of young talent is moving away from manufacturing, there is s dearth of competent talent in the manufacturing sector. It may soon reach a point where the industry that creates wealth, may seriously lack the capability of doing it at all.

How to avoid being a Shouting Boss

Every organization works on a hierarchy. From the top to the bottom on the organizational ladder, you are the boss for some and subordinate of some. During our professional career we come up with a wide variety of bosses and subordinates. One type in particular we do not enjoy having, and that is the Blow Top Boss or B-T-B about whom I wrote a few days back.

While we cannot avoid having a B-T-B we can surely avoid being one. At times it is difficult to curb an urge to shout, but it is not impossible. It is much easier and sustainable in the long run “To create an environment where we do not have to shout at all”.

While thinking about it, a few points came up which can be used to avoid being a B-T-B.

Whenever you get that urge to shout, take a long breath gently. The urge that lasts for a second gets gently blown away. In fact this is a real good way to clear your mind and let rational thoughts fill your mind.

Take a resolve every day that “I will not shout Today” till it becomes second nature.

Try to keep up to date with information, and keep abreast with knowledge about your functional area.

Be a good team man. Realize that you are as good as your team. Motivate people to take decisions and be responsible.

Never publicly humiliate your subordinates. If at all they need to be told, do it in your office.

Finally, there is a lot of cacophony in the world anyway. Let us not add to it. Let us create a learning and dynamic organization. Let our team enjoy the work and workplace. Let them be charged up to take on challenges even before they come. Let our team remember us for posterity rather than thank God that we are gone. After all good practices multiply and last longer than a lifetime, much beyond you and me.

Is maintenance a lucrative job now ?

Every manufacturing scenario usually has the following job functions:

Production or Manufacturing

Materials

Quality

Maintenance

What I am going to discuss is, of the four options, does maintenance figure as a preferred alternative? The usual answer now-a-days range from a ‘no’ to a ‘depends on the organization’. In very exceptional cases I must admit that there are maintenance persons who agree that this is the job they always wanted to do, and would continue doing, and it is found that these persons are really good at it.

Does an organization consider maintenance a priority function? By asking a few basic questions or by rather finding answers to these few questions we can find out if an organization really gives importance to maintenance activity or not.

Are the best technical persons of an organization involved in maintenance?

Do freshers in the company spend time as maintenance personnel before graduating to manufacturing or other functions?

Does the organization consider efficient and effective maintenance as an asset or a liability?

Does the organization consider cash outflow for maintenance an essential part of productivity sustenance and improvement, or does it consider it a drain on resources?

During downsizing, are maintenance persons shown the door first?

Does investment in maintenance infrastructure and manpower require more effort and justification as compared to other areas?

Does the organization realize the importance of planned shutdown, and takes this into account during the capacity calculations, or does it consider this as lost production time?

Does the organization deploy established methods of maintenance management like preventive and predictive maintenance, TPM etc as a ‘way of life’ or is it more of –‘I need to do this because others do it too.’

Answers to these questions in most likelihood reflects an organizations attitude to maintenance. This in turn defines the respect and recognition given to a maintenance person in that unit and hence decides if maintenance is a lucrative job option there.

How to manage a Blow-Top-Boss

There are a few established facts about a boss.

Bosses come in diverse shapes and sizes.

They have their own behaviour and temperaments.

While you can pick and choose your subordinates, you cannot choose your boss.

They come as an add-on to the functional area you chose to work at.

Every boss is a boss and a subordinate too.

You must thank your stars and consider yourself lucky if you get a considerate and understanding boss. So it is your job to keep him as your boss for as long as possible, since you don’t know how the next one will be. For that maybe you need to put in more than your usual share of work and make sure that your boss’s boss is happy with your boss.

If you happen to be the unlucky guy to have a shouting and in-tolerant boss, you have only two choices:
- Pray to God that your boss changes his style or the management replaces him.
- Get yourself rotated to a different function or quit your job.

Either of the above cannot happen immediately, so in all certainty you have to work with a boss whom you did not choose, and who shouts his top off at the slightest provocation.

This is a deliberation on how to work with a boss who is extremely generous with his opinions and that too in a very loud voice, or in simple language a boss who shout at everything and everyone most of the time.

Firstly let us bullet out, why does a boss shout at all:

Establish a sense of importance or to spread the word around, who is the boss.

Motivated management style of divide and rule. Shout at a select group and motivate the groups to shout at each other.

Lack of knowledge of a situation or unable to provide a solution to a problem.

To circumvent established systems or processes.

Personal animosity resulting in persistent fault finding.

Put up an act for someone. Usually a showoff in front of outsiders.

Finally if you have a boss who shouts, after all what do you do? There are many strategies, some of which I have tried myself and some of which I have gathered from my colleagues.

Frontal – Take the bull by the horns. This is the most dangerous. In all probability you may be kicked out of the job, or your personal rating so badly pulled down that you have to quit.

Keep mum – A dead man standing.

Practice selective hearing – Let the boss yell, transport yourself the last fun holiday on the beach.

Psychological attack – This is possible when you have a premonition that the boss has called you for a roll over. The moment he comes into view, wish him a good day with a pleasant smile.

Divert attention and blame it on others - This needs glib talking and good background information.

All this apart, all bosses are predictable. Well almost all. The greatest success lies in anticipating your boss. It takes time and patience to thoroughly understand your boss and form a response strategy. In the meantime, till you have a rock solid game plan, do not do anything that antagonizes your boss. Also do not be seen too much with persons whom your boss hates, or is in competition.

Your health is your own, and it is your paramount responsibility to take care of it. You are useful to your organization as long as you can contribute, which means that you have to be healthy both in body and mind. So, at the end of it all, if the day was really bad and you went through a major grill you still have a few options to keep up your spirits:

Go home play with your kids,

Take your wife and kids out for a movie and dinner,

Go the bar and drown a couple or

The best, go for a jog, swim or a rigorous workout.

There are too many good things in life to simply brood over a horrible scuff.

Yet another blog Why ....... ?

Good day to all of you there. Weather you are an automation engineer or not, if you like good reading maybe I will be able to interest you. But before all that Who Am I ? and why should you listen to me at all ?

My name is Ajay. It is a fairly common name in India. Iam 44 years old and work with one of India's leading manufacturing organizations. By qualification I am an Electronics Engineer and by profession a maintenance and factory automation specialist. I have been in such a job for nearly 22 years growing up from a rookie to a reasonably good engineer (others say so not me !).

As I asked before, with so many blogs out there, why this one ? For an answer, ask yourself this; While there are lots of blogs hosted by people with diverse professions ..... Have you found a blog which captures the essence of a maintenance person ? I mean the true essence, with first hand experiences not stories passed down from one to another .....

Maybe you have not tried .....

Maybe you have tried but not found any.....

Maybe you are simply not interested .....

In any case to tell you the truth, I have put in my effort and haven't found any. This is the first reason for starting this blog.

Secondly, ControlOn is a website which was started by me and my friends about five years ago. We did the website coding and continue to do so. It started off as a portal for technical people, with lots of information for persons in the business of "Factory Automation". Somewhere down the line we began to realize that whilst ControlOn is a storehouse of information, the site is quite inanimate. You seek information, you come here and hopefully get it. That's about it. Period. We have done nothing to capture and share the thoughts, feelings, aspirations, frustrations, joys sorrows and other expressions of persons who visit this site. After all this is what brings the site to life. This blog was just waiting to happen, and should have happened long ago. And here it is.