How this ties in to this article is our Plant Manager is using a permutation on this concept as one of our principles. We compiled what the employees thought were their strengths into a ‘coach’s playbook’. The next phase was we decided what our ‘team’ needs to look like to move us into the future in the best competitive position.

Now come the ‘tryouts’. We are posting our new set of ‘team need’s’ and all are welcome to apply for these positions. Just like in HS & College football, just because you played QB you might end up as a running back, or reciever or even on the defense. Therefore there are no limits for the tryouts, no preconcevied placement of talent.

Well the first tryouts are for Quarterback – a position we are calling Leads. These twelve people will be the subject expert for a different large areas within the plant. They will be tested for knowledge but also tested on how well they can explain & train the different job functions. An expanded Maintenance force (lets call them the defensive linemen) is also open for tryouts and the same time.

As we proceed in creating our new team, other positions will be posted in about three months with the whole concept ready and completed by the end of March.

At the most recent employee meetings a few people questioned the status of the lowest positions, that it might be demeaning to be in that group. To that our Plant Manager replied ‘this is like a football team, these people are my bench and any coach knows to be successful he has to have bench strenght. It is our duty to develop these people to rise into the higher skill positions”.

The concept makes sense. Not everybody can be a starter, there are skilled players and support players and a successful team people know thier roles.

Stay tuned

I am proposing to our HR and Plant Manager that we ask employees to answer two questions

1) I am very good at __________
2) When you are considering changes to (a piece of equipment, a billing process, etc) I would like to be involved.

Now when the VP says “we need to improve the uptime on the Guggenheim line” – you can look at the Roster and see who you need out there.

I think this will help with employee engagement, it certainly forces the employees to view & assess their talents from a managements perspective, and if you see don’t see employees filling a specialist role it might provide insight into future training.

Now sure their are emergencies and the Coach sends down the play down to the people already on the field, but a good Coach would rather take a timeout and make sure the right people are on the field.

Anyway I’ve put it out there for our people to try. If allowed to proceed further I’ll report back here on the results.

peace.