Summary and insights on production site management

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This post was last edited by *aojiaoya0546 on 2016-10-31 at 20:40. First, maintain a proper mindset—do things for yourself; learn skills and do good deeds. 1. In our work, whenever we do something, we should not first think of it as being the company’s responsibility, nor should we consider it to be someone’s superior’s duty. You need to understand that every time we complete and handle a task successfully, it represents an opportunity for growth for us; it is also a form of experience that contributes greatly to our future work and personal development. At the same time, this job is an important source of income that helps sustain the livelihoods of our families; it should serve as a crucial starting point for each of us. In our work, we should approach everything with a sense of gratitude and a commitment to doing our best, as this is the proper attitude toward work for all of us. 2. When entering any industry or company, one is not familiar with everything, so a learning process is necessary; therefore, the right attitude towards learning is also very important. In my view, learning should not only involve learning from professional technicians – in fact, every experienced employee has something to teach. From professionals, one learns knowledge, while from experienced employees, one learns experience. If one can adopt this right attitude, integrating into a team should not be a problem. Integrating into a team is an important step in doing a good job in on-site management at the grassroots level. It’s difficult to carry out grassroots work effectively if one cannot integrate into a team; currently, there are a few grassroots managers whose methods for integrating into the team when they first arrived were similar to this ； Using power to pressure people – I am the leader appointed by my boss, so you must obey me. Using power to force employees to do things, as well as using meals and drinks as a means to build relationships and employ tactics of flattery in order to get employees to work. These are all undesirable. In my opinion, employees’ demands are actually quite simple: what they need is respect, praise, and to be convinced with reason. The work they do deserves to be recognized; recognition from leaders is a form of respect and praise. Personally, I believe there are no disobedient employees; there are only leaders who lack the methods and skills to manage them. Every manager must practice perspective-taking. If I were an employee, how would I handle the tasks assigned by my supervisor? What would I think? This is a way of working. Never think that just because you are in a leadership position, you’re the best and the number one; that the department can’t function without you. We need to remember one sentence ； The world will keep turning without anyone; every enterprise is the foundation for all of us to survive. If you leave the company, it is not the company that suffers a loss – it is you. Without you, the company will continue to develop as before, but you will have to start over once you leave. Therefore, a proper and positive mindset is the foundation for doing one’s work well. Second, learn to summarize and reflect on work and life, and learn to respect employees. We have to do a lot of work every day, which is very tiring; sometimes we have to go to the construction site in the middle of the night to deal with certain issues. But when we look back on the tasks done throughout the day, we can’t even explain exactly what we did – it’s just a constant back-and-forth movement from one place to another. If this is the case frequently, it will reflect the seriousness of the problem. It’s shameful to be tired. What to do about those? My personal opinion is ； After working in a particular role for some time, one should learn to summarize, identify the root causes and patterns of the problems, and then consider solutions to them. How to simplify and organize complex tasks. Within three months of joining the company, I need to take two to three sets of notes, as I am not familiar with the environment, work processes, and the people around me at first. During those first three months, I will learn about everything, record it all down, and write down my thoughts at that time, so as to be able to reflect on things and make improvements in the future. For example, when I first joined the Liling Ceramics Factory, it took me about ten days to record the basic information and individual capabilities of all the employees. At that time, there were 134 people working in our workshop. Forty days later, when I took over as workshop supervisor, I took out this notebook and, based on the information I had gathered earlier, made some significant adjustments to the staff. Why the first three months? Because when you first arrive at a company, you are unaware of all the people, things, and the environment around you; therefore, your initial impressions and feelings are the most straightforward, free from any emotional bias. Over time, one gets assimilated; the resulting understanding becomes more objective. (Chinese people tend to be quite emotional when handling matters.) However, such an objective understanding means that your thoughts will be influenced by the environment and culture, preventing you from achieving the desired results. Therefore, what we write down in our notebooks must be intuitive, and when thinking, we must eliminate all kinds of objective factors. As a new employee joining a company, there are things to do within the first three months. When decisions need to be made after those three months, you can refer to the records from that time to find evidence or the truth. When communicating with employees, I often take the time outside of work to have casual conversations with them. However, there is a common issue that arises during these casual talks: complaints. Many managers get annoyed as soon as they hear complaints; whenever someone complains, they respond with a counterargument, and in the end the conversation ends on a bad note. Some managers even say ； If you’re going to do it, do it; if not, get lost. Think about those who often complain to you; did they end up leaving? Most people, except for a few, will not leave! In fact, when communicating with employees, we should adopt an attitude of being a listener; there’s no need to explain things to them, as we are in different positions and view issues from different perspectives. Some issues simply cannot be explained clearly, and in such cases it’s sufficient to act as a good listener. Being a good listener is not an easy task either; while listening, one needs to be in a good mood and patient. Moreover, there is actually some very important information in their complaints, which needs to be identified through filtering those messages in order to address them as issues in future work. Now let’s think about whether we ourselves often complain as well – definitely so. Complaining is actually a way of releasing stress, and in this process of releasing stress, there is a need for an audience. Often, one has to play that role of an audience member. If one doesn’t do so, three consequences can arise: first, employees will accumulate resentment and keep making mistakes at work; second, they will turn to their superiors for someone to listen to them; third, if they seek others as an audience, the impact will spread further. I think this isn’t the outcome we wanted. Therefore, one must be a good listener and extract useful information during the process of listening. Let me tell you a little story ； When I was working in Guangdong, my wife worked at the factory next to ours. One day she said that a few of her colleagues wanted to go shopping in the city and asked me to drive them there. So I went; along with my wife, there were four people in total. That day I really understood what it means to say \"three women make one drama\" – as soon as we got in the car, they started talking non-stop. They complained about the unreasonable rules at the factory, about certain supervisors being incompetent, and about the boss being too strict, etc. It was all complaints. The drive took about half an hour; during that time I focused on driving and didn’t say a word. When we arrived in the city and were about to get out of the car, I spoke up once ； Since your factory is so poor, why don’t you leave? That factory is currently hiring people. They stopped talking right away, and later, when they were back at the factory, they remained quiet in the car as well. When my wife came home that night, she told me about what had happened in the afternoon ； They’re just talking; some of them have been working at this factory for five or six years and won’t leave easily. In fact, complaining is, in a way, a sign of concern; if one isn’t even willing to complain, then they have truly given up. It’s like when a leader loses even the interest in criticizing you – do you think you still have any future? Summarize in one sentence ； Everything that happens in work and life, and every person who appears, requires us to keep track of it and think about it. Truth stems from practice; every one of our ideas is brought to life by our employees through their hard work. Therefore, we must learn to respect our employees and understand the importance of doing so. Third, we are sandwich cookies. As frontline managers, we’re like a sandwich—caught between two layers. Why do I say this? Above us, we’re responsible to the company and our superiors; below us, we’re responsible to our employees. Many times, employees have strong opinions, and we represent them by bringing those opinions to the company or management. But the boss has his own ideas and tells you what he thinks, before saying that this is the final decision and asking us to go back and convince the employees to accept it. When you go back, you first need to explain the situation to the employees from the company’s perspective. At that time, the employees are very confused and dissatisfied; some even use abusive language or engage in other extreme behaviors. This puts us in a difficult situation. The interests of employees must be protected, as must those of the company. So, what should we do? When faced with such situations, have you ever felt the urge to just walk away? Some people actually do just that. We need to protect both parties—but who will protect us? I would like to say something here ； Many of us talk about how much work we do each day and how many tasks we accomplish for the company. Yet the boss simply doesn’t understand or trust us; he only demands that we get things done, but provides no policies or guidelines to help us do so. So, how are we supposed to carry out our duties? Do we have such complaints? I used to have them. What I want to say now is ； You must believe that in any company, the person who knows you best is your boss; it’s just that the boss uses different criteria to judge you. The boss focuses only on the results, while we, as frontline managers, need to pay attention to the process, because it is impossible to achieve good results without a proper process. And it is at this point that the ability to control and manage this process, as well as to balance the interests between the company and its employees, comes into play – it is then that a manager’s skills are put to the test. We used to like to say a phrase all the time ； There is hard work even without any recognition. Perhaps this phrase was useful in the past, but with the changes of the times, it no longer serves much purpose. No matter how hard or tired you are, if the results aren’t good, no one will acknowledge your efforts. The leader of the Southern Operations Center now gives us this message: ； Getting it done is ability; it is merit. What “getting it done” means is the outcome. This is what leaders want to see and need. As for how to get it done, that refers to the process—that is, what we truly need to do and control. There’s only one end result, but there are countless ways to achieve it. The boss evaluates our merits based on the results, while we grow and mature through the process. When making sandwich cookies, there is one principle to keep in mind ； One must not harm the interests of the company; doing so will mean no future for one. Nor should one harm the interests of employees, as that will result in losing their support. The right approach is to achieve a win-win situation. By making sandwich cookies, you can achieve something for yourself. IV. Execution capability ； As managers at the grassroots level, implementing the company’s intentions and will is our highest priority. So, how to carry it out effectively is a matter of execution ability. Many times, when the company assigns a task, we always have many objective reasons to delay it, and we don’t take action until the last moment. Sometimes the boss is too busy and forgets the tasks he assigned. Many of our managers see this as an opportunity to delay things indefinitely; and when the boss remembers to ask about it, we come up with countless excuses to explain it. This is a sign of inadequate execution, as well as a problem with work attitude. To carry out the tasks assigned by the boss effectively and fulfill his intentions, I believe it mainly comes down to the following points ； 1. To truly understand the boss’s intentions and wishes, it is necessary; without understanding them, it is impossible to complete the tasks assigned by the boss successfully. 2. Analyze the current situation based on the boss’s intentions and wishes, and report the situation to the boss in a timely manner without any delay. 3. Practice empathy by considering things from both the boss’s and the employees’ perspectives, so as to accomplish tasks in a way that does not violate the company’s overall interests. 4. Stick to one’s position; do not refrain from taking action or increase the difficulty of carrying out such actions just because it conflicts with one’s own interests or those of employees. 5. Maintain firm beliefs: The boss is always right; never doubt the boss’s decisions. 6. When encountering difficulties during execution, try to solve them on your own; if you can’t, seek help. Don’t give up just because of obstacles – remember, the boss only cares about the results. 7. Remember, procrastination harms not the boss, but yourself. The boss loses money, while you might lose an opportunity. As a frontline manager, I personally believe that 80% of our time should be spent on the production floor, rather than giving remote instructions. Only by being on site can we promptly identify and resolve issues. Regarding some poor work habits, I used to give them a lot of guidance and insist on addressing these issues day after day; by doing so, they would naturally think about whether they had done anything wrong as soon as they saw me, thus developing a conditioned reflex. As long as one holds firm for a while, I believe it can be corrected; after all, humans are animals with knowledge.