Manufacturing Beyond Machinery with Angela Hodgson

Manufacturing businesses often invest heavily in machinery and systems, but what happens when they overlook the people running them?

In this episode, we sit down with Angela Hodgson, Founder of Ignite Improvement. After more than 20 years working across automotive, luxury manufacturing and engineering SMEs, Angela now helps manufacturing businesses strengthen leadership, develop their people and build healthier ways of working.

Together we explore why growth doesn't have to lead to more pressure, what healthy manufacturing teams have in common, and why investing in people is just as important as investing in technology.

This conversation covers:

• What a healthy manufacturing culture really looks like
• Why growth exposes weaknesses that already exist
• How leadership behaviour shapes the wider business
• The risks of knowledge sitting with one person
• Why adding more people doesn't always reduce pressure
• The importance of investing in people alongside machinery
• How to reduce firefighting and empower teams

Connect with Angela
📋 Free Team Diagnostic Quiz
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📖 Free eBook: Team Success System™
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https://igniteimprovement.co.uk/ebook

🌐 Website
https://igniteimprovement.co.uk/

💼 LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelahodgson/

Transcript

People First, Not Just Machines

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I see a lot of manufacturing businesses investing in machinery, investing in tooling, investing in systems and not investing in their people. But you can have the most amazing systems, you can have the most amazing machinery. But if you don't have the people who want to work in your business, who want to stay in your business, all the best machinery and systems are just going to sit there dusty if they're not being used by people who are genuinely passionate and genuinely want to be there to drive your performance.

Martin Griffiths 0:36

I'm Martin, and today I'm joined by Angela Hodgson. She spent the last 20 years working inside manufacturing operations, helping leaders transform their teams and culture. And one of the things that she's really clear about is this: most manufacturing businesses are investing heavily in machinery and systems, but not so much in the people actually running the plant. That's the real gap. So we talk about what healthy culture looks like and why Gen Z aren't really interested in manufacturing the way previous generations were, and how you actually attract and keep good people. She's also got a really good example of a guy who started on the shop floor at 16 and is now running an entire division in America because his company actually invested in developing him. That's a payoff you get when you get this right. Let's get straight into the episode now. So just tell me where you're joining from today. Okay. And are you working from home then at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Yeah, work from home. Working from home has its kind of benefits, but it also has its kind of downsides as well because the kids will come in and you know they think nothing of kind of coming in and saying, Mom, I need a and the other. But then it also enables you to kind of balance that with the family and be around for them when they need you. So yeah, I do like working from home because it means there's no commuting because I did a lot of traveling, a lot of commuting in my in my prior life.

Martin Griffiths 2:01

So we'll get into your kind of your prior life and what's led you to where you are today, but I'd just like to jump in first with a kind of a deeper question that kind of really dives into your perspective and your outlook.

What Healthy Culture Looks Like

Martin Griffiths 2:13

So, how would you describe a healthy culture in manufacturing?

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Oh, what a great question to start off on. So I would describe a healthy culture as one where people understand the direction that the business is going in and understand how they contribute towards that and feel like they can express their opinions without being shut down. That's what I would say is a healthy culture. One that is quite commercial, is focused on results, but also has that mind on the people. In manufacturing businesses, traditionally, they have traditionally been quite direct, quite things have got to be out the door, got to be done by this day, got to be done by this time. All about quality, quality, quality, timescales, OTIF, and all of that type of stuff. But what we're seeing with these and changes with Gen Z and Millennials, they require different things from a cultural perspective in the business. So businesses, particularly manufacturing businesses, do need to change to embrace what people do require and need from their workplace.

Martin Griffiths 3:06

Brilliant. That sounds great. There's a lot in that, obviously. And I'm hoping that over the next, you know, half an hour's chat, we'll kind of build up to what's led you to that point of view and how you know companies can do that. But yeah, that's kind of you've set a great direction there for where this conversation is going. So let's just roll it back

From Ford To Luxury Automotive

Martin Griffiths 3:26

then. What first drew you into manufacturing?

SPEAKER_00 3:28

So my start with manufacturing was in automotive. So I started working at Ford as part of my internship. So that was back in 2004. So that would be like 22 years ago now, which is quite a long time ago. It was genuinely quite thrilling walking through the factory and seeing all of these loads of cars on the production line and just seeing all of this engineering and all of this excitement around new concepts that were being built. They actually had a track on site where the engineers could raise the cars, and just looking at that was really exciting. And then as part of that, I got the opportunity to work with Jaggy Will Amrover as well. So that was at Gayden, and that was with the more luxury kind of premium end and kind of seeing how they were built and the engineering precision precision, the concepts, the customers. And that was what really inspired me. And that led into a lot of my career being in automotive in luxury brands like Bentley and Bugatti and other places, and really starting to see how these scraps, well, not scraps of metal, the quite luxury bits of metal, become these amazing things that customers just absolutely love.

Martin Griffiths 4:29

Yeah, it's nice to be able to walk around. I think that's one of the things I enjoy about manufacturing so much that you on that walk around, you can see the progression of something getting made step by step, and you've got that physical result of the efforts of the of the day. So, what what kind of roles were you when you did that, that first career with Ford? What roles were you doing and did you get experience of?

SPEAKER_00 4:55

So the first role that I did, well, it was a split role because as I said, I was working with Jaguar Lamb Rover and Ford at the same time because they were both owned by the same group at the time. So my role with Jaguar Lamb Rover was on websites and it was all about the global website and how that was being launched. So it was more around the customer experience, how do they position and do it on the marketing side? But I was also working in the operational function in Ford, and that was actually in the factory. It was working in the manufacturing element, it was working with the people on the shop floor, getting to hear the experiences, the problems, and helping to look at process improvements. So I had two very different experiences in my internship, office-based and shop floor-based. And I genuinely couldn't have asked for a better experience as a kind of entry point because that's something I've always had feedback on is I do understand both dynamics. And as we both know, for manufacturing, there's normally quite some tension between the shop floor and the office, but I can kind of speak the language between both because of that prior experience.

Martin Griffiths 5:52

That's brilliant, isn't it? That's like quite unusual. You don't hear so much of someone doing so, you know, the like the not polar opposites, but such, you know, different uh being able to combine that, yeah, is is amazing. So can you remember a kind of an early moment where you realised this was a career that you were passionate about and you really wanted to kind of continue and grow into this?

SPEAKER_00 6:14

I think just working within the brands, I I kind of when I first finished my internship, I went back to do my degree. So I was I did a degree in business and IT at the time, which is why I got that dynamic side of the website bit and the business side. It was the degree that kind of enabled me to do both of those as part of the internship. And then once I finished that, I did a graduate role in housing. It was pretty dull, to be honest. It was looking at stock management of housing, and I was like, well, this is kind of not really what I want to do. And then I started my own business and started doing things, and I worked with lots and lots of different industries. I've had a real privilege, kind of really unique experience into lots of industries, but the heart and the passion has always been the physical thing of seeing something transform from a drawing, from a concept, from a customer idea into something physical. I like that physical transformation journey. And in a lot of other industries that I've been part of, you don't necessarily see that physical kind of journey or not so quite as much. I also like being involved in those dynamics that you get between the shop floor and the office. And when you work in other, I've worked in science industries and things like that, they don't have that. You have the scientists and you have the office, but it's not kind of the same. So it's always been the people that have drawn me back into manufacturing, and that's kind of really where my passion is, is

Bridging Shop Floor And Office

SPEAKER_00 7:32

people.

Martin Griffiths 7:32

Okay, got it. Yeah. So so let's dig into that a little bit more then, because you know, we started off with the question about the culture, how to build a healthy culture. What kind of experiences do you have early on with that dynamic between the shop floor and the office? What did you learn from that time? And how's that kind of shaped your or changed your opinion?

SPEAKER_00 7:53

It made me learn that they're just two completely different sets of people and that that's actually acceptable. Whereas in a lot of businesses, they don't think it's acceptable. I remember one of my experiences, this was actually at Bentley, and I remember I was I was finished, I never used to finish work on on time. I used to, you know, used to kind of stay late. That was the kind of culture. But this one day I finished work at five o'clock and I was leaving through the office and I saw all these people sprinting, and I thought, oh my god, there must be a fire. So I started sprinting with them, and it turned out it was just all the shop floor lads trying to get to the car park before anybody else to get off site. But it that was a culture shock to me because I was so office people don't run when they leave the office, that they kind of, you know, take the time and they're not necessarily always leaving on time. But that's actually fine. They just want to do the nine to five, they want to do a good job, and they want to go home and watch the football, be with the with the missus, be with their children, do whatever they want to do in their own personal time. Likewise, a lot of office people also like to do that as well. So what I've always tried to do is find the common ground, and the common ground is about the passion that people hold for that business, that product, that customer, that thing that they're actually making, and trying to help people to really understand the connection between what they're doing and what's actually going out the factory gates. Because if you work in finance and you're doing spreadsheets and you're doing balance sheets and all of that, you don't necessarily always relate it back to that amazing product that's going out the door, but you are having a direct link to it. So I always find bringing it back to the passion and bringing it back to the products and the people is the bridge between the two.

Martin Griffiths 9:23

Okay. So so how does that work in practice then? Are you saying that you have to kind of person by, you know, each person by person find out what it is that kind of ticks their boxes or gets them passionate about or what they're interested in?

SPEAKER_00 9:38

I try to do it on a broader level because obviously when I work with organizations that have the luxury of working on a one-to-one with every single employee. And also, they're not going to want to take everybody off the off the shot off the shop floor to then have these one-to-ones. It's not really realistic. So it tends to be more in workshops kind of that I'll do that, where I'll be talking about these things and try to get cross-functional teams working together. So there's a great example with a client I'm working with at the moment where we've created a continuous improvement club and it's got representatives from across the business. And just that giving people the floor to talk about problems from different perspectives, even that in itself opens up the mind. Because then they'll be like, oh, now I understand why you're so fixated on this or why I can't do that or why that's an issue. Oh, that's easy for me to change that. That's absolutely fine. But a lot of the time it's a communication blocker, it's working in silos, and it's not actually having the opportunity to talk outside their teams. So their mindset and their perspective is quite narrow. I try to create opportunities and forums to extend that mindset.

Martin Griffiths 10:39

Okay. So you think that having that opportunity to have that communication is key? Do you think in a lot of businesses then that place isn't there or that space isn't there to do that?

SPEAKER_00 10:49

In a lot that I work with, because obviously they bring me in to do things like that, and a lot of it comes stems from the leaders are also working in silos. So there might be some combative bits or of relationships, there might be some friction tension on the leadership side. So if there's friction between sales and ops, for example, you're not going to get sales saying to their team, oh, go and work with ops, go and set go and be on the shop floor and kind of observe and participate in the things. Likewise, ops aren't going to release their staff to do it because they're trying to protect, they're trying to defend their position. So it starts at the top. So I would always start at the top and try to get a common goal in place for the senior team, a common focus. And core values is also a really important bit that I do that then looks at top and bottom. What's the behaviours that are acceptable in the business? Because if we have a behavior to say that we share information openly, then what are you putting in place to do that? Because you're just telling someone something or putting a poster on a wall, that's not going to drive culture change, that's not going to form these collaborative relationships.

Martin Griffiths 11:49

Yeah.

Burnout, Boundaries, And Better Systems

Martin Griffiths 11:50

Okay. I see. We've jumped around a fair bit there. We've missed the step. So you were at uh Bentley. Tell me what you're doing at the moment and what led you to, you know, what led you to make that move.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

And so I was at Bentley for nine years and I had the great opportunity to work with the Volkswagen Group, and Volkswagen Group obviously owned Porsche and Begassi and Audi and other amazing brands. So again, like the Jaguar Amrover and Ford situation, I was in this amazing situation to work with multiple brands globally, doing loads of travel, loads of experiences in loads of different factories, and I had an incredible nine years. But when I had a maternity leave, a second maternity leave, and then came back, COVID happened. There was lots of changes on the board, there was lots of changes of direction in the business, and it was very overwhelming, and I found it very hard. And I actually had a massive burnout and I found it very, very difficult to kind of reintegrate back into the corporate life. So that made me think I've actually learned loads here. I've had amazing experiences. I'd rather leave on a high and take those experiences to SME manufacturers and engineering businesses that don't have that rigour, don't have that technical standards or processes or governance or people and culture kind of focus and help more local, more innovative kind of businesses make a difference. So that was the step change that I made. And that was in 2020 that I made that change.

Martin Griffiths 13:13

So I'd love to get into a bit more about what you're doing now, and we we will do that in a second. But just going on to the the burnout, like I feel that is something that well, I was having a chat with someone yesterday and he'd he'd taken over, he'd been brought in as CEO, and he said he saw burnout across all of the shop floor. One of the first things he did was ban overtime because they'd been working six days a week for uh 12 months. This was actually during COVID as well. So I'm just wondered on your kind of your opinion, you know, how what do you think causes burnout either in all great organisations or across manufacturing teams and what do you think should be done, you know, when it's spotted?

SPEAKER_00 13:55

I think burnout is quite unique to individuals. Some of it can be from corporate pressure, but then when I've really reflected, I've written um a kind of a short book around my experiences around of this and kind of the changes and systems that I've now created that I support my clients with to not burn out. Um, but when I really reflect, not all of it was because of the corporate environment, a lot of it was because of me. A lot of it was because I had all of these ideas, I had all of these passions, I had all these things I wanted to do. So I was kick-starting all of these initiatives and all of these projects, and I was growing my team. I had 45 people in my team, and I was trying to support their developments, I was trying to be a good leader, I was trying to be a good mum. And actually, I created a lot of that myself where I didn't step back and think these initiatives are great, but actually have I got capacity to do them. Do they need to be done right now? I'd just start them all and not really think about that. So it was with good intent, but the impact was negative. There were other elements as well from a corporate side that also kind of tipped the balance and impacted me. But I think as a leader, you have to reflect about what you can change, because it's easier to change yourself than it is to change this big, massive corporate structure or any structure and organization that you work within, start with self first.

Martin Griffiths 15:08

Okay. Just out of interest then, how do you how do you handle that now? Have you changed since then?

SPEAKER_00 15:14

I think I'm like a totally different person, to be honest. I really do. And it's interesting because I'm very I used to be quite closed in terms of my weaknesses or my habits or my things that weren't kind of very good. I would always be this kind of wearing a mask and presenting myself as this certain type of leader. But the reality was I did have self-confidence issues and I did struggle with certain things, and now I'm really open. I talk about it on LinkedIn, I talk about it on podcasts, I talk about it in articles, I talk about it openly in coaching and with my clients because I want them to feel safe to open up to me about their thoughts and feelings around it. And then I can very authentically say, I can see what you're doing and I can see where that's going to end up because I did that, and actually the changes I made with this, this, and this, and now I've got this result. So that's kind of one part. The other part is then I'm more systemized, so everything is productized or processed, mapped, everything's a checklist. I've tried to make all my working routines as simplified as possible so that I'm not having to deal with loads of variety of change on a day-to-day basis. I'm creating and implementing really good standards into my clients, and that's reduced a lot of the pressure.

Martin Griffiths 16:25

Okay. So you think that you can come an expert in whatever your career ratio operations business, but you think it's having that structure kind of into there's another part of it, is that structure into how to organise and balance your working life that's important as well.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

And it's having strong boundaries. Like we started the conversation about working from home and you know the balance between my children and everything else. And it is about having strong boundaries. So I'm stronger now in terms of what projects I want to work on, what clients I want to work on, what things I want to do. Previously, when I first set the business up, I'd say yes to everything because you're trying to grow your revenue, you're trying to grow your presence in the market. I'm in a much better situation where I don't need to do that anymore. But also, I don't want to do that. I want to work with people who genuinely want to be helped, who genuinely want to make a change in their in their business. There's obviously a lot of resistance to change that I have to support and kind of specialise with with my clients, but they're shoulder to shoulder with me and want to make that change, they just don't quite know how to make it themselves.

Martin Griffiths 17:25

Got it. Okay, brilliant.

Myths And Truths About Pressure

Martin Griffiths 17:27

Um, I'd like to change track slightly here, do a section called Myths and Truths. So some quick fire questions. You can give me a longer or a short answer, uh, however it takes you. Long hours are a sign of commitment.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Myth. So I don't think it is a sign of commitment. And I am one of those managers who used to see it as a sign of commitment. But actually the reality is we don't know what happens behind closed doors. We don't know the personal commitments that people have. And sometimes we're judging people, but we don't know what they're dealing with. They could have a dad who's got cancer, they could have a child who's really sick. It's not a lack of commitment, it's a capacity constraint that they have. So for me, I would rather support them on how to be as efficient and effective within the working hours than expect them to work more hours because they're just going to burn out if that becomes the expectation.

Martin Griffiths 18:13

Yeah. Okay. Growth naturally creates chaos.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Myth. I don't think it naturally creates chaos. I think it exposes the cracks in the systems, management operating systems that already exist. They're not scalable, they're not set up to scale, and they're not set up for success. And a lot of the times they're not set up. I mean, the processes aren't defined, the ownership isn't clear, nobody knows kind of what they're doing, no one knows the direction they're going in. So I don't think it does create the cracks. I think they're already there.

Martin Griffiths 18:42

Okay, brilliant. Adding more people always reduces pressure.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Myth. And again, there's a lot of myths.

Martin Griffiths 18:50

I'm not doing too well here, am I?

SPEAKER_00 18:53

The reason for this, again, from my perspective, is a lot of clients I work with, they will do a light for light replacement. So Jimmy will leave the business, they'll automatically put a recruitment notification out for Jimmy. But is Jimmy's role still required? What was he contributing to the business? Is there a different skill set that's actually required? Is there a different pressure point somewhere else where you could reinvest that capacity all that time? Also, have you got duplication in your business where similar two people, three, five, four people are doing the same things? Remove that first before you replace. Because all you're going to do is create a lot of toxic friction between people of, well, I'm supposed to own that, and now they've brought this person in. Well, what am I supposed to do? And if you're not managing that from a cultural perspective, you'll create more toxicity and you'll create more friction.

Martin Griffiths 19:35

Okay. Yeah. Oh, that makes that makes sense. Okay. Last one. Leadership behaviour influence how it how pressure spreads and is handled throughout a business.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

I think that that one is definitely true. So at least we've got one truth.

unknown 19:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

And leadership behaviour is something that's really important because a lot of leaders I work with aren't self-aware of their behaviours. So literally yesterday I was having a conversation with one of my clients and they are very results-driven. They achieve incredible results, but they smash through people, smash through process. They're not looking at anything around them. They just see the result. And we did this 360 assessment and it came through to say that they're oblivious, they're impulsive, they're impatient, they're combative, they're not nice, basically, in their approach. Nice as a person, but not nice in their approach. And they were really shocked that they were being perceived as aggressive because all they see is I'm just trying to do this for the business. So if you don't have that awareness of your behaviors, you're going to create a lot of people who just want to get out your way. They don't want to work with you. They don't want to go the extra mile. You're losing that goodwill within the business.

Martin Griffiths 20:42

Yeah. So it's it's focusing on your results, but not maybe seeing the wider picture of how it affects the team and the business results. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

And also a lot of leaders think that it's only them who can create the the results. It's easier if I do it myself, is what a lot of people I work with say to me. But actually, is it easier if you do it yourself? Do you want to own that thing for the rest of your life? Or actually, should you be empowering your team to do it so you can focus on more strategic stuff? And sometimes it's because of lack of confidence from their side that they don't want to let go, or it's a trust issue, they don't trust the team is capable. But then have you recruited the right person if they're not capable? Because they're just sat there twiddling the thumbs and you're stressed to death trying to do all of this stuff.

Martin Griffiths 21:21

Brilliant. Okay, thank you for that. Um let's talk about what you're doing at the moment then.

Diagnosing Culture And Team Performance

Martin Griffiths 21:27

What would you say? What type of businesses do you working with at the moment? How are you helping?

SPEAKER_00 21:32

So, again, I keep going back to this word privilege because I was privileged on the Jaguar Lamb Rover Ford side, I was privileged on the Bentley Volkswagen side, and I genuinely feel privileged in Ignite Improvement, the business that I own, because I get to work with so many incredible businesses. So our focus is on manufacturing and engineering SMEs. We work nationally with people all over the UK. And I get to work with advanced manufacturers, CNC, robotics, I get to work with the Eurospace, I get to work with The people who are in the food and beverage, loads and loads of different manufacturing types of businesses. Some that are really specialized in engineering, some that are more focused on the manufacturing side. But what I see from that is a lot of common traits. So my starting point is to do a diagnostic with them and it's split into two different elements. The first part is a cultural diagnostic. What do you people think about your business? What's helping them to drive performance and what's hindering them? That's always quite revealing because it looks at it from a leadership perspective, a shop floor perspective, and an office perspective. And you normally see quite different perspectives. Some people think something's great and other people think that it's not. So it starts with that. And the other side is then around leadership team performance. What are the behaviours like we were just talking about? What is the purpose of that team and how are you working together effectively? So the diagnostic looks at all the elements that are making you amazing and scaling you and setting you up for growth. And what's the bits that's a risk or it's blocking your performance? But there's loads of common themes that come out from that, regardless of the type of manufacturing or engineering business that I work with.

Martin Griffiths 23:06

Do you want to talk about some of those common themes? What are you, what would you say are some of the some of the things that you notice then across across all these businesses?

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Common themes on both the positive and the negative side. So the positive side is people are normally really committed and loyal and they are very passionate about what they do. So you get a lot of good relationships, particularly on the shop floor in or in the office, as in within that dynamic, not across, but within that dynamic is some common themes that kind of come through. They are incredibly passionate about the product or the company that they work for because it is something that their brother, their sister, their cousin works in. In SMEs, you do tend to get quite a closed-knit community because it's local to them or it's the kind of that's the main industry within that city town that they live in. So you get a lot of kind of familiarity and familial um relationships that happen. So that's quite a common piece. On the negative side and on the performance blockers, a lot of it is capacity that the leaders are firefighting, not having clarity on purpose and direction of the future of the business and the strategy, or clarity of who's supposed to actually be doing what. And the other thing that's coming up quite a lot recently is about decisions being blocked, slow decision making. And that's either because people aren't confident to make the decision, they don't know who should make the decision, or the leaders taking all decisions off them, and they've got this massive queue of people outside the door to make commercial decisions, customer decisions, technical decisions. So they're the kind of three common things that I'm seeing this year.

Martin Griffiths 24:36

Okay. So well, this is probably too wide of a question, but what's your strategy once you've found those common themes? What's your what's your strategy then to go about changing the colours?

SPEAKER_00 24:47

So the approach I work with clients is it starts with the diagnostic phase, like I mentioned earlier. So identifying those strengths and those um blockers. The next phase then, that phase is six weeks. The next phase then is the design phase, which is a 12-week kind of sprint. So within that diagnostic, there'll be loads of things that will come up as opportunities for improvement. And sometimes leaders get very excited, or we'll do them all. But then what's going to happen is you're going to nudge incremental, very small progress on lots and lots of different things. So I force them to prioritize three to five big, chunky, complex things, and that's what goes into the design phase. So then we will design those solutions. So it could be about streamlining your processes, it could be about setting up a new management structure, it could be about looking at your training of your people within the business. It could be about looking at those decisions and really clarifying who is making those decisions, what's the standards around those decisions. There's lots of other services that sit underneath, but they're just a few examples. So that's 12 weeks, and there's a beginning, middle, and end of the 12 weeks. We've got objectives, we've got goals, there's targets that we're tracking, taking everybody with us from a change management perspective. At the end of that 12 weeks, there's a deliver phase, which is then full implementation of those solutions. And for some clients, they don't need me at that point. They're like, yeah, we've got all the design, that's fine, we can kind of take that on board. Yeah, we can run with assists and we're not that con we're still not that confident on that particular bit. Can you help us with that? Or for some, it would be it's still quite complex, it's a big change management piece, it's a big there might be some resistance on the on the operational side of the business, and they'll want me to fully project manage that implementation. So again, that's kind of the timescales for that can be different dependent on the size and scope of that project.

Martin Griffiths 26:33

Okay. Yeah, that's interesting, and that's a kind of an interesting approach because like before you were saying, you know, in the past when it maybe taking on too many projects at once had like led you to overwhelm that, you know, it's something we've done actually in the past as well. We split the year up into quarters, we're allowed one new project per quarter. These are two, so three projects in total per quarter, two to follow through on ones we've already started. Yeah, one new project is allowed per quarter, and that actually for us has been really effective because you know, you get new initiatives through, you decide up front what you're gonna do. You're not having the shiny object syndrome, you know, popping up every, you know, every week, which is really tempting to do something new, but like it often doesn't help you, you know, get something delivered, does it?

SPEAKER_00 27:21

So and that control mechanism that I've designed is literally put in place because of what I did at Bentley. And it is trying to make sure that A, there's impact, B, you're not overwhelming the people. Because if you think for every initiative, the management or leadership team are involved, but each one of those will impact the business and the team. It's a new process, it's a new way of working, it's a new template paperwork that they've got to do, a new meeting that they need to attend. You don't want to put so much change in at the same time because you've got no stability. So just putting the right building blocks in at the right time, but it always comes back to the diagnostic. What are the problems that we're trying to solve? What's the common themes that's come up? And that's a bit of a lens and a filter to avoid having just this long list of kind of shiny things. Where does that impact this? And if it doesn't, then we don't proceed with it.

Firefighting And Single Points Of Failure

Martin Griffiths 28:10

Sounds really good. I have a couple of follow-ups that I'd like to dig in on. A couple of things. One thing was about firefighting you mentioned. So, you know, just tell me a bit more about that. Do you think some teams just become so used to the pressure, you know, of getting stuff out the door of reacting that just firefighting just starts to feel normal and it's just uh what do you do in that, in that when you're in that state?

SPEAKER_00 28:35

There's a couple of reflections that I have about firefighting, and it's one of two camps. You've either got the camp that wear the busy badge with pride, oh, you'll see them walking around with the fluff in the papers and oh, I mean back-to-back meetings, I've not got time to breathe. You'll see that type of flustered person. They like the busy badge, you know. I can't, I'm so busy doing this stuff, but they'll be doing things like updating a report that they could have empowered to somebody else. They won't be doing the strategic stuff that's moving the business forward. And the other side that I see is that people are just so used to it, they don't actually see that they're in firefighting mode. They've never known any other world, they're always in reactive mode. I've got fifty 57 emails I've not read, I've got 14 customer requests, I've got all these actions from these meetings. They don't know any other way. So, of both of those, the changes that need to happen are about just settling and reflecting and taking time out to actually look properly about your workload and think. I always use the eyes and how matrix, what's urgent and what's important. Because if you're always doing things that are not urgent and not important, all this other stuff is what's mounting up the pressure in your team and for you personally. So I try to get people to really look at things with fresh eyes. And every time I do coaching or a workshop using those type of simple tools, people are always like, Oh my god, it makes so much sense. And yeah, I know exactly what I need to change now. And you see the light bulb moments.

Martin Griffiths 29:59

Okay, perfect. You touched on this again just then. What happens when like too much knowledge or responsibility fits with one or just a few key people?

SPEAKER_00 30:09

Single source of failure. And that sounds very corporate, it sounds really harsh, but it's fact. And a lot of tacit knowledge does sit in people's heads. There's a client I worked with not that long ago when there was an older chap who was due to retire, and it had um this massive tooling thing, and he was the only one who knew where to click these buttons because he'd done it for literally 45 years, and they didn't have a succession plan, and they didn't have anybody who wanted to do that, and they hadn't really thought about that. And this guy's leaving. So that's really going to cause you a problem because that's quite a caught piece of equipment that nobody will know how to do. I've got it with another client of mine where he's a manager newly promoted into a role, he's really excited to do this management position, but he keeps getting dragged back into operations because he's the only one who knows how to run this piece of equipment. And again, he's not. I always talk about the Stephen Covey example with the sharpen the saw where there's a guy in the wood and he's trying to chop down a tree and someone walks past and says, Need to sharpen the saw, mate. I ain't got time. Well, if you sharpen the saw, it'd go down quicker. He needs to stop what he's doing and train other people to do it. Otherwise, he's it's like a vicious circle. He's never gonna get out of that operational world. So for me, when it comes to that, you've got to take a step back and think, do I want to always own this? If so, what am I gonna do to build the knowledge in the business? And if I don't, who am I gonna give it to? But what's the risk of it only sitting with me? But one final point on that, sorry, is that some people like the fact that they're the only person who knows it and they actually don't want to share that information because they see it as power and they will use it against other people as a bit of a kind of bargaining chip. You gotta be watch out for those type of people. That comes back to the leadership behaviour piece that we were talking about earlier.

Martin Griffiths 31:47

Okay. It's complex, isn't it? A lot of a lot of moving parts.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

That's why I like the people stuff because it is really complex, but I like it. You know, I like solving problems, and I I can look at it from the emotional perspective and the logical perspective, but there's always a root cause that sits behind it, and I love identifying what that is.

Gen Z, Reputation, And Investing In Growth

Martin Griffiths 32:05

What would you like to see manufacturing go over the next few years and kind of interpret that in any way you want? It may be, you know, on a micro scale of individual businesses or like, you know, the industry as a whole.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

One of the things that I'd like to see change is that I see a lot of manufacturing businesses investing in machinery, investing in tooling, investing in systems and not investing in their people. But you can have the most amazing systems, you can have the most amazing machinery. But if you don't have the people who want to work in your business, who want to stay in your business, all the best machinery and systems are just going to sit there dusty if they're not being used by people who are genuinely passionate and genuinely want to be there to drive your performance. So I want to see an equal weighting of people being a key resource in your business that you are going to invest in to develop. It's not just about recruiting them and putting them on the shop floor or giving them a management position, it's about growing them with your business so they are helping you to also grow. From an industry perspective, I want policy change and I want policy change around the rising cost in supply chain, the rising cost in the um energy elements of the business, because we're making it so unsustainable as a UK economy for manufacturing businesses to actually thrive. So something at a policy level also needs to change. And it's something that I do champion a lot on social media.

Martin Griffiths 33:22

You mentioned one of the first comments you made earlier that you think manufacturing as an industry or businesses would then need to change to attract, you know, to change the culture, to attract more Gen Z type people into the, you know, into the future, into manufacturing. You know, what do you think we could learn from other businesses who've adapted better, maybe to to to younger people?

SPEAKER_00 33:45

For me, it's about getting out there and making as simple as this sounds, it's about making people know that manufacturing is not just a dirty, you've not done well in life role. Because, you know, people think a lot of Gen Z, I've got two children and they are Gen Z, they're quite entitled. And I'm saying that as a mum, it's not a judgment piece against other people, maybe it's just my children, but you know, a lot of Gen Z people are entitled. In a good way, though, they're entitled in the fact that what are you gonna do to invest in me? How am I gonna grow? What am I gonna gain from being in your business? And if you can't answer those questions, well, they're not gonna go to you, they're gonna go to somewhere else. But a lot of them have this idea they're gonna be CEO in 10 years after starting their career. Well, you're probably not. There's a bit of a path that you need to go on first, but they're not looking at manufacturing as exciting and products and the engineering and all these things that they can get involved in. They're looking at is this dirty factory down the road that my dad's worked in for 20 years, my dad's dirty clothes when he comes home. Do I really want to do that? No. So it's changing that mindset, and we change that by getting them into the factory, getting them into the shop floor, showing them these amazing CAD designs and physical designs of things that you're that you're building, getting them into the shop floor. Make UK are doing something in September called the Manufacturing Day, and they're making a big thing about having these open days and really making it that manufacturing is an amazing place to work. So, again, that's something that I'm really championing on social media to get more and more manufacturing businesses involved.

Martin Griffiths 35:16

And just going back to the the investing in people, you know, what do you think that can have you got some examples of work where that has worked really well?

SPEAKER_00 35:23

There are examples. There's an example in one of my clients where there's a guy who started working in the business when he was 16 and he started working on the shop floor. It actually was really local to him. I think it's about five minutes away from where he lived. And the business really, the the managing director had a great relationship with him and really took him under his wing. And then he very quickly went through the ranks. So they set up a new a new site in America, and he's only young. I think he's about 32 now, and he is that whole story of we want to be CEO in 10 years, he's like a you know, a dream version of that. The company funded him to go to America, his family now live in America, he set up a new division of the of the business over there, he's employing people over there. So when you invest in someone, they want to stay with you. You know, they understand all these different elements of the business. They're very loyal because you've spotted something in them, so they want to give back.

Martin Griffiths 36:13

Brilliant. That's a nice story. Yeah, it's a really good one for people to kind of aim for. Amazing.

A Practical Decision Audit To Start

Martin Griffiths 36:20

Thank you. Thank you for your time today. This has been a really interesting chat. Um, just before we go, could you like leave us with a thine a final thought? So, what what can you think of one practical thing manufacturing teams could do, you know, to stop pressure building up or if they've started to see overwhelm or burnout in the team? Yeah, what do you think could be done?

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Two very practical things. One, from a leadership or management team perspective, I want you to literally take five minutes out of your day and I want you to write on a piece of paper what's the the decisions only you can make. And it could be about new tooling, it could be about investment in new infrastructure, whatever it may be. There's only you who's able to make that, empowered to make that, authorized to make that. What's that list? You're probably gonna have four, five, six things on that list. And then on the other side of the paper, write down what's the actual decisions that you make. Because you will be making decisions every single day that are so micro, your whole brain is consumed by that. And you're probably not actually making those strategic decisions that only you can make. So having that step back, you're gonna remove some of those blockers, you're gonna make decisions quicker, and you're gonna empower your team. They don't want to be stood outside your office in a queue waiting for you to make the decision because they probably feel embarrassed about that. But you've got to be the one to change, otherwise, all they're gonna continue to do is queue outside your office. So that's one of the kind of key practical bits I would do. And that will have a benefit on burnout because people will feel more empowered and more in control of their own life and their own workplace environment.

Martin Griffiths 37:48

Yeah, brilliant. That's great advice. That's a great starting point. Thank you for the chat today, Angela. It's been great, been really, really interesting to hear where you've come from and you know what you're doing today. And where can people go to find out more about you?

SPEAKER_00 38:01

So I'll give you the links for the show notes. So primarily I'm on LinkedIn. I do share lots of content. There's lots of personal stories, there's lots of m mistakes that I've made, there's lots of wins, client examples, testimonials, and videos with clients who are saying this is actually the change that it's made, so that kind of transformational journey piece, but also practical advice that I share on there as well. So I'll share the link for that. But there's two little gifts that I'd like to offer to the listeners as well. So one is I did kind of reference earlier, I've written a short book, and that book is about the team success system, which is my proprietary model, and it talks through the mistakes that I made as a leader and a bit of a summary, and it talks through what I've put into place with my clients, which is quite a systemized method to bring successful teams. So there's a um a book, an e-book that you can download takes about 15-20 minutes to read, lots of practical advice within there. And there's also a quiz. It takes about five minutes, and it'll just help you to quickly assess your team and identify where you need to focus your improvement activity. I'll send the link for the show notes for those as well.

Martin Griffiths 39:01

That sounds brilliant. That sounds really helpful to get people uh get people started and kind of get a bit of your system and your expertise. That sounds amazing. Thank you, Angela. That's been great.

SPEAKER_00 39:10

Yeah, thank you so much for having me on.