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Golf and the Game of Leadership
Some Adapt, Some Don’t There seem to be some consistent differences between the results of first and second shift operations in production facilities. The second shift tends to out-perform the first. The second shift personnel are usually younger and have fewer years of service than the first. For example, the second shift of a warehousing operation developed a new way to feed large parts down the line. They replaced an expensive method of operating a conveyor belt with a simple gravity feed system. Management was pleased with this continuous improvement effort by the workers and presented the idea to the first shift crew. The people on days wouldn’t buy the idea. It wasn’t theirs—a good example of the ‘‘not invented here’’ syndrome. They were not going to adapt. So, the conveyor belt ran on the first shift and, after the millwrights took a half-hour to change it, the gravity feed system ran on the second. This continued for six months until management went ahead and instituted the gravity feed for both shifts. Thus a good idea developed by a group of workers to improve operations was delayed from full implementation for six months because another group of workers and a less than forceful management team refused to adapt to the change. The late Dr. Norman R. F. Maier, professor of psychology for many years at the University of Michigan, taught his quality/ acceptance theory of decision making at the university and as an international consultant to numerous organizations. His theory, in summary, holds that a decision consists of two parts: quality and acceptance. Quality refers to the objective value of the decision, i.e., is it substantively the best choice. Acceptance refers to the willingness of those affected by the decision to accept it. Obviously the best match is high quality and high acceptance. The second shift operation made their decision based on the high quality and high acceptance of the ‘‘gravity feed system over the conveyor belt’’ in our example. When the high quality decision was met by the low acceptance of the first shift, the change was not accepted.
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CH15
02-23-04 16:45:34
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