What I Learned from the Class

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WAOC, or Warehouse and Operations as a Career here with ya, I hope you’ve had a great & Productive week out there.  I’m in Denver Colorado this week checking on a few Facilities and enjoying looking at the mountains. I’m getting ready to go visit the second shift and thought we’d do a little recording while I wait for them to get started! You all know how I like the dictionary, and I’d like to give you 3 definitions to ponder for a minute.

• an action of leading a group of people or an organization http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/leadership.html
• the action, process, or occupation of supervising: especially: a critical watching and directing (as of activities or a course of action https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/supervision
• be in charge, organize and direct, relay direction https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/

Leadership

A Supervisor

A Lead’s Position

I gave a class earlier this week on Supervision, well I say I gave a class, I think every time I get around a bunch of Leads, Supervisors and Managers I learn more from them than I’m able to share myself.  It’s exciting to see so many individuals everyday that’s wanting more from their jobs than just that weekly paycheck and the occasional good job comment from their bosses.  As we’ve talked about before I think any task or job in operations can make a great Career.  I really enjoyed driving a Forklift and especially the time I spent as an Order Selector, you punch in and know exactly what needs to get done, someone gives you the case counts and you get it done, clean it up and you can punch out and go home!  Even as much as I enjoyed those task I found myself a bit bored at times & really wanted to learn those other task that came before and after mine.  You know like how the orders came down from Sales and how did the system put them into our batches and how was the routing of the loads put together and why would the driver drive past stops only to go back by in the afternoon. I guess you could say, simply put that I wanted a bit more.

As part of the class I brought up a few of the Pro’s and Con’s with coming off the floor as an hourly associate and into a Lead or Supervision Position, things we need to consider before we accept such a position.  One of the Pro’s we spoke of was the word Challenge.  You’re going to have to enjoy a challenge as we’re going to encounter challenges every day, shoot probably every hour.  I think we can look at the first Con as, we’re going to be challenged and that these jobs are going to be challenging.

Another Pro to the job is Education!  We’re going to be learning new things, actually a new way of thinking of the task we use to perform every day.  We’re going to be exposed to the reasons these tasks are completed the way they are and what comes next.  Of course, we’ll have to be open to this education and learning.  We’ve done these jobs and tasks, we were probably really good at them.  Sometimes it’s difficult to learn that we were doing something wrong or there was a better way and a reason to have done it the way we’d been directed to do it.  I think a few of the grandest Pro’s to accepting our first role in Leadership is the opportunity for Growth, Advancement and of course there’s the financial aspect too.  When I speak of growth I’m thinking Professionally and Personally.  I’ve found that once I was open to looking at things differently or seeing the bigger picture at work that I started looking at things at home a bit differently too.  I found myself reanalyzing the way I felt about things and I was much more organized, maybe because I’d look at things from every angle and not just killing time once I was off work.

We mentioned Opportunity, that’s a great Pro but then there’s the Con side of opportunity knocking too.  I think we have to go into leadership roles knowing that more is going to be asked of us, possibly accepting other positions, maybe even moving ourselves and our families to another city or even another state.  Things like that very well could come up and it’ll a Family decision right.  I’ve found, and learned it the hard way, that we need to include our spouses and significant others in our decision to pursue a Leadership position. Our work hours could be a bit unconventional as well, it’s better we’re all in it for the long haul.  Quick true story, early in my career, I think I’d been a Lead in the freezer for about 6 months.  It was Mother’s Day weekend and I’d taken my Mom and my girlfriends Mother out for breakfast, we were going to have a great morning and enjoy the holiday.  We no sooner got our table that my pager went off and when I called in I was informed that our biggest customer had forgotten to order enough hams and I needed to get up to the warehouse right now and get some pulled so someone could come by and pick them up.  As you can guess the day didn’t end well for me.  I give the girlfriend money, explained to everyone that I’d be back shortly, to enjoy breakfast and I’d be right back.  Long story short, I got hung up and they all had to catch a taxi home.  When I showed up at the house about 4 hours later I wasn’t exactly received with open arms.  A little heads up, when something like this happens to you don’t bring up how important it is to keep your job because it won’t go the way you’d think it would. Anyway, we, and I mean our family has to be ready, willing and able to accept that opportunity when it comes knocking.

I rounded out the Pro’s with the words Career and Financial. You’ve probably caught on that for each Pro I’ve mentioned the same word and example falls in the Con category also, Career and Financial is no exception.  We’ve been hourly, and probably have worked for years with overtime being a part of our weekly earnings.  Taking a leadership role could put us on a salary.  I took quite a weekly pay cut with my first step into that role.  I of course later learned my end of year earnings wasn’t really affected, the perks of paid days off, bonuses and incentives helped make up those monies and honestly the education I was receiving was priceless.

For those of us that love challenges and enjoy learning or education and willing to grow, both personally and professionally and can accept opening the door on opportunity and advancement will find financial rewards and a long-lasting career in Leadership and the roles and positions it’ll offer.

Again, and seriously know, any job in Operations can provide us and our families a rewarding career, we just have to enjoy what we’re doing, we have to love our job, we’re going to have to do it for a long time!

Earlier I mentioned how every time I’m around a group of young leads and Supervisors I learn more from them than they do from me.  A few of the things they brought up, things they we’re very passionate about and felt we’re some of the important task they dealt with was the responsibility of

• Scheduling their man hours, making sure they had the coverage for the work loads
• I was impressed when describing things like discipline and corrective actions or warnings they all used words like coaching and training.
• Reporting, their daily and Corp reports were taken seriously by everyone
• Safety was first on every one’s mind, Startup meetings, Near miss reporting and the importance of a strong Safety Culture was discussed by all.
• I really learned a lot about the different Regulatory concerns each had to address too. A very creative group and all agreed there’s no room for negligence there.
• Sanitation came up for every facility represented, every job entails Sanitation
• I believe the biggest and most impressive thing I learned was how much everyone agreed on the importance of Customer Service, both External and Internal to their departments. As Leaders they all agreed our jobs are Customer Service related.

I met a young man that just recently was promoted from an unloader into a Lead role.  He’s very excited and is anxious to learn more about leadership.  His short-term goal is to move into Supervision and transfer with his present company to another state.  He sees himself in a management position in Texas with his family in a few short years.  I thought it’d be fun, and yes educational for us here at WAOC to visit with him occasionally and learn from him as he learns from others!  I’ll see if I can reach out and have him on the show within the next few weeks and maybe we can check in on his progress every few months!

I hope you enjoyed my ramblings today, maybe picked a piece of value out here and there and that you’ll check back in with us next week.  We enjoy reading all the email’s and suggestions each week and appreciate the comments on our Facebook and Twitter feeds.  Keep those Topics coming in and we’ll keep showing up each week ourselves.  My thanks to each of you, and as always, we’ll end on a Safety note.  Robert W Campbell, the first president of the National Safety Council explained “Safety work is today recognized as an economic necessity.  It is the study of the right way to do things.”!