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Marty T Hawkins with Warehouse and Operations as a Career, it’s great to have you back with us this week! Wow, we’re already ending week 3 of the new year, I have really been enjoying all the Goals and Plans that’s been sent in over the last few weeks, keep them coming, 2019 is going to be our best year yet! I wanted to mention a couple of podcast that I’m excited about, I feel they’ve helped kick my year off in the right direction. One is the Safety Pro Podcast, Blaine Hoffman does a great job explaining our needs and keeps the topics interesting and for my financial thoughts I’m so enjoying Cindy B Browns Podcast Unlocking the secrets of living rich! WAOC is not affiliated with either show, I mentioned them both last year, I just enjoy them and I learn something new from them each week!
Well, lets see, oh here’s a note to self. I wanted to talk about Supervision or front-line management for a few minutes. As we’ve discussed, the first of the year is a great time to do some planning and get our goals lined out and I hear so many comments about, and resolutions regarding stepping into management that I went around to a few facilities to do some follow up with people that may of made those comments last year. And how impressed I was to find several of them had done just that, I spoke with 2 individuals that had been promoted to Shift or department leads and 3 brand new supervisors that had set their goals, planned them out and, by following those plans, they had achieved the positions they shot for! I also spoke with 4 individuals that I thought would make great managers one day, that I had visited with early last year. I wanted to see if they had changed their minds or if they felt they’d hit a wall or maybe if life and just gotten in the way, maybe they’d just adjusted their plans a bit! One gentleman stated he’d just gotten busy, he was loving his job, really enjoyed his task and simply didn’t want to leave it. He was really contributing to the company, his management team was giving him all the resources he needed to make a positive impact and in his words “there’s not presently a position in management for his department and his new plan is to continue being innovative, reducing expenses and growing within the company”. I can’t argue with his plan, sounds like a great success story to me!
I spoke with 3 others that, well, they all 3 admitted they just hadn’t followed their plans. It’s hard, we’re serious when we write those goals down but it takes so much follow through doesn’t it? That’s why I feel it’s so important, it’s just imperative that we look at those sentences every morning. It’ll help us push through every day. One of the gentlemen, and I get it, he was feeling a little defensive about the whole subject, stated to me that he couldn’t just give himself the promotion, right? My answer was Absolutely you can give yourself the promotion, if we don’t who will? We laughed a bit, but really, we do give ourselves our promotions. We let our managers know what our goals are, we ask them about our progress, we check in with them every month or quarter about our strengths and weaknesses, our progress. And we strive to do the best job we can do, all while educating ourselves to our tasks and our industry. We are earning those promotions, by supervising ourselves we will be noticed, and we will advance. We’re promoting ourselves!
Each one of the new leads or supervisors commented about how difficult or challenging their new positions were. Everyone agreed that the first big hurdle was figuring out how to separate those old friendships and their new responsibilities and how that was much more difficult than they had planned for. The second thing everyone noticed was that decision-making weight on their shoulders. One of them told her story about overtime. She had a friend that needed the extra hours, but she had another employee that was just flat out more productive than her friend. She of course had to think of the company, her metrics, what she was accountable for, and she made the right decision, she went with the productivity! Everyone one of them had a story about decisions, decisions are just a part of the job!
I’m happy to report that 3 of the 4 that stumbled a little last year are recommitted to their goals for 2019 and I’m certain they’ll have a strong plan put together, I bet each of them finds their own success this year!
How’s your planning, your goal setting coming along? Get it down on paper, you can’t get started until you have a direction mapped out ladies and gentlemen!
Let’s switch gears a little. Another pretty common goal is to become an equipment operator. I feel the exact same approach can be taken when moving from a G/L or utility position and into a pallet jack or lift position. Again, our boss and management team have to know about our goals. I had a conversation with a gentleman on the docks, He’d been unloading for about 7 months so he was certified on the pallet jack and was using it a little each day. He told me that he’d never get to transfer to be a pallet runner, that his boss hadn’t even mentioned it to him before. I could only agree with him. He looked a bit surprised and I asked him what his boss had said to him when he approached him with his wishes. After a long pause he shared that he hadn’t talked to his boss about it. He stated that he’d done a great job at unloading trucks and his boss was just leaving him there because no one else could do some of the specialty loads. Since I was already invested in the conversation I went ahead and asked him if he had taught anyone else how to do those special loads. Of course, his answer was no but I have to admit I was a little perplexed as he continued to explain that, why would I teach somebody else how to do my job. Now I’m not laughing at him, he wants to be a pallet runner but he’s not promoting himself. This is a fine example of how if we wait on our bosses to give us a promotion, we just need to accept that it’s probably not going to happen. And if it does it’s going to be for the wrong reason, there going to offer it to us because they need to get the task done and not because they understand that we’re wanting more. Anyway, at break time I went over and spoke with him. I asked him how was his boss going to know that he wanted to be a pallet runner if he hadn’t ever told him? I asked if his boss knew that he eventually wanted to operate the reach lift? He hesitantly agreed with me that maybe he could have approached the situation a little differently. I told him to just go ahead and promote himself. His boss walked up and greeted me, I hadn’t seen him yet that day and sure enough the gentleman told his boss that he thought he was ready to run some pallets, what’d he think. To his surprise his boss told him to show so and so how to separate a certain load and he could start running pallets half a day next week! Ladies and gentlemen, our management teams aren’t mind readers. If we’re doing a great job for them there perfectly content letting us do that great job for them. Again, lets set us a goal, plan out what we need to do to achieve it and just go do it.
I know all this sounds simple and yes, I’ve probably simplified it a bit, but it’s really the way to achieve it. If we’re being that employee, we will end up with that job. Either the one we want or the one that we’ve settled for, right?
If your feeling stuck in your present position, it’s a new year, lets do something about it. Shoot us an email to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com, we’d be happy to share our two cents, maybe we could share some of our experiences, or maybe something another listener has experienced could help you out! Oh, talking about equipment operators, I’ve heard about so many little accidents already this year. Lets slow down, keep our arms and legs in the operators compartments, control our jacks at all times. We’re all productive, we all do a great job but lets be safe doing it. Well on that note we’ll wrap up episode 121. Please email us with a topic you’d like to hear more on or send us a comment or maybe share a few of your experiences with us, we’ll pass it on to our group. Don’t forget about our Facebook and Twitter feeds too, use @whseandops, Its easy to share your thoughts there too! Thanks for listening in, go out there and give yourself that promotion, you’ve earned it and I bet your boss will agree! Until next week, slow down, be safe, make safety your 1st priority!