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Well, we’re 10 weeks into the new year already! I’m Marty with you here at Warehouse and Operations as a Career. By now we’re usually settling into our groove. Budgets are done, everything’s signed off on and our management teams are looking at their long-term objectives and making those personnel decisions, ad’s deletes, promotions and yes, maybe even demotions. Their goal is to be productive and successful with their plan! It’s about now we could be approached with a new position, maybe our hard work has been noticed because, as we here at WAOC are always preaching, we’ve stated to our management team that we have an interest in another task, or we’d enjoy being a trainer or lead even! Remember they don’t work with a crystal ball, we’re good at what we’re doing so 9 times out of 10 they won’t come to us with opportunities. They need to know that we’re interested in them! Anyway, so today let’s talk about our first front line management job. Last week I shared one of my absolute favorite approaches, the trainer position. Depending on our industry we may or may not have that position in our arsenal of tasks but if so, I think that’s a great place to start. Generally, the next step could be a department lead position. I think a good structured lead position is a great place to dip our toes into the management arena, so today let’s talk about those opportunities!
Meriam Webster defines Definition of lead as
transitive verb
1a: to guide on a way
b: to direct on a course or in a direction
3a(1): to direct the operations, activity, or performance of
(2): to have charge of
intransitive verb
1a: to guide someone or something along a way
You lead and we’ll follow.
c: to guide a dance partner through the steps of a dance
2a: to be first
b(1): BEGIN, OPEN
lead noun (1)
1a(1): LEADERSHIP
(2): EXAMPLE
(2): INITIATIVE
Kind of like the trainer position we spoke about last week, a lead position is not quite a management position, of course depending on your company’s organizational structure, but it will carry or have a good deal of responsibility passed on to us.
My first lead position was as a cooler vault lead. I was on the 2nd shift, and my new job was to make sure the order selectors, replenishment fork drivers and 2 sanitation people were all working in harmony. I was responsible for helping direct the fork drivers to keep the pick slots replenished and to make sure the selectors maintained somewhat of an organized flow in the aisles. We shipped a lot of splits or where the selector would have to take a 1-gallon container from a case containing 4 so we needed to make sure the other 3 didn’t end up getting damaged by rolling around. Calling it a fast-paced environment didn’t come close to describing the action in that vault. It was about 30K sq feet and I’d have anywhere between 12 and 22 people in there at any given time. Between overseeing everyone’s safety and answering all the questions regarding where products were located and notifying the forks what product needed to be filled and where I stayed pretty busy. Although I did not have a direct responsibility regarding headcount, I was responsible for getting the loads to the loading docks in a timely manner. My first shocking realization occurred after my first shift ended as a lead. I’ve always been a pretty happy go lucky guy, pretty well liked by my peers, I’d consider myself as always fair and open minded, but my work ethic has always been to get the job done. Anyway, a group of us, probably we were considered a bit of a rowdy group, would meet after work each morning for a cold beverage or two before we went home to catch a nap. I had to stay a couple of minutes late to turn in some paperwork, so I was walking up to the group alone, beverage in hand. I can honestly say I’d never felt colder than I did at that moment. Everyone quit talking, kind of looking away. All I could think of was to say Really guys? It hit me at that moment that now I was the Man. These we’re the same men and women I was complaining with and cutting up with just last week! To them I was, thankfully only for a few minutes, but to them I was now a different person. I was making 20 cents more than them an hour but had been separated from the crew. Now I was somehow a liaison between right and wrong. Luckily all that didn’t last very long but that’s going to be our first real challenge as we step into those management roles. If it goes to our heads, if we allow a title to change us, instead of just continuing to be ourselves and just performing a new task or job we’re going to be in for a long transition period. One we will ultimately fail at. Being a trainer or lead, supervisor, manager, director, V.P. or even a president of a company shouldn’t change us as people or our personalities. Our job task and responsibilities are what has changed, our objectives and agendas, yes, but we shouldn’t ever get to thinking that now we’ve changed. Oh yeah, we’re going to be hanging out with a new group of people, but we’ll still need to have the respect of our peers. That is going to be a challenge, but we can control that transition by keeping ourselves grounded, performing our new task to the best of our ability and remembering we can’t get anything done by ourselves. I was very fortunate, I had a mentor, my old v.p. that helped keep me on the straight and narrow. I’ve gotten off topic here, but I’ll say to just be ourselves in whatever position we hold throughout our careers!
So, let’s look at a couple of lead scenarios in out bound distribution. As I’ve mentioned in the food service arena, we may have a lead in the dry, cooler and freezer areas. As a lead we’ll get our direction from our supervisor at the beginning of our shift. Some of our responsibilities could be to watch the flow in the aisles. We’ll be the eyes on replenishments, making sure those pick slots are being kept full and that the selectors are moving freight to the docks. Now this doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll be giving orders or direction to the teams. That’s the supervisor’s job. As a lead we’ll be answering questions like what door does such and such batch go to. We’ll be keeping up with any door changes coming from transportation, maybe passing out load mapping sheets to loaders, and reporting, really any type of follow up work regarding our systems and procedures as they relate to the flow of the freight in our area. Sounds like a lot of responsibility doesn’t it. Well it is, welcome to the lead position!
The lead position is about the same in production facilities. Although our job won’t typically be to direct employees we may be asked to follow up and report production numbers hourly, maybe be assigned to pass out work tools, and again we’ll be the go to person for questions from our associates regarding their workload and tasks. A lead position is really the same, in most instances no manner what kind of warehouse we’re in. It’ll be to work closely with the team, be there for them, their support person. What did we learn earlier, one of our definitions was Leadership, Example and Initiative?
Now you may be asking yourself, if I’m being held responsible for results yet I don’t have any direct input with the direction or orders given to the employees what’s in it for me. Well, we’re learning from our supervisors and managers how to make those decisions and why they make the calls that they do. If we have a good strong supervisor, use him or her further our education, ask questions and try and get as much face time as possible with them. And if we are assigned a, well let’s say a less motivated Supervisor, we can learn from them as well. We’ll probably learn to not make snap decisions without enough information, and we’ll get to experience the way we’re not going to do things when we’re on our own, with our own crews as a supervisor!
So, there’s a few thoughts on the lead position, they how, why’s of the job. It is that first step and it was one of my favorite positions! I love learning, and as a lead we’ll be learning every shift. Next week we’ll talk a little bit about the front-line supervisor position.
If you have a good leadman or leadwoman experience please share it with us, maybe start a conversation on our Facebook or Twitter feeds where you can always find someone with an opinion using that little @whseandops.
Until next week, and we’d love for you to stop in again next week, let’s all look over how we’re doing with our planning and goals so far this year and as always let’s make sure we’re practicing Safety in all that we do!