Today I had a conversation with a forward-thinking media company about promoting engagement and cultural excellence to the engineering and manufacturing sector. Our shared observations detect a distinct absence of such focus in publications and exhibition seminars, where talk surrounds AI, tech upgrades, cyber security and data protection.
People, then, are getting the raw end of the deal when it comes to industrial investment. While the vast majority of shop-floor workers come in each morning with gritted teeth, grab the pay cheque and slag off the management, it certainly doesn't need to be this way and there is no benefit to the company whatsoever in maintaining such angst as a status quo.
Why, then, is this approach so prevalent? My feeling is that it harks back to the Industrial Revolution, which was only 150 years ago after all. Workers were collateral, machinery was everything. Plenty of sticks were waved on the factory floor and carrots were occasional, in a good year, often for the chosen few. Is this echoing a note of familiarity with you?
Traditions, as we know, die hard. They become a comfort zone on which to hinge a version of normality, whether it's a healthy version or not. We also know that a disengaged workforce is not profitable, that high turnover and low morale add up to a deep fiscal haemorrhage of almost a million pounds a year for a modest SME with 60-odd employees.
So what about you, kind reader? Are you looking to adopt empathic leadership and develop autonomy? Do you want to foster an engaged, energised culture and support an innovative, people-centric strategy? You're much needed on the front benches, if so, for the manufacturing/engineering industry is dragging a long-standing ball and chain of hard-line management practices, desperately needing incentive to raise its bars and find its feet in the 21st Century.
You, as a leader, can do much to help this urgent cause. You can set an example of hard-won excellence by laying plans for a strategy that involves team spirit, loyalty, personal responsibility and self-awareness. The cost of this strategy will be much less than that new robot you were just looking at and will guarantee your company's health and welfare in the era of social standing we have been steadily walking into for some time.
Feel the fear and do it anyway. As I'm open to discuss, money creates a bubble for people to sit in, high above the ravages of debt and fiscal stress. From a lofty position, it's easy to poke at problems and blame others for causing them, to adopt phrases of degradation for
subordinates and sit tight in a world where dirty work is for the masses. Bubble-dwellers shout about 'coming up through the ranks', earning their stripes and being part of the driven who worked hard to get there, but the bubble is the end of life's journey for many and it doesn't manufacture happiness.
From this vantage point, people become invisible, just as they do from a plane. Whatever your internal struggles, whatever you feel about yourself and others, nobody is getting in and that's the way negativity wants it. Breaking out of the bubble and taking part in the accountability process is likely to be scary, but once airborne, there's really nothing to fear at all. Everyone wants to be there at your side, helping to build a culture of social strength and sector greatness. You'll find yourself leading from a ready-made thermal.
Would you like to join me in the Engagement Party, and see how far we can help British industry to fly? Get in touch - let's have a chat.
