Joe Sprangel: Innovative Approaches to Manufacturing, AI for Future Work Solutions

In this episode of the Coherent Business Podcast, host Aram DiGennaro sits down with Joe Sprangle, an author, consultant, and professor of business at Mary Baldwin University. They explore the necessity of human-centric leadership in manufacturing, the ethics of community engagement, and the strategic integration of Artificial Intelligence.

Sprangle shares insights from his career as a plant manager, discussing how treating frontline workers with dignity and respect can turn around failing operations. He introduces the metaphor of the serpentine belt to describe "optimal tension" in an organization—pushing people to thrive without causing them to slack or snap. From hiring "unemployable" populations to committing to workforce retention during technological shifts, this conversation offers a pragmatic roadmap for building resilient, high-output cultures.

Resources:

Coherent Business Project Website 

https://coherentbusinessproject.com/ 

For leaders, thinkers, and builders who believe business can be more than just efficient — it can be whole, human, and meaningful. Post-reductionist answers to real-world problems.

Protentional 

https://protentional.com

Protentional guides leaders to integrate compelling priorities into coherent strategy. 

Emmanuel Strategic Sustainability Website

https://emmanuelstrategicsustainability.com/ Focusing on human-AI augmentation and strategic consulting for small to medium manufacturing facilities.

Joe’s LinkedIn Newsletters 

Human-First AI for Mfg Leaders 

https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/human-first-ai-for-mfg-leaders-7416582176416145408/

AI Strategy 

https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/ai-strategy-6874741270099693569/

Joe's LinkedIn: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joesprangel/

Aram’s LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aram-digennaro/

Key Topics:

Human-centric leadership, manufacturing culture, AI and human augmentation, optimal tension (serpentine belt metaphor), hiring neurodiverse and "returning citizen" populations, living wages, community impact, lean manufacturing, and change management.

Key Takeaways:

• Respect Drives Productivity: Treating frontline workers with dignity and acknowledging small wins can significantly improve scrap rates and machine uptime.
• Optimal Tension is Essential: Like a serpentine belt, employees need enough tension to perform their specific roles (e.g., "charging" like an alternator or "cooling" like a water pump) without being overstretched.
• Individualized Management: Fairness does not mean treating everyone the same; leaders must understand what specifically motivates and supports each individual to pull the best out of them.
• Untapped Labor Pools: Hiring neurodiverse individuals or returning citizens can create a loyal, highly productive workforce, provided the company invests in the right training and oversight.
• AI as Augmentation, Not Replacement: Smart companies will use AI to handle repetitive tasks, freeing humans to focus on creative problem-solving and innovation.
• Commitment to People: To maintain employee buy-in for new technology (like AI or Lean), leaders should aim to upskill and redeploy staff rather than using efficiency gains as a reason for layoffs

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I've often had people tell me, Oh, you're the best boss I ever had. And to me, I don't think I'm doing anything all that spectacular. I just feel like I'm doing what you should do, and that I treat people the way you wanted to be treated.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

My guest today is Joe Sprangel. Joe is an author, consultant, and professor of business at Mary Baldwin. Joe, welcome to the show. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Pleased to be here. Look forward to our conversation.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Yeah, same. So in your book, you describe being pushed out by four different employers. At what point did you stop asking what's wrong with me and start asking what's wrong with these companies?

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Well, part of what was wrong with me, I think I had a savior complex. So I kept going into companies thinking, you know, I can save them. But what I learned much too long after I should have was that if they have problems when you get there, they're probably going to have problems when you leave. And I looked at, you know, most of them had this just ongoing cycle of just bringing somebody in for a short period of time, letting them go, bringing somebody else in. Part of it was I I was never really good at selling myself either, I guess. I still struggle with that as a consultant. I'm very good at what I do, but I tend to probably be maybe a bit humble on it and I don't like, you know, going in and telling everybody how great I'm doing. I think they should just look at what I'm doing and understand that. And I found over the years that doesn't really work. Okay. What changed then? Or what additional perspective did you acquire as you moved through these experiences? Well, I learned a lot about what not to do, unfortunately. Well, I shouldn't say unfortunately, because it does guide a lot of what I do today. I did start to pay more attention to what was being asked in the in the interviews. For example, you know, are they looking for someone to do a particular job? And and when I asked them questions about it, do they give me the right kind of answers? And even things like, I remember one, I I showed up and I think it was like 45 minutes after the interview was supposed to start before they actually came and got me out of the lobby. That should have sent me the other way at that point. Because if that's if that's how they treat you on the day where they're trying to impress you most, it's probably not going to be a good job, you know, long term.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

So one of your core ideas or recurring themes seems to be just what you're alluding to, which is that you should treat people like real people. And I think that's a popular idea among some companies, especially those that employ highly educated or people where maybe talent is scarce. What makes you think that that works or that that's important for manufacturing companies?

SPEAKER_00 2:33

So in my last job, I was a plant manager. And when I came to that particular facility, they were having all kinds of problems. Their productivity was down, their scrap was up, their machine time was problematic. And I was in my doctorate program at the time and I learned about this positive psychology. It was quite simple, really, what I did. I just went in and every line had a whiteboard at the end of the production line. And I would look for something positive. And at first, man, it was hard, you know. And so there might be two pieces of scrap less than they had the day before. And I just write a note. Great job on scrap today. Every day, day after day, I would do this. And within six months, people were running into my office or stopping me in the plant, going, We made rate today. And they'd never made rate in the, you know, the history of the line. And so much of it was just because I treated them well. I respected them and I valued them for the contribution they were making. And it wasn't the only place I've ever done that. I've often had people tell me, oh, you're the best boss I ever had. And to me, I don't think I'm doing anything all that spectacular. I just feel like I'm doing what you should do and that I treat people the way you wanted to be treated. Oh, it's it's been a pet peeve of mine that people don't treat frontline workers in particular the way they should, because I had a plant where I had 200 people that I was responsible for. If 200 people are happy and doing a good job, my job is going to be so much easier than it is if they're out there trying to sabotage the line or, you know, send a scrat part to our customer. So people really do need to pay attention to how they treat people and to make sure that they do it in a way that gives them dignity and respect.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Yeah. So in your book, you use the metaphor of a serpentine belt and optimal tension. Yeah. Can you tell us about that?

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Yeah, so you know, people open the hood on their car, although it's getting harder and harder to find it because they get so much stuffed in the in the front end of that vehicle. But there's a belt that goes around like the alternator, the water pump and so forth, the crank on the engine. And if you look at that, there's also an idler pulley that is spring tension. And that spring tension keeps that belt tight so that it doesn't slip. What you will also find is that on the drive side of the pulley, there's more tension on the belt there than there is on the other side of the pulley. And I kind of equate that to how things happen in an organization. Everybody needs to be at an optimal level of tension where they're being pushed just a little bit beyond what they think they can do, but they're also not allowed to slack off and just, you know, let the day go by without really being asked to do much. Sometimes, you know, you're the alternator and you need to charge up the rest of the organization. Sometimes you're the water pump. You need to be cooling things off. And I just thought that was kind of a neat way to look at it. Everybody doesn't have to be on all the time, but when you have to be on, you should be on. And as a leader, we want to make sure we put them in an opportunity where they're able to thrive and to produce at their best.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Yeah, it seems like you're sort of creating a polarity there because, on the one hand, you need to treat people like people, and people need to feel, for the most part, positive and supportive in order to substitute their best work. At the same time, there need to be expectations, there need to be demands, and both of those things need to be functioning at their best in order for the system to drive output.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Yeah, exactly. And it it is that balance, right? That you push them enough, but not too much. And like you say, you can't push everybody all the time. Everything can't be urgent every minute of every day. But when it is urgent, then we need to step up and do what's necessary to get done.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Now, this has to vary from person to person, doesn't it? Is this an individualized thing, or do you think it happens on a company or departmental level?

SPEAKER_00 6:20

I've always thought that people that felt that they should treat everybody the same were not doing justice to the people that they were responsible for. There are some people you just need to look at them and they know, yep, I shouldn't have done that. And there are other people you need to talk to them a hundred different times before maybe you finally get through to them. You know, everybody needs something different. And what I've often told people that I'm responsible for, are you getting what you need from me? Okay. Yes. All right. Don't worry about, you know, the other person. If you're getting what you need, I'm giving them what they need. And I'm gonna be just and fair, but I'm not gonna treat everybody exactly the same way because we just all need something different to pull the best out of us.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

So that sounds like a highly individualized environment where you know everybody's optimal tension, you know how people interact with the task, and you're you're scaling that based on each person. I can see that working in smaller groups, but is it practical when you have 200 people on the floor or something like that?

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Yeah, so in most places, you know, I was the plant manager and I had about five or six different direct reports. And so I would treat them the way that I expected them to treat the people that they were responsible for. And so, yes, you know, if your span of control gets wider and wider and more people, it does become a little more difficult. But I still think that no matter how many people we have in an organization, we still should know who they are, what drives them, what makes them work at their best. If you have a hundred thousand people working for you, you're probably not gonna know everybody. But if you are a smaller organization, you really do need to understand who it is that works for you and what it takes to motivate them and help them to thrive.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

Yeah. So in your book, you mentioned a statistic from McKinsey that 86% of job satisfaction comes from the relationship with a manager. But in my experience, manufacturing companies often run on extremely tight margins. So management bandwidth is just in very short supply. How have you seen that playing out in this particular sector where you know there's a lot going on, the management structure is usually pretty flat and nobody has a lot of extra time for talking.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Yeah, it's still something where I think you need to make the time. And you can't do it all at once. It's something that you have to build over a period of time. And the example I told earlier about the plant that I turned around, I mean, it took six months to make that happen. Now, that's relatively quick compared to what some people are able to achieve. But because I went out there and I was with them, I understood them. They also saw that I was willing to pick up a broom if something was on the floor that needed to be swept up. I would actually step in and run a machine on occasion if we had had the need to have somebody fill in. And so, you know, a lot of it's also just by your actions. And then, you know, for example, I had a young lady that wanted to be a registered nurse. And so she let me know that. I put her on a line that had less overtime hours. She could get to her clinical rotations and that sort of thing. And each time I treated somebody like that, that word began to ripple out farther and farther. And so even if I'm not talking directly to people, they knew that, oh, this guy actually does care about us and he's, you know, he's doing right by us. So, you know, there's a lot of different ways you can make it happen. It doesn't always have to be every conversation one-on-one, but sometimes it's, you know, at a group meeting or the whole plan. Another example is, you know, we'd have customers that would shut their lines down for a period of time. And it would mean that some people needed to be laid off and others didn't. Well, every time I would announce that, half the people on the line would be thrilled because they wanted the time off with a little, you know, unemployment check. But the other were like, hey, I can't afford to do that. So I would go in and say, okay, who wants to be off? All right, you guys are off. Who doesn't? Okay. Let's see if we can find somebody on another line that we can swap out. They can have the time off that they want as well. So it's just an ongoing pattern of, you know, here's what I do to make sure that everybody gets what they can within the constraints that I'm operating under.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

Yeah, and one thing I hear you saying is that it is you, and you're giving examples of things that you specifically do, but it's also not just you, that your actions need to trickle down through the whole organization and the managers underneath you need to be acting in a similar way. And that's really the power of culture is that it isn't just the CEO needs to do all this, or the director or one manager needs to do all this, but that the culture replicates the values that you want to have it replicate. Yeah, exactly. Now, one thing you need to talk about a lot is hiring people that others write off as unemployable or less desirable. Do you see this primarily as a way of triaging a labor crisis? Or is this a pragmatic move, or is this the right thing to do, or how do you see the you know entry into what is normally a difficult market to work in?

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Yeah, so some examples are people that are handicapped, people that are neurodiverse, they may be autistic. There's programs for people they call returning citizens that are people that have done a period of time and incarceration. And what I found, especially like, you know, with people that are autistic, for example, they love a repetitive job where they do the same thing over and over and over and over again. And they'll do it in a really consistent format. They won't deviate from what it is they're supposed to be doing. And that that kind of was led to me to think about when I heard about a company that was called Rising Tide Car Wash. And the father of an autistic child saw that he was aging out. And after about 21 or so, they don't have any options anymore. They can't continue in school, for example. And so he decided to buy this car wash so his son would have somewhere to work. Pretty much everybody that they hired was autistic. And they were able to make that car wash the most productive, the highest-rated car wash that that existed in the state of Florida. They were knocking the snot out of everybody else because people would bring their car there and they were just blown away by it. Now, there are issues with that. For example, a lot of them can't drive. So, how do you get them to work? Well, what happens if a parent or a guardian or someone else can't get them there? Okay, well, work with your company to have sort of an adopt a buddy kind of program where somebody generally is probably gonna live in the same neighborhood. Pay them a small stipend, pick them up and so forth. And even when you bring them in, you're gonna have to ask somebody that actually understands what's happening and and how to best deal with an individual that way. So it requires some training. There are people, you know, the returning citizens that I mentioned. Yeah, a lot of people aren't gonna want somebody that's been thrown in jail for some reason to come work in the workplace. Are we gonna be able to trust them? But there's a lot of people out there, they made one stupid mistake. And I can tell you for a fact, there's been a couple of times in my life where I did something that it could have easily gone one way or the other. I remember driving down the road, almost hit somebody. You know, if I'd have been three feet over, I might have hit that person. Worst case, kill them, you know, uh, might have, you know, harmed them terribly. But by the grace of God, thankfully I didn't. But I'm generally a pretty good person, but I I made a mistake or potentially could have made it. And so you kind of have to vet them and understand who they are, what the issue was that they were dealing with. And in many cases where these people are doing this, the whole workforce ends up being happier because they see that our company cares, that our company is willing to give people a second chance. And again, if you bring the right people in from these populations, have the right oversight to make sure they do their job well, you know, it's gonna go well. It's probably not gonna go without any hiccups, but overall, you hope that it does. And as you said, part of the problem is we have these aging baby boomers, and there's, you know, numbers that in the next five or so years, a lot of them are gonna retire. And when they do, the younger generations aren't thrilled about working in manufacturing. They'd rather do something in finance or, you know, a hospitality industry. And that's part of the problem as well. Manufacturing is not what most people think it is, but if you do hire this autistic person, they're gonna come to work every day. They're gonna do their job really well every day. They're gonna stay with you. They're not gonna be looking for another job because they don't have the opportunity to be hired in many different places. So it's a win-win as far as I'm concerned.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

Yeah, I mean, I can certainly see the strengths of this approach. At the same time, a lot of management is risk management. Oh, yeah. And where there are people, you know, whether it's an owner or a manager who are looking at the risks, and that's that's the right thing to do. Has this led to any hard conversations when you've engaged or wanted to engage some of these populations that could be perceived as risky for employment?

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Yeah, so most of my experience in that regard is is looking at what others have done. So I've I've not been in a position where I've been able to do this. Uh, the autism idea, you know, I I mentioned the rising tide car wash to somebody, uh, an HR person. Her lies lit up because she had a child that was autistic. And she said, Oh, that'd be so great. But she said, you know, I tried to do that and I failed because I didn't have the right people in place. I didn't give them the right training to make sure they could deal with this different population. Somebody that's autistic is probably going to share things with you you don't really want to know about. So you got to have somebody that that can deal with that. You have to have people that work in that area that are willing to do it as well. Now, some companies like Nehemiah Manufacturing in Cincinnati, that's all they hire is returning citizens. So in that case, it makes it a little different because everybody's kind of coming from the same, same position. And so, you know, it ends up probably working out a lot better in a case like that where it's a majority of the population versus one where maybe you have five or ten percent of them that are coming from one of these groups.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

So let's talk about the relationship of companies with their communities. And this is something that I think is particularly important in smaller towns and rural areas. You know, you and I are both in the Shenandoah Valley. And, you know, you sort of describe companies that are extractive or that drain communities of resources and can leave it worse off. And then you're kind of advocating for a different approach. Can you describe a little bit about how you see that working?

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Obviously, we always have internal stakeholders to a company, but we also have a lot of external stakeholders. And so it can be the government, it can be, you know, the the shop owners. People have always said for every one job in a facility, there's probably 10 other jobs that that are in the community because of that, with restaurants and and shops and and so on and so forth. And so, you know, for me, when you come into a particular community, you shouldn't just be there to mine, you know, whatever resource is there or be there only until you get a better deal. To me, you should be a strong part of that community. And doing that, part of it's you have to treat the environment right. You know, when I was early in my manufacturing career, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland catches fire like 30 times over a period of time because there's so many pollutants in the river and they couldn't put it out because it just burnt so hot and so fiercely. You know, you have a problem if your rivers are catching fire.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Exactly. Sounds like something out of a myth or a fairy tale, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Yeah, it's very much true. Anybody can look it up and find out. Something like 27 fires or something like that. But when I first started out, I mean, people were dumping coolant in the creek behind the plant, or they were burying drums of chemicals on their property and so forth. And then, you know, eventually they would leave and all that stuff would be left behind. And so, you know, to me, that's part of it. But I'm also a big believer in, you know, we should pay a living wage. People shouldn't be hired for the absolute minimum that we can get them for. Because again, if you hire somebody for minimum wage or you hire them for, you know, a living wage, you're gonna get a much better employee. They're probably gonna be more productive, especially if you treat them the way that you should. They're not gonna be drain on the locality because they're gonna have health insurance. Not everybody's gonna have to run to a free clinic and so forth. And, you know, I just feel that you should buy locally whenever possible, the things that you can. And so, yeah, some might argue, well, it's that's gonna cost me money, but you know, Elon Musk is shortly gonna be a trillionaire. Does one person need to be a trillionaire? I don't think so. And, you know, some of these companies could do a little bit better for their employees, but also for the communities in which they operate.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

I think it really does depend on the company. What you're saying sounds good. And we can certainly see how, especially if you're in a small community, you really don't want to be extracted because this is also the community that you live in. It's the people that you interact with, it's the people who are going to be, you know, eating at a restaurant near you and going to your school and that sort of thing. But there are a lot of companies and manufacturing companies are not immune to this who really are just struggling to survive. If you're small, you are subject to the winds of change and you don't get to control them. How do these conversations play out when you're talking to manufacturers or other companies that are really just want to survive? You know, it's not about anybody getting becoming a trillionaire. It's more about how can I keep employing these same 25 people or these same 250 people three years from now.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Yeah. One of the examples in the book that I talk about is Bob Chapman and Barry Waymiller was the company that he led. And unfortunately, he just passed away in the last week. But his approach, he he got thrust into the CEO role because his father died unexpectedly. And when he came into the company, it was nearly bankrupt if it wasn't already on the way. He was sitting there one day. It was this time of year. He was in a company they'd just acquired. They were in the break room, and everybody was excitedly talking about, you know, the NCAA March Madness and just a real buzz and positive vibe going on. And then the buzzer went off for the start of the shift. And it was like everything was sucked out of them. And it just like became forlorn as they went out to the plant. And at that time, he said, why can't work be fun? And that sent him on a path where he started to look at, well, what do we need to do to lead our people in the best possible manner? And he took the approach that you needed to treat everybody like family. Now, in some families, this might not be a good idea, right? You know, they aren't the greatest people to be around. But an example of how he did that was they had a downturn in the economy. And instead of laying off 10% of the people, he went to the members of the company and said, you know, we're a family here. We're not laying anybody off. We're all taking a 10% hit. And nobody balked at it. Everybody was like, well, yeah, that's that's what we would expect in this particular culture. And so what happened? Yeah, everybody lost 10% of their income for a period of time. But when the economy started to pick up, they didn't have to go out and hire new workers, retrain them, and so forth. And so as things got better, they quickly all went back to work. They got their money back. And this guy took a small, almost bankrupt company and over Decades of running his company like this, it ended up being a three billion dollar company. I mean, they they bought, you know, many, many, many companies. I I forget the actual number, but they never sold one because he said you wouldn't ever sell part of your, you know, your family. So why would we sell any member of our company? And that's an example on the people side. Ray Anderson was the founder of a company called Interface. And he went on a sustainability journey that people thought he was crazy because they were a carpet manufacturer and everything they did was uh oil, you know, petroleum-based. And they just thought, you know, this guy's gone round the bend, which is a southern term for the guy's going crazy. But everything they did with that company allowed them to cut more and more of the cost and create more and more profitability. And just another example of a company that's done really well by doing the right thing environmentally.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

I guess the goal is to get good enough at what you do that you are able to function with things that are the right thing to do, but seem impractical and then figure out how to make them practical. And I think the examples you give are great. And I can also think of examples with my clients that do similar things to what you're talking about during a downturn. And if you have the kind of college that can support that action, it can actually be really powerful. This actually might be a good segue to the new book you're writing on AI and manufacturing. One of the really provocative suggestions you make is that managers should commit to not reducing workforce as they expand their technological footprint. What kind of reactions do you get when you put that out there?

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Well, it's not out there yet. So I do it in my thought leadership. What would it look like in practice? The example I would use is in lean manufacturing, people would go in and kind of cherry pick the best parts of it. And when the Japanese developed this Toyota production system many decades ago, you know, the whole thing they talk about is it's either an all or nothing thing. You know, you have to go all in on it. And in lean, they have what they call a kaizen event. They'll bring a cross-sectional group in and they'll look at what are the ways that we can eliminate waste in this particular line. And so if you start out with 10 people and these people come together and figure out a way to reduce two people out of the line because of waste, and you let go of those two people, what do you think is going to happen in the next time you do a project, right? Nobody's gonna come in and volunteer to do that. And at some point, at the very least, they may be resistant, but in the worst case, they may start to sabotage things. And so I use an example of an article that I read about Salesforce. Salesforce figured out a way to cut 50% of their people, but they didn't get rid of them. They upskilled them, they moved them into other discipline areas in the organization. Now I will tell you that Salesforce had the luxury that they could never keep up with, you know, the demands that they had at the time anyway. They've always been, I'm sure, fairly profitable, so they had enough money to do a lot of what they were doing. But in most companies, you're not going to go from zero to 60 overnight, right? You might free up a couple of people in the first month and maybe another couple of people a month or two later and so forth. So if you can redeploy those people doing projects that will help make the company better, well, why wouldn't you do that as opposed to getting rid of them and then putting a significant break on the potential progress of the company? And the other thing is I recommend that people focus on the pain points that employees are dealing with. And if if you focus on those pain points and get rid of those, people are gonna continue to want to buy in to making this happen. And so, yeah, if if there's a significant economic downturn, maybe you do have to let some people go. Although I I'd use the example I you know shared earlier about the guy that said, no, we're not gonna do that. But if if you're on the verge of either going out of business or not, I think most people are gonna understand that maybe we need to let a few people go. But if they see the guy driving in with the latest high-end Cadillac or Range Rover or whatever, and then he tells you you can't afford to keep people around, well, okay, you know, it's a choice you're making, and it's your right as an, you know, I never tell an owner they can't do what they they want to do. But in many cases, most people can do it if they really wanted to do it.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

Yeah, yeah. So this seems like a strange time or a difficult time, I should say, to write a book about artificial intelligence. How are you managing the downside of writing a book when the entire world changes about every six weeks?

SPEAKER_00 26:31

So my focus is more on uh the strategy, culture development, and and tools to help people evaluate what project they should work on. I don't begin to think that I could write this implement A, B, C, D, and E, because as you mentioned, tomorrow it's going to be E, F, G, and H. There's no way I can keep up with that. But I'm taking a lot of the things that have always worked in manufacturing and other particular types like the lean that I mentioned, and trying to apply those into the AI framework. And the primary focus is this human AI augmentation, where AI and humans are brought together where the the technology works on the redundant, repetitive sort of things and frees up employees to be more creative, innovative in problem solving. You know, that I'm sure there'll be a day when AI can completely replace this, but the smart companies are gonna understand that the human element is still really important in in making sure that your company operates in the best possible manner. So it's sort of a transition period, I guess, where I'm gonna I'm trying to write a book that that can help people to best deal with what we have going on for the next, let's say, five years, maybe, if that long.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Yeah, yeah. Well, in the adoption process, you describe, I think you call it productivity J curve, where things get worse or need investment before they get better. Can you tell us how you see that playing out of how manufacturers can handle any sort of investment or slow down before things get better?

SPEAKER_00 28:07

Yeah. Yeah, you know, again, that's one of the reasons why people don't do it. That's why people didn't do lean. It's why they didn't do a lot of other things. Because, especially as a former plant manager, in particular if you're a plant manager at a remote location and corporates pushing down numbers, you know, it really is difficult to be able to go out and and have this momentary downturn before things start to come back up. And it is a risk. One of the new chapters that I'm putting into the book is okay, here's what it means to you personally as a leader of a company to do this. And there are a lot of positives, but there are some negatives. Are you willing to do this? Now, you're probably old enough to remember that Fram oil filter commercial, right? Where, you know, you could pay me now or you could pay me later. You know, you can put a good oil filter in there and make sure the oil is better and keep your car running for longer, or you can use a cheap filter and and you know, reduce the longevity of your car. If you're a leader that's a few years away from retiring, well, maybe you don't want to take that chance. But if you're 30, AI is coming. I mean, it it is going to be an absolute part of your job. So I would encourage anyone that's particularly younger in their career to say, okay, what can I do to embrace this? And so a lot of things you can do as an individual where, you know, you can use large language models like perplexity or something to help you write a document. I mean, I used, I used it to kind of help frame the book to say, okay, what are what are some of the key items that I should have in here? And then I take that information and I go through and go, okay, well, I like this, I don't like that. But it gave me, you know, compared to the other book that I wrote, where I've wrote everything from scratch, it's been a really strong productivity tool. And so the more I can do to bring out something like that, that's either free or if you do pay for a paid version, it's relatively inexpensive. But if everybody is doing that in your organization and everybody's a little bit more productive, well, maybe you can soften that curve a little bit so that, you know, it's not nearly as strong as it could be, especially if you don't have a good plan. And that's part of why, you know, there's a lot of focus in the book on strategy is that how do you bring everybody together in a cohesive manner as opposed to everybody going off in different directions, which I often see in a lot of companies I deal with.

SPEAKER_02 30:26

You know, one of the dynamics with technology is that it's often generational. So we often retire technology along with workers because the transition costs or the upskilling costs, the retraining costs can be so high. So, you know, I've been in manufacturers where they're literally planning to replace equipment when certain people retire with more updated equipment that they will be able to source a worker to run. How do you see this playing out? Maybe this is the trillion dollar question, but how do you see this playing out with a potentially much more rapid change in technology?

SPEAKER_00 31:03

Yeah. Part of what I advocate is that leaders go out and actually find out who's already doing things in their company with AI and to bring those on as champions. And Mary Baldwin, where you said I teach, we have a young man there that it's incredible what that guy can do with, you know, these various technologies. And so if you bring him in and you put him in a position where, hey, are you willing to be somebody that can counsel, advise, you know, help train people to do what you do, this is something you'd be willing to do. Maybe you give them a small stipend or something to give them a little bit of reward for helping you out. But the more you can do of that, I think the more that you'll be better off in the long run. And in change management, we talk about the, you know, the bell curve. There's a small percentage of people on the right side that they're excited about change and they want to make it happen. And then there's the other people on the other end of the bell curve that are going to fight it tooth and nail, whatever they can do to make sure that it doesn't happen. And then everybody else is in the middle and they're kind of waiting to see which of these two groups is going to win. The more people you can get to go on the right side of that curve, the better off you're going to be in the long run. And again, that's that's going out, it's talking to people. You know, one of the other things with with lean is, you know, walking the walk. You know, you go out and and you actually talk to people in the plant. You don't tell them what they should do or how they should do it. You ask them questions, you observe, you you see what's happening, and then you're just able to figure out what you can do to make that company stronger, as opposed to thinking you have all the answers up in the ivory tower. I don't know if you ever watched the undercover boss show. I mean, I used to love that thing because the CEO or the owner of the company would go out and and maybe they'd they'd work as the garbage truck worker one day or they serve food at a fast food restaurant for a day, and they would begin to see, you know, that the devastating impact of some of their less than desirable decisions. And and at the end of it, you know, they're like, oh, I'm so sorry that I did this to you. You know, you know, it's always been easier for me because when I started out in manufacturing, I worked in a job that was cleaning machines in its cleaning booth, and we would spray it down with with oleum, which is just a nasty, foul smelling liquid to clean the thing off. I'd go home spattered with grease and dirt and smelling like, you know, petroleum, and and then just kept working my way up through an apprenticeship and so forth, engineering jobs and managerial roles, supervisory roles. And so I've been there, I've done it, and that's the other thing that that often I very quickly am able to get people to understand. No, I I do know what you're going through. I've been there, I've done it, you know. Tell me more about what it is that that your issues right now, and what can I do to help you in that regard?

SPEAKER_02 33:53

Yeah, well, you know, as we look at the next few years, whether it's technology, artificial intelligence, labor markets, I think we can all agree that we have a lot of challenges ahead. Oh, yeah. Hopefully, I mean, I think you and I both hope that that we take this opportunity to make our workplaces better fit for purpose, to both be more productive and to be more humanist. So I'm glad you're working on this. I'll be keeping track of some of the things that you come up with, and I hope that some folks can pick up on some of your ideas. What else would you want to tell the audience, or where could people find out more about the ideas you're working on?

SPEAKER_00 34:32

Yeah, so I do have um a website called Emanual Strategic Sustainability.com where it talks about the human AI augmentation and and some of what I can offer. I do have two LinkedIn newsletters that I'm writing right now. I may reduce it to one here shortly, but both on AI. One is just AI in general, and then the other is AI and small to medium manufacturing facilities. And so those are three different ways that you can see some of what I'm doing. But always love to have more students at Mary Baldwin. You know, if you want to come there and learn learn from me in our undergrad or MBA program, happy to do that as well. But um, but those are the main ways you can get a hold of me. Yeah. Well, thanks so much, Joe. And look forward to connecting again soon. All righty, thank you. It's been a pleasure.