Turning Around Struggling Manufacturers with Christian Smith

In this episode of the Allied Advisors Podcast, host Justin Goethe sits down with Christian Smith, a results-driven operations executive, former US Army captain, and Lean Six Sigma black belt. Christian has transformed operations and increased EBITDA for major organizations like Danaher, Target, and Nestlé.

Today, we dive deep into the "front door" signals of a struggling manufacturer, the critical difference between person vs. process, and why the "superstar problem solver" might actually be your biggest bottleneck.

Key Takeaways

• The First Signal of Trouble: When walking into a new facility, Christian looks for visual waste—people waiting, over-processing to "look busy," or visual management tools (like floor markings) that are completely ignored by the team.
• Person vs. Process: While leadership often blames "bad people" for poor performance, Christian argues that 99% of the time, the issue is the process. If you give people the right tools, training, and processes, they will succeed.
• The Danger of Tribal Knowledge: We discuss "Bob"—the superstar machinist who is the only one who knows how to run a critical piece of equipment. Christian explains how this "tribal knowledge" creates massive business risk and why standardizing that knowledge is non-negotiable for scaling.
• Grace Under Pressure: Christian shares how his military background taught him to maintain calm in high-stress manufacturing environments, reminding us that "nobody is going to die" if a product is 15 minutes late, allowing for more rational, process-driven decisions.
• The Power of Gemba: Successful leaders don't solve problems in conference rooms. Christian emphasizes the "go-to-gemba" mentality—being on the floor, sitting in the lunchroom, and truly understanding the daily frustrations of the frontline team to drive real change.

Featured Guest: Christian Smith

Christian is a veteran operations leader specializing in building high-performing teams and driving sustainable growth. Trained through Danaher Business University, he excels at connecting operational discipline with commercial strategy to unlock new growth opportunities.

• Connect with Christian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianesmith/

About Allied Advisors

We embed senior operators into mid-market manufacturing and supply chain organizations to unlock throughput, free up cash, and drive EBITDA growth. We focus on Installation over Advice through our Fractional Continuous Improvement Manager (FCIM) program.

Are you an "Exhausted COO" tired of firefighting? * Stop the Capital Leakage: Learn about our Proprietary AI Framework for managing procurement exceptions.

• Synchronize Your Supply Chain: Book a 2-Day Strategic Workshop to optimize your MRP strategy and reduce inventory bloat.

Visit us at: www.alliedadvisors.io

Email us at: info@allied-log.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Allied Advisors Podcast, the podcast for mid-market manufacturers looking to improve operations and improve that ever-important bottom line. Today's guest is Christian Smith, a results-driven operations executive and former U.S. Army captain who specializes in building high-performing teams and driving sustainable growth across manufacturing, logistics, and industrial organization. A Lean Six Sigma black belt trained through Danaher Business University, Christian brings a rare blend of strategic vision and hands-on execution, with a proven track record of transforming operations, increasing EBITDA, and optimizing end-to-end supply chain performance. Throughout leadership roles spanning companies such as Danaher, Target, and Nestie, he has successfully led large-scale integrations, enterprise operational excellence initiatives, and multi-site PL ownership while strengthening culture, safety, and customer value. Known for his collaborative leadership style, Christian excels at aligning teams, stabilizing processes, and unlocking new growth opportunities by connecting operational discipline with commercial strategy. So, Christian, again, thank you so much for carving out the time to come on the show. Really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Hey, Justin, thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it. And wow, what an introduction. Yeah, well, the only thing you didn't mention is that I've been involved in uh scouting. Uh I have three boys, all are Eagle Scouts. And uh started when my oldest came to me in kindergarten and said, Dad, we need a den leader. And uh I I just kind of followed him through that whole process and found it was great. Teaches kids uh self-reliance and uh leadership and accountability and things that you know are good when you're growing up. So I guess it's the only thing he didn't mention.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Well, I appreciate you correcting it though. But thanks again. Yeah, no, thanks again. Really appreciate the time. So, you know, you and I talked a little bit in the in the pre-meeting about your experience and some of the roles you've played over the years. And one of the things that I thought was super interesting is you know, you've been called in to several, you know, let's say struggling mid-market manufacturers and and had the opportunity to to turn it around, right? To lead the charge, to make things better and to and to drive value. You know, when you go into someplace like that, what's the first signal of, let's say, what the real problems are? You know, is it is it technology, is it culture, is it standards? You know, what are you looking for when you're walking in that front door that first day?

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Well, you know, it's interesting because uh uh depending on the situation, you might have an inkling of what might be a problem. And in some cases, I've just walked in. Uh, you know, they maybe somebody hired me and they said, Oh, it's a great place and everything's perfect. And you walk in the door and you're like, oh boy. Um, I'll tell you what, first I I like to identify that there is a problem, and usually it it's uh it's usually visual and it's usually wastes. Uh people are standing around waiting, or a little harder to see, people are doing things because they want to look busy, right? But then when you look closely, they're really not doing anything. Um, maybe they're going to the same place six or eight times to check on something, or they're reworking product. Um, I also look for things like maybe there's evidence of visual management, but it's not being used. I recently walked into a manif uh and actually a plating company, and uh uh they had visual management uh lines on the floor and areas that were designated, and clearly nobody was using it. It was oh boy, right? Um, but to to the point of you know getting to that, you know, what is the problem? Um, usually those wastes are caused by processes. Now the processes may be established. I mean, there might be a process to not put things in the right spot. I've never run into it, but there's a possibility. Uh so I verify that I talk to people. I talk to the people on the floor. What are you doing? How's it going? Usually it comes out quickly. Um, you know, what are your frustrations? Oh, the the last shift didn't do what they were supposed to do. Okay, what were they supposed to do? Well, they're supposed to clean up afterwards. And they didn't? No. Okay, there's there's an indicator, right? They were supposed to, they didn't. Um, where does this go? Well, I usually find a spot in this direction somewhere, and you know, okay, okay, that's that's not a very good process. So those usually beget those those problems. And then what you're really trying to do is it's called change management, is uh when I go in to start solving those problems, I want to get the people who are doing things every day to admit that these are problems, right? I they don't clean up after themselves. Well, you clean up after you yourself. Well, yes, I do that every time. Hmm. You know, I talk to your second chef and they tell me something different. Maybe we should get together and and see what that means, right? Or gosh, you're spending a lot of time sanding this apart that was supposed to be right to begin with. Why are you doing that? Well, there were problems and we have to put it through the process again. Uh oh. Do you like doing that? Well, no, that's a lot of work. Okay. Would it be better if you didn't do that? Yes. Okay. So how do we prevent that from happening? And you'll get the same, right? It just happens. It always happens. This is the way it happens all the time. Okay, but at least you've got them to admit there's a problem. So your your point, look at you know, I walk in, I look for the wastes, and then I talk to the people to kind of verify what that problem happens to be. And I look for standards. I look to make sure that we have a way to do things and that we're following that way to do things, and it actually works. Let me ask you this, it doesn't.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Let me ask you this. You know, sometimes when I walk into a new mid-market manufacturer, someplace I've never been, one of the common things I hear from the leadership team is a focus on the people, right? Oh, well, you know, if we could get those people out on the shop floor, if we can get better people, um, you know, we would be all right. We just we just need better people. And and I struggle, or I I feel like sometimes I struggle to explain to them, hey, look, yeah, okay, for sure. We need people to show up on time, we need them to work while they're here. We we need to hold people accountable um to doing what what we're paying them to do. Okay, fair enough. I agree. But have we looked at the process? Have we looked at what processes we've given these people to be successful? Because I find that, and I I think I'm sure you agree, more value is is derived from the process than you know trying to hire a team full of all-stars. But that's not where a lot of leadership teams want to focus their their attention. Do you see that, or is that just me? Oh, I see it all the time.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

And frankly, you know, it's interesting because uh I, you know, I might be guilty of it sometimes too. Gosh, you know, we we need to find people who are better at doing XYZ. Or we need they need to, they're not, you know, following their training or whatever it is. But um, those are the times I reflect and say to myself, okay, is it the person or the process? And and the answer is 99% of the time it's the process. Now, there's there's gonna be the occasion where uh, and this is years ago, I remember somebody in a uh manufacturing environment, and we were running uh punch presses at the time, and uh they intentionally uh sounds weird, but they threw a wrench into the punch press. So you got like this hundred-ton press coming down on a wrench. Something's gonna break. It really is. And yes, the wrench broke, but so did the die. So uh we found out, first of all, because the other people that were working kind of knew it, but they weren't gonna tell you, but they kind of indicated, and we did have cameras for various reasons, safety reasons, you know, we weren't like spying on people, but we did have cameras in the facility, and we were able to pull up cameras that kind of saw what was happening. Um that happens, right? But very seldom. And I'll tell you, there's most of the time it's uh you you have to teach people that you know, somebody's coming to work every day, they're trying to do the best job they can. And if you give them the tools and and that's the the processes, the training, uh, if you give them those things, they will do those things. Um it's it's all about change management. You know, some people will talk about that, and I am a big proponent, right? They need to understand why they're doing it, right? Why am I spending all this time and effort doing X, Y, Z? Then they have to have a motivation. Well, I'm getting paid to do that, that's a good motivation. Um, I find satisfaction in doing it correctly, that's motivation, or I'm gonna get in trouble if I don't. That's motivation too. Uh it's the negative side, but you know, sometimes you have a little bit of both, right? Um but you go through these processes, and when it's done wrong, um, then look at the process. Here's a great example. I had a I had a uh um uh uh I had a fleet of trucks in my last gig, right? Um and they were dispersed operations. So I had these truck drivers in 11 states. I had they're all over the place. And I didn't get to meet all of them, which was kind of unfortunate, but I met a number of them, and and we actually had a an accident. It was down in uh uh basically Nebraska. So I had a rundown on a Friday holiday weekend. Um I had a driver, he got burned. Um, and I I hate to say it, but I will say it because I I you don't hide problems, right? He got burned doing something that was unusual. I went down there, saw him, made sure he was okay, made sure he knew that you know we had insurance and he was getting taken care of and any help he needed, he needed to contact us because he's down in Nebraska and we're up in Minnesota, but uh we worked through that. And uh after you know, after I talked to him and everything, um I asked him, I said, I need your help to solve this problem. Um, I need to know what happened, how did it happen, and everything else. Now it's interesting because then I got back to the office and uh I was relatively new in this role, and there were a lot of people in the office that had been there for a long time, to include the former owner of the company, right? So I had take it got in purchase, they brought me in to take over the leadership role, he took a different role within the company. Good guy, but his first thing he says on Monday is you gotta fire him. And I said, Why why do I have to fire him? And he's like, Well, he got in it, he got hurt. You know, obviously he's not paying attention, he's not doing the job right, something, right? I said, No, no, no, let's see what happened. And we we ended up, we didn't talk to him immediately. You know, he was in the hospital getting treated. I just wanted to assure him everything was gonna be okay. Uh, but then that week, uh he had time. We got on a conference call with him and it and I said, Look, uh, what what were you doing? And he explained it. And I had already checked. So I kind of knew what he was doing from the other people that were working there. Then yes, I knew it wasn't something we normally did. And I said, Okay, well, what what is the process for it? I mean, how do you know how to do it? And he's like, Well, I, you know, that's kind of the way it should work. I'm like, okay, well, clearly that's not a process, right? And I talked to the team and I said, Do we have any written uh instructions on how to do it this way? No, we don't. But it should be obvious. They're always always that, right? Right. And of course they came back to me and they're like, Well, he was probably rushing because it was a Friday and it was late and it was a holiday weekend and all this other stuff. And I said, That's that will happen. There's times when you're working a job and you're tired. We've all done it. I've done it, right? I'm tired, I make a stupid decision, I get hurt, or I almost get hurt. But um, but I said, look, we've got to have a process for this. So we did, we documented a process for it. In the process, we made some changes to the equipment so that we so we couldn't do it that way any longer so that nobody would get hurt. But the point was, I I spent the time with this individual. He jumped into it full force and admitted to me later that he thought he was going to get fired. Because that was kind of the way things normally work in this industry, right? You got a driver, he's responsible for the load, he screws up, he gets hurt, you fire. I mean, I I can't say any more plainly than that. But I didn't. And uh he thought that was great. So fast forward forward to the end of the quarter, we had our quarterly meeting, and one of the things I did with my drivers is I I set up a video call and I tried to locate myself someplace where a lot of drivers could get to, uh, because you know they're coming from all over. And they would dial in, and if they weren't actively driving or something like that, or they could pull over and dial in. Uh, and I would have about a dozen or so at the location I was at. And uh they all knew about it. They all knew about it. He apparently told everybody, and that's not uncommon with drivers, especially dispersed drivers. Right. And uh they came to me later and they said, you know, this is a family company, and we're glad that it's still a family company because you take care of people, and we appreciate that. And I will tell you that I could have asked any of those drivers to do anything after that, and they would have been more than happy to do it. So think about the amount of time and effort and money uh that you spend in training your people. And do you really want to just get rid of them?

SPEAKER_00 14:28

That's exactly what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

There's gonna be the person who doesn't show up on time, right? And that can be a problem because it creates problems with everybody else who does show up on time. But you've already invested. You don't capitalize on your investment.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Yeah, I mean, there has to be standards, there has to be accountability, but but there also has to be standards the other way, and there has to be accountability the other way that such that leadership and those responsible for developing the processes are held responsible for giving these people processes that they can execute, right? I mean, accountability goes both ways, in my opinion, right? I I feel like what I see too often is accountability only goes one way, it only goes to the shop floor, not to the office. And that that is not uh a recipe for for success, or not that I've seen. Now, you know, hey, 100% correct. Another experience, but but you know, in the pre-meeting, you and I talked about, and and you mentioned you called them superstar problem solvers, you know, the guy that everybody goes to when when something breaks. And I see the same thing, you know. I I think there are people that really enjoy the firefighting, right? They get they get a uh, you know, they they feel a sense of accomplishment, they they feel valued when they're the guy that are you know that's the go-to person to to fix the problem. But you know, you mentioned then that while that might feel good in the short term, it's a dangerous habit to start. You know, can you maybe elaborate on that a bit more? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

So I uh I've yeah I know everybody runs into this. Right, because people find value in the fact that they're able to do that. I uh uh the one of the one of the biggest examples I have was in a machine shop. Um I had some very talented machinists, and we were running CNC lathes and mills, but we were also running manual stations and uh uh, you know, like nurlers and in and machining stations with, you know, six lit, you know, rotating six process type of thing. I mean, these are these this is equipment that had some of this equipment had been around for decades, uh, and we were still running it. Worked fine, uh really good stuff. But there were a few pieces of equipment that one guy knew how to set up and run. And that was it. Now, here's some history. Uh, and and you mentioned uh uh one one of my past lives, and I'll just I won't I won't mention the name, but basically this corporation comes in, they buy uh small but relatively successful, maybe struggling, uh type of uh business, and they they have a fairly standard way to do it. They uh they get rid of almost all the leadership. Uh they cut back on the uh the headcount fairly drastically. Um they institute a lot of lean systems and they teach everybody and they basically say, okay, perform, or we're selling you. I mean, honestly, it's really basically it, right? And I came in on board after a couple of years, several years after that had happened. Well, this guy had been through it, and apparently he lost everybody he worked with. He was like the last one. And the reason he was the last one in that group is that he had the ability to run machines that more machines than anybody else could, right? So they got rid of everybody else. He's kind of the last Mohican, and and he's like, okay, well, this is clearly what I provide as value, and he hold held on to that. And he got promoted, and he was he was basically a uh a team lead uh of his section. I relied on him. He was a great guy, he was very helpful in a lot of respects. But one of the things is he wouldn't let anybody know. Well, he said he wouldn't let anybody know how to run equipment, certain if certain pieces of equipment. And his uh his justification was, well, we don't run it very often. I'll be here, and if I happen to be gone, I'll be coming back. So we'll know in plenty of time. I don't take that much vacation at one time. I mean, you know, all these reasons. Well, it came to a head. Um, he actually was on vacation. I think he was on a cruise or something with his wife. I mean, he was out of the country, and uh and we got the order came in uh that required this equipment, and it was one of these, you know, customers unhappy, some sort of quality issue or perceived quality issue, not sure which what the situation was, but I knew I had to run it right away. And uh he wasn't there, we couldn't set it up. So, you know, I'm looking at this piece of equipment. I grabbed uh one of my senior technicians and I said, Hey, we got to figure out how to run this thing. And he's like, geez, he said, this this this equipment's old. He said, Let's call the company and see if they have like instructions. And for the low, low cost of like$800 or something insane, they uh they overnight uh a uh a Xerox type copy of a manual that was probably written in the late 70s, honest to God. It was like typewritten and there were drawings, and they had just it you could tell it had been Xerox like six or eight times, right? So we get the manual and we're monkeying around with this equipment, and we kind of got it working. And uh all of the people in this guy's section kept walking by going, Oh, you shouldn't touch the equipment. Oh, he'll be so angry. No, no, no, you shouldn't do that, you shouldn't do that. So we finally kind of got in it going, and it was like the end of the shift, and one of the guys comes up and he says, Maybe I can get these parts for you. And I said, I I knew he knew how to run it at that point. I'm like, you know, all this time we're spending and the money I spent to get this manual. I said, fine, you know, help me out here. So he did, and uh, and then uh we'll call him Bob. Bob comes back from his cruise, and by the way, I apologize to any Roberts out there, but if you use a name, right? His name really wasn't Bob. Bob comes back from his cruise and he was pissed, wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't talk to me for weeks. Um but as I explained to him, I said, we can't have one person to be the only one who can do this. I mean, if if you had died on that cruise and we had to tell all these customers that they couldn't get their parts because we couldn't figure out how to run the equipment, we would look like idiots, wouldn't we? Um and you don't want to be in that situation. And that was a little bit that was a big problem at the time. But everybody's run into it. Their own Bob. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

That problem exists all over the place. You know, tribal knowledge is probably uh uh the biggest issue that I run into in my consulting practice. I mean, it's it's endemic, right? And the fact of the matter is it's just easy. It's much easier to say, oh Bob will do that, than to force somebody to take the time to document the process and you know to to to put together um documents that that you can train to and teach people to do that. I will say, I think artificial intelligence makes this so much easier in. The future. You know, I was on a phone call with a with a client the other day. We were trying to develop this uh custom bespoke software solution. And you know, I was like, Well, do you have any documents on how to do this, this process we were talking about? And you're like, No, we don't have anything. And my developer was like, we don't need it. All we need to do is get these guys in a room and let them talk. Ask them questions, let them talk, record it, and we could feed that into a large language model, right? That's and it can develop the documentation if we need it, right? We don't have have, you know, we don't have to take the time to put together all of these schematics and all of these work instructions like we like we did before. We could we can just record them talking and then AI could probably put something together and just have them approve it, you know, go through it and say, Yeah, this is correct. So so I was like, wow, that's that's really, really cool. And and I hadn't thought of it until then, but yeah, I could see that that definitely supporting that type of thing. Like just sit down with Bob and ask Bob, hey Bob, tell me about X and just record it. Let him talk. And uh I think that's a brilliant way to go.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

It does. And I I I love I I love AI. I've been I've been playing with it, I've been reading about it. There's so many different things, and there are people that are much smarter than me who are doing this, honest to God. Uh, but I'm proud to say I kind of know a few of them, and it's kind of nice. Um, and I've seen some of the things that that I that I've seen and that I I hear about and stuff are just absolutely amazing. And I remember the day when you actually had to do you had to you had to put together a spreadsheet with you know steps down one column and then pictures and next to them, and maybe times or something like that, and you'd print it out, and that's the document you would use. But but I'll tell you the other thing you can do, and I I saw an ad for this uh uh part of a part of part of a large large language model. They were trying to talk about how great it was, and uh and this guy said, Oh yeah, I can I can develop a training program for you within a minute, right? And they're like, Well, you know, you can't possibly do this. He said, Sure, I can. I mean, you know, give me the manual on um uh uh I don't know, some diversity training for your corporation. Okay, I'm gonna feed it into a large language model, I'm gonna turn it into a video of and it it was it was this a AI generated uh avatar, and uh she was just walking you through the training. And I'm like, wow, that's brilliant. It's amazing. It it I I mean, it's really it's almost like magic. Oh, and and it it you can change languages. I know how many people and think about this how many times and I've been in these situations where I was in one manufacturing plant for several years, we had 23 spoken languages. Now, most people either spoke English or worked with uh usually a family member who spoke English, right? So we could communicate, but 23 spoken languages, my goodness. Um we did standard work documentation uh with pictures uh because we had such a language uh issue, right? I mean, we we took the uh IKEA model to the nth degree, and we had, you know, we had one of the people were good at drawing and they did stick figures. And, you know, we tried to make things very, very standard that way, and we did a lot with visual management so people understood um the arrow with the number one was step one is here, you know, that sort of thing. Not only on the documentation, but on the equipment. And I still think there's a lot of positive to that. But boy, if you can just do it in a video and then change it to Swahili, if you've got somebody who speaks Swahili, wow, isn't that great?

SPEAKER_00 26:00

It's wild the impact this is gonna have. You know, I think a lot of mid-market folks are still struggling to figure out how do we apply artificial intelligence in our day-to-day. You know, I don't think I don't think uh corporate has caught up to personal yet. Um, probably not. I think this year is gonna be the year it happens. Um I mean the stock market hopes it is at least. So yeah, I mean, I I think this year is the is the year that we finally make that connection.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

You can look into it, but there's a lot of money being put into it, and and the returns on the investment aren't are starting to happen.

unknown 26:38

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Uh I think at the largest levels. But here's something to think about. And I've I've been talking to a couple of small business owners and mid-sized business owners, and uh like and I was I was just talking to this this group, maybe maybe 10 people, right? And they dedicated somebody's time for two weeks to develop some sort of I can't remember if it was a training or something, right? Um you know, to documenting it and getting it all together and everything. And then apparently, and this was a little while ago, about six months ago, and then the next week, uh one of the one of the large language models came up with an app that just did it, right? Like that. And they're like, wow, we spent two weeks of somebody's time to do something that was done in five seconds, right? Um so for the small and mid-size, especially, you're you're you don't want to dedicate a lot of time and resources to developing something if it's just going to turn around and be available in and you know really soon. So focus on the basics, I believe, first. And then for the large companies, the big concern, and it's a really big concern and makes sense, is uh security. How do you keep you know your information private? Because big companies, they they not only learn from each other, but you know, it's I was in the military for 10 years. Let me tell you, military intelligence is uh they always say it's an oxymoron, but honestly, it's it's spying, it's trying to get information from somebody else to use against them, right? And uh, and I'm I'm sure at big companies they do that sort of thing, maybe not intentionally, but they're always trying to get information. And if it's available, it's available. You know, they use it to their advantage.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Absolutely. You know, you mentioned your military experience. Um, obviously that that's definitely shaped your approach to leadership. You know, what soft skills from the military do you think best translate to manufacturing leadership? You know, especially when when you know there's a a problem, when there's a you know fire on the shop floor. What what what are those soft skills that you learned back during your military days that you think really apply now?

SPEAKER_01 28:45

Well, you know, it's interesting. Uh I would say one of the biggest things is um is it grace under pressure, uh not letting it get to you, uh keeping your calm in a stressful situation. And for for me, for a lot of veterans, you think back to your time in the service and you're like, well, you know, I'm making this product, nobody's you know, it could be dangerous manufacturing and everything, but basically nobody's gonna die if I don't get the product perfect the first time and out the door within the next 15 minutes, right? I mean, you can work with people. Um and and it's it, I know you there's gonna be examples. Well, these are medical devices and they go in, people, yeah. Okay, you have to have it right the first time. Or this is an ITAR part and the government wants it. And if uh if I don't get it to them, they'll shut me down and make me do it anyway. I'll okay, well, we won't let that happen. But it's not like you're being ambushed, honestly. So that's really very important. And I think the other thing is being able to get out where the people are working, uh, on the shop floor or in the military in the motor pool or uh in the field and actually experience what they're experiencing uh as we're all experiencing it together. So you understand what they're going through, but they also so they see you and they know you understand what they're going through because you're going through it as well. I think that's extremely important in any manufacturing. It gets difficult as you know, this hierarchy and you get higher up in the organization. You can't you I was working at a large uh retailer, we had 50 distribution centers. It's hard to get to 50 distribution centers on a regular basis. If you're the CEO and you just want to hit distribution centers, take you a year if you go one a week, right? I mean you're not it's just gonna happen that way. So you're not gonna be there all the time, but it's important that people see that you care and uh that you you have an appreciation for what they do. And uh uh and if they have problems, you'll listen to them. It's really what it comes down to. And that's it's back to the change management. They understand you're communicating to them, uh, they appreciate it, uh, that they have the motivation because they believe that you, and hopefully you do, uh, have that uh that care of what they're doing. So always a good thing. And and those are some of the soft skills. I'm sure there are others, but those are the ones that come to my mind anyway.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

Yeah, you mentioned about going to Gimba and being on the shop floor. You know, I think that is so critical, especially as you climb the ranks of executive leadership. Um what I find or what I see is that the leaders that are the most successful, especially in the mid-market, so so maybe not the you know mega companies with the with the 50 distribution centers like like what you're mentioning, but even those guys, I think, too, when there's a problem, they don't try to solve it in the conference room, right? They they go out on the floor themselves and and see what's actually happening because you know it's just so easy to misdiagnose things if you're not out there talking to the people and really diving into the details, right? If you if you just trusting what somebody's telling you in a conference room, it it's just easy to to wind up down a path to nowhere, uh chasing things that aren't really problems.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

The uh I I I will I'll tell everybody the cost of going to see the problem in person and experience it far outweighs the cost of of well not solving it really. Um so you're right. And and by the way, it doesn't matter the size. If you're a small 10-person organization and you're you're gonna be there anyway, because you've that that that's one of your hats, right? I mean, I was in a smaller organization and I made the coffee and took the garbage out before I left in the night. I yeah, I just did, right? So I understood it. Um, but even if you're the CEO of a company, you should. You should, I mean, even a big corporation, you should go see what's going on. And I do see, I'll never forget that. And and I would never worked at Best Buy, I'm not endorsing them or anything, but they are based here. And my wife went to one of the Best Buys uh a few years back. Uh I don't know, Black Friday, I think it was. And the CEO was there greeting people as they walked into the uh into the place. And I guarantee that, and I I don't know for sure, I wasn't there at the time, but had if he was paying attention to what was going on, he was seeing a Black Friday, and he probably talked to some of his people, and he probably talked to some of the customers, and what he learns from that is just invaluable. Because then he can go back to his boardroom where people are telling him things like, Oh, the customers love Black Friday. And he can say, Well, honestly, I talked to like six or eight people, and they said it was a madhouse, and some woman got hurt because she was knocked over. And and I think we need something a little bit more controlled. Um, whereas the person who maybe made that comment is looking at a spreadsheet saying, Look, sales were up for you know 2% or something like that over last year. Um that's that's really important, and uh, and you should always take the opportunity when you can. Now, realizing if you're the CEO of a large corporation, you've got board meetings and you've got you know C-suite meetings, and and you're making decisions on all sorts of things. You probably, if you're big enough, you're probably going to the White House and talking to the president every once in a while, but or his cabinet or something like that. These are things that have to happen, uh, and that is why you're in the position. But if you lose touch with what you're doing as an organization, uh then you can't lead it. You can't lead any organization where you don't know what's going on. 100%. You have to rely on people, but trust but verify, right?

SPEAKER_00 34:52

And I think you're you might be being a bit too generous when you talk about the CEOs of smaller companies having to be on the shop floor or because you know, by dent of their size. I don't think that's always the the case. I mean, I I think there's some folks that once they make it to the corner office, they feel like that other stuff that's for that's for somebody else. And you know, they do that to their own detriment. You know, I I had um we had Steve Cook on the show. Steve is you know MIT grad, he teaches business courses at Harvard Business School, probably one of the smartest people that's ever taken the time to speak with me. And even he said, it's like you gotta be able, especially in the mid-market, you gotta be able to play the high keys and the low keys. He used a piano analogy. You gotta be able to present to the board and to meet the president, as well as we'll take the trash out when the trash can's overflow, right? Those are the type of leaders that that make the most uh have the biggest impact in that mid-market manufacturing space. And and I think you know, you're spot on uh with what you're saying is yeah, you gotta be there. And if you're not, there's a price to be paid for it. It's not it's not free. And and it and sometimes, you know, sometimes if you if you don't do it long enough, the price you pay is the job, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:14

You know, that is true. That is true. Or the price you pay is is your business. Yeah. Um I I I have found myself on a number of occasions taking leaders either that I work for or work with or who worked for me. And sometimes you have to help them along in that sort of thing. There are people that are more introverted. They want to look at the books a little bit more, they don't want to walk around and get dirty or whatever the heck the case may be. But you know, sometimes you just have to, you have to do it. And you really do have to do it. And what I've done with them is, you know, let's take a walk. Let's say hi to people. Another great thing you can do uh is you can you can take lunch with your people. Um you absolutely find out so much about your organization by just sitting down in whatever lunch room you've got, if you've got one, which is a great place to go. Sit down with a group, say hi, talk to them about what's going on in the world, maybe uh uh mention your your family, and then they know you're a human being, and they'll start opening up to you, and you'd be surprised what you learn. I had a uh I had an HR group uh who had a huge turnover problem, right? And they were trying to solve their turnover problem. And I said, Well, what are you doing to find out why people are leaving? Well, we have exit interviews. And I said, Well, okay, but how many exit interviews did they just basically tell you uh they're going for more money? Oh, actually, that's one of the biggest problems. You know, they're always going for more money. And I said, Are they really going for more money though? Do you know? I mean, maybe I said, and and truly, 50 cents an hour or 10 cents an hour or something like that. I don't believe they would do that if they were happy where they were. I'll be honest. And I said, Why don't you go and sit during lunch and listen to people? You know, let them talk. Better yet, instead of an say Bob left, right? Instead of calling up Bob, which is what they were doing, they call up Bob at home uh after he after he quit. Hey, Bob, I really want to do an exit interview with you. Do you have a few minutes? And then they ask him some standard questions, get some standard answers. They said, Well, why don't you just go in and find out who the heck we're friends with Bob? And ask them. I mean, he left. He probably told them what he was leaving for. I hate my supervisor, or you know, blah, blah, blah. They don't treat me fair. Um, and and they'll know. Will they tell you? Maybe, maybe not, but um, but you might get more information that way. And they did. They did that, and they actually found out when they started doing their curato charts to figure out what the biggest reasons were for leaving. They found out that there were other reasons. Uh, some were dependent on certain leaders and stuff, and we focused on those leaders to make it better. Some people, uh, what was more impressive is they found out that there were a few junior leaders within the organization who were very good and people loved them. And they're like, I work here forever if I can work for this person. Wow. Okay, let's talk to this person. What do you do? And they don't they're usually they don't really know, right? You know, I set expectations and hold people accountable and everything else. But I remember this one leader, and uh, she would bring in the new person, whoever it was, and her routine was three days. She would the first day, she would do the job, and that person would follow her around. The second day, they would do the job together, and the third day, she would be with the person while they did the job for the whole day. As as a supervisor, right? She just felt this was important. And I will tell that tell you that her people perform better than anybody else, and it was a distribution center, but anybody else within the distribution center, her team stats, when you started breaking it down, her team stats were amazing. They all knew what they were doing. And even when they went and moved a different shift or a different team or whatever, they still performed very well. Um, but when you started filtering down to what was the root cause of success, it was her. And what was her success was the time she spent initially with people to make sure they were comfortable doing what they did, they did it correctly, they understood, uh, they had the skills and the uh the knowledge to do it. And then the rest of the time she didn't have much turnovers, so she didn't have to do it all that often. Right. And the rest of the time she basically audited what they did. So they knew she cared.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

She was there at Gimba all the time. I mean, you can definitely tell when you talk to somebody like you, Christian, that was in the military, that's that's had some very um, let's say tenuous moments in your leadership journey, uh, and then you're in, you know, you you transfer to the manufacturing space. You you you can just tell the difference, right? You I don't I don't know what it is. I've never been in the military, so you know, I won't venture a guess, but it just feels like folks that come out of the military, they're they're more grounded in their leadership style and they're able to relate and really get at the root cause faster than some of us that that haven't served. So, you know, I I uh I don't know, I guess this is winding up as a promotion for hiring veterans. I do think, I mean, I can tell you this, there was one point in time where everybody in the company was at four of us, right? Everybody was a veteran except me, right? Um, you know, I do think it's a uh there's some skill sets there that translate super well to the manufacturing space. Um, you know, and uh I think it's just about understanding how to relate to people under pressure day in and day out and being and being human at different levels of the of the hierarchy, right? I think sometimes, you know, we we create this artificial block once we move up past a certain level. And again, that's that's much to our own detriment. So, you know, it's refreshing to have somebody like you on the show with your background, you know, talking about the value and talking to to the shop floor folks and and and what you've been able to do um over the course of your career taking that approach. So again, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show and talk with us. I've certainly enjoyed it. I hope the audience at home they get as much out of it as I've gotten. So, really, again, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

Well, thank you very much, and thank you for your endorsement of veterans. I really uh I I advocate for veterans uh quite often. Um I think that's uh it's a really great thing to have in your past. And uh really, I think it's really appreciated if you know for for people getting out of the service to have advocates. So I do appreciate that. Thank you very much for having me today, and thank you for the discussion. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 43:15

Absolutely. And we'll link to your LinkedIn profile if folks want to want to connect with you after the show. Uh and folks, if you've enjoyed today's conversation with Christian, please do leave us a five star review, comment, share the show with your friends. It helps us spread the message and get this out in front of more people. So if you enjoyed it, please do you know make sure to pass it along. All right, we'll catch you guys next time. See ya.

SPEAKER_01 43:37

Hey, thank you very much. Take care.