Next Shoring: Popular, catchy, but old school. Tea and Ketchup history lesson

Next Shoring has entered our Politician's language; it speaks of the return of manufacturing, rebalancing the economy and maybe even more jobs. It appeared in this Blog in 2008 and I can trace it back to at least 2005 in McKinseys thought leadership work.

Next Shoring is defined by McKinsey as "...not about about the shift of manufacturing from one place to another but about adapting to, and preparing for, the changing nature of manufacturing everywhere." Mckinsey next-shoring: a CEOs guide

So CEOs listen up!

But lets put some perspective on this and other revelations about matching local needs & manufacturing opportunities from our own recent history.

Tea was first introduced into India by the British, in an attempt to break the Chinese monopoly on tea. The British used Chinese seeds, plus Chinese planting and cultivating techniques to launch a tea industry by offering land in Assam to any European who agreed to cultivate tea for export.

I used to work for HJ Heinz, and the company history will tell you that from a US beginning in 1869, they exported their new Tomato Ketchup to the UK in 1886, followed by Cream of Tomato Soup in 1910 and Beans and more. A new production site in the UK made thousands of tonnes of product in its first year in the roaring twenties.

Next Shoring, reshoring, offshoring. CEOs think about your business and it's loci, and don't be too in awe of the "very latest thinking"!

Contracts: 3 "large print" points

It shows that I'm not a Lawyer, but I have to admit that as I've aged the importance of Contracts to me has risen. Whether Tom Waits, Amos 'n' Andy or Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen coined the phrase:

"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away"

I have work colleagues who have had reason to thank their small print, or blame it... to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds. When things go wrong, it pays to have thought ahead and captured in the contract the correct disposition of the result.

Reviewing contracts, your own and others', requires a crystal clear understanding of your purpose in contracting, and sufficient experience in reading and negotiating contracts of a particular type. That experience may come in-house, or from external legal advice. I say of that "particular type" because I recently reviewed a contract outside of my normal comfort zone, and my lack of established reference points was obvious to me. So my learning points are to make sure that:

• You and anyone advising you is clear on your purpose in contracting
• You have or apply sufficient experience of the type of contract you will be signing
• You and any advisors have thought through what might go wrong and how you would want it dealt with if it does.

Happy signing!

Bandwidth tax and Checklists

Two excellent books I would recommend are Scarcity: Why having too little means so much and The Checklist Manifesto.

In Scarcity, the authors have written an excellent and thought provoking book, founded in the effect that scarcity has on how we behave and even our intelligence and ability to cope, The "tax on Bandwidth" conclusion, drawn from the research and evidence in the book supports my own observations, both personally and of clients. The strategies proposed in the book, and tested in some environments to overcome the impact of Scarcity and the tax are intuitively satisfying and a challenge to all of us to apply correctly rather than label behaviours as poor and dismiss them.

The Checklist Manifesto tackles with great detail (the primarily surgical examples are explicit), a topic that appears bound to be dry as dust, but really isn't. As an avowed believer in checklists, this book raised my understanding of what the good design of them looks like and the measurable impact that they can have in key situations. It also tackles some of my concerns about them such as the perception that it hinders creativity (it shouldn't), and the dangers of getting the level of detail wrong (OCD tendencies and lack of user involvement can be dangerous here). The importance of testing, review and modification of a new checklist along with tailoring to local situations was also highlighted by comparing common Surgery checklists in "1st" v "3rd" world Operating Theatres.

Enjoy and apply! 

Guerrilla Change

In recent posts, I have remarked on the response of large corporates to initiate change programs on a global scale; rolling out world-wide implementation plans. There are good, bad and (sometimes the worst), indifferent programs.

A good program can give training in new skills, access to executives to get new projects moving that wouldn't have seen light of day otherwise and secondment opportunities. They also provide more communication from on high, maybe with little relevance to the people on the ground adding the value.

There is an alternative to that: Guerrilla Change and, from my point of view, Guerrilla consulting. Here the change and the support is local, fixed on local strategies to overcome change or develop new business aims. The hall mark of many of these changes are that the audience recognise the problem, have lived with it for years, or have been telling their bosses for many quarters. Guerrilla change doesn't always get the support of higher executives. They may be too far removed to see the need or the opportunity. Successful campaigns here have many side benefits: the belief that we can make change, experience in new skills, creation of unexpected leaders and experts.

What do you need to get the bananas out for where you are?

Help at your Elbow

A couple of weeks ago I was attending The 2013 National Manufacturing Debate at Cranfield University. One of the speakers used the phrase "at your elbow", and it created a very visible image of helping someone at their desk, their work centre, at their screen. A bit like helping your son or daughter with their Maths revision or learning to read.

Workshops and training and coaching sessions can be excellent, but we have to remember that there are times when we have to roll up our sleeves and place ourself at someone's elbow to give them the help they need. 1:1 input doesn't resonate with efficient working patterns, but where would we be if we never had that experience when we were stumbling with our Green sticker readers?

Incoming!

In the previous blog we likened top down corporate initiatives as either Virus or Vaccine. (see Corporate Initiative: Vaccine or Virus)

Incoming is how a Site leadership or Senior Management should treat these initiatives.

For each of them as they start to appear on the horizon, what do we do to respond? Does it meet a missing element in our own capability that we should harness as quickly and whole-heartedly as possible? Is it a training programme that cuts across one of our own, will it lead to confusion in our teams? In that case can we tailor it to ensure that it dovetails into our existing processes, can it be packaged as an enhancement, rather than “here comes another initiative…. what happened to the last one?” comments.

Alternatively is it a new, unproven piece of work? Do you want to be the first implementation? If the resourcing is high on the first roll out you might be a winner. However do you want your people and processes to be the pilot, the sandbox?

Is the timing completely wrong for your site, can you push the roll out back with plausible reasons? Is the incoming a reason to address some SG&A support?

So as they appear, you and your team have a number of responses to consider. I mentioned above “appear on the horizon”. You and your team need to be tuned into what is likely to be rolling out from corporate HQ. Look out for new functional appointments, corporate announcements. The earlier you can spot them, the greater your reaction time. A responsibility you have is providing air cover for your people, managing the incoming initiatives.

Corporate Initiative: Virus or Vaccine

For global giant companies, full of corporate structures with VPs, how do you initiate and prove global change? 

There you are, the Global VP of ??????????? (Insert Compliance, Talent Management, Ethics, Continuous Improvement, Sourcing.... etc). Your boss the CEO wants a significant reduction in costs/increase in performance of your chosen field across all Geographies. How do you do it?

Many take the route of launching a global initiative. Elements might include:

• A single contracted in service (recruitment, lean six sigma)
• A set of standardised methods, PowerPoint slides
• Regional appointees to manage the process through

Such an initiative is then "Rolled out" across the business onto the divisions and units that are delivering the business. Cynics might say "Rolled over".

So a healthy but hard-pressed body (the business) is faced with the initiative. Now would you liken it to a Vaccine, described as:

• "A mixture that is given to help stimulate the body's own immune system to produce antibodies to fight a certain disease"

Or a Virus:

• "the causative agent of an infectious disease"

Of course the metrics of success can be highly visible, such as training courses run, projects completed, savings made at the Corporate P and L level. However the benefits can be harder to nail down and recognise at the local level.

So taking a challenge and making it into an initiative may not always be the best route... Will it be the equivalent of a corporate Vaccine, strengthening internal processes, adding to resilience, fighting off competition, or more of a Virus, creating a sapping debilitating disease that weakens the organs?