When you set a goal, your team might care about it. When you set a goal and let them own it, not only are they are going to do the work but they are going to be so much better at solving it.
So how do I know this? Because it happened to me.
On my Six Sigma Black Belt project, the team and I could not figure out what was going on. It was a tough problem. We ran the process. We applied the tools. We weren’t sure it was going to work. If we’d done it just to get the check mark from the boss, we would have quit. But we got stubborn. We really wanted to fix it to prove that we could, and we set our hearts on solving it. In other words, we took ownership.
This is what you want to do as manufacturing leaders: give your people the opportunity to make your goals THEIR success. Don’t make it something they’re doing for you, to follow your orders or be obedient. Make it something they’re committed to, for their own reasons. So when we did solve the problem, it was sweet indeed! (High five Deepak, Cam, Ned, Kevin…)
That pride that I feel to this day is the inspiration for the Sparkplug process: all about giving your front line leaders that sense of accomplishment and activating their internal drive.
Have you done this? How did you encourage ownership and drive in your team?