Manufacturing Career Growth: Supervisor or Specialist?

Ed Ballina
Hi, I’m Ed Ballina.

Alvaro Cuba
Hello guys, Alvaro Cuba here.

Ed Ballina
Well, welcome to just another of the ever exciting and invigorating Manufacturing Meetup podcast. This is a show where we kick back on our downtime, you know, talk about efficiencies on the shop floor. ⁓ and Alvaro and I dip into our endless well of stories from the shop floor. It’s almost like from the other side. ⁓ anyway, that’s my intro.

Alvaro Cuba
I love your introduction. So energetic. Yeah, love it. How about the hat?

Ed Ballina
So the hat again, part of our custom here, right? I am wearing, it’s cold folks. I am in North Carolina, but it’s chilly here and I hear there are iguanas dropping out of palm trees all over Florida. So I wore my little beanie to keep me warm. And you know, it must be about 78 degrees in Florida. So Alvaro, you can tell us why you’re wearing yours, but that’s why I’m wearing mine because I’m old. I also wear this during hunting season.

Alvaro Cuba
Yeah, I had to get out my winter gear. Alright. That’s great. Now I’m using this, well, you know, 60 degrees in Florida is freezing. So I have to get my gear. And I love this one and I had it for a long time because the very first time I got to work in the US, the very, very first time, I flew overnight. I landed in New Jersey, went straight to an all day meeting with the team.

And when we finished at 5:30, they said, okay, everyone to the bus. To the bus, what? Driving to see the Yankees in the Yankee Stadium in the booth and see a full baseball game in the Yankee Stadium. So I bought this there and I have kept it because it’s a fantastic story of my very first day working in the U.S., my very first day in the Yankee Stadium.

Ed Ballina
That is a very cool story. I thought you were going to tell me you wound up in New York City and you were freezing and you had to get a hat just to keep your ears from falling off.

Alvaro Cuba
It was, I was getting freeze, but more interesting than that, I got to see the Yankees. Yeah.

Ed Ballina
Well, awesome folks. We’re going to talk something a little different. We’re going to talk about career transitions. So as you wind up in an organization and you start growing your skill set and your impact, you will reach these transition points where perhaps you go from shop floor to first level. Or department manager to group manager. We’re going to talk a little bit about those transitions and then also a little bit about what if you don’t want to go that route? What if you really don’t want to manage people? Let’s hope you’re not antisocial, but usually that’s not the case, it’s you are deeply technical and you want to pursue something different. We’re going to talk about that. Alvaro?

Alvaro Cuba
Yeah. Yeah. I love this topic because it’s about development. It’s about training. It’s about  building leaders. And you can do that because you are being promoted to a supervisor. You can do that because you want to get better and grow. It really doesn’t matter. It’s about growing personally, contributing, getting building your careers. So that’s why I love this topic. But before we start,  hit the subscribe button at the bottom of your screen don’t lose these conversations. And also you can share it with your peers and we can grow this meetup. So let’s go.

Ed Ballina
Let’s do it. Great team. So thanks for joining us. And again, don’t forget, hit the subscribe button. I’m going to try and figure out exactly where I have to point to make it look like I’m hitting the button. Lower, much lower. Yeah, right down there, kind of. All right. So as promised, we’re going to talk a little bit about career transitions. And one of the first ones that most people tackle is that of moving from an individual contributor to starting to manage folks, right? ⁓ And it is a challenging transition no matter what, and you’ll face that through your career, right? If you’re amongst a group of vice presidents and you wind up, and they’re your peers, and you wind up being promoted to the senior vice president, the same challenges apply as if you were a shop floor mechanic that gets promoted into a maintenance supervisor role.

And there, so the challenges are very, very similar. But we’re, I’ve seen, you know, where it can be a little bit extreme is when you have a person has been a really, really great mechanic, right? Or I’ll say an hourly employee, right? Shop floor and they’re excellent at what they do. And then they get the opportunity to move into management ranks, right. And, and grow their career.

And let me tell you, there’s a lot of obstacles that you have to jump through to make that happen because in many cases that person is also making a significant amount of money because they’re working a lot of overtime, right? So the overtime inflates their pay. And when I’ve seen cases where these folks are moving into management and taking a pay cut because of course in management you don’t get paid an hourly rate or overtime.

Got to get the financial piece right to even get people to take that. But now they’re facing a situation where the buddies that they were having coffee with in the break area and lamenting about management. Now, all of a sudden, you are one of them.  And managing that interaction can be really, really funny. 

And becomes even more complicated if you have a union environment. Now the days of truly, truly adverse relationships between management and union have gone by the wayside because we realize that if we don’t work together, we sink together, right? But there’s still that kind of us versus them mentality. And sometimes, you know, I’ve seen a case where one of my  toughest chief shop stewards, was also an amazing electrician. And I wound up promoting him into management, which he became a senior manager, had a great, great run with the company. But at first I was like, now you get to sit on the other side of this and see how this thing works. And  it makes for really, really comical conversations, but it is a tough transition to make. One of the toughest challenges is where do you draw the line?

Right. Because you have relationships, right? That, you know,  this might be the person that you, you know,  you played on the softball team on, right. But now you are in a supervisory relationship with them and now you gotta assess their performance, provide balanced feedback, right? Write performance reviews. And I gotta tell you, if you don’t make the transition, right, from buddy to leader of that group,  you will not be successful.  Now, you have to be honest and you have to have open conversations with your buddies and friends and say, hey, look, our relationship outside of work is that. The relationship in here is a different story.  And a quick microcosm of that, I faced that in my business in OpEx because my son is my general manager and he works for me and at one point in time the other son was here too and when you know we’re in the shop it’s not…But I even do it with my grandson. I’m teaching him. He’ll come in the shop and he, you know, you guys have seen, he cleans toilets and stuff. And I tell him, in here, I am not abuelo, okay. In here I’m the president of this company, I’m the guy who pays his salary. Yeah, again, it’s a challenge, right? And some people can make it and make it and get the benefit of the reputation and relationships that they’ve built on the shop floor, right? That goes a long way, but you’ve got to really make that,  and make it open, right? So people know where you’re coming from, because it’s challenging.

Alvaro Cuba
Yeah, I agree with you. But the first thing that I would say is if you are in this situation, well, congratulations. It means you have great skills or you have great experience or you have great personal leadership and then you are being promoted. The second thing is you have a big advantage. You coming from the floor so you know exactly what is happening there. You know exactly what to do, how things are done. That’s a big advantage for you. And the third is also a big opportunity because as you have worked there, you have seen the opportunities. Opportunities to get the line more efficient. Opportunities to get the team in a better position. Opportunities to…increase production, several things that now in the position you are in, you can influence. So those are all things that play to your favor.  On the flip side, or not the flip side, but two or three just tips when you go up, your goal, especially in the first months, to a year, you need to build rapport. As Ed was saying, it’s different to be a buddy than to be the supervisor. So you have to build rapport and you have to get the credibility as the boss. And for that, just a few things. One, never stop listening. Th e fact that now you are a supervisor doesn’t mean that you know everything. The second is, be fair. Always be fair. The abusive times of the bosses are long, long gone.  This  is,  and Ed used a great word, collaboration. It’s between the union and the people that work, the management, but it’s also between boss and team.

Because everyone understands that this is a collaboration. Third, the why. You heard us talking many times about what’s in it for me. So when you explain the why and the other person gets it, it’s not about you are the supervisor and I’m the operator. It’s about it makes sense. It’s for the better of all of us.

Stay connected. I had both experiences. When I just started in my career, I went from outside to be a supervisor. And during my career, I had times that I was promoted from within. In both cases, applies the same tips. In the case that you are promoted from within, you have those opportunities that you know the opportunities, you know the work, you know the people. So you can get a lot. And remember, always keep the balance between results are needed and are good for everyone. But we need to protect the team as well at all the time because they are the ones who make the things happen in the floor. So guys, keep training yourselves and trust the floor. Embrace the floor, it’s a team. You can help them. So go ahead.

Ed Ballina
Alvaro, no, that’s a great point. And something you said, I want to poke out a little bit more  because I was going to say, here’s one thing that you need, number one mistake. But you know, number 1.2 mistake a lot of folks make, thinking that you have to know everything because now you’re a supervisor, right? And you have to… no. Use the strength and the knowledge, right, to network, to ask questions, to you know. I had a  sales guy that told me it’s all about just being a good dummy sometimes. Just be a good dummy, just listen to what people are telling you. Because it really makes a makes a big, big difference and, oh by the way, on the humor side, if you came from the floor you probably know where some of the bodies are buried.

Okay, this is not the time to start divulging every little secret and what who said what about the plant manager? I’m joking. People don’t do that. But be forewarned. Don’t bring up the dirty laundry folks. Okay, you got inside knowledge.

Alvaro Cuba
Yeah⁓ Okay, time to change the topic.

Okay, so  we want to touch the flip side of this topic, no? Because not everyone wants to be, to have to manage a team. There are a lot of folks that really enjoy what they are doing. And so, you don’t need to be promoted to grow. You don’t need to be promoted to improve your knowledge, to improve your experience, to improve your personal leadership, to improve your influence. No, those are things that you can do without being promoted. And I have seen many, many cases where technical jobs, operator jobs or mechanical jobs pay better than supervisor roles, or are hugely respected. The brew master, for instance, in the breweries,  or the cracking  in the oil industry, the cracking expert, or the champions in the TPM world, all the champions are really, really respected. And you get pride, image, you have time to learn, fulfillment. So there are many things. And the other important perspective is, and we were discussing this with Ed this morning, exchanged a couple of emails, is the world is changing. There is a huge gap in labor. And at the same time, there is automation. AI coming. So what that is making is to narrow the organizations, to flatten the organizations. In a full TPM organization, you have the plant manager, you have the technical guys, and then you have the shop floor, the operators, and they are their own supervisors. So in that world, every one of us, everyone has to continue to train and continue to grow and continue to develop. So, what do you think, Ed?

Ed Ballina
It’s AI, and I’m not going to call it AI, just this whole information revolution that has happened over the last 30, 40 years. One thing it’s done, it’s democratized decision making, right? Because it’s putting, you know, one of the reasons you need at all these levels, right, is because certain data could only be accessed by certain people. And some people grew kingdoms by doing that. Right? And preventing others from accessing the data. Oh, I’m the only one that could be the steward. Now data is being democratized to the point where you don’t need all those levels. You don’t need all those, you know, bottle gaps, frankly, to some degree. But  I’m passionate about this topic because there are a number of people that I know that are really, really capable, have a lot of leadership ability, deep deep technical skills and want absolutely nothing to do with managing people. Okay. It’s not their cup of tea. They don’t want to deal with that, but they have so much to contribute. And the good news folks is our need for technical capability is only continuing to mushroom. Right. When you bring, yeah, right. You bring AI in.

Alvaro Cuba
It’s huge. The gap now, they are talking about five million positions gap, no, half a million now and it will grow to two million and a half. So it’s a huge gap on people, technical, trade. So all that, it will continue to be needed. And the more skilled you are, the better position you are going to be.

Ed Ballina
Half a million. Yeah, that article that I shared with you on, you know, Ford’s CEO and a couple of other industrialists saying, Hey folks, China is rushing ahead of us when it comes to this manufacturing capability. And we’re sitting around trying to find half a million jobs today. We start insourcing, right? That problem becomes even larger. But plenty, certain different people problems, but not the number. That’s for sure.  I have a little story to tell on this one. 

Alvaro Cuba
Yeah. They don’t have people problems. ⁓

Ed Ballina
When I was plant manager in Denver, we had two folks that were very, very capable, one as a mechanical mechanic, if you will, the other one is electrician and controls. And we created a role for them, right? Because they were at the top of the technician scale, but they were running projects. So we made master electrician, master mechanic that also retained them. The person that took the master electrician role in time came out of the organization.

Started working for engineering,  led projects, led production initiatives, and he retired last year and had a phenomenal run. And he started as an electrician in this facility.  So these stories are everywhere, folks, and we need more and more people to do that.

Alvaro Cuba
Yeah. I have one example. When we had the first, we started the TPM run in North America and we went to the first plant and we said, okay, this is going to be the model plant. And then a model plant starts with the model line. And we said, okay, who wants to come to the model line? And initially it was no, no.

We don’t need that. It doesn’t work. We know everything. And it was hard to convince a group of people to come and be part of the Model Line. Finally, we got the people and then they started and they got trained in personal leadership and technical and they start putting all these things. By six years, six months and in a year, it was obvious that the line was running much, much better than the other lines, better quality of work, better results, a lot of things. And then…zero in that line because they were ahead. The other lines start coming in complaining, hey, why I have to work so hard and so much? Well, they are in the model line. So you jump in into the model line. Well, at that time when the rest of the plant said, okay, we are ready, let’s do the rollout, those guys became the champions.

Those guys travel, those guys, I remember this lady, the safety, the one that became a safety champion. She was doing videos. She was consulted by everyone. Then she was so, she grew so much. She became well known to everyone. Everyone that came to visit the plant wanted to talk to her.

And then at some point she told us, this is not only helping me here in my house, I’m applying all this and now I’m the safety leader in my community.

So how much she grew just by going technical. So it’s great opportunities. And probably the last thing I’ll say is for every one of us, never stop learning, never stop  being curious about the new things and going after. And now with all the technology coming and all the opportunities.

Go take advantage of it folks.

Ed Ballina
Embrace the opportunity. And just for clarity, the person I was talking about, it wasn’t that he was a bad people, he was a phenomenal person, and he eventually started leading work and teams. And that’s the other thing. Let’s say you go the technical route, because that’s really what you want to do and grow in that. I’ve seen some of these folks as they get exposed to different opportunities and maybe they get to lead a project, all of a sudden, and embrace the opportunity. They start engaging more, they start leading teams and leading teams to supervising is a short step. So people expand, right? And before you know it, they’re running a major project where they’ve got 10 people that are reporting to them, maybe not in the org chart, but functionally. So fun stuff.

Alvaro Cuba
Well, it was a great discussion, amigo. A couple, a couple, as always, and a pleasure. Couple, a couple. You want to start the wrap up?

Ed Ballina
As always. Yeah, yeah. So we’ll try and just give you three key points each of us.  And here go mine. OK, first of all, if you just got promoted, it is stressful. It can be very frightening. But look at it this way. You’ve already gotten a seal of approval from your organization. They think you’re doing something right. Nobody expects you to turn the ship around in two months. Okay.

Well, maybe 12 weeks. No, people are going to give you time, right? People recognize you are learning too. And your personal contribution will just continue to skyrocket as you get more and more your job under your belt.  And something somebody told me a long time ago that resonated with me and still does today, if you want to get promoted, start acting like you have the job already.

Okay, if you’re a senior director and you want to be promoted to be a vice president, start acting like you are a vice president. Okay. Demonstrate the capability. If you want to go to the next technician rank, start acting at that level. Right. Because that’s the surest way for you to be able to get the job. And you know, never ever forget about your people, right? Because they are the key to enterprise success, to your personal success, and it’s just the right thing to do, right? To have a good environment  and, you know, an empowered and turned on  team. This applies to hourly, to supervisors, to directors, to vice presidents. It’s just people.

Alvaro Cuba
Right? And I would say, lead guys. So the title doesn’t matter. Influence is what matters. You can lead from personal leadership. You can lead from, you don’t need the title.  The best example I have is peer to peer safety. It’s the best ever in safety. And how it works? Because I supervise you, you supervise me. The other supervise us and we do peer to peer. And that’s what the magic happens. So technical  expertise and personal leadership is so powerful and makes your life easier. And the things happen in the floor. So once you have all that, just make it happen.

Ed Ballina
And another lead to senior leadership, there isn’t a senior leader that I haven’t heard say, we need to get our supervisors on the floor. Why aren’t they on the floor? And then two weeks later comes another raft of bureaucratic paperwork we’re having them fill out. And we wonder why the supervisors are spending 80% of the time in the office on a computer. Folks, we don’t need that anymore. There are amazing technologies to automate data input, whether it’s voice.  I mean, there’s so much out there. Take the administrative burden off of your front line. You want them to be out on the floor? Give them a chance to win.

Alvaro Cuba
And if you do that, you will have the time to develop yourself and develop others. Great. So, after this fun episode,  we would like to just  wrap up and  it has been a pleasure to be with you friends as always. Please thank you for all what you participate, tell your pals, let’s make this growth. If you enjoyed it, ⁓ follow, subscribe. If you are listening in YouTube, just like us or give us a review if you are listening in iTunes and great having you.

Ed Ballina
Fantastic. So if you want to keep the conversation going, you can email us at mmu@augury.com We’ll also have  links in the show notes.  So we’ll definitely see you next time. And for God’s sakes, if you’re in Florida, watch out for those falling iguanas. All right, that’s no joke, dude. They weigh like 30 pounds. That thing hits you in the head like a linebacker. So stay safe.

Alvaro Cuba
We are very worried staying warm.

Ed Ballina
Stay warm. It’s cold out there. Take care, team.