The following list was developed by the operations team at MakeSpace upon moving over to Iron Mountain in a joint-venture. Our team was diverse and competitive, yet respectful. As we transitioned into a new company, we felt the need to document the values that we lived by to hold ourselves accountable moving forward. Since that transition to Iron Mountain, all of us have since left and gone to new ventures, but the following principles stand true.
Only “A players” are allowed "on the bus." What defines an A player? It isn’t experience or capabilities. An “A Player” can be found at any level of the organization. They are defined by three traits. First, they must have integrity. They must do the “right thing, every time.” Second, they make decisions as if they were the owner of the company. Third, they have a learning mentality. They are always looking to grow and have an open mind to new ideas.
Why is this so important? “A players” hire other A players. But B players hire C players, C players hire D players and so on (Steve Jobs’ “Bozo Explosion Theory”). “A players” welcome superstars onto the team. B players feel threatened.
But even with a bus full of A players, no jerks are allowed. Ever.
In Operations we have the luxury of black and white outcomes. We were on-time or we weren’t. We either scanned the item or we didn’t. A customer gave us 5 out of 5 stars or they didn’t. We have the data, now let’s dig in and understand what happened so it doesn’t happen again.
You either know the answer or you don’t. If you don’t know the answer, provide a timeline as to when you’ll know. Guessing, assuming or theorizing is a waste of time.
In other words, great is the enemy of good. This isn’t an excuse for cutting corners, but we need to make decisions and take action right now, not tomorrow.
99.9% of people wake up each day and want to do a good job. If there is a miss, it is almost never the employee’s “fault.” As leaders, it is our job to remove barriers and support our employees for them to succeed. If you start the conversation with the basic understanding that the employee wants to do a good job, you approach the conversation in a much different way.
If a leader says something like, “Johnny was on that shift, and well, you know Johnny… he can’t be counted on. I gave him a verbal warning. I hope he doesn’t do it again or he’s fired.” This answer is a waste of time. If you are confident that Johnny has been provided the training, tools and guidance to succeed, the next step is to ask Johnny what happened and conduct a Five Why. It is our job as leaders to remove the barrier so Johnny can do his job to the best of his ability. Only when we are 100% confident in the process, training and tools can we take a punitive approach.
The approach to any situation must be via the lense of “what happened?” and not “who did it?” If employees are fearful that they will be “blamed” if something goes wrong, they will put great effort into concealing the mistake. When mistakes are “covered up” management doesn’t have visibility to them, so they can’t do their job, which is to continuously improve the operation and resolve problems. Thus, when they don’t know about problems, more errors occur and the cycle starts again.
When I visit an operation, one of the best signals of an “accountability” culture is when associates feel comfortable providing frank feedback. It demonstrates that local management encourages associates to bring ideas to resolve issues in the operation, which leads me to Kaizen.
As a hammer is to a carpenter is the “Five Why’s” approach is to an operator. The approach is critical to establishing a culture that is about finding out the true root cause to an issue. The following example demonstrates a classic Five Why approach and root cause analysis. In 1993, a professor at the University of Maryland was tasked to understand why the structure of the Lincoln Memorial was rapidly deteriorating. The analysis was as follows: