Leadership styles and lean

Daniel Goleman describes six leadership styles: Coercive, Authoritative, Affiliative, Democratic, Pacesetting and Coaching. He asserts, "Leaders who have mastered four or more styles, especially the Authoritative, Democratic, Affiliative and Coaching styles, have the best climate and business performance.

COERCIVE LEADER always demands immediate compliance, they request their subordinates to do what they tell them. The subordinates are drove to achieve, initiative and self-control. The leadership style is suitable in a crisis, to kick start a turnaround, or with problem employees. For long term, it caused a negative morale and working atmosphere. Also, this kind of leadership would cause a high risk in business because the leader usually can not accept different idea or comment from the colleagues or underlings.

AUTHORITATIVE LEADER mobilizes people toward a vision, they always say "Come with me". They shown self-confidence, acted as change catalyst in revolution. When changes require a new vision, or when a clear direction is needed, authoritative leader is the best one to lead for changes. This kind of leadership is strongly positive in working atmosphere and their subordinates are willing to follow the leaders with confidence.

AFFILIATIVE LEADER creates harmony and builds emotional bonds. They are good in building relationships in working environment, also can setup a good communication channel between the subordinates. In the situation for healing rifts in a team or to motivate people during stressful circumstances, this kind of leader would be the best choice. This is also making a positive working climate.

DEMOCRATIC LEADER forges consensus through participation. We lalways hear the leader said "What do you think?". This kind of leader shown us collaboration, team leadership and also good in communication. In situation to build buy-in or consensus, or to get input from valuable employees, the leader becomes the motivator for the team. This is also making a positive working climate.

PACESETTING LEADER sets high standards for performance. Maxim from them is "Do as I do, or I am your model." They are conscientiousness, drive to achieve and initiative. To get quick results from a highly motivated and competent team is need the kind of leader. However, they would cause a negative working atmosphere for the team because lack of suggestion system and not encourage of comment from subordinates.

COACHING LEADER develops people for the future. We always hear they say "Try this." to encourage the others to strengthen. The leader is good in developing others, empathy and self-awareness. To help an employee improve performance or develop long-term strengths is suitable for this kind of leader. Positive working environment came from this kind of leadership.

The different characteristics of leadership are just like the different numbers of golf club. It is hard to say which kind of leadership is the best or worst. When we implement the lean transformation, we should select the suitable kind of leadership to lead the Kaizen according to the change of company culture. A trope in golf, during we just start to implement lean, we need the immediately culture change in a big jump. We need to use the coercive leadership to lead just like we use the club in number "0" for issueing ball to more than 200 yards. During the culture is improved, we need to motivate the member to improve by themselves. We can use coaching leadership to lead by encourage for trial, just like we use club of number "P" (putter) to put the ball close to the hole around 50 yards.

The important factor is how to select the suitable leadership style for different period and change selectively. In simply say, the different leadership styles like our set of golf club. Select the club in right time. How many clubs do you have right now? Or, actually you don't know what is the number of club you are using?

Hong Kong Flower Show 2009

I went to Hong Kong Flower Show 2009 today and took some photos, share with you!

Have a good day.

Rainbow again! 又见彩虹!

很久以前，一个雨的下午，看到过一次彩虹。

今天中午，又再次看到彩虹。我以最快的速度跑回家中，把我所有的照相机都拿出来，用不同的光暗调节，拍了很多照片。

这条彩虹跟以前见过的不一样，因为它不是那种横跨天空，从左到右像跨桥般的彩虹，而是环绕着太阳成圈形的。若你没有带上太阳眼镜，就比较难看到了。

五年前看到过彩虹，过了几年不错的日子。听说看到彩虹会走好运，看看这次又怎么样!!!

祝所有关心我的家人及好朋友都走好运!!!

若你没有看到彩虹，就多看我拍的照片吧，保证有一样的行运效果！

Aged employee? Senile employee?

First of all, I make a clear statement here,

Aged employee not equals to senile employee! We must say, aged employee equals to experienced employee!

Agree?

By my last business trip to HuaDong, I visited a wire manufacturing plant in Shanghai. I experienced a story and I want to share it with my reader. During the audit of the wire supplier, we walked thourgh her workshop area and the image of many old, dusted and outdated manufacturing machine get into my eyes. Afterward, we walked to the testing laboratory, much clean, well 5S working place seen there. And then, we went back to conference to have a conclusion of the audit. We stated what is the improvement actions should be in placed and give them some suggestions on quality and management system. The CEO of that supplier gave us a reply liked this, "although our machines are old (outdated), our employee are old (senile), but we appreciated your comments and it is truth that we need to improve the quality and management system.". At that moment, the aged employee looked so regret but I felt so disappointed by his reply.

On the way to Putong airport, it is around one hour of transportation, it is a chance for me to talk about my feedback about his reply in conference room because his "old" employee are not on car. It is the first time I discussed the lean concept to the people out of my current company. I summarized the conversation as below,

"In lean concept, the machine will depreciate all the time in every second but not for people. Employee is value-adding all the time! They absorb experience and solve problem during their working time. The experience never depreciates or lost, experience can combine with their knowledge to form a concrete power to improve their work. Yes, sometime, their knowledge would be updated or covered by new technology, but company must provide the chance to catch up the new technology by training or let them to join seminar for new knowledge. Keep them in a learning atmosphere is a very important factor of company success. Trunaround to machine, it is no way to value-add in its value, no matter how good for the preventive maintenance we provided, depreciation is still there. You must change your mind!"

The CEO nodded! I don't know what will he do but it seen to me that he understood what I said.
In lean world, there are two most important spirits. "Continuous improvement" and "Respect to people". Without these, The "single piece flow", "standardization ", "eliminate wastes", ....etc are all bullshit!!!

Simple? but hard to do!

Observation in Wenzhou

Introduction:

Terminal is a kind of quick connection device for cable harnessing assembly. This is one of the famous industries in Wenzhou, meanwhile, the low voltage, high voltage electricty controlling device, leather product and automotive spare parts are also the famous industries in that area. Because I worked for that industry of terminal manufacturing and have some experience for that. For a long time, Wenzhou's terminal is always the strongest competitor with Guangdong's terminal manufacturer. Unfortunately, I have no chance to visit Wenzhou to have a fully assessment. Last year, I joined the audit team and went to Wenzhou for observation.

Scope:

Visited two famous terminal, housing and connector manufacturer in Wenzhou. Their sizes are very similar and they have different vision I found. I am going to use these two samples to summarize their common advantage, common disadvantage and differences.

Common advantages:

1. Good business network: the senior management of companies owned their stronge business network in both north and south part of China. The bosses of both companies were started in a salesman to build up their business, for many years experience and effort, they are not only know the business partners in whole China, also, they get so many technicial support from GuangDong and Taiwan partners.
2. Quick and wide sensation: because of their well established business network, they can recieve the news and marketing development signal faster than other district. Also, due to they have more updated news on hand by thier network, their mindset are much wider than the others. Furthermore, they are willing to learn the way of operation. This is one of the important factors of their success.
3. Good relationship and teamwork: This item is not talking about the relationship and team work within the company. Furthermore, they have much better relationship with Goveronment out of the district in Wenzhou. In simply say, the classmate of the bosses are all working in government, even to be the town mayor, offcause, they can get the benefit in local policy by this relationship. On the other hand, their family supporting is also significant.
4. Market reputation: They almost seperated the industries by different town districts. For this town, the famous product is leather product, for another town, automotive spare parts is their main product for most of her companies. During the visiting, I found so many foreign customer to visit that area to look for their supply. It is too easy to get a suitable supply when they walk around the town.
5. Resource sharing: Because of the market established successfully, the other supporting partners setup in their related area for business. For example, there are so many machining vendors for tools located in the town closed to the terminal manufacturer, offcause, they know the companies are needed tooling and machining sub-contract. Due to the case, the human resource also reinforce the industry in Wenzhou because many techinical people knew that they can get a job easily in Wenzhou.
6. Geographic location: I believed that we no need a detailly explanation. Please look at the map, Wenzhou locates in the middle between Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Ineluctable situation, disadvantages accompanies with advantages all the time. I found some potential problems for the terminal manufacturing industry in Wenzhou as below,

Common disadvantages:

1. Government policy: Due to high income of the companies in that area, the local tax rate and the land price increased accordingly. Intangibly, the local policy will block the way of the local business for further development. At this moment, some industries are started to move the main manufacturing base to Hangzhou and Suzhou.
2. Environment protection: Focus on terminal manufacturing, the plating process is a main factor of success. Due to the policy of environment protection, the plating sub-contractor as forced to consolidate into one area. The plating technique is much lower than Guangdong area, and deeply affected their quality of product (dimensional quality). For the global harness manufacturer are using the fully automatic crimping machine for process and Wenzhou's terminal can not be used in that way obviously. It makes the industry far away to deal with global customer, I am sorry that I can not see they have any solution of that.
3. Not attend to their proper works: due to the quick and updated news, good business network and huge capital we made from many years, the bosses from Wenzhou started to shift to other high return business such as land and real estate trading, even cotton trading. As we know, it is the easiler and fastest way to get fortune, offcause, it needs some lucky. They no more concentrated their core business (manufacturing business). Without attention of technical and management improvement but just step on their feet, I have no surprise that the industry in Wenzhou would be catch up by other district.
4. Fortune can not be extended to third generation: This is a Chinese maxim and always proved its accuracy by real cases. If our next generation saw us just working in speculation but earned easily and quickly, they will do the same way in their lifetime. They don't know the previous generation how to save the capital at the beginning and how they were working to build up the business. In Wenzhou right now, all the bosses are going to or went to play the land trading, what happen to their next? How many land left for them to trade at that moment? I hope they should consider my concern here!

The differences between that two suppliers:

1. The bigger supplier shown me that they are going to expand the company in capacity. No evidence shown me that they are going to improve her management system as well as quality system. They told me that they order a lot of production machines, but I can not find the machines has any upgrade. Turnaround to lean, I can not see any concept they knew of lean. 5S, standardization, continuous flow are totally absented there, Self-complacent!
2. The smaller supplier shown me that they understood the disadvantage of the industry, also shown me that they are finding the solution. For the common disadvantage item 2, they planned to setup the plating process internally to control the quality. It is good signal! At least they have a little bit ideas of continuous improvement. On the other hand, the management shown me the motivation of improving refer to their new plant planning. Some years later, I believed the smaller supplier will catch up the bigger one.

P.S.:

First of all, the above two post are just my personal observation and may be not showing the true at all. This is only my visiting summary for reference. Eventaully, this business trip is so valuable for me to analysis the terminal manufacturing industry and I gained much for my experience!