MANAGEMENT TRAINING

MANAGEMENT SKILLS MAXIMISE TWI IMPACT

Training within Industry was designed during World War II to make a big impact quickly. There was no time to build long-term for the future. Factories were repurposed for wartime needs, and people who had never worked in industry had to learn to build products that had never before existed at an unprecedented rate. Whilst the target of Training within Industry skills training were the front-line supervisors overseeing production, management had an active role to play in making TWI a success.

This is no different today. Managers are required to challenge, support and coach supervisors for TWI to fulfil its potential. Often this means, leaders need to acquire new management skills and habits themselves.

MANAGEMENT SKILLS TO PROVIDE DIRECTION

People need a clear direction to ensure their efforts make the maximum impact. Knowing how to align effort and energise people is one of the critical management skills.

MANAGEMENT SKILLS - ALIGN EFFORT

A common pitfall when starting out with a new method, such as Training within Industry, is to let people go off on their own to find something to work on. Instead, managers need to understand how TWI skills work, figure out how they will help achieve the organisation’s strategy and communicate this clearly to their supervisors and teams.

This is not a one-off task, but a something managers must do consistently. Developing the strategy for TWI deployment, monitoring progress and impact and ensuring supervisors stay the course - always working on the true priorities - are key management skills that enable organisations to extract maximum the value from TWI.

MANAGEMENT SKILLS - ENERGISE LEADERS & TEAMS

Training within Industry grows problem solving skills that enable supervisors to remove daily problems for their team more effectively whilst building strong bonds of trust and collaboration. This can have a tremendously motivating impact for the front-line.
Managers can support this effect by showing a personal commitment to TWI improvement. Regular (daily or weekly) tier meetings provide an excellent opportunity to link discussions about TWI to existing operations routines. Short, regular coaching meetings could be established with each supervisor to discuss progress and remove obstacles.

Time should also be set aside to allow managers to develop new TWI and management skills and get personally involved with the TWI effort, leading by example. For example managers can have supervisors train them on a newly developed TWI Job Instruction breakdown to help improving it, or by taking out and applying the TWI Job Relations card every time a people problem is discussed in a team or one-to-one meeting with their supervisors. Actions speak louder than words, and seeing their managers roll up their sleeves, learning new TWI and management skills and taking an active part in the work of their teams can be tremendously energising for everyone.

Some of these tasks and routines will be new to managers. As part of the Training within Industry rollout, organisations should carefully consider how to equip their managers with new Training within Industry and management skills.

MANAGEMENT SKILLS TO BUILD STRUCTURE & PROCESS

MANAGEMENT SKILLS - CREATE IMPROVEMENT CAPACITY

In our experience, supervisors and team leaders receiving TWI training are excited about the new leadership skills and can really see the value in applying them. But there is one common concern: ‘When am I going to do this?’.

Supervisors’ schedules in most organisations are extremely busy, not to say overloaded, with daily operations tasks, meetings, e-mail and reports. Right now, they only have enough capacity to keep daily production rolling. Very little time is dedicated to developing their people or improving their processes.

It’s too easy to say that we value continuous improvement. Managers must put their money where their mouth is. Little is gained by organising a Training within Industry training without planning how and when to use the new skills.

Carving out capacity to be used for TWI, and ring-fencing it, is one of the critical management responsibilities. It’s a make or break for sustained TWI impact. This often means, current supervisor tasks need to be eliminated, rearranged or simplified first, to free up time. It’s also critical to schedule that time for TWI, to remove obstacles to it being used and to make sure it is used well.

Needless to say, in organisations new to this kind of working, new management skills should be trained and developed in parallel to growing supervisor capability.

MANAGEMENT SKILLS - OPTIMISE IMPROVEMENT CAPACITY UTILISATION

Once capacity for applying Training within Industry skills is set aside, it must be used and used well. Managers are responsible for supporting their team leaders and supervisors by removing obstacles to making it happen - such as staff or managers scheduling meetings at the same time. Managers must also ensure all involved are ready and prepared to make the best use of improvement time, so they can hit the ground running when the improvement slot arrives and don’t need to scramble to collect people, tools and whatever else is needed to use TWI Job Methods or TWI Job Instruction effectively. Regular coaching is another critical aspect here: the better supervisors and their teams apply the TWI methods the greater the impact. Often this task is delegated to staff experts from the process engineering, operations excellence or learning and development departments. But, as mentioned before, there is great value in the manager becoming a coach of TWI. By this s/he gets first-hand feedback about the obstacles faced by their people, strengthens relations and ensures that TWI methods are applied correctly and for maximum effect.

Creating improvement capacity and making sure effectively utilised is not something every manager is used to. In organisations new to this way of working, new management skills complement TWI skills training to boost performance.

MANAGEMENT SKILLS TO DEVELOP CAPABILITY

Supervisor skills training is frequently overlooks. Whilst newly appointed supervisors get sent to the odd one-day leadership course when they take up their new duties, many supervisors will tell you that knowing about managing did not prepare them well for doing it.

What’s more, after the initial bust of induction trainings there is very little in the way of continuous professional development. That’s partially because supervisors are so essential to keeping production running that nobody dares to release them for skills training, including the supervisors themselves. Largely, though, it is because there is no plan and no routine for making it happen.

MANAGEMENT SKILLS - PROVIDE SKILLS TRAINING

Good managers understand that not developing their supervisors is costly. They are the most important members of management. Try removing them for a week and see what happens. Remove the MD for a week and production keeps running.
What supervisors do, and how they do it, determines production and service quality. Giving them the leadership skills and improvement capabilities to excel is therefore one of the best investments an organisation can make. It also is a key management responsibility.

Training within Industry provides an strong foundation for more advanced training in Lean and Six Sigma to flourish. And these skills transitions should be planned. Career paths and regular leadership skills reviews, perhaps as part of senior leadership meetings, are a great way of ensuring supervisor and management skills grow, so the organisation grows.

Management skills - PROVIDE PERFORMANCE COACHING

Participants leave Training within Industry training energised and well prepared to take their first steps with TWI Job Instruction, TWI Job Methods, TWI Job Relations or TWI Job Safety. But all skills need time to internalise and grow. Though repeated application of the same pattern TWI practitioners get better and faster at making and impact and the skills become habits, second nature.

Whilst the skills are embedded, practitioners should be accompanied by an experienced coach to reinforce the method and help them overcome technical challenges. Managers too, should become coaches for their supervisors. Not just to ensure the method is correctly applied, and the improvement capacity well utilised, but to keep TWI activities aligned with strategic priorities. By working on the right things in the right way, managers can ensure TWI performance impact is maximised.
TRainjng within Industry and performance coaching are therefore amongst the essential management skills organisations should consider when crafting the CPD programs of their senior and middle managers.

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