EPISODE #2.4:

Finding Common Ground: What We Can Learn from What Has Worked with Mark Lorch

Or listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

Yes, our work environments have shifted lately! And many leaders may be feeling a little disoriented. 

If you are looking for a way to enhance your work for greater success, this episode is for you. 

The good news is this: You don’t have to start over completely. You can build on what has worked in the past when our companies faced monumental challenges. 

Mark Lorch, former union steward and leader extraordinaire, shares his stories of how an oil refinery with 11 labor unions found the secrets to transformation. They moved from an adversarial culture to a workplace characterized by respect and the quest for common ground. Hear him tell how they did it.  

The universal truths in his stories can help us now as we too seek common ground.

Listen and learn as you look for ways to transform your workplace as you address the crises and the opportunities we face. 

Mark says he started out as an angry young man with a chip on his shoulder. He had an “aha” experience that motivated him to change. 

Some of the topics we explore include: 

• What we can learn now from the employee involvement movement from the late ’80s and early ’90s
• How a push for an empowered workforce resulted in both personal and company success 
• The central role of empowerment in the transformed culture
• How workforce development enabled the company to transform 
• The role of an “open systems” approach to finding common ground 

And some additional links:
Leading from where you are
The single most important thing to know to create an engaging culture

EPISODE #2.4 TRANSCRIPT

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Welcome to the Conscious Culture Cafe, the podcast that explores how you can lean into your purpose, live your values, and enhance your social impact through your work. I’m your host Kathy Miller Perkins. The current pandemic and economic crisis are threatening all of us, however there are opportunities for us within this crisis.

We have the chance to change ourselves and our organizations. We can transform and come out of this difficult time stronger and more resilient, and we can learn from some of the transformational movements of the past. My guest today is Mark Lorch.  Mark started out as an operator in a major oil refinery facility in the Midwest. He became a union steward and was instrumental in assisting his company in transforming the way they did business.

He helped lead a union management partnership to create an empowered workforce in a transformed organization. He is here to share his story about how he grew into his role as a change maker. He talks about the power of a workplace where an adversarial culture was transformed to an empowered, resilient workplace. We have much to learn from Mark as we think about what we can do now to transform and strengthen our organizations for an uncertain future, one that will require the best each of us has to offer.

Welcome Mark. It’s so nice to have you with us today. Mark and I go way back, but instead of my telling you about his career, I’m going to ask him to do that. So Mark, thanks for coming and tell us a little bit about your long and fruitful career.

Mark:

Good afternoon. Great to hear from you. So, back in the early eighties I hired into one of the oil companies here in the Midwest, in a refinery as a refinery operator. Hired in on a brand new unit that had never been run and was part of the original startup crew on that unit, which was really a great learning experience. They had the new hires paired up with some of the old hands. So, I really benefited from learning from the old hands and also each shift had a chemical engineer assigned to it, so benefited greatly from that as well.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Sounds like a good start.

Mark:

It was. I could not have had a better way to start in the refining business and worked with a really great crew.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Well, tell me what it was like to be a union steward in those days. If you are a good arguer, tell me about that. How did that work out for you? How did you argue? What was your style?

Mark:

Well, originally when I started out, first off, I studied the contract and made sure I knew the contract. I also really was tuned in to safe work practices and the general orders around safe work practices and so forth in a refinery. It’s just something I felt like I should know well if I was going to be representing folks. So, naturally there would be disagreements about how to do things, there would be disagreements about schedules, which most factory workers know that schedules are like really important to individuals. So, a lot of those arguments or grievances would come up about schedules or work practices. And early on, being the good arguer I was, was sometimes described as the angry young man in my approach.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

What does that mean? 

Mark:

Well, I guess I was a little on the belligerent side and not real politically correct oftentimes, probably use some strong language. One of my compadres compared me to William Shatner when he was doing the Energizer commercials and he always had a chip on his shoulder.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Oh really.

Mark:

Yeah, probably not the best approach, but I was a young guy.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah. Well, did you think it was an effective approach at that point?

Mark:

It had its moments. It really did. I mean, there are times when raising your voice or using strong language really gets people’s attention, and a lot of times they have to listen. And truthfully, sometimes they really don’t want to be in that environment where you are very adversarial.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah. So, it worked for you and against you, both ways.

Mark:

I would say that’s very accurate. There were times when it was very effective and there were also times where it created resistance to my ideas or the point I was trying to get across.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Were you aware of that at the time?

Mark:

I could sense that from time to time. And I think you’ll remember the story where I was arguing a grievance. And grievances go through steps and one of those steps you actually get out to meet with human resources and the department manager in the human resources’ office to discuss your grievance. And this is really the last step before it goes to arbitration. You don’t really like to get to that step. It’s called the third step where we were at.

But anyway, I had a really strong case for winning this particular grievance. Walked out of the meeting pretty angry, had some very strong words back and forth between myself and the HR manager, went back to the unit not knowing what the outcome would be. They have several days to get back to you with an answer.

A few days later I get a message through my foreman that human resources wanted to speak to me out-front. I went out and met with the human resource manager. And he says, “You know Mark, you really had a good case here and my inclination,” this was him speaking, “Since we were really nose-to-nose. That was a really ugly meeting. You said a lot of ugly things to me and I may have said a few ugly things to you.”

Kathy Miller Perkins:

And had he been ugly?

Mark:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. In a much more politically correct way, yes.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Okay.

Mark:

He said, “I was writing up the response to this and my response was to say, ‘Hey, go fish. You guys take it to arbitration. I dare you.'” And he spelled out what his case for doing that was, which was weak and he knew that. He also knows that it costs money for the union to go to that next step, and there’s decisions that had to be made before you do that, and it’s still a gamble.

Anyway, his reaction was, “Look, instead of doing this, instead of throwing this up the next step,” he said, “I will let you have this win if you will agree to work on our relationship, me and you, and try to figure out a way to work in a more constructive way.”

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Wow.

Mark:

Yup.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s pretty impressive.

Mark:

It was powerful. It was powerful for me. Nobody had ever shown that much respect to me in an environment like that before. And yeah, I went back to the unit and thought about it for a while, called him up the next day and said, “Larry, I’ll take you up on that. How are we going to do this?”

Anyway, from that point on, he and I worked really hard on our relationship, and looking at the facts of the cases, and remarkably we found ways to solve our problems without the grievance process quite often.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Really?

Mark:

Yup.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Well, when you said you worked on your relationship, how did you do that? What did you do that made that go forward in a different way or was it just that first conversation that just changed everything?

Mark:

Well, one thing he offered was that he and I meet on a monthly basis to discuss issues and to try to get ahead of issues before they became grievances. I went back to the business agent before I agreed to that. I thought it sounded like a good idea. And the business agent, he’s like, “Mark, this is an opportunity.” And he said, “I suggest you do that. And I think going forward this is going to help us all.”

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Now for those people who might not be familiar with union hierarchy, what’s the business agent?

Mark:

So the business agent is the, really he is the guy in charge for that local. He’s the top of the food chain at that local. And at that time I was just a committeeman.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Right, okay.

Mark:

So, I was just a steward at that time. So, as it turned out, Kathy, one of the things that HR manager and I agreed to work on after the next contract came around was working on shift schedules and then training for operators, which sometime later that’s where you and I…

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Exactly. That’s when I came into the picture.

Mark:

That’s right.

It was a shift schedule thing that came first, which was a huge change for us. But it is the first time I got involved in a study group to work hand in hand with management to come up with a new shift proposal. 

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Who chose you? Is that the human resource person that you were working with that chose you for that committee or how did that work?

Mark:

No, the business agent. Basically the operations management offered up three people and the business agent offered up three people that represented the operators.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

I see. Well, that is when I entered the picture because I worked with that group and I saw the group working very well. So, maybe behind the scenes there were things going on that I wasn’t aware of, but in the time that I’ve spent with your group, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you who was union and who wasn’t because of the way you guys work together. How did that happen?

Mark:

Well, now that that effort you and I were involved in was operator training.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Oh, okay. All right.

Mark:

Previous to that was the shift schedule thing.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Okay. I got it.

Mark:

Yeah. The other two guys on that committee for the shift schedule were also stewards from out in the plant. So we had to work with two supervisors and a manager on the shift schedules and there was a lot of constructive relationship building during that effort. I know the union was happy with it when it all ended up and the company was happy with it. And it really set the stage for the things you and I were involved with together, which was operator training.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Okay. Now up to that point, before that time, what were the union management relationships like in the plant? Was it adversarial? Was it fairly collegial? What was it like?

Mark:

It was a quiet adversarial relationship. There were not tremendous amounts of grievances, but there were some that were pretty passionate at times. So, you didn’t see anything like work stoppages or anything like that. I mean, grievance going to arbitration would be the most significant. But there was not a lot of cooperation going on between the two parties up to that point.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

So this committee, was that the beginning of a change in the relationships then? It sounds like it might have been.

Mark:

It was for the operators. I’m sure there were things going on with some of the other unions as well. Shifts schedules is something that’s really dear to people’s hearts when you work shift work.

So, it had a lot of profile across the company and as far as I know, it was a first time where you really had that work group of both parties working together to one end.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Oh good.

Mark:

A lot of challenges.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Interesting.

Mark:

It was very challenging.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

How so?

Mark:

Well, you can get divided on this topic very easily between eight hour schedule and a 12 hour schedule, for instance. And we were looking at both. We were looking at a couple of different eight hour schedules and a couple of different 12 hour schedules. People lined up pretty quickly behind one or the other.

And in plant management, the upper management put a standard where we had to be able to pass it by a two thirds of majority, which is pretty difficult.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Wow, that’s a high bar.

Mark:

That’s a high bar in any group to get a two thirds majority.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah, absolutely.

Mark:

So anyway, we made it but we made it by getting out and talking to people. We did several different surveys. We surveyed between eight and 12 first and then, okay, if we’re going to go 12, which 12 do you want? There were also some lines drawn there by a certain party. So, it was tenuous, but I grew a lot because I had to get out and interface with a lot of people.

We had to put on a lot of joint meetings where somebody from the union had to get up and speak. And I’d never spoken before groups before I got involved in this stuff.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Oh, really.

Mark:

Yeah. Yeah.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

I bet that was interesting.

Mark:

Yeah.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Challenging.

Mark:

I sweated a lot.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

I bet. Well, so it turned out that turned out successful, I take it.

Mark:

It did.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

And at some point in the process, and I don’t know what that point was, Mark, you decided to do some more and bigger joint management union partnerships, didn’t you? Wasn’t there a more formal agreement around that at some point?

Mark:

It came on a little later, but we had an agreement at the next contract to try to tackle operator training in the same way a joint committee combining operators and management. There were some common people in those two groups between the shift schedule group and the management, which helped because some of us already had relationships built, didn’t have to start from scratch.

But part of that activity was hiring a consultant to help us through the process once we realized how big a challenge we had in front of us.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

And that was me.

Mark:

That was you. That was you.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

It was an interesting experience for me as well because, like I said a few minutes ago, the group worked well together. And I was interested, I still am interested in how you built those relationships. You said a minute ago it was about relationship and I would assume it was about trust. How did that come about? What was different from the time that you were the angry young man to the time that you were working jointly in these committees?

Mark:

Well, one of the things in the early stages of that process, we were talking about going out and benchmarking other companies on schedules to see what other people liked and didn’t like about the various different schedules. I was a little hesitant to get that deep in research, so to speak. I had never traveled before, that’s one thing.

I had a discussion with the business agent about my concerns and misgivings about going down that path. And one of the things he told me, he says, “Mark,” he says, “Look, one of the things that could really work to our advantage here is you learning more about how to operate in this environment of working side by side with these managers and supervisors.”

And it’s a whole different environment than that on the unit. You’re trying to get a unit started up, shutdown or equipment prepared or shut down this whole different environment. But he says, “One of the things you ought to think about is if you know what they know, it’s to your advantage and it’s to all the members’ advantages.”

I took that to heart. It made sense to me. So, rather than starting out my relationship with new members of the next team, I was motivated to develop a constructive relationship right out of the gate.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s great. Well, it sounds like your business manager was a wise individual.

Mark:

He was. He was.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Gave you good advice it sounds like.

Mark:

Yes. Yep.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Well, you talked to me and we’ve had a lot of conversations, the two of us over the years about these things. And one of the things that you have emphasized in our conversations is the importance of interpersonal skills and having influence. I mean, I always describe you Mark is one of the best leaders I’ve ever known and I truly believe that in all the years that I’ve been in business. Oh, I do.

Mark:

You’re too kind.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Well, watching how you were able to influence people was truly amazing for me. And you had exceptional and do still have exceptional interpersonal skills. How did you develop those?

Mark:

Well, when we got started on the training team, the team that was put together to work with you and to pursue this training system that we developed during refinery, there was a point where they offered me the lead role in implementing that process lead that we started.

And one of the requirements was for me to get involved in their personal skills program or I’m not going to call it a program, it is a process that the company had. And I’m talking company from a more global terms, not just our specific location. They had a program called increasing human effectiveness and presentation skills or meeting facilitation. Actually it was meeting facilitation.

And so, one of the things they told me, and this was the HR manager and the business agent sat me down and said, “We’re going to offer you this opportunity, but one of the conditions of that is to get on board with the personal development programs that the company offers.”

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Were you okay with that?

Mark:

Well, I had an opportunity to help develop a training program that I had been identifying as a huge gap for an operator from the day I hired in. I had an opportunity to lead that effort or not. I wasn’t going to turn down that opportunity because of these training activities that they were asking me to do.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Were you skeptical about it or did you welcome it? How did you feel about it?

Mark:

I was not skeptical. I would say I was apprehensive because once again I was stepping out of my comfort zone. And typically the people that went through those programs were all staff. So, basically I was thrown into an environment where many times I was the only hourly employee and certainly the only union leader. So, that was… One thing I overlooked here is after the operator scheduling process, once we got through that and got that new shift schedule approved, they asked me to be the chairman for the operating engineers.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Oh, really.

Mark:

So, that’s the chief steward.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

I’m not sure I knew that. That’s great.

Mark:

Yeah. Yeah, that’s the chief steward. So, when you and I met, I was already in that role.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Okay. All right. I see.

Mark:

So, I reported to, on the union side, to the business agent directly at that point, who would say you didn’t need to improve your personal skills if you were operating at those levels. And it was a great benefit to me. I would say that I could never have achieved a lot of the things I achieved without that.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Really. Tell me about the program. What was it like? How did they help you learn?  

Mark:

Well, you started out with a five day training event locked in away from the refinery. And so, they sent you off to a retreat environment. This thing was offered to people all across the company, so it wasn’t just people from our particular location, it was a mix of people from all across the company. And so, this particular event was called open systems workshop. And open systems, you know about open systems, it really is all about learning to be more open to new ideas, open to communicating more effectively with others, learning to be an active listener, things like empathic listening.

Anyway, five day workshop, ton of stuff built into it to get you to a different level in terms of communication, in terms of working together as a team, being able to appreciate your teammates’ skills, being able to recognize your own weaknesses, and try to draw the strengths out of your team to offset the weaknesses. Really a great activity. And yeah, I’m not sure if they’re still using that program today or not, but I can say that that five days was a huge growth opportunity for me and I took full advantage of it.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

After that, did they have other hourly people go through the program or were you the only one who ever went through that program, the only hourly person?

Mark:

For our particular location, it was on the front end of including hourly people. There had been a few hourly people that were just getting started doing that. It’s the same time the company had started their effort to work more towards an empowered work group, an empowered work environment across the whole company. So, it fit really well with that.

That open systems workshop was developed at our particular location, but it was always open across the whole company. And probably the offshore drilling people had gotten into that a year or two before they started getting the hourly people in the refineries involved in it.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

So, you said this was happening at the same time that they were coming up with a push towards an empowered workforce. What does that mean and what led to that, do you think? Why did they decide to do that and what was that push?

Mark:

I mean, at that time employee involvement was a thing and you can probably date that back to the mid to late eighties. So, the company had adopted that as one of their key beliefs, belief in people, empowering everyone, and that everyone has the ability to lead in some fashion or form.

So, there’s a front end of that effort. And frankly, I probably could never have ended up where I was with the company if it hadn’t been for that… I probably couldn’t have survived if I’d still back at the ammunition plant.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Well, so it was a big culture change, it sounds like, that employee involvement, as I recall in those days, involved complete transformation in a culture. It was stimulating, it was exciting, but it was tough as I recall.

Mark:

Yeah. We had a lot of discussions about some of the tenets of those efforts back then. For instance, we weren’t going to have supervisors anymore we were going to have coaches, as an example. Operators like, look, hey, I just come in, I want to do my job and go home. I don’t want to be a leader. I don’t want to, and you heard me coin this phrase you had the blue collar mentality or what’s wrong with me just coming to work and doing my job and going home?

So, it was difficult at times. And there was a huge spectrum of belief that it would work and whether or not it was good for the union workers to get involved. Was this an effort to undercut the union, undermine the union?

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah. I wondered about that. I wondered if anybody gave you a hard time for your apparent buy in to this culture and to this process. Did your union buddies accept that, were they pleased, were they unhappy with you? Did they ever see you as a sellout, do you think?

Mark:

Oh, I had been accused of that, yes, of being a sellout. My response was always, “I’m just trying to do what’s best for the operators. And like it or not, this is the path the company has chosen. If we dig our heels in and say we’re not doing it, we’re not going to be able to reap the benefits that are out there.” There’s good and bad with all programs. Most programs there’s good and bad.

And so, my response always you have to weigh the good with the bad and figure out a path to take. And we’re going down this path and if we get in on the front end of it, we can help influence the structure and influence to what degree we’re going to accept responsibility or how we’re going to accept it.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

And were you able to persuade people to your way of thinking about that?

Mark:

I must have done okay because I kept getting reelected.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s a good sign. That’s a good measure. I like that metric.

Mark:

Yeah. Even when I took over the leadership of the training process, the guys back in my department continued to elect me as the department chairman.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s really affirming.

Mark:

Yeah. So, I must’ve been doing okay. The other thing that goes hand in hand with this, during the shift schedule, that effort, I developed relationships all across the refinery with other departments and ended up reaching out, as part of the effort to implement the new shift schedule, to a lot of people that normally I would never had any interface with.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

I see.

Mark:

And so, I had rapport and relationships in every department out there. And the other thing as the chairman of the operators, I also changed the way we chose our leadership in the… What I In the old days the chief steward or chairman of the refinery committee, they took care of the whole plant and I basically started recruiting people from the different departments to tackle specific areas of problems or specific departments and just spread it out. I spread the responsibility out a little more, which also helped me build more relationships.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Absolutely, what a wonderful thing to do in terms of relationship building and influence for that matter.

Mark:

Yeah. And the other thing, people heard me talk a lot about looking down the road. And by that I mean, building more long-term strategies rather than just feeling good about short term wins or short term solutions, trying to build more long-term and lasting strategies as part of the union involvement. I felt really strongly about that. I think that buys you a whole lot of credibility with the workers when they hear you talking about making things better for the long haul.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yes, yes indeed. So, the company really got its money’s worth out of the time that they… the money and effort they put into your training, it sounds like.

Mark:

I think the company and the union both got a lot out of that effort. Yeah. And so, once I’d been through open systems, I’m like, “Guys, I know this stuff’s got a bad rap. We got a lot of people that are resistant to these personal skill stuff. But I really want my leadership, the other committees, to sign on and get through this stuff and learn more. And if you can’t sell it any other way, it’s you need to know what those company people know. So let’s get out there and sign up. When they make the offer, take them up on it.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

And did they?

Mark:

A lot of them did, yes.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Oh, that’s wonderful. That’s great.

Mark:

There were 10 or 11 unions at that location. Once we got into it, the other union started doing it as well. I mean, I’m sure that came about because of the business agents talking and promoting it. But I think the workforce benefited a lot from that kind of stuff.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

So, what do you think the impact, and I know we’ve talked about this before that there were some measures of impact of the culture change and so forth and the union management partnerships. And you told me about the productivity of the facility. Can you say some more about that for our listeners?

Mark:

Well, the things that I can cite for that are a little farther along in my career where I was working in more of a manufacturing environment. It was in a bottling plant, a package plant.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

For the same company? Was it for the same company?

Mark:

Yes, same company, different division. So, when we would go out and look at improving our production, first we found out we weren’t doing a really good job of measuring how we were doing. One of my mentors, by this time I was staff, I’d actually made the jump to staff by this time, but taught me a lot about measuring and metrics.

Once we decided we needed to improve a particular production line or whatever, we would get the operators involved in that. We also had Teamsters, they’re material movers, and we would get input from them before we started down a path. And I can’t ever remember a major change that we did not get input from the workers.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s amazing. That’s great. And that piece of the picture I would guess is incredibly important in terms of getting things done- in getting people’s input, getting people’s involvement rather than doing top-down kinds of things.

Mark:

Absolutely. Because once you get their buy in, it just creates a whole different work environment when you make change. And we did some really simple things that and even though I was staff, I still felt like I was part of the team as an hourly worker. An example, when we started making changes on production and getting the numbers up, we realized we didn’t have all the physical pieces of the environment that those people were working in that would make it easier for them to achieve our goals.

Example, we didn’t have work mats down. Just the rubber mats that go alongside everybody’s workstation or their path and it struck me, first off, I’d worked that job, my feet hurt by the end of the day.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah, right.

Mark:

And then I realized when we’re making these changes, those people are going to have to make more steps to get what we wanted to accomplish. We bought huge runners of rubber matting so that those folks were walking on rubber instead of concrete.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s great.

Mark:

That’s not a huge thing, but it made a difference. And the people really appreciated it. We bought some mechanized equipment that was not really about more speed or anything but less effort for the operators. 

You start adding all that stuff up and it pays you back.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah, absolutely.

Mark:

You still have to measure and you have to let everybody see what you’re measuring and what your numbers are, but a lot of times you’re just showing folks the numbers, your goal against what you’re actually doing. That in itself will motivate folks and they’ll work together to reach your goal.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Oh, that’s an interesting observation. So the metrics themselves become motivational.

Mark:

Oh, absolutely. 

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Oh, that’s interesting. What is it about that do you think that makes people more motivated?

Mark:

Well, I really believe people always want to improve. I don’t think anybody is ever satisfied just sitting still. People want to improve. And if you set a reasonable goal, you involve them in what the goal is, how you get to that goal. Set the metric, show them what you’re doing now versus where you want to be, they’re already bought in because you involved them. And you can’t replace that in terms of motivating people, I don’t think.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Right, I agree. And too few people appreciate that, I think, because it takes time to do that. It slows things down a little bit in the process, doesn’t it?

Mark:

Yes. It takes you longer to make the change, but if you’re making the right change, it pays off. And the right change is always going to be the one that your folks buy into.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Absolutely. Yeah, that really says it all in terms of how to make change and how to have influence, I think.

Mark:

Yes. If you go back to what we were talking about earlier, isn’t that what the company did when they asked me to get involved in building that shift schedule?

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Say more.

Mark:

Well, the company – They got our buy in.

They knew they wanted to change schedules, but they wanted buy in. And what did they do? They got operators involved and they actually made us equals in the process with the company people involved. Then we went out into the plant and got buy in from, well first we asked operators, what do you want? We took their input and put it all together and we tabulated and said, “Here’s our results. We asked you guys this question, here’s what you told us.” And so, I think you can just take that and build that into a lot of the different accomplishments, those two locations over my 30 plus years there.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Right. That’s great.

Mark:

It was the wisdom of the leadership that was the foundation for that.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

So, you mentioned a minute ago that you became staff at some point. Can you tell me a little bit about that, why that happened, how it happened, what that transition was like for you?

Mark:

Well, I’d like to say I got snickered into this, but… So, initially when I moved to the new division of the company, they were in a self-directed mode. There was a manager, there were no immediate supervisors, but there were hourly coordinators who were essentially doing what a first line supervisor would do, but they were hourly. The individual that was in one of those positions was going on vacation.

He had a long vacation lined up and he said, “Mark hey, would you mind covering for me while I’m gone? And I’ll break in, take us about a week and then you work my vacation and then you can start breaking my vacation every year.” “Okay, I’ll do that.” So, long story short, the guy went on vacation, come back, said, “I don’t want to do that anymore.”

So tag you’re it. I was the coordinator. And shortly after that, maybe a year or so, the company took over another company’s manufacturing division of the same kind. And they did not like that there were no supervisors. The new management did not like the fact that there were no staff people on the floor and in the off shifts.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

I see.

Mark:

And so, they offered me and the other coordinator an opportunity to go to staff. The first time they offered it to us, we told them no. Yeah, they came back a few months later and said, “Look, if you guys don’t want this, we’re going to post it out there across the whole company and we can’t guarantee that you’re going to get it. But if you want to take it now, it’s yours.”

So basically that’s what we did. So anyway, that’s how I ended up being staff. It was a pretty big change for me. But at the same time, I still felt like I was one of the guys down there on the line when I walked down on the lines and it didn’t feel like that big a difference for me initially.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

So people didn’t treat you differently? One of the things that I wondered about is whether people gave you a hard time over that move.

Mark:

Very few. Like buying the rubber mats and buying them some new equipment and so forth. I think that bought me a lot of credibility with the folks. I was try to be fair to everybody. I made the bold statement one time when we were coming up on contract, I said, “Look guys, I’m not going to apologize for the wages we make here. We just have to make sure we’re earning them, but you’re never going to hear me apologize for the wages that we make.” And somebody told me later, “You know Mark, when you said that you really spoke to us all.”

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Oh, that’s wonderful, because they knew that you had their back.

Mark:

Yes. And I feel like I always did.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah. Well, if you didn’t, they would have turned on you.

Mark:

Yeah.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

So, you were smart enough to know that.

Mark:

Yeah.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

I think. And plus, like you said, you felt like you were still one of them. Did it change your relationships at all with the hourly workers?

Mark:

There were a few, there was one here or there that it changed, especially when it came to where I had to step in and address some behaviors that were not real good. So, that happened from time to time. But overall, I just always felt like I had a really good rapport with the whole team.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s great. That’s terrific. Well, let’s see what kind of lessons that we can leave as takeaways for other people. Let’s start with those people who might be in that angry young man position. What advice would you give people who feel like that? Like that adversarial style is the best style to use? Any comments about that or advice or tips?

Mark:

Yeah, I would have to say that you cannot really have a good constructive relationship with folks when you’re in that adversarial role mode. You can accomplish things, but you can accomplish so much more when you’re operating in a constructive mode. And that means you’re listening to people, you’re not calling names, you’re not diminishing their efforts, however they are.

I mean, oftentimes you think, “Ah, the company is doing this to me.” And so, that causes you to get your hackles up. But if you turn around and say, “Okay, you need to accomplish this, but maybe there’s a better way to do it.” One of my themes was always trying to be constructive rather than destructive. And if you’re the angry young man, you’re going to be in a destructive mode a lot. If you’re that guy that’s listening and that is trying to find common ground, you’re going to be in a constructive mode.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s great. That common ground issue, that’s one of the things. And you and I both have worked for a long time and I personally have seen a loss in the ability of groups and individuals to look for common ground. It seems to be harder and harder for people to do that now, so I think that’s a really important point that you’re making.

Mark:

You know that HR manager that first got across to me, his idea was, I talked about having those monthly meetings, his idea was to work on the stuff where we did have common ground and not even bother with the stuff where we couldn’t find common ground.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Oh, that’s really interesting.

Mark:

And unless we were forced by either company or union leadership to deal with something where we couldn’t find common ground, we always made sure we were being proactive and working on stuff where we could find common ground.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Oh, that in itself is priceless advice, I think, for some of the times that we’re in, in the workplace.

Mark:

Yeah. Take that operator training activity. The company and the operators both benefit from that greatly, if you can work together on training.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Right.

Mark:

It’s a no-brainer. It is going to benefit the company and it’s going to benefit the individual, the operators, the ones online. I don’t care what you’re doing, it’s going to benefit you.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Anything else that you would like to leave as words of wisdom or advice? I’m sure just from the stories you’ve told, our listeners have gotten a lot out of this, but any last words from you Mark, for today? Last words for today.

Mark:

Yeah, I feel like I’ve been talking too much as it is, Kathy.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s the whole point.

Mark:

Yeah.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s the point. Well, I thank you so much. You and I have had a long and wonderful professional relationship and friendship over the years, and I personally have learned a great deal from you, so I’m glad to give the listeners an opportunity to do that as well.

Mark:

And vice versa.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Well, that’s good. Let’s keep learning from each other then.

Mark:

Yes, I’m in.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

All right. Thanks, Mark. Thanks for listening to the Conscious Culture Café. If you’ve liked what you heard, connect with us at millerconsultants.com. You can access the show notes and receive our free materials. See you next episode.