NRG
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Post by NRG on Apr 6, 2018 17:30:53 GMT -5
THD provided some awesome training a while back. The segment was titled "The Four Levels of Competence". The purpose was to teach us how to speak to our direct reports and train them in their jobs.
Here are the levels:
Level 1 UNCONSCIOUS INCOMPETENCE At this level the person is a total newbie, and is unaware they are incompetent or what knowledge to seek to progress.
Level 2 CONSCIOUS INCOMPETENCE At this stage the person has started learning and doing the task. They are now aware they don't know a whole bunch
Level 3 CONSCIOUS COMPETENCE At this stage the person is doing well, knows a lot, still needs guidance and must do the task deliberately. Care is required to for them to succeed, but they have what it takes to be successful.
Level 4 UNCONSCIOUS COMPETENCE These are those with real experience. They can do the job on instinct with little thought. They may recognize more can be learned and seek training, but for the most part they are successful effortlessly.
While these levels are presented as distinct stages, there are no perfect boundaries and those at each stage may have some needs at a lower or higher level. A good manager will sort these out for each of their charges.
Can you visualize how you would speak different to folks at the various levels differently?
What happens when you speak to a level 3-4 like a level 1? You probably have had that manager. They call it "micromanaging". The micromanager is either inexperienced or has an ego problem. Issues arise because we can't tell which is the case....
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NRG
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Post by NRG on Apr 6, 2018 17:31:58 GMT -5
Perhaps a more experienced manager Tommy will have something to add? Not calling you out. Genuinely seeking new knowledge. I'm conscious of my incompetence.
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Tommy
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Post by Tommy on Apr 6, 2018 17:53:28 GMT -5
Perhaps a more experienced manager Tommy will have something to add? Not calling you out. Genuinely seeking new knowledge. I'm conscious of my incompetence. I will, and I don't want to leave you hanging but I'm about to be tied up for a few hours and need time to mull some thoughts together anyway. lol
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Post by Rockoonz on Apr 6, 2018 19:17:28 GMT -5
THD? What does total harmonic distortion have to do with it? When I worked directly for the owners they did tend to breathe down my neck, but were never stingy with affirmation that they trusted my work. Since they "retired" and gave it to their kids with a manager from outside, I think to give customers a middle aged front office,it has changed considerably. I watch the work of dept heads go to crap for a time after his walk throughs. Unconscious competence and going through the motions, don't give a $#!+ really look about the same sometimes. Sometimes I think that most management creates the need for management by being there.
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Post by toiv0 on Apr 6, 2018 19:36:58 GMT -5
I don't think your level 3 and level 4 can't be taught. You either have it or you don't. A level 3 can be made into a 4 but can a 1 be? I say no. In one company I worked for they used give these management courses and hand out the "new" book on sales or management. He took them all and in my opinion he failed on so many levels. But he is a genius on a different level. My ex boss called me a cultural bridge because I can communicate with the laborer or the corporate management. You should see the look on their face when I show up to a function in bib overalls and white shirt, and sports coat. They said wear a tie, and asked where it was. I had made a huge turquoise bolo, you just couldn't see it behind my 3 button beard.
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grayfingers
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Post by grayfingers on Apr 7, 2018 7:09:36 GMT -5
*
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Post by 1dave on Apr 7, 2018 7:53:20 GMT -5
We all have gone through these stages many times as we grew up. It is training separate sections of the brain. Learning to crawl, then to walk. You never think about it any more, it just happens. Learning to eat with a spoon. Sometimes it got to your mouth, but often not. Now you never miss. Driving a car. terrifying number of levers, mirrors, peddles and dials. Which is most important? When the "DRIVER" part of your brain is fully trained, You climb into the car and turn that function over to the DRIVER and only start paying attention again when you start getting near your destination, because no matter how talented your DRIVER is, IT has no idea where you want to go. That is why from time to time you drive past the street you wanted to turn on. If you have learned several languages, each of those is contained in their separate brain compartments. Watch a trained interpreter sometime. Earphones on, mouth speaking, while the interpreter is reading a book and oblivious to the message being spoken.
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NRG
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Post by NRG on Apr 7, 2018 9:30:36 GMT -5
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NRG
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Post by NRG on Apr 7, 2018 9:34:25 GMT -5
I don't think your level 3 and level 4 can't be taught. You either have it or you don't. A level 3 can be made into a 4 but can a 1 be? I say no. In one company I worked for they used give these management courses and hand out the "new" book on sales or management. He took them all and in my opinion he failed on so many levels. But he is a genius on a different level. My ex boss called me a cultural bridge because I can communicate with the laborer or the corporate management. You should see the look on their face when I show up to a function in bib overalls and white shirt, and sports coat. They said wear a tie, and asked where it was. I had made a huge turquoise bolo, you just couldn't see it behind my 3 button beard. Depends on the task. I trained 4 raw salespeople up to level 3. They all could do the job and do it well. But they needed to be thinking about the task all the time. Let their guard down and their intuition fails them. One of them is about to fill my old position. She has the best level 4 intuition of them all. And she will promote out. It's my feeling that those that want to put in the efforts can be level 4 at the things they want to achieve. All the rest? You are spot on.
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Tommy
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Post by Tommy on Apr 7, 2018 10:46:59 GMT -5
Perhaps a more experienced manager Tommy will have something to add? Not calling you out. Genuinely seeking new knowledge. I'm conscious of my incompetence. I had to mull this over for a while and I'm still not sure what is going to come out of my fingers this morning but I am coffeed up and will break this into two parts. My response, Part 1. In private life, or professional life, for me personally it was always a "gut feeling" that I have about a person whether they have what it takes to to learn and accomplish a certain task and for whatever reason I was usually not wrong. True story - several years ago, HR through our temp agency brought me the next in a long string of candidate we tried for an open position in the plant - entry level press staging or "runner" as we called it. Corporate hiring structure *required* that we use this particular temp agency almost as an insurance policy because we could instantly fire anyone they sent us with no strings attached just by calling the agency and asking that they not come back - and that they send us the next one up. This particular person named Johnny was brought to me one day and I took one look in his eyes and knew that the lights were (barely) on but nobody was home upstairs and that the next few weeks attempting to train him were going to be a waste. Over my strong objections to HR and the GM I was required to give him a chance and so I did. His first task on his first day was to shadow a Flexo press operator and watch and learn what the operators need to have staged for them, raw material, ink, dies, etc. A couple of hours into his very first shift, the press operator came to me and said "boss, I think we have a problem..." I followed him to his press where Johnny was sitting on a stool with his head on the press table, sleeping soundly - literally snoring. Without waking sleeping beauty I went straight to the office and asked the HR manager and GM to follow me out to the press and they did and Johnny was escorted to the door. After that they both backed off of me regarding "next up - anyone can be trained" nonsense and let me launch my own search - asking around through the plant seeing if anyone knew anyone. After saying no to a couple more candidates from the temp agency, I came across a young kid just out of high school with bright eyes and good communication skills, and a pleasant and humble personality. He was also the son of a Vietnamese woman who had worked in our final assembly department for 30 years. Despite her challenging language barrier which probably caused her to never want to advance beyond her position, she was damn good at what she did and I relied on her heavily as my go-to problem solver in the group. Genetics? After I worked HR and the GM past the 'nepotism' issue, and the kid had to jump through a few hoops by going down to the temp agency and signing up with them, I hired him and it only took about two weeks to know that being a 'runner' was child's play for this kid and within a few months he was operating a press on his own and producing high quality work. Natural, gifted, good genes? I probably strayed too far from the original intent of the thread but I'll come back to it a bit more in Part 2.
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Post by Rockoonz on Apr 7, 2018 11:14:53 GMT -5
Duh. I was an employee of theirs for a few days when I liquidated my auto parts business and needed a new side gig part time to continue saving for a house downpayment. Was looking at part time weekends till the boss found out I was unavailable for Friday overtime days and made me a guarantee of at least one per 2 week pay period, lots more $ than the 16h/wk from THD. The HR and the training at the store I was at were impressive, though.
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Post by MrP on Apr 7, 2018 11:21:47 GMT -5
Have you ever noticed the difference between the person that wants the job because it is a promotion that they want to further there career and the person that wants it because of the money? The person taking it for the money never rises to the level of the person taking it because they want to better them self..................MrP
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Tommy
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Post by Tommy on Apr 7, 2018 11:24:23 GMT -5
Part 2.
The last several years with this company, our entire focus was on implementing a QMS and becoming ISO certified. Everything became about training and documenting and training the trainers, and documenting, ad nauseum. Every situation, accident, mistake, violation, fell under the scrutiny of documenting and training, and re-training, to the point that it took on the feel of a giant CYA cluster-you-know-what - and in reality it became another tool for the corporation to use to continually trim staff and eliminate jobs. Our work force, made up of maybe 80% Vietnamese and Laotian people with very limited language skills were now being asked to read and know Standard Operating Procedures, largely written by a Quality Manager who was adored by upper management for being extremely detailed, but in real life knowledge or manufacturing knowledge had her head firmly inserted up her ass most of the time. General frustration ensued - employees looking at me like "can't we just continue to do our jobs highly successfully like we always have?" It was around this point where we began to lose key people - and I myself decided it was time to move on.
So... levels of competence as experienced in the corporate ISO environment.
This is borrowed from an ISO consulting website - it's not exactly what I experienced - we had onsite trainers working us through the process - but it pretty much summarizes the experience for me...
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Post by Rockoonz on Apr 7, 2018 11:36:56 GMT -5
Tommy your story really hits home for the past couple years in my dept at work, a seemingly endless stream of temp to hire candidates, and management who required giving them all a "chance". Finally got Wellington, a Dominican Republic immigrant who learned the job in an amazingly short time for someone with limited english skills. Sue, one of the original owners and former schoolteacher, had that philosophy that anyone could be trained. Took me years to teach her that their really was a thing called aptitude that you're just born with.
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NRG
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Post by NRG on Apr 7, 2018 11:39:19 GMT -5
Yes. I understand about talent search. At THD we have a new talent acquisition machine. They are good at weeding them down to a pool of good to great candidates. And still, the outside sales team has a 5% retention rate at 1 year.
I blame that on their managers. That because of the four I onboarded and trained, all four are still with us. The only difference I can figure out, is the other managers don't spend any time developing the new hire's skillset and knowledge. That's all I did.
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Post by Rockoonz on Apr 7, 2018 12:02:43 GMT -5
Part 2. Freaking QM systems... Where I'm at we're transitioning to the "new, improved" ISO, which carries over to the AS (aerospace, used to be BS for Boeing, seemed more appropriate) and TS (transportation, KW, Peterbilt and Freightliner in our case) certifications. The guy they hired years ago to develop a system within the shop was great. He understood that any system we used had to fit the company culture and still meet the requirements, and that it should also make life easier for everyone rather than just be a paper trail designed to pass audits. Current manager and QA guy are both former USMC air winger groom troopers who let it carry over to their civilian lives, I'm also a Marine and now understand why my recon DI's had no respect for them.
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Post by Rockoonz on Apr 7, 2018 12:19:45 GMT -5
Have you ever noticed the difference between the person that wants the job because it is a promotion that they want to further there career and the person that wants it because of the money? The person taking it for the money never rises to the level of the person taking it because they want to better them self..................MrP If the "mercenaries" see their position as a way to finance their real goals and passions they usually turn out better than the guy climbing the ladder because they derive their entire sense of worth from their job. The ladder climbers tend to have such a self improvement focus that they have little concept of loyalty and long term business relations, and their legacies blow away in the wind once they move on to the next stepping stone. I'm sure your comparison is more to the guy that reaches minimum competency, then thinks their value should be equal to those who trained them, and they should no longer have to perform the tasks that they feel are beneath them. Frequent days off also are common with these. I refer to those individuals as "warm bodies".
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Tommy
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Post by Tommy on Apr 7, 2018 12:31:44 GMT -5
Moved to chit-chat for the OP
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Post by MrP on Apr 7, 2018 12:45:46 GMT -5
Have you ever noticed the difference between the person that wants the job because it is a promotion that they want to further there career and the person that wants it because of the money? The person taking it for the money never rises to the level of the person taking it because they want to better them self..................MrP If the "mercenaries" see their position as a way to finance their real goals and passions they usually turn out better than the guy climbing the ladder because they derive their entire sense of worth from their job. The ladder climbers tend to have such a self improvement focus that they have little concept of loyalty and long term business relations, and their legacies blow away in the wind once they move on to the next stepping stone. I'm sure your comparison is more to the guy that reaches minimum competency, then thinks their value should be equal to those who trained them, and they should no longer have to perform the tasks that they feel are beneath them. Frequent days off also are common with these. I refer to those individuals as "warm bodies". You are correct about "mercenaries" . I guess I am referring to the person who could have the capability but has no real desire to learn more then is needed to barely keep the position. They only do the job because it pays more then the job they came from. I have also worked with a person who 'stopped' learning because he had 'learned all he wanted to'. That was sad................................MrP
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Post by mohs on Apr 7, 2018 14:26:13 GMT -5
Interesting discussion I like the opening salvo of competence Scientific management is the death of innovative labor. Its kills the creativeness of the individual laborer. Sound Marxian but that not my point I’ve worked in many shops. ISO I kind of liked. I liked documenting procedures-- not written in concrete as general guidelines--- yet saw how management used those procedures against creative production. Case in Point. I was operating IBM 3900 Double Wide lazar printer in large fast pace corporate environment. i could operate these beasts under water On the train where the printed-paper collected was a mechanical finger. When the stack of printed material tripped the finger it would shut down the printer. This was bad! I wanted the printer to keep running-- as I was running 10 other printers, for millions of customers, and every print order was due yesterday. Ha ha So I put a piece of scotch tape on the finger to hold it up. This prevented the stacking paper from stopping the production flow. The 2nd level moaning manager inspections sees the tape on the finger. Tells me to remove. It’s not in the ISO procedures! Geez ! So now I got to take the tape off each morning before he shows up. As a conscientious employee I’m doing what best to keep to production flowing. Get caught with the tape--- get wrote up. by some white collar nit wit --- who’s only job from what I can tell is: re-inventing dotting the i and crossing the T-- hindering my process. The amount of paperwork they kept foisting on us to fill out for every procedure. Shit get old. Let me roll! I’m glad my days of wage work are over. The trend is becoming too robotic & procedure filled for my tastes. To to be fair. I was difficult person to manage… m stly
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