Mentoring Teaching How to Think

Most of us will take a new job, and we depend on people to teach us. They become our mentors. Then comes the day we have to teach the newbie. We are their mentors.

So how do you train someone well? First remember some failures of other people to orient you before. Hours, breaks, bathrooms, and general rules of the office are helpful along with introducing coworkers.

The story of a new hire on a manual zinc die cast machine comes to mind. He just had to pull the lever to close the door, then push the lever open to get the part. New guy works through break, then thru lunch. Finally his manager asks him how he is doing? Sweating profusely the new guys says, “How do you stop this machine?” When told just don’t close the door. He picks up his things and walks out the door quitting on the spot. Training failure.

You need to show someone more than what steps to do. You need to teach them how to think. The steps are okay if everything goes right. What do you do if something is wrong? Mentors must teach how to think. How to handle unsatisfied customers. Who to call for problems. Safety rules and processes. Warning signs looking out for potential problems.

Here is a list of mentoring steps by a curmudgeon:

·   Read the draft manual & procedures.

·   Complete my required training.

·   Giddily using a red pencil to redline the hell out of my engineering drawings.

·   Go leave the comfort of our cubicle area to go to the labs and to walk the production line.

·   Forced me to talk with the mechanics and technicians.

·   No clue what to say, so he would politely say something in just the right way for me to rephrase it and ask it myself.

·   Stories shared from his 30+ years with the company on mistakes made & how they were fixed, successes achieved.

·   Important things to remember when running this test or that analysis.

·   Knowing how the organization works and who the key players are.

·   Why it's important to understand things from our customer's perspective.

·   The significance of integration & handoffs between engineering groups and our products.

·   Appreciation of the precision and detail required to generate computer equivalent engineering drawings by hand.

This woman’s career was been forever shaped by the time and effort this man put into her to learn about the craft of engineering.

Mentors are not done unless the trainee also has life skills to go do the job.  The soft skills of working with people have to be taught everyone. 

Especially the transition from schooling to working. Working with 2 interns they thought there would be no issue sitting down and talking with the CEO. My question was don’t you think he has other responsibilities to be working on? Most CEOs are the chief salesperson making decisions daily, that affect many employees. Part of our job is to protect their time so the CEO can focus. However if you have great ideas and necessary information, you need to bring it to the CEO.

Here are some soft skills were taught by my mentors:

·   Encouraged become a problem solver, to take initiative, and to meet deadlines.

·   Stressed 'problem solving'.

·   That things will go wrong, and to focus on prevention as well as recovery.

·   Asking good questions.

·   Help me develop perspective, and to take logical risks.

·   Humility - serious about my work and not so serious about myself. Life is easier.

·   Speak up and overcome my shyness.

·   Engineering should also be interesting and fun (and not to lose that)

Successful in my career and life because many people took their time to teach me life lessons, work skills, computer programs, problem solving, handling people on bad days, and maintain perspective in crisis’s. Am eternally grateful, and passing my learning on.

Who mentored you? Honor them by teaching others.

My Job No One Knows

My first job after college was a career I never heard of. Even though my parents are engineers, never learned about Manufacturing Engineers. Am not alone, there are many careers no one knows about or understands.

Design engineers are what everyone thinks of for engineering. The people who can take a idea and create from scratch new products is what people think of engineers. (That and we drive trains and sound the whistle) Truth is even simple products need vastly different skills and talents to be made successfully.

Manufacturing has designers, design engineers, toolmakers, tool designers, industrial engineers, machine designers, planners, production mangers, and the craftsmen who put products together every day. Every small product takes a team of people to accomplish everything you touch or hold.

Manufacturing and tooling engineers are often considered second-class citizens by management. The example that comes to mind is I was in my thirties before I had desk younger than I. Sales had the fancy offices. Production is industrial. And manufacturing engineers plan, coordinate, improve and team to make it happen.

Why do it? I love it. Am fascinated by technology, products and services. The challenge of find the easiest way, the least cost, a faster way, a safer way, and to make your product better is consuming. People need help and you solve problems. You wake up at night with new ideas how.

Nothing happens instantaneously. The first version doesn’t work. The second round can’t be made as designed. The third version needs to be more reliable. And competition means the cost has to go down. There are always problems and challenges that have to be overcome. Innovation, creativity and persistance are key. You work hard to make your team succeed.

Production celebrates shipping new products like teams winning playoffs. Anything great is the result of lots of hard work.

There is a sense of accomplishment and knowing you have done what others could not with new products. New production systems may be invented, tools created specially for your product, people need to be trained, instructions and documents written, and schedules met.

Manufacturing is a great career even if no one understands what you do.

“Make Something Better.” Bill Boeing

Happy 100th Birthday Boeing

The original Pacific Aero Products Company celebrates turning 100 today. Boeing is now a huge international company known worldwide. It was originally a few men who believed they could make better airplanes, and they did. From the original B&W Model 1 to the Clipper to WW2’s B-17 to B-52 to 707’s original jet age to 727 to the iconic 747 to the great F-15 to the amazing C-17 and F-18 to today’s 787, Boeing makes wonderful airplanes.

Boeing is the 3^rd company I have worked for with over 100 years of history. Celebrated Colt Firearms 150^th anniversary, and Sargent and Company dated back to 1864 making builders hardware.

What do these companies have in common?

• ·      Innovate great products and services.
• ·      Look out for their customers & end users. They care.
• ·      Always becoming more productive.
• ·      Adapt and adjust to market conditions.
• ·      Always learning, especially from failures.
• ·      Hire and develop great people.

Boeing has “The Incredibles” who built the first 747 in ~16 months while the factory was built around them. Supervisors would sometimes have to walk people out to their cars and watch them leave to make sure they went home for a break. (You cannot pay for performance like that.)

A lot of people will honor Boeing today and it is well deserved. Boeing people “Enthusiastically Tackle Challenges” through the decades, and do so today.

This is the best company ever worked for. What took me so long to get here?

Stopping Shootings

This is off topic for a business problem solving blog. The shooting at schools like Umpqua Community College is a problem not being solved. Look at cities that have shootings every weekend.

Lets not make light of this. Any shooting is a tragedy to someone. Am praying for the victims and their family & friends. No one knows the pain they are feeling.

This is a good example of how people react versus thinking. Lets make a law. Has anyone ever checked if laws work? One of the cities with the strictest laws is Chicago. 2,332 shooting victims by October 2^nd. Detroit is another disaster with strict gun ownership laws. Neither city is a place would want to live.

How about the safest city in the US? No guns right? Wrong. Plano has high gun ownership with liberal carry laws. Challenges the ban all guns assumption in some proposed laws.

Lived in Texas when the new permits were being issued. Predictions were blood in the street with hundreds of shootings. What happened? Crime went down 10% each of the first 3 years. In the 3^rd year there was a shooting involving an owner with a permit. A classic case of self-defense where the permit holder tried to back away from someone intending to harm them.

What is missing here? The pundits were sure more guns meant more deaths. Reality is the problems are complicated, not straightforward, and causes not well understood. Proposing solutions without research does not work.

Look at potential causes: Disaffected males, gangs, drug money, mental health, lack of male role models, recruiting by terrorists, and suicide.  

Suicide is one of the major causes of gun deaths, and often used to inflate gun violence statistics. One thought is some public attacks may be males who want to commit Suicide by Cop.

Disaffected males are probably the main cause of violence. They may be unsuccessful with jobs and relationships. Mental health issues may be a cause or result of isolation.

Isolated or disaffected males are vulnerable to recruiting by gangs and terrorists. The lack of adults, particularly men, in their lives have them looking for alternative families. Predators will recruit them to support their cults.  Lone wolves are the hardest for law enforcement to stop.

The financial element cannot be ignored for these organizations. The incentive of big money and power draw young men into crime cartels.

What can be done to prevent violence?

First care about and talk with people. Get involved with young adults. The most difficult and unlovable person probably needs someone to talk with the most.

Evil can be prevented by letting people know their ideas are not healthy. They should not consider making people pay for their sins. Most criminals slowly graduate from small crimes until they graduate to major crimes. Interventions do stop misbehaviors from growing to crimes committed.

Mental health care has to lose its stigma. Stressed out people do not make good decisions. Have seen estimates 20% to 25% of adults experience mental illness. That makes it normal. First responders have to be trained how to keep mentally ill calm and get them into treatment.

Start by greeting everyone you can today, and being a role model for others. Talk with people different than you - age, color, dress, hair, politics and religion.  Anyone you meet. Kindness, listening, and caring have to be our calling card.

If someone is a danger to themselves or others, don’t hope it will go away. Intervene and notify authorities if necessary. It is up to us to make this world safe.