Clueless SPECTATORS
- Marty Schad
- Nov 15, 2018
- 2 min read
The dictionary defines a spectator as “a person who watches at a show, game, or other event.” It is always interesting to me how many people think they are participants when actually they are spectators. Simply talking about things does not convert a spectator into a participant (no matter how much talk there is), obviously. I’d like to share a story that illustrates this point. A CEO of a startup and I were meeting to discuss where his lab-scale process was at and what would be needed to commercialize it for high-volume manufacturing. The startup was making a wire of a new material that had significant potential advantages over existing commercially available materials. He gave me a 30 minute presentation describing his lab-scale process. I dug into the details about the lab-scale trials that had been completed to make the samples that he was showing me. He told me that it took about 50 trials to make 10 small pieces of this wire. The CEO casually told me if they wanted to, they could make miles of this wire at a time, an interesting conjecture to say the least, given the state of their process. It was obvious to me that his process needed a lot of work, and it was far from being ready for prime time. I tried to suggest this gently to him, but he did not seem to understand my intimations. So I finally asked him: “Mr. CEO, if you could make miles of this wire at a time, why did you go to the trouble of doing 50 trials, that seems like a lot of extra work?”. He had no answer for me, and he was a bit stunned. He quickly realized he could not fool me about the state of his process. This CEO had seen some processes scaled up, but he had never actually scaled up anything himself, so he thought it was much easier than it actually is. The CEO was a spectator to these efforts, but thought he was a participant! He was (unknowingly) outside his “circle of competence” as Warren Buffet calls it. On important topics, this is a dangerous place to be.
My main learning from this is that many people are clueless spectators. Great and profitable manufacturing processes are built by seasoned participants, not by spectators.
YOUR CHALLENGE THIS WEEK
Please think about (and list on a piece of paper) the folks responsible for building great manufacturing processes in your organization…
Who on your list are the proven participants in creating great processes?
How can you leverage the experience and wisdom of these process builders to have a greater impact in your organization?
I would enjoy discussing the concept of spectators vs participants with you! Please send your thoughts to me at marty@martyschad.com, or call me at 508-410-8081.
All the Best, Marty
Comments