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  1. #1
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    Question Let's talk "UGLY" work situations

    Edit: thank you all for the feedback. The different perspectives and insight really helped.

    I'll be as brief as I can. I started with a new company several months ago. During the interview process, I was told it would be a supervisor role, but when they explained some of the roles they had in mind for my position, it was clear they were going to give me lots of Manager level duties/responsibilities to take care of as well. That is fine by me, I'm always up to for a challenge, and I was already doing most of those things in my supervisor role I was leaving. Also, I knew it would make it easier to get promoted to a Manager title much sooner. Put in the work, earn the reward (pending I did a good job of course).

    I start the job, and the "training" consisted of...almost nothing. That is not an exaggeration. I've been in some less than ideal situations at work before with a lack of help. But in this case, there was zero plans/processes in effect for bringing ANYONE new on board, not just me. There was no training plan beyond "well when the guy that used to do his job has time, he can help." Which anyone that has any experience in a high paced manufacturing facility knows, is never. No one ever has any extra time.

    Fast forward to now. I still have no clear understanding of what it is we really do here, or how we do it. I have reached out to several different people on many occasions asking for help. I have hundreds of sent emails (I've started saving them) asking for help on issues or projects, where I need the backstory/history of how a problem got from A to Z, that I never got any answers from. The vast majority of those were sent to the two people with the most direct knowledge of this position, and the products & processes it is responsible for. Being new, I don't have that backstory/history/knowledge of how these problems became what they are. Despite my many repeated attempts to reach out for help, far too many . A few of my reports have been amazing trying to help me out as much as they can, but their knowledge only goes so far, so their help is limited.

    What do you do in this situation?

    I know what I want to do, and will try to do. I know what I should do, and am going to do. But I also know that I'm still relatively young, and I don't have a lot of experience in these situations yet. I know there's a lot of great experience here to draw on and ask guidance from, and that could help paint a clearer picture of what I could and/or should do moving forward.
    Last edited by Reel Northern Bass; 02-21-2019 at 06:36 AM.

  2. Member
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    #2
    To quote Steve Jobs:
    “It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do”
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  3. Banned
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    #3
    You typed:

    "Fast forward to now. I still have no clear understanding of what it is we really do here or how we do it..."

    Then how do You know You're doing it incorrectly?

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    #4
    I’d say you hit a homerun with the job. No one seems to lnow what is going on so you can act like you know what’s going on. A good start could be wear a hard hat, some safety glasses, ear plugs and walk around with a clipboard and serious ass look on your face. Collect the pay check and ride the wave.

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    #5
    Quote Originally Posted by JStratosB View Post
    To quote Steve Jobs:
    “It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do”
    Great perspective, and a very great point.

    Quote Originally Posted by LewStulePH.D. View Post
    You typed:

    "Fast forward to now. I still have no clear understanding of what it is we really do here or how we do it..."

    Then how do You know You're doing it incorrectly?
    Valid point. I wouldn't say that I'm doing it incorrectly. Rather, I don't know how to go about doing some things. Those some things happen to be important things though. There's plenty of aspects of my job that are "easy" to me, as the experience I have from previous jobs provides the know how to do those tasks. But when it comes to making informed decisions on where to go with our products or processes, which is a also a big part of my role...well I can't do that in a lot of cases, because I'm uninformed. Some things can be figured out along the way, but it's hard to make good decisions to move forward with, without knowing the history of the product/processes.

    That kind of oversimplifies the problem I have.

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    #6
    What kind of job is it. Knowing that might help.

  7. Member rds_nc's Avatar
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    #7
    Who's gonna chew your ass and affect your pay check? Start there and figure out at least part of their vision of what they want you to be doing.
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    #8
    Quote Originally Posted by 603bass View Post
    But when it comes to making informed decisions on where to go with our products or processes, which is a also a big part of my role...well I can't do that in a lot of cases, because I'm uninformed. Some things can be figured out along the way, but it's hard to make good decisions to move forward.
    Trial and error. One cannot always be told what should be done. Best judgement with the available information

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    #9
    Maybe you are not asking the right people. I would start copying the higher ups with any email I sent someone that asked for help or clarification on whatever problem you encounter.

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    #10
    Quote Originally Posted by rds_nc View Post
    Who's gonna chew your ass and affect your pay check? Start there and figure out at least part of their vision of what they want you to be doing.
    Ah, the plot thickens. So that person is now my boss. And coincidentally, he is the same person that should have (in my opinion) been helping me all along during this time, but ghosted on me. And now he's my boss......

    Quote Originally Posted by bshort View Post
    Trial and error. One cannot always be told what should be done. Best judgement with the available information
    Very good point. There's the risk of making a bad decision, but at least an attempt was made?...

    Quote Originally Posted by Mike198P View Post
    Maybe you are not asking the right people. I would start copying the higher ups with any email I sent someone that asked for help or clarification on whatever problem you encounter.
    All higher ups have been kept in the loop. I had the highest level HR manager in our corporation in my office last week, and verbatim, said "We know you're in a crappy situation. We've basically forced you into a sink or swim position. But we're going to do what we can do to fix it."

    I've been in this situation before and it didn't pan out, so my only experience is negative. I'd like to believe she means it, but actions mean something, not words...

  11. Go Cubs Go cubswin's Avatar
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    #11
    If there is no process, and you can get the job done, then start creating the paperwork as well. It is quite possible that no one person knows the information you want, depending on who has come and gone. Sucks, but can be a reality. I run into it fairly often, usually when long term employees have left a company and took with them knowledge that was never well documented.

    If you like the work, keep doing it and try to effect change without being a giant pain in the ass to everyone.
    "It's even, but it ain't settled. Let's settle it." Fast Eddie
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    #12
    Quote Originally Posted by cubswin View Post
    If there is no process, and you can get the job done, then start creating the paperwork as well. It is quite possible that no one person knows the information you want, depending on who has come and gone. Sucks, but can be a reality. I run into it fairly often, usually when long term employees have left a company and took with them knowledge that was never well documented.

    If you like the work, keep doing it and try to effect change without being a giant pain in the ass to everyone.
    That's what I've been trying to do so far with not only myself, but also for one of my reports that is on the verge of retirement. Great guy, 35+ years with the company, knows an insane amount of things about 2 of 4 of our main product lines (one of those 4 is brand new). Trying to capture as much knowledge that he has before he leaves. Last company I worked for we had a guy like this, 35+ years, had an insane amount of knowledge on a lot of our core competencies, but was just bad at his job in the end. They let him go without capturing the vast majority of his knowledge. I know that for a fact, because it fell to me to capture/document it all. They gave us enough time for me to capture one thing, the single most important information to our single most core competency there, then let him go. The rest wasn't captured. Such a waste...

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    #13
    I guess I don’t understand what it is that you can’t figure out, is there some reason why you can’t learn what your job is? Are you making something, supposed to be controlling someone,etc... I can’t think of a situation where a person couldn’t brainstorm a solution to a problem or is it just a product that you have zero knowledge about. Usually if there’s a will, there’s a way.

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    #14
    Quote Originally Posted by grout-scout View Post
    I guess I don’t understand what it is that you can’t figure out, is there some reason why you can’t learn what your job is? Are you making something, supposed to controlling someone,etc... I can’t think of a situation where a person couldn’t brainstorm a solution to a problem. If there’s a will, there’s a way.
    So we have a handful of products that we make here, not a lot, just a few, with incredibly high throughput on each one. The only variable on them is what we attach to them, but the core parts stay the same. We have a large number of issues that have been ongoing for over a year now revolving around our processes, the product itself, and issues with customers in general with some of the custom parts we attach to our core parts.

    The issue I have is they dumped all of these previous/ongoing issues onto my plate, and just said, "here, these are your problems now." I don't know why these issues are issues. Customer says the part is bad/unacceptable. Why? I ask my operators/reports. "It's because it was designed that way, or it's because the process was designed/defined that way." "Okay, who designed it that way? Who defined that process?" "That would be the guy you replaced, we don't know the reason for the why's."

    Really, a lot of my unknowns come from one very specific person. They hold all of the history behind a lot of the current issues that we have. Customers are asking "hey we asked for X performance parameters of this part, you're giving us Y performance parameters, what gives?" So I do the best I can to do a deep dive/root cause analysis to figure out why these issues are there. The operators I talk to don't know why, they just know what buttons to hit. The people making/handling the raw materials just know they were told to mix a bit of A and a bit of B to give the next step in the process C, but they don't know why it's X% of A and Y% of B.

    Lot of people just doing their jobs here without any knowledge of the WHY. The WHY resides with one or two people. Those people aren't making the time to share that knowledge with me, so I can actually conduct a proper deep dive/root cause analysis into determining WHY these issues are coming up.

    Hopefully that makes sense and paints a clearer picture.

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    #15
    Edward Deming was brilliant and largely responsible for the success of the Post WWII Japanese manufacturing success.

    Read this and read it again. Try to implement some of the core principles.
    https://asq.org/quality-resources/to.../deming-points

  16. Member Jeff Hahn's Avatar
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    #16
    If only one or two people have the knowledge base and history that you need to do your job, I would make an appointment with both (separately, to make sure their stories jive) and have a sit down. Offer to take them to lunch if that's what it takes to get them to open up. If they keep putting you off, I'd park myself in their office until they agreed to fill you in on the details. If that doesn't work, you could go to the CEO (or the highest ranking person at your office) and explain the situation and ask why those two people are not being giving you the info necessary to do your job. If you continue to operate in the dark, someone higher up may just make you the "fall guy" for the problems that existed long before you got there.
    "The man of system is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamored with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it…He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chessboard.” Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

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    #17
    Yeah I guess you might be screwed if they put you in charge of quality control and there is none to begin with.

    Makes a person wonder if the designer is guessing at the formula or if he’s not will to share the info with you, thinking you might try to steal the info/product knowledge.

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    #18
    I work in manufacturing as a technician, and spend much of my time re-engineering new equipment and processes.
    I read your posts and still don't understand what you were hired for??
    Are you there as a supervisor, or are you there to solve process issues? If it's process or quality issues due to the design, it sounds like the designers or engineers should be stepping up.

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    #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Nova Kaw 650 View Post
    I work in manufacturing as a technician, and spend much of my time re-engineering new equipment and processes.
    I read your posts and still don't understand what you were hired for??
    Are you there as a supervisor, or are you there to solve process issues? If it's process or quality issues due to the design, it sounds like the designers or engineers should be stepping up.

    Sounds like he was hired to be the future scapegoat.




    603 What kind of products are you guys building, something for guys like us or an entirely different segment?

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    #20
    Free advertising...

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