Develop leaders internally. We’ve
been in a leadership training
development program for the
last year now, and it has really
helped people understand
their role here — the expectations, the accountability and
the teamwork aspect of it.
Right now, we have upper
management — about 40 to 50
people — in it, and the hope is
that we’ll have training all the
way down to the guy on the
floor running the machine. We
talk about situational leadership — how to react to different things, how to communicate and how to problem solve.
Leadership training has got
to be effective. It can’t be just
fly-by-night, flavor-of-the-month type of training. You’ve
got to live it, breathe it, lead by
example and understand it.
You’ve got to give people
opportunities to change and
succeed, and you’ve got to
empower them to do their job.
It goes from the top down.
If this leadership program
keeps progressing the way it is
now, and we’re happy with it,
there’s no reason why we
wouldn’t train all the way
down. If you don’t do it, you’re
never going to know how
much better you could be.
Establish a corporate definition of
success. Success is intrinsic
satisfaction of what you do. If
you don’t love what you do,
and you’re not happy with it,
change it because you’re not
going to be as successful.
I don’t know that you can
hard-data measure it, but you
can definitely measure it by
the way people are, their aura
and their behavior.
Are they happy? Do they
mope around? You can tell
when people feel good about
what they’re doing. They’ve
got to have a sense of pride
and success in their mind. I
can’t see somebody being
unhappy and thinking that
they’re successful.
Success is about winning. It’s
about understanding what you
do and knowing that you contribute to a bigger piece.
HOW TO REACH: Cope Plastics Inc., (800) 851-5510 or www.copeplastics.com
