Collaboration and Clarity at the Core of Improvement with Javan Lapp | 058

Collaboration and Clarity at the Core of Improvement with Javan Lapp | 058

Welcome to Lean Leadership for Ops Managers, the podcast for leaders in Ops Management who want to spark improvement, foster engagement, and boost problem solving – AND still get their day job done. Here’s your host, Leadership Trainer, Lean Enthusiast, and Spy Thriller Junkie, Jamie V. Parker. 

How well do you understand your customers and what they value? I mean, really understand. As Ops Leaders, how do you collaborate with internal business partners to better understand and deliver that value?  

Welcome to the Lean Leadership for Ops Managers Executive Series. Javan Lapp joins us today, and he’s engaging and funny and also has some really great points for you to ponder when it comes to collaboration and clarity.  

At the core of improvement, you’ll hear about some growing pains of vertically integrating and scaling, as well as Javan’s thoughts on the one most important leadership challenge that manufacturing organizations are facing.  

And before we jump in, I just want to tell you that today is my birthday. So I am out celebrating today with a trip to Fox Theater to see Hamilton with my family. You know, I’ve seen it before, but I love it. And I am super stoked to be heading out again, particularly with a couple of first timers.  

All right, back to the show. So, we’re talking with Javan Lapp, who serves as Chief Operating Officer at Key-Link Fence and Railing, as well as Superior Plastic Products. Now Key-Link Fencing and Railing manufacturers fence and railing systems that add value to outdoor living spaces, and their team members work together to delight deck builders and homeowners when their expertly engineered products.  

One of the things I love about Javan is that he is passionate about the impact that healthy organizations can have on the world by creating opportunities for people to grow and develop. Let’s dive in.

Jamie: [00:02:18] Javan, welcome to the show today. 

Javan: [00:02:20] Hi, Jamie. It’s great to be here.

 Jamie: [00:02:23] I am so excited to chat with you today. So, let’s just jump right in and I want to start with a value, mantra, principle, or something that you feel really embodies your beliefs about leadership.

Javan: [00:02:38] Oh, wow. Hard to know where to start on that one. There are so many things that we could talk about serving organizations, supporting your people. But, you know, one quote that I keep coming back to again and again, and probably it’s a part of where we are as an organization, trying to build a culture where we develop new ways of thinking and problem solving together.  

But there’s a quote by John Schook, “It’s easier to act your way to a new way of thinking than to think your way to a new way of acting.”  

And I find myself repeating that quote over and over again as we try to build healthy rhythms and routines and as we try to learn by doing and experimenting our ways to to better processes that serve our customers.

 Jamie: [00:03:22] Yeah, all right, fantastic. Well, I’m excited to hear a little bit about some of these routines and things that you’re doing as you’re growing a culture. So tell us a little bit about your organization. Who do you serve and how do you create value?

 Javan: [00:03:35] Yeah, so Key-Link Fencing and Railing and the sister organization, Superior Plastic Products really serve the fencing and railing segments of the building materials industry. So, we manufacture both aluminum and PVC fence and railing systems. And the goal is for homeowners and builders to have great products to add value to their outdoor living spaces and sometimes interior as well.  

It’s really part of that transition between interior living spaces and outdoor living spaces. And we love that we get to provide a high quality, well engineered product that helps people enjoy their backyard, their family, their friends, hosting gatherings with other people. So that’s really where we operate in the market.

 Jamie: [00:04:28] Oh, that sounds so fun. I love this idea of really helping people and enjoy their outdoor living. Fantastic. Yeah. All right. And so, I know you are an improvement-minded executive, so why don’t you talk a little bit about the role that improvement thinking plays in your organizational strategy?

 Javan: [00:04:50] Yeah. While we have so much more to grow in this area, there’s so much more that we are hoping to be putting in place as time goes on. But improvement thinking, continuous improvement, and thinking about increasing the the flow of value from us and our operations to our customers has definitely been making a great impact on our operations side in our plants, affecting multiple plant layouts, encouraging and our people and engaging in how to solve problems and make things better in the process.  

And we’re only just now really starting to have that step all the way through our organization. So, you know, engineering’s definitely been involved in this way of thinking, but just starting to get it into even I.T., and finance, and administration. It’s really a journey for us. But we have seen great, great benefit.  

And in organizing our teams around, how do we serve our customers better and identifying what are those activities that we do that help create products the customers love and value, and what are those things that maybe wouldn’t be necessary?  

So, as a growing company, we’ve gone through a lot of challenges. And the growing pains of scaling an organization have been a real challenge for us over the last decade as we’ve grown as a manufacturer and just the continuous improvement mindset, learning from tips and other methodologies. Things that people have learned in the past have really helped us to think about how we simplify because it’s hard to scale without simplifying our processes and keeping what matters most to create that value.

 Jamie: [00:06:35] I think these are growing pains with scaling is probably something that we have listeners right now are like, yes, I’m feeling this.  

So, can you talk it a little bit more about, you know, what it’s been like to to to grow and scale and how you’ve incorporated or tried to incorporate? Maybe it’s still in progress of incorporating this thinking to help simplify things.

 Javan: [00:06:55] Yes, very much still in process. And many times, there’s this challenge, and I love that you addressed this as well in your podcast, Jamie. You know, the challenge between the daily push of operations, the daily grind of getting orders out and trying to move the organization long term to a better, healthier place through continuous improvement and improving processes for the long haul, really solving problems at the root cause so big for us.  

So as a company, we were, still are, a family-owned second generation, a manufacturing company. And over the last 10 years we really deepened our manufacturing capabilities by vertically integrating. And so what that means is even though our sales, our sales have grown, we made some shifts in our market positioning.  

But the real change in our organization the last 10 years is we are now doing processes in-house that used to be done by our suppliers. And so that that really comes from a place of wanting to do things ourselves, trying to be self-sufficient, learning to deepen our technical know-how and skills be more self-reliant.  

And that has been that’s a great part of our culture and part of that entrepreneurial, innovative, solve problems, learn by doing, that’s embedded deeply in our culture as an organization. But what comes with that is a lot of challenges because suddenly we’re trying to do things that we haven’t done before.

 Javan: [00:08:23] We have a lot more people in the plants. And so, you know, team health, teamwork, team dynamics, improving people’s input in the process, all those things become a lot harder to do; whereas, before we could have parts of the shop operate as independent sort of owner operators of cells, almost like there were sub shops all throughout the shop. We’re now needing to work together in actual value stream where we work together and there’s a downstream and upstream and it’s not just everybody doing their own thing.  

And so that’s really changed how we think about things. And of course, in the season, high demand in our product segment, and so we continue to grow. But learning how to do things together has been a real challenge.  

The one thing that I didn’t anticipate when I first got involved in this business and this learning how to deal with scaling challenges is how important it is for the leaders in the organization to understand where we’re going and what the purpose of the organization is, who our customers are. Who matters?  

And so, in the past, we may have tended to be sort of all things to all people when it comes to our customers, and we didn’t really understand our value because our value proposition got diluted because we sort of had traditional customer segments and multiple verticals.  

And so really having to understand what matters and how that sets our team up for success in delivering. Because when you go through that and you don’t have clear line of sight as a leader to what we’re trying to accomplish and what matters to your customer, then you can’t your teams up for success, you’re going to have service issues and delivery issues, and you’re not going to deliver on time and therefore you’re not going to have be able to to have a perfect order with complete accuracy ratings you want.  

And so that’s been a real challenge for us. And quite frankly, we haven’t lived up to our to the service levels that we’ve wanted to. And one of the things that has helped us is that we make a great quality product, and our customers know us for the quality of our product. 

And so, they’ve lived with us and given us some grace through the scaling challenges of some of the service issues. But long term for the health of the organization, you know, we have to put these things together and help people realize that the structure we’re putting in place is in order to help empower our people to serve our customers.

 Jamie: [00:10:49] Yeah, I love that. Is there any takeaway you learn when you talk about needing to communicate more and help team members and leaders to understand and have more clarity about who the customer is and how we create value? Any specific tactics or things that you’ve learned have maybe worked well to improve that?

 Javan: [00:11:10] Understanding who the customers and that close communication of partnership with, who they are, what really matters to them, not just what’s nice to have, but what really matters to them and focusing in on that and setting priorities based on what matters to the customer.  

Because, you know, this is a common occurrence when you start introducing Continuous Improvement as a way of thinking and as a way of life in an operation becomes very easy, I think people just get as common sense, is how to make things easier for me, but making things easier for the customer. It takes a little bit more time into helping connect those dots really is beneficial.   

I’ll just give one example. You know, we have certain things we do in our shop that are very time intensive things that we do in order to make things easier for our customer. It saves them time when they’re installing our product. And so, helping the people that are doing that job realize that what they’re doing has value because it saves the customers time. And they appreciate that, even though it feels like, why are we doing this? Wouldn’t it be easier if we just didn’t do this?

 Jamie: [00:12:19] Mm. Love it. All right. Well, so you’ve got all of the challenges that come with scaling in growth and your vertical integration. And then we’re also just thinking about the immediate future, where we have the supply chain gaps in employment market challenges and variability in demand.  

I’m hearing a ton about how much demand organizations are facing right now. So for this immediate future, how do you think Ops Managers need to evolve in order to really navigate these operational challenges while still building organizational cultures where people thrive?

 Javan: [00:12:53] Yeah, that’s a great question and I get this challenge. I feel like I’m living in the middle of it right now, trying to learn every bit that I can. And, you know, I started in operations. My first management job was in operations. And today I sit in the places as where I integrate together sales and operations and engineering and I.T. and H.R. and so I’m very passionate about the subject of line of sight and managers understanding their role in the strategic place, positioning of the company.  

So, my encouragement for ops managers is to work as a strategic business partner with all parts of the organization. I know when you’re under fire and things are coming at you and it’s hard to get things out and it feels like things are changing every day, that it’s the easiest thing to do is to kind of hunker down and say, I got to take care of my people or to build some stability in my processes. 

And don’t get me wrong, taking care of your people’s job, number one of management, supporting your people, helping you to be successful every time to do the job, clearly defining what success is, and then giving them that feedback and working with them to remove those obstacles That is the job of management. So that is job number one.  

But if you’re not able to give them a clear line of sight to to what the organization’s trying to do in the role in it and really embrace your role as a strategic business partner with the other parts of the organization, you’re going to you’re going to suffer in your ability to impact that over the long term.  

And so, as I said, operations managers have so many things coming at them and the best operations managers understand the value of stability and supporting their people. And sometimes that makes it hard to say, OK, when is the time to pivot? When is the time to aggressively go after new process improvement or systems design that needs to be put into place? And that’s always a challenge for ops managers, but we’ve got to do both. We’ve got to look at both and figure out how to work together.

 Jamie: [00:15:05] Yeah, so interesting. I guess maybe about once every six weeks I get an email or a LinkedIn message from somebody, maybe an engineer or an I.T. person or somebody that’s in, you know, kind of an organizational support function, who says, can you help me understand operations managers? I’m having a hard time trying to figure out how to partner with these operations managers I’m supporting. And you seem to know them. So, can you just help me understand their brains and their personalities? Because I don’t get it. And so, it’s funny that you say this. I’m bringing this up because this cross-functional piece is important.

 Javan: [00:15:41] Yeah. And, you know, one of the best operations managers that I’ve ever worked with since Bob and I have the pleasure of working with them now. He’s one of our plant managers. And I have often called Bob the king of making do.  

And I don’t think that that is that is uncommon for ops managers. They kind of have these levers that they know how to pull and nobody else does to kind of get things done. And for ops managers, you know, they have this real sense that they know they have the source for getting things done.  

And so it can sometimes feel difficult for them when they’re relating with other people in the organization because it feels like they always want something from them. And even if you have somebody coming to them, you know, IT, engineering, whoever, saying, hey, we want to help you. It always feels like that help might be a little unhelpful in some ways. And so, you know, when you’re in operations, 

I hear this distrust of corporate and there’s a right way to say corporate in this in this kind of lingo is it’s the right mix of kind of smirk and a frown. This kind of disdain for folks who don’t really get it, don’t really understand what goes on it. And I get it. It really is it’s a challenge. But if we’re going to work together, we have to know where things are going.

 Javan: [00:17:07] And one of the best ways to do that is to work closely with, yes, believe it or not, sales. And I know the rivalry between ops and sales is always intense in organizations but working closely with sales to better understand the customer is really powerful. And so, I encourage operations managers, hey, if Sales wants to work with you, if they want to bring customers in for a plant tour, make the time to give that plant tour, because that’s some face time with customers and you get to understand better what they value.  

And oh, by the way, I don’t know of any time that ops manager has gone to their counterpart in sales and said, hey, I looked right along to the customer visit to better understand our customers, what makes them tick that sales said, no, we don’t want you visiting the customer. You know, those are things we don’t always think about.  

Maybe think a little outside the box, but there’s something that somebody with an operations brain and understanding can bring when they are visiting a customer’s place of business, learning about how they do business, how they handle the product or work with the services that are provided by that company that a salesperson isn’t going to see and is going to sometimes miss.  

And so, as an Ops Leader, you can do that and you can better understand your customer. You’re going to have insight into what to prioritize in your day and what you’re doing.

 Javan: [00:18:27] And by better understanding what matters to the customer, you are actually supporting your team. You’re setting themselves them up to succeed by giving them better insight into what matters.  

And I’ll just give you one other example. I mean, I know one thing we’re doing, and I’m sure we’re not the only ones, is we’re trimming our product lines right now and trying to streamline the things that customers care most about. Well, an Operations Leader, if they understand what matters most to the customer, sometimes there are easy changes and easy fixes that make life so much better for the customer that it takes somebody with the operations background to see and understand.  

And so, I think it’s really important to work together. It’s so easy to, you know, go through a sales and operations planning cycle and feel like man sales is making life hard for us. And, you know, we’re not doing things right. And all the things that Operations cares about, whether it’s changes to the product meters, or the man not being low level or those sorts of things, if you can get more insight into who the customers are and what matters to them, it makes a big difference.  

So that’s something I feel strongly about that I think that even though maybe it’s in the opposite direction of the Ops Manager’s instinct, I think it really increases the value that Ops can bring to the table as a strategic business partner with the rest of the organization.

 Jamie: [00:19:57] Yeah, I love this. And what I’m what I’m hearing, too, is this. That’s how it will elevate the conversations so that as we get more clarity, as we have more shared experiences. So now the sales and operations partner, they can have a whole new level of conversation and dialog than what could happen before.

 Javan: [00:20:19] Absolutely. And it’s so important to realize that as an Ops Leader, you not only are responsible for a team, you work as part of a team. And so really embracing that role in the organization can help empower your team, because one of the things that happens and Ops Managers are as likely as anybody to complain about organizational politics and things like that, but if all I’m doing is telling my team, my team members that, hey, hang tight, I’ll deal with sales, I’ll deal with the engineering, and we’re not actually working together with clarity about where the organization’s going, what its priorities are, even if it means I’ve got to sell things to folks for my team and say, hey, this is important for our goals, then we’re only contributing to that organizational politics and infighting and silo building.

 Jamie: [00:21:10] Absolutely I do. I hear that where, you know, they kind of like, oh, well, you know, I’ll deal with them, or I’ll go talk to them, or that’s out of my control right now. You’re not helping the situation for sure.  

So, as we look forward to moving forward right next year and coming up over the next 12 to 18 months, what do you think are the leadership opportunities that you think organizations like yours are going to face? What are the other fears you have or even maybe what you’re excited about? Because it presents a new opportunity when you think about leadership and culture coming up.

 Javan: [00:21:47] Yeah, people, people, people. I mean, to me, people development is more important than ever before. It’s something I’ve always seen as important. Obviously, in a company that’s growing and scaling, I’m very concerned about scaling our people along with our processes and our strategic goals and our market positioning. So people development matters from that standpoint.  

But in this environment in particular, we are seeing the reality that people choose jobs based on what that’s best for them and what matters to them. And so if we don’t have workplaces where people are growing, developing and being challenged and given the opportunities that they want, we are going to continue to struggle to recruit and retain people. And so, to me, people development is really the big challenge. 

 And I know it’s always how do we have time to do that? But it’s little things that add up and particularly if we can involve them with problem solving and identifying issues, improvement ideas, and really give them that clear line of sight to the things that matter. Right. KPIs that actually make a difference to the customer and don’t just report on activity in their workspace, then we can start to make a difference.

 Javan: [00:23:03] But I really think we have to start thinking about the folks in our organization as people that are going to grow and develop. And we want to see people graduate out of jobs, not drop out of them. And so, if that graduating out of an entry level job means moving on to another job in our organization, or maybe they have a career dream or path that doesn’t involve our organization, great. 

But if they could be better for the time spent here and we can feel like they really grew and developed and we see more graduates instead of dropouts, then I’m fine with certain jobs having higher turnover rates than we think is ideal.  

But the key is that we’re developing the best in our people. I know it always is a bit of a challenge saying, well, how much should we invest in people if they’re going to leave? Well, it’s a whole lot worse if they would decide to stay and you didn’t develop them at all or invest in them.

 Jamie: [00:23:56] Yeah. So, if there’s an operations executive out there right now who says, you know, I hear you, but I just don’t know how much can I really invest and maybe some of this money, but a lot of its time as well. Right. Like how much can I really invest in development given all of these things going on and all of these challenges? What would you say to that person?

 Javan: [00:24:21] It is a challenge, obviously. There’s only so many hours in a week, but five final days, you know, whether it’s, you know, team exercises, assigning mentors to look out for people, just quick check ins or building into your processes the healthy rhythms and routines that are going to give people challenges to help them grow. 

And really, you know, the question is, if you’re doing the Tier one daily stand ups, are we really engaging our people there or are we just kind of going through the motions or are those routines healthy? Are they working or are people seeing the problems doing it to do something about them?  

And the more we can do that and like I said, clear line of sight and what the organization is trying to accomplish and then giving them the tools and resources to grow in their ability to make a difference.

 Jamie: [00:25:16] Great. All right, so, Javan, as we wrap up, what words of encouragement or advice would you leave our listeners with today?

 Javan: [00:25:24] Keep it up. When I talk to leaders, I just say keep it up. There’s so much going on, it’s hard to prioritize. But the key is to find the couple of things that really matter, and they’re going to make a difference over the long haul and make sure that those are the things you’re doing. Which are moving the needle forward and the things that matter and better understanding of where we want to end up. Where do we want things to be in a year from now or two years from now? And are we doing the things today that are going to help our people get there?  

It’s not all on you. Often we’re in the seat of we have to make it do. It comes down to us. We’re in the position to make it happen as ops leaders. And sure, the buck stops here, take ownership, but build, rely on the teamwork, the folks that you can rely to help make it happen.  

And so that would be my encouragement is know what your priorities are to communicate them and then work with the people on those things. And I get it. That’s tough, but that’s the only way we’re going to move our organization forward.

 Jamie: [00:26:30] Great, thank you, Javan. I really appreciate you joining us today and the insights that you shared.

 Javan: [00:26:35] Thank you, Jamie. It’s so great to be here. And I love your show and what you do.

 Jamie: [00:26:41] You heard it, folks, you have to invest in people development and creating environments where people are challenged and engaged. You can hear more about my model for doing this, which covers the four P’s of leading excellence back in Episodes 52 and 53, where I talk about inspiring an engaged, aligned team and about creating and sustaining an improvement culture.  

Now, here’s what I know. Your operations managers have the biggest direct impact on creating the type of environment that Javan talked about today. So you got to invest in developing your operations managers. I also really love that Javan challenges operations managers to be strategic business partners.  

One of the other benefits of developing your operations managers is that doing so gets them out of firefighting all day long and into more of a proactive, intentional leadership space. So leadership development, when applied, it elevates everyone.  

And of course, how well do your operations managers understand who the customer is, what they truly value and why and how their teams help deliver that value.  

All right, it’s time for you to take action. I want you to reflect on what you heard today and then head over to LinkedIn and share your key away. Be sure to tag me Jamie V, V like Victoria, Jamie V. Parker and Javan Lapp in your post.  

If you need links to our profiles, you can find them at our show notes at processplusresults.com/podcast. Now, a quick question for you. 

 Do you know a COO who would be a great fit for this Executive Series? Drop me a note and nominate them. I’m looking for improvement minded operations executives who have lessons learned and messages to share.  

Now, here’s what’s happening in this 2021 September Executive Series.  

Next up, Kristin Ogo is going to talk about how Kenmore Envelope Company built and expanded their leadership team through a period of big growth on September 22nd.  

Marc Bronn, former President of Cambridge Air Solutions, talks us through the process of transitioning out and developing someone to fill your executive shoes. 

And on September 29th,  Scott Post, COO of Pizza Ranch, shares the challenges and a few triumphs of leading Buffet restaurants through a pandemic.  

And of course, if you missed it, last week, Gary Peterson dropped some serious inspiration, including my new favorite quote. Head back to listen if you missed it. Until next time.