Business Growth Requires Leadership Growth with Kristin Ogo | 059

Business Growth Requires Leadership Growth | 059

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. 

 

Do you have the leadership team you need to support big time business growth? How are you deliberately identifying leadership needs and investing in and developing your leaders through the time that you give them, through the way that you mentor, teach and coach them? If your business is growing or if you want to grow, then you also want to consider how you’re growing your leaders. 

 

Welcome to the Lean leadership for Ops Managers Executive Series. Kristen Ogo knows what it’s like to work in a growing organization. 

 

I love the transparency she brings to today’s conversation as she talks about the steps that Kenmore Executives took to expand their leadership team and to continue to develop leadership capabilities through growth. You’ll also hear how their communication changed through the pandemic and why they’re keeping it going now. 

 

Kenmore Envelope Company is a High-End envelope manufacturer, serving clients’ direct mail needs. And Kristin joined the Kenmore team after managing a distribution center and online store for eight years. She served in a variety of roles across different functional areas, and now she serves in the role of Chief Operating Officer. 

 

Kristin focuses her time into driving the company’s mission and vision and bringing those values to life. And in order to do so, she believes in collaborating with team members to find solutions for continued growth. So, let’s talk to Kristen.

 

Jamie: [00:02:06] Hi, Kristin, and welcome to the show today.

 

Kristin: [00:02:08] Thank you. Thank you for having me.

 

Jamie: [00:02:10] Well, I’m so excited to talk with you and dig into leadership and growth and all of the things. But before we do that, I want to learn a little bit about you. So tell me about a value or mantra, principle, something that you feel kind of embodies your beliefs about leadership.

 

Kristin: [00:02:30] Absolutely. One that we use around Kenmore, a quote that we use is, “when the tide rises in the harbor, all the boats rise with it.” And I use that not just with leadership, I really use that around the company for different items that we’re working on.  

 

But with leadership, it’s just about each of us as individuals continuing to learn, continuing to invest in others as well as ourselves, so that when we do that, we’re all impacted by that. We all rise together and everyone gets to benefit from that growth.

 

Jamie: [00:02:56] Oh, I love this “we” piece of this. We together. That’s fantastic. Well, tell us a little bit about your organization. Who do you serve? How do you create value? Tell us a little bit about Kenmore.

 

Kristin: [00:03:13] Absolutely. So Kenmore is a third generation family business. We are located in Richmond, Virginia, and we have one production facility; it’s around 180,000 square feet. We have 175 employees currently, which is actually up from 146 pre-COVID. So that’s been really awesome to see.  

We serve the direct mail industry. We work with multiple verticals like auto, telecom, nonprofit banking, and we have relationships not only with those agencies but also with end-users, like the full service letter shops and the mail shop they’re actually sending that work out to the market.  

 

Our focus with them is really to create value with that envelope. So we focus on high-quality, quick turns. We not only want to get the envelope delivered on time, but we want their clients to actually open those envelopes and see the message inside. So that’s our focus.

 

Jamie: [00:04:03] Yeah, what a great need. I’ve done a little bit, the tiniest bit of direct mail work as in production from a standpoint of production. In my experience with FedEx, it was the tiniest bit because it was not our core business in any way. And so I have mad respect for the work that you do.

 

Kristin: [00:04:22] It’s definitely evolved. When I first started here a little under 10 years ago, I thought, man, this is so fast, everything is moving so fast. And I’d laugh at myself today because we’re moving even faster. And the fact that we have been able to do that as we’ve grown has been really exciting for us.

 

Jamie: [00:04:37] All right. So let’s talk about as you’ve grown then, because, you know, growth has been a big part of your story over the last decade. And, you know, of course, we love growth. Growth is fantastic, but it also creates these new opportunities and challenges.  

 

And I know it’s, you know, across the board, we’re talking a lot about leadership here. So so thinking about growth, how did you kind of build this leadership team as the organization grew?

 

Kristin: [00:05:04] So I believe when we started looking at our company and trying to figure out where are we going to go next? We needed to have a roadmap. So the first thing that we did is we partnered with a local company called Inner Well, and we had them come in because we didn’t know what to do next, really. And we focused on our mission, our vision, and our values.  

 

So we brought all of our team members and, of course, team members. And we all talked about what is it that makes us successful already? What is it that Kenmore has is a business that has got us to this point? And how can we really focus in on that? And what else can we do to continue that growth?  

 

From there, we really need to come up with a strategic plan. Where are we going next? And taking those two things and marrying them up really gave us an opportunity to look at our leadership team, to look at the levels that we had in our management, and realize that we don’t have enough. We’re not going to be able to get here unless we create additional layers. 

 

And that’s easy to say. But then you look at the team and you know, who do we have? What do we need? How can we invest in those individuals to get them to where we need them to be?  

 

So I think a big piece of that focus is just where are we trying to go? And then taking that roadmap with your mission, vision, values, being able to hire to that buyer, to that train against that and say, this is where we’re going.  

 

This is our roadmap. This is our culture. And these are all values have been really important. And at first, it was a little corny. It was like, yeah, we value reputation, right? We value drive. We value speed wins. But now it’s language we all use very regularly. It’s become part of our language of Kenmore.

 

Jamie: [00:06:38] I think that’s so important. There are four quadrants of cultural enablers that I teach and work with organizations on. And purpose is one of those, you know, encompassing all of the stuff that you talked about.  

 

And it’s so interesting as to see where organizations are successful in bringing it kind of off the posters on the wall right into everyday behaviors and also decision making. It’s a great way to guide your decision-making. Around some of those hard decisions.

 

Kristin: [00:07:06] Yeah, absolutely.

 

Jamie: [00:07:08] All right, so now, you know, you need these different management layers, but you’ve got like you said, it’s easier said than done. And now you actually have to fill these positions. So talk to us about, you know, how did you do that? How did you go about making it happen?

 

Kristin: [00:07:20] Absolutely. So it’s uncomfortable as you continue growing because you don’t know certain things. People who start asking you questions that you’re like, man, I haven’t even thought about that. I haven’t looked at that. And your ego starts talking. Right, because you should know all the answers.  

 

And so what our CEO really talked about here, Scott Evans, is hire people that aren’t like us, that know more than us, because, well, again, we’re all going to grow together. So when we look at individual that wasn’t we’re not looking for a mirror. We’re looking for what do they have that I don’t have? And then how can we exploit that? How can we say, all right, what is that position going to look like for them? How can they be most successful at Kenmore? Because they as an individual are bringing something that we hadn’t even thought that we might need.

 

Jamie: [00:08:05] I think that’s a great learning and takeaway there. All right. Well, let’s think about, you know, the adversity of the last 18 months. We’ve all kind of been in this pandemic situation. What was like a challenge that your leadership team faced and how you tackled or maybe even continue to tackle that challenge?

 

Kristin: [00:08:23] For us, staying open was was difficult at first, not knowing if we were going to be considered essential. Are we going to be here? All this work that we have, once we realized that we would be open, we did see a decrease of around 20 to 30% for those first three months. And going into it, we weren’t sure what that decrease was going to look like.  

 

So the first two weeks, I remember vividly sitting in a room with our CEO and our CFO and talking about how long can we go if the work just stops coming? What do we need to do to keep everyone here and keep them paid? There was just so much uncertainty out in the world. They were trying to make sure that in Kenmore, we knew the answers to the questions that our people would want to know. So then the next step is communication. We’re not seeing anybody anymore here. So all day is being separate. 

 

It’s like everybody had COVID, right, that’s what you think, you got COVID, so we’re not stopping. We’re not talking. We’re not having that communication. So we started our Zoom calls just like the rest of the world, but we had a weekly company update where each of the leadership team started feeding our CEO with information on what was happening with our teams. We talked about our sales growth. We talked about what we were going to do as a company to keep everyone on.

 Kristin: [00:09:34] So we figured out how many months we could go and keeping everyone and we’d inform them of that. Like, if we don’t get another order, we can keep going, guys. And this is our plan. So we gave mental health days. We focused on making sure that everyone knew what that was going to plan on doing next, what the marketplace was saying that, you know, you think that somebody on the board, they don’t need to know where the market is going. Everyone needs to know everyone needs to be educated so they feel comfortable and confident that we have a hold on what’s going to happen next. 

 And that confidence makes them feel more confident that we’re going to lead them in the right direction. So communication has actually continued all the way until now. We still do our company updates. They’ve turned into this really fun thing that we have going. Oh, we’ve got green screens, we’ve got bobblehead sites. And it’s become just a ridiculous thing that we do. We read peer to peer cards on there. So people started actually writing cards in recognition, thanking each other since we weren’t seeing each other in person anymore.  

So it’s been really, really wonderful to have something come out of Covid that’s just had a big impact on our people and the communication we have amongst all the chefs since we do have 24/7, and we don’t always see the night shift and people coming in on the weekend.

 Jamie: [00:10:40] Yeah, it really sounds like transparency played a big role in helping to reduce uncertainty in, you know, in this time where it was full of uncertainty.

 Kristin: [00:10:49] Yes. 100 percent.

 Jamie: [00:10:51] And I’m thinking back to those days. I mean, I remember there was first, you know, however many months where it was like everybody was in this. Oh, what does this mean? Do we make it through this? What happens to our business and starting to worry about, you know, how long can I make it? How long can we keep paying people? What do we need to do to stay? What about now? Are you seeing higher levels of volume in business now?

 Kristin: [00:11:20] Yes, actually, we knew it was going to turn at some point last year, and we just kept preparing for it. Get ready. Get ready. You know, focus on the people, keep everyone here. And then it turned and it never stopped. So we usually have you know, we always do our quotes now, because the last five years, we hadn’t had a slow period.  

So we usually have a slower period, you know, Q1, a little bit of Q2, and then it kind of explodes starting in June, but we’ve done really well. We’re so grateful. We’re so thankful to have the problems of what are we going to do with all this work, how are we going to get it all out, and all the other challenges that everyone’s going through right now in the industry.

 Jamie: [00:11:59] Yeah, it’s so fascinating, because certainly, my clients have that same experience. Some of the folks, other COOs that I’ve interviewed here recently, they’re talking about the same across all kinds of different industries and all kinds of industries have that same “ahhh”. And then now it’s a completely different problem, which is, whoa, we are having, you know, volume levels that you know, or just we haven’t had before.

 Kristin: [00:12:24] It’s just unexpected. Right. So you can plan and prepare as much as possible that sometimes things are going to catch you by surprise. So you have to pivot, right?

 Jamie: [00:12:32] That’s right. All right. Well, let’s talk about kind of the here and now, because the reality is we are facing some of these operational challenges. We have supply chain gaps. There’s you know,   challenging employment market, there are some shifts in movement as far as like where people are living and their people are relocating different parts of town. People can work more remotely, which changes the competitiveness of the market.  

All of these different things. So thinking about here and now, how do you think operations managers, operations leaders need to evolve to be able to navigate these operational challenges while also building that organizational culture where people can thrive and really, you know, feel good about working here? They want to work here.

 Kristin: [00:13:17] Right. Yeah, that’s definitely a challenge. Everything that you name, those are the exact challenges that we all have with supply chain, with the employment market. All the means that we come into when we’re talking about something that we haven’t dealt with before, the question that always comes out is what are we not doing? 

So what have we done in the past and what are we not doing? And who how can we go out and research that? How can we go and figure out how people are being successful? Networking, having conversations, finding out what other people are doing in your industry.  

All of that’s really important, because the funny thing is, when you go into business, you think that everyone’s competing with you. And at least in our industry and the relationships that we have, we feel like we’re all in this together, not only internally, but externally, developing those relationships and having your team develop those relationships so they feel like they have a pulse in the market. 

It’s not just coming down from you. You’re not the only person that’s having these conversations. You don’t want to hoard that. It’s not for you. So going to them, asking them for the ideas, having them take those ideas. And even if you don’t 100 percent agree, sometimes you don’t have buy in.

 Kristin: [00:14:23] And when you are an operations manager or manager or leader, you always probably know a way to tweak it. Yeah, I can tweak that idea. I can make it a little bit better. Sometimes you just hold back. Don’t say anything at all. Let them have the idea exactly how it is and take it. And sometimes you’re going to be wrong. But there’s just there’s this feeling inside like, oh, well, we can do it a little bit different. It’s actually going to go further with your people if you leave it the way that it was when they brought it to you.  So think outside the box, do things differently. 

With the employment market for us. We started doing internal surveys. We started discussing possibly having “stay interviews” to figure out why do our employees stay here? What is it about Kenmore that keeps them here? What would it be that someone else would have to do to get them to leave Kenmore? So all of these new ideas sometimes can be uncomfortable. There are pros and cons to these things. What are we opening up if we start doing them? But how do we stay relevant? How do we get ahead?

 Jamie: [00:15:24] Yeah. Is there anything, in particular, you think you’ve learned or that has stood out to you as you’ve explored these possibilities?

 Kristin: [00:15:33] I think that with you know when I think about supply chain and what we’ve been doing with supply chain, we’re doing things in some cases a little unconventionally. So we will risk possibly getting inventory that we’re not 100 percent sure that sales are going to go through. And we think that it might go through and do a little bit of gambling right with what you have in the building and there those are things that we’re doing that are new, that are a little bit more unconventional that we might not have done before.  

Where a lot of companies like we’ve got to have it. The contract has to be signed. We have to know it’s coming. You know, we kind of push that a little bit. And if you win 75 percent of the time, you’re usually going to get ahead still. So look at those things. Look at those opportunities and don’t always follow the roadmap that was laid ahead of you before 2021. Because it’s a different year, for sure.

 Jamie: [00:16:17] Yeah, for sure. All right. So we talked a little bit about the last 18 months, some of the challenges now looking forward when you look forward to the next year to the next two years. What do you think are the leadership opportunities that organizations like yours are going to face?

 Kristin: [00:16:33] I think with a leadership team, it’s going to be relationships with their people and their teams. What I’ve really started focusing on early this year is, again, partnering back with Inner Well. Finding a company that knows more than I know and figuring out what can we do as a company. These are our challenges. What training do we need as a management team? And we’ve really started to invest in that team, because they’re the ones out there. They’re the ones talking to our people that are the ones developing those relationships.  

Listen for them. You know, what is it that we’re doing? What is it that we’re not doing? If there’s a problem, bring it to us first. Don’t wait until it’s too late. So we’re trying to make sure that our leaders are being developed. They know that we’re investing in them. They know and that I know that they’re aligned with what my values are so that they can align their values with their people as well.  

So I think that it’s really low hanging fruit and it’s so important. And it’s only going to make you happy to invest in your leaders because it’s only going to make their people happy as well. So keep a pulse on that. Don’t lose that relationship with your leadership team; see what they need and then invest in it.

 Jamie: [00:17:38] Yeah. So let’s talk about that a little bit. So what have you noticed as some of the things that leaders have needed? What types of either skills or conferences or concepts have you been investing in?

 Kristin: [00:17:51] Yeah, for me, it’s you start seeing the generational differences. Right. So especially in manufacturing, you have. Well, it’s really in any industry, but we have different generations and different leadership styles, and that’s fine. And you want that mix, but you also want to make sure that we’re all aligned with situational leadership, which is one of the big ones that we’re focusing on this year.  

If something is happening that’s wrong, it’s usually not the person, it’s the situation or the process. Right. And changing somebody’s mind from one section, one end of the spectrum to the other is really difficult. And you have to practice and you have to work through and you have to learn how do you actually do that? And last year, we had bias training during all the movement that we had for those six months. And obviously, we’re all still working through that.  

But they’re difficult conversations to have. And as a company, you don’t want to risk yourself. I’m not going to go and have this conversation. There’s this uncomfortable feeling. So utilizing someone from outside has been super, super key for us. They come in, they’re the ones that facilitate. I get involved. I go to these meetings and I and I do my part as well. But it allows someone else to also teach you as the leader of that team.

 Jamie: [00:19:03] Great. And so for the managers or executives that might be out there and they’re like, hey, you know what? I hear you. But we’ve got a lot of things to invest in right now. And I don’t know if leadership, like investing in leadership is really where I want to go. It just it seems a little soft, right?  

It’s hard to have maybe it’s hard to draw the direct connection between this and a bottom line number. You know, so maybe they’re on the fence. And what would you say to that person?

 Kristin: [00:19:27] I would say that if you at all or having any staffing issues like the rest of the world, that leadership and if you don’t know this, you know, there’s a lot of books about it, but leadership, it has the most the biggest impact on your team and your turnover. So if you’re seeing turnover and you’re spending a half a million dollars every year on turnover, and you don’t want to spend the ten thousand dollars on somebody to come in and facilitate some training, now, you might want to reevaluate that.  

You might want to see where are you actually losing money. When we look at data, especially in operations, you’re looking at materials, right? You’re looking at what does the lights costs this month? But the turnover is so important. And don’t just leave it to HR, don’t just leave it to the CFO. Everyone should be involved in the turnover. And what that impacts and it’s not just, OK, we lost that person, this is the cost of that person. How does that affect everyone around that person? How does it affect that leader? They’re gonna have to bring somebody new and start training that person. And this is the first thought that people have.

 Kristin: [00:20:23] What did that person know? That I don’t know. There must be something else is greener on the other side. And investing in leaders is just again, low hanging fruit. Invest in them. Not only what these facilitators and people coming in and talking about different leadership qualities, but from yourself, are you having one-on-ones? Are you really hearing them out? Do you know what happened with their kids last week?  

I know I talked about our company update. One of the things that we do on that is we bring up things that are happening in our team members families. David’s son just joined the Marines. You know, he just got relocated, was also excited for him. Mary’s daughter, she’s you know, she’s just shipped off as well, her birthday’s this week. If you want to write a Post-it note, get it to Mary’s desk. Like all of those little things make us all connected. And it makes us all care makes us all feel like we have roots. And you want people to grow roots. And the way you do that is through your leadership team first.

 Jamie: [00:21:16] I love it. I like to say business is personal and leadership is a relationship. And that’s what it sounds like y’all are doing. All right. One last question, because you run 24/7.   

I know that, you know, sometimes it can be challenging to carry over that same level of culture and engagement and transparency and knowledge and information from these day shifts, weekday shifts into our evening or overnight, or weekends. Any tips you have about that?

 Kristin: [00:21:48] Yes, that’s definitely a challenge that we continue working through. Right now, something new, again, that came out of Covid was the fact that we’re doing our production calls now via Zoom, and we still are continuing that now just because it’s been so successful. So our night shift supervisors are able to log in and engage on those calls in the morning. 

 What was happening before they would meet with our plant manager. All the communication would happen there, and then the plant manager would have to take that and get it to where it needs to go. So now the night shift supervisor gets to be on the call, gets the kudo’s, gets to talk about the problems that he had last night. We all get to hear it. Our scheduler gets to hear everybody that it impacts and then they get to take that and go to their team and say this is what happened this morning.  

And that is a small thing that happened that all of the night shift managers have just loved. They talk about it still, how much they’ve enjoyed it, how much they feel so much more connected with their team. So find a way that you can align everyone together at once. And whether that means it’s a monthly meeting or having your company updates where everybody, even though everyone can’t log on at the same time, they can watch the prerecorded message. They can leave notes. They can get with HR at any time.  

So we’re just trying to figure out ways that we can engage everyone and even shutting down the plant, we’re shut down the plant this month so that we can ah, I’m sorry, August 1st, and we’re all going to go to a Squirrels game together. And sometimes you have to sacrifice that. This is a busy season. But we shut down for nine hours so we can all go have burgers and dogs together. Everyone brings their families, you know, invest in those pieces because it really ends up being a very small amount to the whole for the year.

 Jamie: [00:23:23] I love it. Great tips there. All right. So, Kristin, as we wrap up, what words of encouragement or advice will you leave our listeners with?

 Kristin: [00:23:31] I do want to say that if you’re in operations, it just feels like it’s a thankless job. And I appreciate everything that you’re doing, whatever leadership position that you’re in, in operations. It’s thankless sometimes that you are the swing vote for something. You’re not making everyone happy all the time. But I want to remind you that what fuels me, because sometimes some days don’t feel that great.  

My best days are when I go out on the floor, when I take my walks, when I have those relationships. We look at it like, oh, we’re going to the gamba, right. We’re going to the floor. We’re going to figure out how we can be more efficient. There are days that I’m specifically going out just so I can see people and have my moments with them and see what’s going on in their lives. And you need that fuel. Figure out what it is and go find it and then actually nurture it.

 Jamie: [00:24:14] Oh, I love it. Great stuff here. Fighting the fight. What fuels you? And then go fill up. It’s awesome. Kristin, thank you so much for joining in and sharing your story and some of the challenges, some of the tips that and things that you’ve learned. Really appreciate you today.

 Kristin: [00:24:29] Thank you so much for having me. I really had a nice time talking with you today.

 Jamie: [00:24:35] You heard Kristin talk about the role, that purpose, vision, mission values, play in decision making all the way to how to hire, how to develop, how to communicate. And you could really hear Kenmore’s value of community come through in how Kristen talks about, you know, lifting all boats and learning together. I talk a little about using purpose to inspire an engaged, aligned team back in Episode 52 of the podcast.  

I also really want to call out the entire conversation about transparency and communication and how important that was in times of uncertainty and really how you want to make that a standard in your communication. 

And finally, one message that was clear is that Kristin values investing in developing leaders. And you know what? That wasn’t necessarily where we were going. But I’m so glad that this conversation went there, because you know that I believe it, too.  

And while there isn’t always a clear direct line from building leadership capabilities to an exact number on the P&L, when you pause to consider the implications, you can see how it’s really not optional. It’s required. It’s just a matter of how you do it. And Kristin really helped us to see that today. Now for you, it’s time to take action so reflect on this episode.

 Jamie: [00:25:54] What was your key takeaway? Head over to LinkedIn and tag me Jamie V. Parker and our guest, Kristen Ogo, in your comment. We’d love to see what you’re taking away and engage with you in conversation. And if you need links to our profiles, you can always grab them at our show notes processplusresults.com/podcast. 

 Now in our Executive Series for September of 2021, next up, Mark Braun is going to chair How to Leave Well, the process of exiting a leadership role and steps he took to develop the next President of Cambridge Air Solutions.  

Then September 29th, you’ll hear from Scott Post of Pizza Ranch as he walks us through the experience of leading a buffet restaurant through a pandemic.  

And if you missed it, go back to our first two episodes of the series. Two episodes ago, Gary Peterson drops some serious inspiration, including my new favorite quote. So head back to listen to it if you missed it.  

And last week, Jaivin Lapp talked about clarity and collaboration being at the core of improvement. So I hope you’ll join us for the rest of this Executive Series. Until next time.