Do Your Due Diligence

Midway through my corporate career, I was a senior industrial engineer at Armstrong World Industries. I spent most of my time providing support to our many manufacturing facilities all over the world. I have always been fascinated by manufacturing and it never ceases to amaze me how good (and bad) decisions can immediately impact performance.

I thought I would someday be a plant manager and told my manager I wanted the opportunity to take the next step to get me there, as a business unit manager. I thought all my continuous improvement experience would serve me well and I would make more good decisions than bad ones.

One day, the week before Easter, my manager informed me that the plant manager at the Lancaster flooring plant wanted to talk to me about a position in his plant. I was excited for two reasons. One was my opportunity to learn manufacturing from the inside. The other was it would be a two-grade promotion. More money was never a bad thing, or so I thought!

I met Rob, the plant manager, on the Friday before Easter weekend. The plant wasn’t running, but he gave me a short tour of the areas I would be responsible for. All of the hourly workers were gone and I never met anyone on the staff. I thought it was odd, but I was enamored with the idea of the next step towards plant manager.

At the end of the tour, Rob offered me the job and told me that he wanted my answer by the end of the weekend. Even though I knew my answer, I told him I would talk things over with my family and get back with him on Monday morning.

I really didn’t think too much about it. I knew I was going to take the job. My wife was supportive and knew this new role would keep me home more. But the hours were going to be long. It was a tradeoff, but it seemed like the right choice to make. I did mention it was odd that I hadn’t met anyone during the tour, but tried not to read too much into it.

On Monday, I called Rob and told him I would take the job. My manager and I agreed on a transition plan, as I had some projects to wrap up or hand over to others. For the next four weeks, I tried to do both jobs, spending half of my time at my new factory, watching the staff conduct business.

One week before I started my new job full-time, Rob was promoted and left the plant. His replacement wouldn’t arrive for six more weeks. In addition, my counterpart in the factory who ran a different business had a three-week National Guard deployment. I would essentially be on my own, learning as I went.

I had a staff, but they didn’t know me. I also had the vice president of manufacturing to discuss issues with, should things get out of hand. I really didn’t want to have to use his support, but there were a few times that I had to. There were some union/management issues to be resolved and I didn’t have the historical perspective to help me out. So, I swallowed my pride and met with the VP. He was very helpful and supportive. He understood my lack of experience.

For the next few weeks, I barely survived. Finally, my counterpart came back and helped me deal with some issues and then our new plant manager arrived. Things got better, but they were tough. This plant had been in decline for many years and the management and union relationship was strained, to say the least. I did my best to improve things throughout my two years as business unit manager.

Would I have chosen a different path if I had known what was in front of me? Maybe. More likely, I would have tried to gain perspective on what I was agreeing to well before accepting the job. It would have eliminated some of my early bad decisions. It was an amazing learning experience. I like to think I gained twenty years of experience during my time on the job.