Brain Breach

The following entry is a summary of this amazing article, Engines of Democracy . This is exciting info, and a good follow up on the previous entry on Simplexity. You can read my drab summary of the article, or read the 12 pages yourself, which I highly recommend. I understand the ideas presented here aren’t turn-key solutions for every organization. It sure is interesting to think HOW these principles can be applied to my current and future companies.

• Just one floor manager for 170 employees
• Teams, averaging 16 people, create jet engines
• Three levels of techs, with clear pay grades
• Level 3’s can do any jet job
• Each task has clear directions, with photos of each step
• Interview process takes 8 hours:
  > They are given tasks, work with the team, and build a presentation
  > Team rates interviewee on 11 criteria, many involve teamwork
• They give each other feedback when needed. They don’t have resentment, or hide feelings
• Employees get creativity with the exact process of building engines
• They are trained on how to reach consensus, or live without getting their way:
  > they know if it doesn’t work out, the have a chance to change it later on
• Sharing skill is important, it allows the team to operate without you when you need time off
• Teams are really tribes: accountability, culture, training, loyalty
• Members periodically join councils to decide hr/discipline/rewards for other teams
• A team is responsible for themselves with things like cleanup and tool tracking
• Basic principles, from managers mouth:
  > Layerless organization
  > People paid according to skill
  > Everyone certified/trained by FAA
  > Tribal mentality
• Three types of decisions for the company
  > A decisions – The plant manager decides (She only makes 10-12 of those a year)
  > B decision – The plant manger decides with input from teams
  > C decision – Decision is made by employee consensus (most common type)
• Though they technically have only one boss for 170 employees, they see it as having 15 bosses. Their peers.
• Employees don’t think their job is making jet engines, but making them better

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 and is filed under Other, don't know how I got on without knowing this.