Profit Champion, The Manufacturing Insitute

2. Big company/small company
- Leadership is the key
Mike Innes
Profit Champion
The Manufacturing Institute

3. So what have I learnt about leadership?
My first engineering role
Great training and mentoring
In at the deep end
SME with global reach
Operational excellence first
Profit Champion for SME’s

4. Leadership is quite broad
• Providing direction with a clear and compelling way forward with coordinated
plans and actions organised to achieve agreed goals
• Adapting positively to change, taking the initiative, clarifying issues and
ensuring decisions are logical
• Communicating persuasively to engage people while presenting a confident,
assertive personal image
• Enabling others to take the right action, delegating effectively to the right
people as well as listening, supporting and giving constructive feedback
• Learning personally from all situations, accepting responsibility for mistakes and
persevering with determination to succeed
Andrew DuBrin estimates there are 35,000 definitions of leadership in academic literature.

5. Principle centred leadership
• The Mars Five Principles are the foundation
of their culture and approach to business.
• They unite employees (associates) across
geographies, languages, cultures and
generations.

6. Great Place to Work® recently noted other key areas for
its unique working environment and Associate culture:
• Mars’ commitment to providing safe, healthy and positive
workplaces so that all Associates feel engaged and motivated.
• Providing a unique learning and development program through
Mars University, with more than 40 percent of Associates
participating in learning programs worldwide.
• A commitment to making a difference to people and planet
through performance by putting Mars Five Principles into action
through their work or community engagement.

7. Surrounded by great people
• When you have 20 great ideas, someone needs to
decide where to focus
• Energy everywhere, but watch out for arrogance
• Every ex-Mars person I’ve come across says it was a
great place to work
The Mars Five Principles guide everything

8. Small company leadership
– it’s just the same
• Define your values
• Communicate widely
• Build a great management team
• Get out of the office and the building
• The world’s a small place when you have
a compelling value proposition

9. Culture and Values
• Commitment to developing and maintaining long term
Customer and partner relationships, through building trust
and exceeding expectations.
• People make the business – listen, communicate and involve
• Obsess with Quality
• Drive continuous improvement and Change relentlessly
Ensure your values are shared with all your stakeholders,
communicate relentlessly

10. Values in action, linked to the
Crane Business System
• Strength through integrity
• Performance culture based on trust and respect
• Make it ugly
• Good people make good things happen
• Continuous improvement
• Passion for learning
• Crane helping Crane
• Focus on the customer
• Faster, better, easier
Crane hold 500 Kaizen events each year as the basis for continuous improvement

11. Operational excellence rules
• Continuous improvement as standard work
• Investment in training gives great payback
• Process needs balancing with creativity and
freedom

12. Characteristics Industrial Age Knowledge Age
Asset Base Tangible assets Intangible assets
Capital & Labour Skills & Knowledge
Resources Innovation
Leadership Practices Principles
Focus on efficiency Focus on effectiveness
Formal Authority Moral Authority
Leaders as a boss Leader as a servant
Boss is responsible Culture is responsible
Leadership
Challenges

13. “The rate of change is not going to slow down anytime soon. If
anything, competition in most industries will speed up even more.“
Globalisation
Horizontalisation Technology
LEADERSHIP
Ageing
Society
Quality of
Life
More
Educated
Balance
Retrenchment
The structure and type of
work will change
Diversity
Technology
More than a third of employees
would take a pay cut for less
stress
More than a third of 24
year olds are graduates
Putting together programs that help employees
find the right balance between home and work
Baby boomer
retirement ‘wave’ will
wash many skills from
industry
Dealing with a diverse
workforce and finding a way
to direct these workers
toward a common purpose.
Technology will give employees
more autonomy over when and
where they work.
Effective handling of company
downsizing and retrenched
workers
Equal access to information
and knowledge
John P. Kotter
Leadership
Challenges

14. Leadership Challenges - new paradigms
(Highly educated)
(Capable of independent thought
and willing to challenge)
(Evolution of consciousness seeing
desire to own one’s own destiny –
even with older workforce)
(Priorities of current
workforces very different to
predecessors)

15. The Triple Bottom Line

16. Principle –centered Leadership
“If you focus on
principles, you empower
everyone who
understands those
principles to act without
constant monitoring,
evaluating, correcting
or controlling”
Stephen R Covey

17. Some things I learned along the way
• Visit customers all the time and encourage everyone else to
• Build trust by listening, and then following through on promises
• Customers don’t always know what they want until you show them it
• Vision – people like to know where they’re going
• Build a great team around shared values
• Create product champions – things need to be loved
• Training, training, training
• Go ugly early– expose problems and fix them fast
• People expect quality
• Bend like a bamboo – pick your battles