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A corporate fixer who makes a commitment to listening to rank-and-file employees? A major British Columbia lumber producer who will focus on quality over quantity? I know… I shouldn’t hold my breath.
On the other hand, an article in a Vancouver Island paper (Cowichan News Leader) “Meet Western Forests Products great new hope” makes me want to be a believer. Steve Frasher is a corporate fixer who was brought in by Western Forest Products in June of 2009. As new president & CEO, he has a mission both straightforward and daunting: bring the company back to profitability in the midst of the worst business environment the BC lumber industry has ever seen.
What stood out for me in this article were not the business facts of WFP or the BC lumber industry. As a BC resident, I have heard them all 100’s of times before. What caught my attention were the values and approaches of Frasher himself.
Both Frasher and the job WFP have ahead of them provided an opportunity for me to pause and reflect on why this sounds promising, and what may be some key strategies to take away.
Three items gave me pause.
1. It’s never happened before! A spokesman for WFP is quoted as saying that Frasher is going to do something that has never been done before: he is going to talk to people. Yup. It sounds like for the first time in this 140-year old company (including its earlier incarnations) of about 3,000 employees, the boss is finally going to talk to the troops. I know this is over-simplified, but probably not by much. To quote a WFP spokesperson: “He talks to people and wants to hear what’s important to them and that’s not something that’s happened at Western before…”
While it is easy to be flip about this, this is worth noting and watching for two reasons. Firstly, an organization like WFP has a deeply entrenched culture that is almost certain to resist Mr. Frasher’s efforts. 140 years of being ignored tends to make people a little suspicious and cynical. The first signs of weakness or deviation, even if legitimate and temporary, will be seen as signs the effort was phoney from the start.
Clearly defined and communicated early success indicators will help to off-set this.
Secondly, making people feel like they are truly heard, while balancing what needs to be done even if people disagree, is tough even in healthy organizations. The ability to tell someone you understand and value their input, and then go and do the opposite of what they suggested without losing their loyalty, is one of the hallmarks of truly masterful leadership.
Absolute transparency and clarity in the decision making process significantly raises the chances of success in this.
2. Let me make this perfectly clear. That last approach sounds exactly like what Frasher is proposing. To quote him: “These people know what to do, so we’re going to understand our markets better and we’re going to pull fibre through mills where each one will have a marketing plan, the employees will know what the plan is and they’ll know the (goals) every day.” Exactly.
Making every level of the organization aware of what the plans are and what individual and division-level contributions are expected to be is a powerful an necessary element of a change process. If Frasher and WFP’s middle management layer are able to sustain this level of transparency and engagement for the duration, that will be a victory in itself.
When things go off the rails, as they surely will, it is critical that management takes the bullet and avoids finger-pointing. It’ll be a hard slog as it is, but people with little power in the process taking the heat for failures is a sure way to quickly demoralize the team.
One thing I was looking for in this, but didn’t see, was a reference to employee/team motivation or rewards. Keeping your job is certainly motivation for a while. But as the months and years tick by, and the inevitable setbacks occur, consideration of recognition and celebrations is critical. Even success has its pitfalls: if there are early successes, and bonuses, promotions, and other benefits accrue to senior management but not to front-line workers & managers, the cycle of cynicism and declining productivity will start all over.
A powerful form of recognition is to let people know explicitly what role they have played in any success. Giving credit where credit is truly due makes hard work worth it.
I suspect Frasher knows this as well as anyone, but it would be interesting to know the vision here for WFP.
3. Quality not quantity. Western Forest Products has been divesting itself of non-core assets. This is often the right decision as it brings focus back to the operation. At the same time Frasher is refocusing WFP’s core business model. He is looking to match demand with quality product rather than working on volumes and margins. In his words, “We’re going to focus on quality as opposed to quantity.” Frasher claims “It’s not a dramatic change, but it’s a change that will help us become a successful, sustainable forest company.” I’m sorry, but any time I hear a company who’s very lifeblood is a commodity say that they are focusing on quality and sustainable customer responsiveness, that’s dramatic.
As I wrote in What if your Business Disappeared Tomorrow? businesses operate on a commodities-to-relationship continuum. At one end businesses treat products and services as a commodity: driven exclusively by considerations of price, margins, and volume. At the other end are businesses that treat each transaction as arising out of, and contributing to, a relationship driven by quality of experience (for customers and employees).
Businesses with a commodities mindset are vulnerable to competition because they are unremarkable and entirely reproducible. They are always looking over their shoulders to see who is coming up behind them. A competitor will inevitably emerge who is able to do the same thing for less money.
A business built on creating unique relationships strives for a culture that sees customers and employees as partners. These businesses are far less vulnerable to competition because they focus on creating unique experiences that are difficult to reproduce.
Typically the latter business model is consistent with being a premium provider, where things like lower volumes, customization, time per transaction, lower wait times, etc. result in higher costs.
For a business literally in commodities to make a deliberate shift towards relationships and quality is dramatic. It has impacts on everything from marketing (influencing decisions about product, pricing, placement, and promotion) to operations, investor relations, and human resources.
In all three areas this is exactly the kind of shift Frasher seems to be proposing. I am intrigued and interested to see how this plays out.
