Themes from the 2013 ICBE Conference
Common Themes arising from the ICBE Conference
I couldn’t even begin to do justice to the depth and breadth of knowledge shared at the ICBE conference ‘Strategies for Growth and Transformation’ on 15th & 16th October in Carton House but I wanted to touch on just some of the common themes that caught my attention.
- Irish Pride
Irish business people are proud that many of the world’s most successful organisations choose to locate here. John Conlon of the IDA spoke of how 75% of IDA’s business comes from repeat clients. As a country we must clearly be doing something right if companies are choosing to invest here time and time again. The passion from Noel Hennessy of Lake Region Medical was palpable. He sees going to work in the morning as going in to play a match – after all you have competitors don’t you and you want to win? Bob Savage spoke passionately about the satisfaction obtained from a busy EMC car park!
- Networking Matters
John McGowan of Ballina Beverages / Coca-Cola spoke of the importance of large multinationals in Ireland networking effectively internally in their groups. It’s clear that Irish plants need to showcase themselves within their groups. This is paramount in order that we stay relevant and remain crucial to these companies. Many companies spoke of previously having experts coming from plants in other parts of the world to review and recommend and help implement changes in our plants. This has changed; in many cases the opposite is now true as our engineers go to implement best practices in foreign plants.
- You have to look after people
Jeff Turner of Facebook asked us all an excellent question “Who would want to be led by you?”The following day Noel Hennessy of Lake Region Medical spoke of how Employee Engagement is a contact sport. A good way to get people engaged would be to get excited personally about the tasks at hand. “There’s no point in waiting for spontaneous combustion. You have to light the fire” he said.
Leadership, however, isn’t necessarily for everyone. Jeff Turner spoke of how Facebook recognises this and provides people with the option to progress through the organisation as individual contributors. Leading is not the only way to progress. A career with them is seen to have the flexibility of movement of a climbing frame, rather than a ladder.
Orla Graham of Deloitte spoke of the importance of the relationship between team members and line managers. People don’t leave organisations; they leave poor managers. Amongst other things engaged employees would agree with the statement that “My supervisor or someone at work seems to care about me as a person.”
There is no one way to look after people. What one person looks for is different from what someone else looks for. Generation B, X and Y are all currently in the workplace and they all have different values. Organisations need to constantly temperature check what ‘looking after people’ means to the people in their organisations and work to meet those needs.
- Start Now – Take Control
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The difference between step improvements and incremental improvements was noted. This was discussed primarily in relation to lean manufacturing projects, but I think the point relates to all organisations. Sometimes there is a danger of determining that improvements are required and deciding that in six months we’re going to do a site visit to a different plant and when we come back we will implement everything they are doing! The point was ‘why wait?’ Surely there are changes we can implement now that will save costs, improve efficiency, enhance the customer experience etc. The point reminded me of a phrase once said to me when I was stalling on something as I wanted it to be perfect. I was told sometimes things need to be ‘alright’ as in sufficient as supposed to be ‘ALL right’ as in 100% perfect. Certainly we need to make massive improvements where possible but if there is a small thing we can implement now – do that first! Don’t wait!
- Self-Improvement - whose responsibility is it?
Justin Kinnear of Britvic spoke about the amount of courses now available via MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course). The format varies slightly from provider to provider, but the concept is that you can now take courses on pretty much anything online for free. The point is that if we want to develop in a certain area, but our organisation isn’t willing or able to sponsor the course, what is stopping us from learning or acquiring the knowledge independently?
- Always be looking forward
This advice was given in relation to manufacturing and personally and is common to all of the points above. On the manufacturing front the organisations present relayed not only the increases in units per hour per person that they have achieved since the mid 2000’s, but also the changes in the products they manufacture. The increases and changes were staggering and constantly these organisations are looking to how their plants stay relevant within their networks far into the future. It struck me that nationally we owe a debt of gratitude to those leaders that keep their plants top of the pile within their group. It’s what keeps jobs and opportunities here!
Personally we need to make sure that our skill set matches what is currently needed by our organisations, while working to develop and ensure it stays relevant for the new organisation. The pace of change is staggering and we must work to keep pace!
To do the conference justice would probably have required a full transcript, but I hope I’ve managed to capture a flavour of the areas discussed.
Looking forward to seeing you all there next year!
