5 Minutes with Colin Hales

With a longstanding operational leadership career, Colin has most recently operated as Eurocell’s Chief Operating Officer.

Having worked within fenestration, and managed numerous Operation Director and operational led Managing Director assignments, Mark was keen to understand more about Colin’s views on key topics. 

Here’s what they discussed:

Mark: Your career has centred around understanding broader company strategies and incorporating them into your operational plan. In doing so, what are the key areas you focus on to ensure the two align?

Colin: I’ve sometimes found that a company’s ambition has been well articulated into a strategy document, generally after the Senior Leadership Team, or SLT, have spent considerable time in workshops and off-site events.  After that, the SLT, being enthused with a perceived joined-up and aligned direction of travel, all go back to their functions/departments and delve into the art-of the possible within their own teams.  That’s where the problem starts and the massive potential from a mobilized group of talented individuals loses its effect, why? They fall back into silo’s!

For many years now, I’ve been a huge fan of Policy Deployment.  The reason being, you can breakdown the three-to-five-year strategic ambition into manageable bite-size chunks, or annual improvement priorities and objectives; furthermore, you can then cascade these objectives all the way down the organization to ensure work is being done on the critical few rather than the trivial many.  Everyone should be aligned right? Not always, there needs to be regular follow-ups to ensure that the objectives are met and often course-correction needed as things don’t always go as we expect, this is absolutely fine.  The operational plan reflects the short-term tactical issues which need to be addressed to meet the strategic ambition and can be done independently of other functions but is not ideal.

Mark: And your experiences have involved major turn arounds of both SME’s and large corporate manufacturers. When building strategies and rolling them out on the factory floors, how does your approach change for the two very different styles of manufacturers? 

Colin:  No two situations are similar!  However, the approach that works for me and can be applied to all scale of operations is best summed up using the analogy of ‘triage the patient’. Invariably, my first port of call is either the CFO or Head of Quality, why? I need to gain some context on what the patient’s condition might be.  Do we have P&L issues, cash flow or commercial margins, quality, or new product launch problems to name a few…what’s the voice of the customer really telling us?  This is important when I then engage with the business from a product, process or people perspective as I have context and can then begin to form a rehabilitation plan.  I’ve often seen open-heart surgery applied to the patient in the form of a panic reorganisation, restructuring, product changes and wasted investment resulting in uncertainty, confusion, concern and ultimately stress on the workforce and loss or demotivation of key talent.  Sometimes all that is needed is a little physiotherapy, that is small changes to daily routines, changing bad behaviours to better ones, allowing your talent to take a step-back, breath and reflect ultimately performing a reset.  This can be done quickly and although a cliché, small quick wins build confidence and momentum.

Mark: Recently, throughout the operationally led assignments that I’ve managed within building products, devising and executing new continuous improvement programs have been key focusses. Especially within SME manufacturers, a “Toyota Production System” approach doesn’t work. When inheriting a new plant, how do you assure where on the CI journey the manufacturer is, and what are your first go-to’s that typically create improvements fast?

Colin: You can get a good sense when you walk the floor.  The general signals are house-keeping, colleagues respecting health and safety requirements, organization of workstations, condition of welfare areas and what visual management is about. Important for me – is everyone willing to make eye-contact and engage in a conversation?

Also, I think it depends on where on the journey the business is in their aspirations to improve.  My go-to is always trying to keep it simple; I like to promote the use of common sense, and to use another cliché, sometimes common sense isn’t that common.  I like to highlight areas of inefficiency, cost burden and waste, in its traditional seven guises, as opportunities for the business to improve – if I hear ‘we’ve always done it that way’ alarm bells ring and I reply with ‘I’m only interested in the best way’.  There must be structure to the activities, without structure and follow-up you could end up with conflicting initiatives which significantly slow progress down or even reverse it.  Again, critical few against the trivial many – as well as recognising the colleagues running the process day-in, day-out know where the issues lie and often what can be done to improve. 

Link back to the improvement priorities and objectives from the Policy Deployment activity, be brave, find the time to release colleagues from their duties to conduct improvement events and follow-ups.  Creating this level of engagement gives you a better chance of driving sustainable improvements through ownership thus, beginning to embed the positive behaviours that we want our colleagues to demonstrate – relentless continual improvement.

Mark: Clearly, health and safety are central to any operational leadership role. Companies’ awareness of mental health throughout workforces have heightened over the last couple of years. Is this an area you’ve been involved in implementing, and what positives have come from driving awareness and change within operation departments? 

Colin: Absolutely, we all have a responsibility and duty of care for the health and safety of our colleagues, and you are correct there has been a significant shift in short-term, potentially leading to long-term, absence related to mental health.  Whilst still maintaining normal health and safety disciplines regarding safe systems of work and compliance, we as employers are now exploring ways to provide support or employee assistance programmes as well as reviewing policies which potentially impact upon the colleague’s mental health and the stigma attached to it.

I’ve witnessed first-hand where a team leader, who had noticed a change in the behaviour of one of his team members over a short-period, was that concerned he went to his house to make sure all was ok as he’d missed a shift only to find that he had tried to take his own life, thankfully the colleague recovered and received help through the company’s assistance programme. 

From a human viewpoint, we must respect that the issue is real for the individual and we must recognise that ours’ and other colleagues’ actions, or words, could exacerbate their mental health, furthermore, the issue may be not related to work – but that doesn’t matter!  For me, this is an area that we, as employers, should promote awareness of; the more information that is shared, workshops, access to support networks, guidance and treatment the better.

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