Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1265351
58 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2020 Feature Interview by Barry Matties I-CONNECT007 Ross Berntson, president and COO of Indium Corporation, shares his perspective, thoughts, and lessons learned on managing his global organization as Indium Corporation responds to health issues, market demand shifts, and organizational change. This interview was conducted in May 2020. Barry Matties: Ross, we recently conducted an interview with you on the manufacturing pledge Indium Corporation and a consortium of manu- facturing businesses in central New York devel- oped and signed. The realization is that it's not identifying the small things that you may not think about—like the salt and pepper shakers— but now we're rethinking nearly everything, including company strategy and markets. Let's start by talking about health and safety. Ross Berntson: If you can keep a spirit of every- one being in this together and trying to create a safe environment, then a lot of good ideas come out from the people on the front lines. That's so important because the big challenge that we're fighting right now is complacency. We're bringing in a local analytics professor on the fidelity of adherence to practices like in healthcare and in foodservice companies. She has been doing this work for a long time. She's going to help us come up with both metrics on the fidelity to the program, as well as ways to look at measuring how well we're doing at keeping that fidelity high. Matties: And that becomes a very visible mea- sure for your entire team to be aware of. Berntson: We have a goal of zero on-site trans- mission, of course. And it doesn't mean zero cases. It's almost impossible to have zero cases. People in the company are married to health- care workers. We've already had positive cases in our employee population, but we haven't had that transmission through contact tracing on-site, which is our goal. We don't want any on-site transmission. Matties: Are you doing daily temperature checks as they come to work? Organizational and Team Management in Times of Change Ross Berntson