Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1275152
68 SMT007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2020 We don't ask them to turn in their plan, but we allow them to voluntarily discuss it as part of our last session. From what I've seen, most of the personal improvement generally is related to interpersonal skills we teach in the leadership curriculum. It might include being more proactive in identifying problems; a lot of times, they think more about how they interact with people and how it may influence the con- versations they have. They also look more at their negotiating skills, thinking about the importance of build- ing business cases for the things they either ask their employer or their customers to do. Those come out in our class discussions, and it helps them be more organized in the way they interact in their jobs. Matties: That's great because you talk about one phase of this course being focused on lead- ership, but the truth is that every aspect of the course all relates back to your leadership. Whether it's the contract negotiation or prob- lem solving, you have to take those leadership skills and apply them in the right circumstances. Mucha: Exactly. Essentially, a program man- ager can make or break the company they work in. In a large company, you can't kill a company with a single program manager. But in a small- to medium-sized company or a small or regional contract manufacturer, one program manager making one bad mistake can kill a company's profit for an entire year. It's a pretty important position in most companies. A good program manager also helps a com- pany become more profitable because they eliminate a lot of things that cost money. A good program manager benefits the OEM side of the equation as well because they elim- inate wasted activity that costs money. And when we look at the pricing in contract manu- facturing, we say, "We want to pay attention to the price." But there are a lot of hidden costs on both sides of the equation. If the contract man- ufacturer is efficient, and the OEM team is effi- cient, they eliminate items that would other- wise cost their respective organizations money on factors that nobody ever measures. This can include wasted activity, such as having to do three transactions instead of one because they're not thinking through how many ECOs they need in a week. Or it's somebody who is expediting stuff because they weren't paying enough attention to forecasting. That's what we talk about in this program. We help people focus on how to prevent bad things from happening in a business, which benefits both OEM representatives and con- tract manufacturing or EMS people who attend the class. It helps them think things through, which makes them better leaders in the parts of the programs they're managing. Matties: It's not what we pay; it's how much it costs. That's true in all aspects. With the shift of world circumstances, what sort of shifts are happening in leadership training with the large shift to remote work? Mucha: In the companies that I've talked to, I've seen two things. One is people have to take more personal responsibility for making sure their work—and the work of their team—gets done. But from what I've seen in most compa- nies, a lot of the people on the program team still have to work inside the facility. It's people in sales who typically work out of their homes. Depending on the company and its sys- tem capabilities, program managers might be doing more work from home, but most of the time, they have to go back into the factory. We talk about ethics and personal responsibility because that's part of it, too. The biggest thing is controlling the chaos that happens in somebody's house when they work From what I've seen, most of the personal improvement generally is related to interper- sonal skills we teach in the leadership curriculum.