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54 The PCB Magazine • May 2014 And nobody had a problem with that, includ- ing me, the lost puppy who sat in his office not knowing what to do. I was treated as a VIP, and I knew why! In that short span of time with him I was both intimidated and inspired. I wanted to prove to him I was worthy of his attention and my treatment. If he had been my captain in the army during a battle, I would have had no problem running out of my foxhole firing off rounds if he had instructed me to do it. With his command I wouldn't have given it a second thought. Jim is the Johnny Bravo that Simon Sinek talked about in this video I shared in my last column. Jim is an operations guy too, and in my inter- actions with him over the decades, he frequent- ly said, "Get to the end." So here it is. Corporate Lean doesn't work and it doesn't work for two reasons: First, it is a solution outside of the four walls of the plant and sec- ond, Lean is about change. You can't manage change; you have to lead change. What follows is Jim's story, in his words. It is a story about a plant that rose out of the ash- es and became one of the best PCB laminate plants in the world. And it is a story about how Jim changed to become the plant's true leader instead of remaining its highly compe- tent micromanager. The Jim Shaw Story: Turning a Dog of a Plant into a Shining Star Can Lean work with a cor- porate Lean manager? Not re- ally. The plant manager has to be the change agent—the true leader of any important mission. That is what my story is about. But I was once one of those people who come in from corporate to show the plants how to change. It doesn't work! There is resistance (or resentment) from the plant manager, hesita- tion from employees to trust an outsider, and a general dislike from headquarters for the ex- pert. Someone once gave me the definition of an expert that stuck with me: X is an unknown quantity and a spurt is a drip under pressure. Not very flattering. Because this corporate approach seems to be the way these days with Lean, I have developed what I call PowerLean to differentiate it from corporate Lean. PowerLean means the follow- ing: 1. The plant manager is trained in Lean and leads the charge 2. The plant manager has complete support from his boss and executive leadership 3. The focus of the Lean effort is on empowering the employees In my story, I will hit on each of these points as they come up. I will be using the term Pow- erLean, which refers to the three points above, even though back in the day it was just called Lean. Here we go. My plant wasn't performing and I didn't understand why. So I worked harder. Things got worse. I was perplexed. Some- how my plant had slipped to the point of having the worst quality, worst customer service, and the highest costs, by far, of all the plants in the company. This bothered me a lot. One plant had tried Lean and I had participated in a Kaizen event. It seemed to work, too. This was way back in the mid-1990s and was one of the first Lean events ever held in our indus- try. Based on this experience, I thought Lean could help my plant, so I set out to learn as much as I could. But something bothered me. I drove in one day and as I got out of my car, I felt more than ever that this was my plant. I had to play an active role in its change, and my conscious would not allow me to be a passive participant to some Lean consultant who would tell me what to do. I had to learn this Lean stuff and lead the charge or things would just stay the same. This was foremost on my mind when I walked in to my office. I knew my people were DOES CORPORATE LEAN WORK? continues Somehow my plant had slipped to the point of having the worst quality, worst customer service, and the highest costs, by far, of all the plants in the company. this bothered me a lot. one plant had tried lean and I had participated in a Kaizen event. " "