Monday Manufacturing Motivation – with Jeremiah Sinks

Curt Anderson 0:03
Dude, it’s like halfway through August like what’s happening here like somebody needs to slow the calendar down. How are you doing warp?

Damon Pistulka 0:11
It’s a time warp time.

Curt Anderson 0:12
And it’s like, what is today when

Damon Pistulka 0:14
in this wormhole we came out ahead that’s all it was. I don’t know if, like summer

Curt Anderson 0:18
slow down one minute guys. Happy Monday Welcome to Manufacturing Monday motivation, Damon, we have a powerhouse guest today. I’ve been looking for this for months. We have Jeremiah sinks in the house and we he’s running the Purdue Manufacturing Extension Partnership MEP in the great state of Indiana. Jeremiah. Good afternoon, my friend. How are you?

Jeremiah Sinks 0:42
Fantastic. Glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me. I’m really pumped up about today and hanging out with you guys and whoever’s watching this with us.

Curt Anderson 0:51
Absolutely. So hey, if anybody’s out there, just you know, drop a note, you want to connect with Jeremiah here on LinkedIn. And we’re going to take a deep dive by Jeremiah, you are doing some amazing work, I dropped some of your videos in the chat box here. Guys, you want to connect with Jeremiah and LinkedIn you want to check out do yourself a favor, check out his videos, go to the Purdue MEP website, and you can learn more. So Jeremiah, let’s just begin, you have a great background on manufacturing, I believe mining construction. I’m gonna take a step back a little bit. Let’s go back in time to share a little bit about your background and what led and then we’ll slide into where how you ended up at the Purdue MEP.

Jeremiah Sinks 1:27
Sure, definitely. You know, I’ve spent over 10 years in the automotive industry. And when I left there, I was part of a group, we went into this very small town in Northwestern Indiana. And we had to build and then operate this massive production facility. It was a 287 acre facility $350 million project, it was in White County, Indiana, and it was the biggest investment in White County by about $348 million. They had seen nothing like it. We got that place up and run. And it was a fabulous, fabulous time in my life. We We not only built the plant, the facilities, the processes and everything that goes along with it. It really helped me launch into the work I do today. Because among all the physical and process type things, one of the things we wanted to build with some serious intent was our culture. We wanted to have genuine leadership and build a tremendous culture. And we did that it was an absolute home run. Still to this day, when I when I run in people from that time, they they’re all over the country running plants and doing things and they say you know, I’ve still never experienced anything like that it was just fabulous. So we got that place up and running. And our commodity, I’ll keep this short and sweet. But our commodity went from $174 a tonne down to $38 a tonne. Yes, you can only out efficient, so many things, you can only cost down so much. So the unfortunate thing was we ended up having to close that place down. Now, as we saw that coming, we were transparent about it the whole way. Every one of us our views were that we employ families. And this was a serious thing. If people were going to lose their jobs. We didn’t want people to show up one day and find out we’re closed, we wanted to help people transition on to their next job. So what we started doing was well, we gave everyone the the two month warning notice. But they were we were open about it way before that. So it was no genuine surprise, we just kept hoping right that the price would come up so we could make it. And once we saw that wasn’t going to rebound in time we gave the notice. And then myself and some other folks, we started reaching out to the other companies and manufacturers in the Lafayette area, in that in that whole area, saying you won’t believe the people we have that work here, their character, their attitude, their motivation, you won’t believe these employees. So we said, come on out onto our property. And we were having job fairs and trying to help our folks get onto the next job. And as they were working if if they wanted to come talk to one of these companies, we’d find someone to cover for them and they could come in you know, it was all about people it was all about families and us doing the best we could to help them transition on. So word started to get around that this was something unique, a little different than most companies do. And someone said to me, you know where your heart and mind seem to be on the people side and and doing the right eight types of things. You might want to talk to these people over Purdue MEP. I said I’ve never heard of Purdue MEP.

Curt Anderson 5:07
What is an MEP?

Jeremiah Sinks 5:09
Right? Yeah. So some someone introduced me to them. And we we liked each other, obviously. Now here we are.

Curt Anderson 5:20
Oh, that’s awesome. Well, Jeremiah, that’s a great, thanks for sharing that story. David, did

Damon Pistulka 5:24
you What do you got? Well, yeah, I just, I just think it’s, it’s so your story is so timely, given the fact that over the last couple of years, we heard these horror stories about, and even today, I was reading again, about somebody just logging in, they don’t have access. And when they call in, it’s like, Hey, you were laid off. They didn’t even tell them, or the people have done it over a mass zoom call and stuff. And it’s like, this, this kind of thing is, it’s just, it can be done. Right. Like you said, it’s a bad situation, but you make the best of it. Or you can make it even worse.

Jeremiah Sinks 5:59
Yeah, it’s disappointing. I come across those stories as well. And it’s just absolutely disappointing. It’s good to be a good human being. Yeah, you know, sleep little

Curt Anderson 6:08
better. A little better. So. So let’s dig into this. So you’re, you’re a senior services manager, you’re big on leadership development. And you mentioned you are with the Purdue MEP. Let’s take a deep dive there for anybody out there, like, hey, MEP, what on earth does that stand for? Of course, we’re talking about the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. But just share a little bit about what is the MEP? What is what’s going on at Purdue MEP specifically?

Jeremiah Sinks 6:33
Sure, definitely, I love to. So we are first and foremost, I’d like people to understand we are a nonprofit. We’re primarily funded by NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. And we do get some grants from the state for different things. But essentially, the way I always like to talk about our group, you know, where organizations have a desire or a need to be bigger, better, faster, safer, smarter, in some way, shape, or form. We know a guy we got we got an abundance of experts in house, people like me who have who have done this stuff in real life, we don’t come in and talk about something we read in a book one time, man, we have the miles and we have the years behind us. And so whatever way people need help, we probably know somebody so we come in and we help them. Right? We do usually get a pretty good ROI. So we track impact NIST, NIST always wants to know, what’s the bang for the buck, right? So we track the impact. And I think the last numbers I saw companies who do work with us, their ROI is $14 for every $1 they spend Bice so that can be in food that can be in Lean, that can be in Six Sigma, that can be you name it, we have again, an abundance of experts and obviously leadership.

Curt Anderson 8:00
Right. So let’s, let’s slide into that. So again, you know, music to our ears, 14 to one return on investment, dude, that is absolutely phenomenal. You know, we were blessing. You know, Daymond i We know a number of your teammates, you know, our dear friend, Jean Jones, our bill, Kyle, Julie, Michelle, we could go on and on. Just share a little bit of when you know, people are like, you know, hey, but you’re intrigued me, Jeremiah, tell me some more. Talk about some of you know, you’re we’re gonna dig deep into your superpowers you do an amazing job with leadership and workforce development, but just share some of the other folks in your team. What can if somebody knocks on that Purdue MEP door? What can they expect with that engagement?

Jeremiah Sinks 8:42
Well, like you mentioned it several names and a lot more. We just were blessed for the people we have. Yeah, you got folks like, you know, art, he he’s done a lot of Lean and Six Sigma stuff over the years. We’ve got this guy at lavo, one of my favorite instructors, he is done. We believe he has done more value stream maps than anyone on the planet. And they kind of half exaggerating about that, right where it can come in, and he can follow your process and help organizations understand where they’re wasting time, money, resource, whatever, you know, in a heartbeat. We’ve got cybersecurity folks. You mentioned Jesus Jones, that guy, I’ll never forget how well he impressed me early on. As I was getting to know him. He was doing a little one hour in house session for us. And he was talking about, okay, let’s talk about your passwords and how strong they are. And I thought, well, I’m pretty good. And he’s just having the front of the class and he says, if your passwords are one of these and he throws like five or eight up there, he says you need to do better and one of them was mine. I was like, Are you kidding me?

Damon Pistulka 9:57
That’s awesome. I need to listen to that one. Yah, yah,

Jeremiah Sinks 10:00
yah, yah. And several others quality is one of our big deals, a lot of organizations, especially if you’re an automotive, you got to be ISO IETF, some type of certification and, and we’ve got folks who come in and literally will, they will set up the entire program for a company who’s just starting that journey. So they can, they can pass their surveillance audits and get their certifications. They come in, and we teach internal auditors, so they’ve got that they can do it in house safety, quality, on time delivery, and cost and everything that goes into that, right, we’re in it,

Curt Anderson 10:39
we are. So all sorts of amazing resources that you have access to. And of course, there’s an MEP in all 50 states. So even if some, you know, if there’s a subject matter expert outside of Indiana, you can pull that person in, you have access to third party resources. So again, you’re just a powerhouse of information, tools, assets that help a manufacturer, just you know, and again, so many manufacturers feel, you know, they’re like you said, you know, here, you’re tackling this massive project, and you had no idea that the MVP even existed, right.

Jeremiah Sinks 11:10
You know, and sometimes it’s nice when you understand that just to reach out and get a fresh pair of eyes. A fresh perspective. Yeah, a little extra horsepower. You know, all those things can help. Yep, absolutely.

Curt Anderson 11:24
Exactly. All right. So let’s dig into your superpower. So we were just sharing before we went live. So you went. So I’ve I’m blessed and fortunate. I have a client that I work with, through the Purdue MEP, and they were going on and on on workforce challenges that they have. And I was like, Hey, I have just the guy for you. I have a guy, right. And I sent him several of your videos that I actually put in the comment section here with our live today. And boy, they were blown away. And I get a note back Hey, Kurt, by the way, we’re working with Jeremiah in person. So kudos to you, you’re doing an amazing job. So talk a little bit about the type of work that you do. What what are the what are you seeing on the street? How are you helping your clients win the day with your with your leadership development and workforce? Solutions?

Jeremiah Sinks 12:09
Sure. You know, when we started our leadership series a handful of years ago, maybe six years ago, tick tock, it goes by quick. Yep, a handful of years ago, it was answering the call from a lot of our clients who said, you know, what? We, we’ve promoted in house supervisors. And what we’ve done is we’ve taken people who were really good, technically, mechanically, they were great operators, right? Yeah. And we promoted them. And what we’re running into is they’ll have the people skills to lead people, right. And so we put together a nine day series that runs every three weeks, and we essentially started their journey down that path, hey, let’s try to grow these leaders into actual leaders, right. We then have fairly recently, within the last couple of years launched an upper management leadership series. So the original one was for those leads, team leads, supervisors, floor folks, this other one, we tend, we tend to get the senior leadership team, the President’s CFOs, and so on HR directors, that one’s a 10 day series still has the same cadence every three weeks we get together. And then we just drill further into culture building and strategic alignment, vision, mission values, how do you live vision mission values, for example? A lot of folks I mean, real life real talk, when I asked people, Hey, what are your vision mission values? They gotta look them up. Right? Right there tells me there’s it don’t mean nothing. It’s something you print on a mug or a t shirt or posters up somewhere, right? So how do we make these things living breathing things? And what I will say to kind of tie this up here is the last couple years, but even before COVID, last year, before COVID, we’ve been getting sucked up into this massive need for employee attraction and retention. So the beautiful thing is, all the stuff we were already doing for the leadership side of things, was was always something that moved the needle on retention, and to be honest, on attraction as well. But as we’ve dived more deeply into this employee attraction retention issue and blended it with leadership, and sometimes some other things like leaving, you know, if I’ve got 40 open positions, do I really need 40 people? Or could you look at your process and understand that you’re, you really only need 36 If you set it up the right way, right? Yeah. So you know, most of our work has been down that road tied to the retention, which I’m going to say is good Link to the attraction side because those there’s nothing I like to call word on the street. Right? Word on the street. So think about this, if your employer, what do your employees do when they go home at the end of the day? Who do they talk to you? And what are they talking about? Right? So if you’re a toxic type of a workplace, hey, that’s gonna spread the word on the street, you don’t want if you’re the opposite, good culture, good leadership genuinely about people, right? They say this least they spread that message to and I’ll tell you, when it comes to attraction, your employees for most organizations, they’re your best recruiters or not one or the other. They’re in one way or the other. They’re not sitting idly still. They talk. It’s happening.

Curt Anderson 15:53
Right? And it’s, it’s up to you on, you know, hey, enthusiasm and negativity spreads just as fast, right? Yeah, negative. Unfortunately, negativity probably actually spreads faster. So, you know, you you can determine that outcome. And I love what you’re saying about culture gaming, when you think

Damon Pistulka 16:09

well, and you see this in good manufacturing companies that manufacturing companies that have good culture, I should say, because employees will will. They’ll try to get family hired, they’ll try to get friends hired, they’ll try to tell everybody about it right because they want their family to work in a place that’s I think to me that is one of the biggest things is when you see someone trying to get a family member heart you know that they like it enough to do that because they wouldn’t do that if they thought it was a bad place to work.

Jeremiah Sinks 16:40
absolutely on point right there. Absolutely. Point

Curt Anderson 16:45
and Whitney she she confirms 100% Negative spreads faster. So Whitney, thank you for for confirming that for us. So when you have some again, I dropped your videos. I love your videos. Jeremiah, guys, if you’re looking for some leadership tips, you definitely want to check out Jeremiah, you have people are working, but are they working for you? And when I absolutely, absolutely love what you’re talking about is culture. And you have another great video in so if anybody wrote from the 80s? Damon, you’re from the 80s. Right? There’s a woman named Tina Turner remember Tina Turner, she had a great song and said what’s culture got to do with it? Or something like I think was something like that, right? What’s Love Got to do? I don’t know. But we’re gonna talk about culture. But you’re my you have a great video. It’s what’s culture got to do with it. We’re going to do karaoke at the end of the program here today. But what does culture have to do with it? Let’s talk about take a deep dive man. Just enlighten us on how you help folks on that on that culture front?

Jeremiah Sinks 17:40
Absolutely. And Damon, what’s in that cup? Are you prepping for the karaoke? Yeah,

Damon Pistulka 17:44
I’m getting ready for karaoke.

Jeremiah Sinks 17:45
We all know how this works on these two. Yeah.

Curt Anderson 17:48
Three bed, three bed singers. But, you know, come at the top of the hour, we are doing Tina Turner. But anyway, we’ll see. I don’t want to ruin the surprise.

Jeremiah Sinks 17:57
So you know, I do have coming from automotive especially. I’m sure you folks understand that that industry is is highly processed, driven. We want to focus on processes big time. And we always are pursuing automation and poking error proofing, removing the the opportunity for human error. And my position is clear. Your culture will make or break you. I don’t care how robust your systems are, I don’t care how much error proofing you’ve put into your systems. At the end of the day, do people do the right things when no one’s looking? Even on simple things like automation? Someone could say, well, you know what? We fully automated we got Cobots and robots and whatever bots right? And so everything’s automated? How to how could a toxic culture screw that up? People aren’t even involved? Well, periodically, what do you got to do with these things? They need oil they need check. They need maintenance. Right? They need calibrated. You cannot outspend and you cannot out process poor leadership, which builds culture. So again, guess let me dive into it this way? Yeah. You know, we mentioned earlier, a lot of folks are promoted based off technical skills, mechanical skills. And they they’re what I refer to as homegrown leaders, and I am a fan of that process you promote from within give people an opportunity if they so on it. The there are a few issues with these homegrown leaders, one of which is that every time they’ve been promoted, they just got promoted to their highest level of incompetence, because they have never done it before. Right. If it ain’t their fault, you just throw them out to it. And so what happens is these these folks are trying to situate themselves they want to do well They’re not sure which way to go. But the heart’s in the right place. And so they think, Well, I got a new job title, I got maybe a bump and pay. And now I kind of view myself as part of the management team. So what should I start doing? I guess, I guess I should start managing people. Now, I will say this years and years of experience prior to joining Purdue, and of course, five and a half years, and then some with Purdue working with organizations all over the place. I say, with an absolutely crystal clear conscience. Most people in most organizations are over managed, and under lead, there is a game changing difference. Now to be world class to the best of the best, you want to be good at both. But let me tell you the differentiator, right, management is for processes. Leadership is for people. People don’t like to be managed, people do not like to be managed, right? So I want that continuity, that predictability, the stability and my processes. That’s where I need management, people need something different. So these folks who are homegrown leaders, now, they’re trying to sort themselves out, figure out how to move forward. And they say, Well, I’m a manager, I’m gonna start managing. So we just mentioned people don’t like to be managed, but that’s the road, they start to go down. Now, when they start to go down that road, there starts to become a perception of them. And this is one of the things I defined to folks early in my courses. So they start to be perceived as what I call a boss. When I say the word boss, think of the worst person you ever worked for in your entire life. I am right now. Right? Doesn’t take most of us very long, right? Someone jumps in our head. And it’s funny, you know, when I go on a plant tour, or when I’m visiting a facility, you know, we do a walk around. And let me tell you something I can tell. I can see when the person escorting me around is a boss, right? Because what do you think people do when the boss hits the floor? One or two things? Yeah, they’ll run away. If they’re fast enough, don’t make eye contact and scatter. I mean, you’ll see him do a u turn in the gangway. I mean, they will literally flip and run, right. So if they’re fast enough, they’ll do that. If they’re not fast enough, they get caught out, well, then they, then they have to tighten up start looking busy, right, tighten up a little bit. So if we all understand, that’s what happens when a boss hits the floor, we should go ahead and finish the line of logic there and ask ourselves,

what do people do when the boss leaves the floor? Do they do the right thing when no one’s looking? And with bosses, they kind of create a toxic environment, right? And very few people are willing to do even the fundamental basic right things. They’re just trying to skate through and not get yelled at or fired that day. Right? Because that’s the type of culture. So what’s, what’s a leader then? Well, my personal definition of a leader is it’s someone who gets the willing participation of others to follow a vision. Willing participation are key words, their bosses push people around, you can only push people so far, and for so long, but leaders don’t push we pull, right? So we pull. Now, when I do these sessions in person, and I’m launching a group and a new series, I always have fun with them. And I’ll ask them, tell me what you guys build. And the majority of the time, you know, the folks in the room tell me about their products. And then I pull them up and I say, Well, you are leaders. This is leadership, training. Your people make your products, what leaders build our people and history, what leaders build our people and history. And those two things work together in the background over time to build your career legacy as a leader, and you’re already building it. And a lot of us haven’t connected these dots, therefore we may not be leaving a legacy we would be proud of, we might actually unintentionally even be leaving the legacy of us, right? If that’s a possibility, who cares? That’s yesterday, today can be one of those line in the sand moments. Start leading with intent build that people in history and what I’m talking about with that legacy and that people in history, current name and this goes right back to the question. What I’m talking about is culture. That’s what you’re building. What have you People remember, five years from now? What are they gonna remember the products you kicked out the door that day? Or the culture? That’s what we all remember. So, culture is critical. To everything you do, I’m just going to tell you, I know we’re short on duration and time here, but the culture, you will feel it good or bad. And every metric, I don’t care what metrics you come on. Yeah, you’re gonna see it, the needle is gonna move some direction based off that culture. And then what I usually get, or people ask me, Well, okay, if I would like to start building this people in history with intent, this culture, how do I do it? Where do I start? Well, I’ll answer that by first saying where you don’t do it. You don’t do it by rebranding your vision, mission values and having a chili cook off and throw in T shirts out of a can and that everybody, right, that’s cool stuff. That’s neat, but that don’t do it. That’ll change culture. So how do you build culture, it’s, it’s quite simple. Every time we have an interaction with our co workers, above, below beside us, I don’t care what level they are at all levels. Every time we have an interaction with our co workers, it is in that very moment that that person feels trusted or not respected, are not appreciated. You see where I’m going with this. That’s where culture gets built. It’s in 1000 interactions we have all day every day, you can’t talk about it, you got to be about it. It’s not what you say. It’s how you live. Right. That’s what sets the culture. It is your daily permissible norms, which is essentially the way I like to say it’s how you live at work. I don’t care what’s on your policy, it ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on if that’s not what people do out on the floor. Right? How do people live? Do we walk right on by safety concerns? Well, you can do all the safety shares you want. People see you walk right on by hazards, open cabinet, electrical panels, you’re telling everybody we talk about safety here, we don’t care about safety here. Those things resonate. They speak louder than anything you can print or save. If you want the right culture, you got to build it. You got to build it with intent. And to me your best chances, your first chance that should start in onboarding and continue on every day into every refresher training you do. And every day, you have a chance to interact with those people on the floor. I took up a lot of time on that. I apologize. You got me going man.

Curt Anderson 27:52
Like we’re just we’re just pat was awesome. Nominal. Yeah. And look

Damon Pistulka 28:00
at this. Right? No,

Curt Anderson 28:01
I love full Office Office. You know, we’ve got the TPS reports, the DBS reports and we need to talk that

Jeremiah Sinks 28:12
I want to work Saturday.

Curt Anderson 28:15
You’re my if you I would love if you could spare a couple more minutes. I just I feel like, we’re Dude, you are on fire. Yeah, that was so good. Can you complete that sentence willing participation of can you finish that? For me?

Jeremiah Sinks 28:29
Yes. A leader gets the willing participation of others to follow a vision, willing participation of others to follow a vision. And essentially, I just, I gotta have a vision in the first place. Right? So let’s go to the culture side. You’ve only got two types of cultures, one that is intentional, I have a vision of the way we live on a daily basis, and I drive it like a process. So if I don’t have an intentional culture, you you have probably the wishful culture, where you the whole management team sits around says, I wonder why morale is so low around here, right? There’s only one of those two types. Every organization has one of those two types. So if I want the intentional culture that I better have a vision of the way we treat each other, respect each other, listen to each other, and so on. Then, I communicate that vision over and over and over again, all the ways it takes to get it. You know, here’s a funny question, guys. Where does communication occur? Right. Now, I’m not going to put you on the spot. But when I asked that, where does communication occur? Everyone gives me the same answers everywhere. And I say yeah, trying to dial in a little tighter, right? Well, the break room, emails, phone, et cetera, et cetera. Here’s the deal. communication occurs in the mind of the receiver, when I get what’s here vividly in explicitly, in the mind of the reason, all these other ways communication happens, yes, they’re true. But where’s the one place that truly occurs in the mind of the receiver. And it’s a lot harder to get in there than most people realize. So I have to communicate that vision over and over and over again until I get my folks to see it. Then, once they start to see it, we can start to collaborate. I don’t take the boss approach and say, here’s what you’re going to do to drive my vision. I’ll ask the right questions. Okay, team, you see the vision? How can we get there, basic collaboration, let people get some skin in the game. Let them feel like they got a voice, right? Let them get involved. So start collaborating, and then that vision, they see it, it becomes our vision, and then you just drive continuous improvement and build trust is the shortest way I could describe it. That builds a beautiful culture. truly engaged, truly connected. You know, empowered, even all these buzzwords people like to use but they don’t know how to achieve it.

Damon Pistulka 31:11
I tell you do. Go ahead you go. Well, you said one word that that really makes this stand out is intentional. That doesn’t just happen by accident. It happens by making a plan executing the steps you need. It’s not it’s it doesn’t just happen because I want to feel good someday and you don’t do this. You have to work at it. Just like you have to work at getting really good at making the products you do you have to work at being developing the right culture. It’s intentional.

Jeremiah Sinks 31:41
Yep, I view it exactly that way. It’s a process like just like your physical process to make your products, inputs and outputs. Yep. Yeah,

Curt Anderson 31:51
I’m like I had such high expectations for this conversation. Like you’ve just completely crushed it Jeremy like you. So I want to recap a couple of things. And again, I want to be mindful, you’re like I have to ask well, I have got to hang out with us for one more minute. Sure. So be about it. People in history. I would I hate to say it when you asked that question I would have said well the break room the you know the after you know in the parking lot Hey, can you believe you know the gossip right? And you know, not thinking is it’s in the receiver Dude that is so an iPad you know, I’m sorry. Like, this isn’t my jam like Workforce Development leadership but like that is so transformational. Because if I’m a toxic you know, if I’m not happy somebody hurt my feelings on the floor and I in when I am in a parking lot. Hey, Damon, can you believe what so can you believe what they did? Can you know that it’s so unfair, you know, that? But the thing is that as a worker, if I don’t feel you’re mentioning that connection, I don’t feel that trust. I don’t feel appreciated. Everything that you just talked about, dude, you’re give me chills. This is so good. Now, Jeremiah, you’ve written a couple books, if I’m not mistaken the field. Damon, you love this? The field does not come to the farmer. Yes. Damon, did you know that the field doesn’t come to the

Damon Pistulka 33:09
farm? I pretty much I had to go to a lot of them when I was growing up.

Curt Anderson 33:15
Leading Gen Y and Gen Z. And another one is on great management leadership. Jeremiah, what inspired you to write these books? Can you just share a little bit about these books? For anybody out there listening wants to learn more?

Jeremiah Sinks 33:25
Sure. You know, I had a lot of thoughts that I formed over the years, of course, through through work and through your life. And I thought at some point, you know, certainly I need to put the put pen to paper and jot some of these things down. And the motivation was really just that there was nothing grandiose, I just thought, Okay, let me go ahead and put some stuff together. But the way I’ve put those few books together, and if I do any more, I kind of go on about it with this this theme, I guess. I like keeping them short, fairly short. If I write a 10,000 page book, ain’t nobody gonna read it. Right? So keep them fairly short, easy to digest, and narrow the topic to some discipline or another. So I thought, okay, if I’m going to keep these kinds of short and maybe run a series, what are a couple of the first things I would want to start with? Well, the first one to me was leading Gen Y and Z. That was a no brainer to me, because I’m just going to tell you I hear about I hear so many hiring managers and supervisors on the floor complain about all these kids. Oh, these kids. And they what they say is they’re lazy and and I got to tell you something. They’re not. They are not. The problem is the things that connect with and motivate them are way different than the things that connect with and motivate a baby boomer, for example. So if you take, well, if I’m a baby boomer, and I prefer my style, of course we all do. We’d like our own styles, then I tried to treat people in the way that I think is the right way. And if that don’t fit, we’re pushing people out the door, not because they’re lazy, you’re entitled because we totally whiffed. If, if you have someone willing to show up in your four walls and a roof, and they’re, they’re willing to give you a chance, and they don’t make it a week, you got to start blaming the people and start looking inward and saying, What am I doing wrong? Right. So I started with that one. And then I went on to great management leadership, to try and drive home the fact that we, we need to be good at managing and leading I sometimes come across like I’m beating up management. I’m not but the reality is most people overemphasize management and underemphasized leadership and you die 1000 deaths from it. And the whole title of the series as the field does, does not come to the farmer for one primary reason. You got to meet the need where it is your team’s performance is a direct reflection of your performance as a leader, if you have an underperforming team, you better find a way to adjust, adapt and overcome to get them going, even if that’s a way that is unnatural or uncomfortable to you. Right? It isn’t about me getting myself going. It’s me getting my whole team growing. And that means if I’ve got 10 different people that might be 10, different buzzers that get those people going, but I gotta, I gotta find them. Which one works for every person because you know how it works. The high performing team comes from high performing individuals. And I gotta hit everyone where they’re at to get them going. That’s a burden that’s part of it comes with the job.

Curt Anderson 36:46
Right? Yeah. So good. And, you know, and it’s so unfortunate that, you know, like, Gen X and baby boomers, like we’re, you know, it’s like all these kids, because guess what, the generation before us, you know, when, when the same thing goes right down the line, you know, I studied Rockefeller, and you talked about, like, you know, the early generation oil guys, they were completely griping about these young kids that wanted to change and get into this new technology called the automobile. Nothing’s never going to work, right. Yeah. And there was like a huge friction between the 50 somethings and the 20 Somethings, because oil does that we’re always going to do it. Nobody’s going to put oil on this car. I’m gonna get back on my horse, you know. So you’re my I want to be mindful of your time. Can I ask one last question? Definitely. Okay. You have a great video, and he talked about a gentleman, I can share this on your video. So I’m assuming I can share definitely manager who was just had a horrific batting average, trying to communicate connect with folks and open job positions. Yes. You had an amazing change. Could you please share that with everybody on what you did?

Jeremiah Sinks 37:50
Absolutely. And it’s a beautiful example, possibly my favorite of re emphasizing the message. As a leader, I gotta find a way to meet the need where it is, right. So one of my participants was going through our one of our series, it was the first way for him. And at the start of the series, he mentioned that he had posted a job. He had 354 people apply. And so he started calling to set up interviews. Okay, he’s got 354. And he thought, well, I know how the world is I’m going to overcall. So he tried to schedule interviews with like, 160 165 people just kept calling and leaving voicemails, he ultimately got 11 people to come in for an interview this. So 354 People found your posting and applied, you can only get 11 to come in for an interview. Now a lot of folks would sit there and say, well told you these kids are lazy and title, right. Okay, well, we spent some time together and his project was on retention. And he said, Okay, for my next one, let me try something different. He posted another job had about the same number of applicants, and understanding how do different generations prefer to communicate? And he thought, well, Gen Y, and Z now make up more than 50% of the available workers out there. So odds are these people who are applying are probably Gen Y and Z. How do they like to communicate? Do they like to answer the phone and talk to people for numbers? They don’t recognize? No, maybe I should try to text. And he texted and I’ll tell you this, this man is what I would refer to as a seasoned veteran, which is a polite way of saying He’s a little older than me, right? A seasoned veteran. Do you think he was great at texting? Do you think he liked text all these people? But he had to he had to choose as hard adapt and overcome. And that’s hard, but he did it and his response rate went way up. Or he could choose his other hard which is stay the same and do it the way he likes. Just keep calling 180 People who don’t answer the phone. Either way, it’s going to be hard. You got to Pick one. Right so he met the need where it was I’m proud of him for that.

Curt Anderson 40:05
That was an here’s our dear friend Jeremy This is Diane she’s with PTAC you’re familiar with the Midwest tax she’s from the the Mid Atlantic tack. Appreciate where your people at gold. Everyone comes to the situation with their own background experience education, appreciate appreciation, great conversation. And Whitney says who wants to talk on the phone anymore? And I’ll go back to Whitney’s comment here. As busy work if I’m calling 160 people right just think of how much time how inefficient that is anymore so for all of us Gen Xers baby boomers out there, we need to get with the times Jeremiah, I want to I’ll let you go dude. Thank you. This was a masterclass in leadership, communication connection, guys, you’re just getting a little taste of the amazing overwhelming amount of talent that is at the MVP network, manufacturing extension partnerships around the country, let alone for you special folks in the great state of Indiana. If you’re in Indiana and boy, you haven’t connected with Jeremiah Jean, our anybody, Michelle Julie, anybody on the team at Purdue boy, do yourself a favor as matter of fact for a shameless plug. We have a great webinar, a little workshop, we’re doing a little SEO Deep Dive. I’m doing it with Nicole Donnelly, on Wednesday at 12 o’clock at the Purdue MEP, join us there we’re doing a case study with one of the manufacturers that Jeremiah both had the honor and privilege of working with together and so we’re gonna be hitting that Wednesday. Jeremiah any parting thoughts words of wisdom that you want to share with the folks today?

Jeremiah Sinks 41:34
Yeah, be great team whoever is on here be great. And if you don’t know where to start, just get started. You get better as you go. You get better as you go expertise comes from repetition. Repetition comes from practice practice comes from just trying that very first time when you swing and miss fail forward. Be great. Dude, thank you guys.

Curt Anderson 41:56
I’m dropping the microphone. I’m just dropped off in the mic and so guys, wow. Okay. Say is Damon, what do you what do you think of this conversation? So guys go out you have women on faces a business team and you’ve got two great guests coming up on Tuesday and Thursday. We have an amazing guest on manufacturing ecommerce success on Friday. We have a week oh we have a fantastic guests coming up. So guys, just boy. Just do it. Just like Jeremiah said. Just be out

Damon Pistulka 42:25
there and get it done. Hang out one so much everyone have a

Curt Anderson 42:28
phenomenal week. Thanks for joining us. If you missed this or you’re catching a replay boy just keep rewinding it over and over to these truth bombs. So, Jeremiah thank you guys have a great week. Bye guys.