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36: How to Become a Navigator of Chaos - with Bill Fournet
Manage episode 378748485 series 3345299
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Meet Bill Fournet
Bill Fournet is Founder & CEO of The Persimmon Group, the award-winning management consulting firm he founded in 2004. Bill has been a project leader for more than 25 years in the IT, engineering, manufacturing, and business change areas. He has led or overseen large and mega projects in excess of $10 billion. Sometimes called “The Navigator of Chaos,” Bill loves to solve complex problems for organizations of all sizes. A popular keynote speaker, Bill believes “we are in the midst of a great transformation.” From technology to generational issues, Bill analyzes workforce trends to help you stay ahead in uncertain times.
He will deliver the keynote address at the Manufacturing First Conference in October, where he will share a hopeful and much-needed strategic perspective of the evolving workplace while equipping you with actions you can apply today to lead in a post-pandemic world.
As you were working with clients in the manufacturing field, and out with different speaking engagements, what leadership topics do you see rising to the top today?
I'm gonna put them kind of in three categories. The one that I would say has been the most recent, and probably one of the hottest areas of questions and concerns or challenges for leadership teams is the AI and robotics aspects. How's it going to affect their business, their site? How do they take advantage of it? But also, how does it potentially have long-term implications for that? And for me, the main focus around that one is around ethics. Is this the Jeff Goldblum quote from Jurassic Park? Just because we can do it, should we do it? And what are the potential effects it has for the manufacturer or the leadership team and for the labor force? The second is very much around the workforce. And really, in the workforce, it's been two areas. One has been most recent, which is the construction and the availability of labor. And the effects that that has on the business. But the broader one that I've been seeing for about the last 15 years has been the generational shift. And that can be everything from just the drivers and the expectations of the workforce, all the way through the technologies they want to use or maybe haven't used in the past. And then the last one, which has also been pretty recent. It seems like a lot of manufacturers are starting to settle in on this space, and that is around the supply chain and the inflationary impacts over the post-pandemic period coming out of that. How do they manage through these disruptions that could affect their logistics? Affect their supply chain? And how do they address that also in an inflationary economy?
How can manufacturing companies utilize disruptive moments to foster an inclusive environment that values and promotes the contributions of women leaders?
So my company, for example, is almost 75% female. It wasn't something I set out and was intentional in doing necessarily, at first. What I found was, it comes down to a couple of things. One is the openness to engage, where you may check your ego or baggage at the door. This means that in a lot of organizations, and this is a really interesting difference between the sports military side of the house, and the most corporate environments- in the sports in the military, they're very good at watching game film and talking about how to improve. Without getting their egos so caught up in taking it personally. Because we get what they do, they accept that we all make mistakes at times. And the question is, what do we learn from them? And we don't do that. We get very defensive, and then we start attacking each other. And we don't get to the point of actually solving the problem in an open way. And so on the inclusive aspect, especially with women leaders, is you got to start first with questions. And a lot of teams right now are moving so fast and feel like they're reacting to change. They're drawing conclusions instead of asking questions. I was very fortunate early on in my career at MTV, VH1 and Nickelodeon. Nickelodeon was almost 100% female management. And what I found was it’s a different feel or vibe in the culture. And part of it was because it was much more about asking questions. And so the way to increase your inclusivity, whether it's with women leaders, whether it's in diversity, whether it's in diversity of ideas, is you frame questions. As a leader, you say, “This is what I want to get the answer to, or what we want to achieve.” And you include people with their rank or title left at the door so that you can have an open dialogue. And then as a leader, you have to make a decision at times of which options you may want to take. But I think bringing in more people into the conversation early on, asking questions, and listening, to try to understand versus to respond, are great ways of dealing with this.
And so much more…
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