On The Fast Track

I began my career before an MBA became essentially the most important qualification for any position above the department manager level. Most companies promoted from within their own ranks for plant managers and division officers. The feeling at the time was that if a man didn't have an intimate knowledge of the product, production process, and customer base, he couldn't do an acceptable job of managing day to day operations of the business. Workers also trusted people they'd worked with for a long time, so labor relations were a lot easier too.

Corporate level positions were usually filled from the ranks of division level officers, but were sometimes filled by men from other companies with similar products and financial situations. The determining measurement for these positions was year over year improvement in profits and not by how much education the candidate had.

There were colleges that offered MBA programs, but a twenty-two year old with a degree in finance or engineering and an MBA wasn't worth the money he expected to earn. It took too long to train them away from the utopian situations of the classroom and into the realities of manufacturing. Companies wanted leaders who had enough experience to hit the ground running.

There were certain skills that it was necessary for upper echelon leadership to understand though. Education in these skills was gained by attending seminars produced by the corporation as well as by private consultants. These seminars were expensive, so corporations usually did not send anyone to them unless the employee was a "Fast Track" employee. Fast Track was the term my company used and meant that employee had been recognized as having abilities beyond most other employees and was being groomed for higher responsibilities.

It was during my tenth performance review that I learned I was a Fast Track employee. To be honest, I'd never given it a second thought. I knew I was progressing a little faster than some -- I'd been given an engineering supervisor's job after six years as an engineer, and an engineering manager's job after eight -- but I figured that was about where I'd stay for the next fifteen years or so. The men in the positions above me were all fairly young, so it was going to be a while before I could even entertain the idea of moving up.

Part of the performance review process was the discussion with my boss, Arnie Jones, the Division Director of Engineering, of what I needed to do to improve my performance. That year, his assessment was I needed to improve my understanding of the financial aspects of business and I had to agree. I could calculate stresses in structural members in my sleep, but I had almost no idea about how the financial end of things worked.

He went on to say he'd signed me up for a week-long financial seminar in Orlando, Florida in January, and said his secretary would make all the arrangements and then tell me when I was leaving. All I had to do was attend and learn as much as I could.

That seminar was appealing for several reasons. I was well aware of my lack of financial skills beyond balancing my checkbook. Any further advancement would mean managing money as much or more than managing people. It would also be nice to spend a week in Florida in the middle of January instead of staying in the January freeze in Springfield, Illinois.

I went to that seminar and learned enough I could talk to our accountants without feeling like a kid talking to his sixth grade teacher. I was able to understand how they made decisions about projects based on things like discounted cash flow and return on investment, and my project justifications got a lot better.

My performance review the next year was pretty good. I got a very high performance rating and enrollment in another seminar, this time a seminar about tax laws relative to business. That seminar was in February in Los Angles, California. I spent the week learning how to avoid paying taxes and learning that the pictures I'd seen of half naked women on the beaches were all true. Of course, the bikini's of the time weren't as skimpy as what women wear today, but they were still showing a lot of tanned skin.

I turned thirty-four the year of my next performance review. It was also a good review and I was told I'd been registered for another seminar. This one was also a week long and would be in Chicago in April. The subject matter was to be leadership skills and I was told it was very important to the CEO of the company that all senior management candidates go through that seminar. That made me think I was headed for at least a division job in the near future. I wasn't very enthusiastic about Chicago in April, but if it was what I needed for the next step in my career, I could stand that.

The class was held in a meeting room in the consultant's suite of offices in the Borg Warner Building on Michigan Avenue, right in the middle of downtown Chicago. I took a hotel bus from O'Hare to the Intercontinental Hotel that Sunday afternoon, and had dinner in one of the two restaurants in the hotel.

The instructions I'd received in the seminar information sheet said all meals after Sunday night would be furnished by the seminar. The next morning I skipped breakfast in the hotel and walked from the hotel to the Borg Warner Building and took the elevator to the seventh floor where Future Leaders Consulting had their offices. From there, I followed the signs to a conference room.

At eight there were six of us seated at the mahogany conference table, and at five after eight, a woman wheeled in a cart with plates covered by silver covers, coffee cups and saucers, and silverware. On the top of the cart were two silver coffee urns, one labeled "Decaff", and another silver urn with a label that said "Hot Water". There was a large creamer with real cream and a large sugar bowl filled with sugar, a plastic container of non-dairy creamer and a small segmented tray with several brands of sugarless sweetener and four different brands of teabags.

The woman pushed her cart behind us, placed silverware in linen napkins to one side of each of us, then sat a plate on the table and removed the cover, and asked if we wanted coffee or tea.

That breakfast wasn't much, and at least to some it was more of a joke. It was melon balls and strawberries with a china cup of yogurt. I've never been a big fan of breakfast, so it suited me fine. Some of the others picked at the melon balls and berries before pushing their plates away. I heard one say that a McDonald's breakfast platter would have been better and probably cheaper.

My instructions said there was no dress code, but when I saw the location of the seminar, I opted for slacks, a white shirt and tie, and a sports jacket. That's what I usually wore to work, and I figured I'd fit in since we were all supposed to be potential senior executives. As I looked around the table though, I saw men who apparently didn't think like I did. There were two in suits and ties, but the other three were wearing casual slacks and polo shirts.

At eight thirty, the woman came back to the room and collected our plates, but left the coffee and hot water urns on a table at the side of the room along with the selection of creamers, sweeteners, and tea bags. Five minutes after she left, seven people filed into the room -- one man in jeans and a T-shirt and six young, very good looking women in either skirts and blouses or tight fitting pants and tops. The man walked to the head of the table and waited until everybody stopped talking. Then he began his introduction to the seminar.

"Hello. I'm Todd Marx. I want to welcome you to the Upcoming Leader's Conference presented by Future Leaders Consulting. You have all been selected by your various corporations as potential future senior executives, and they enrolled you in this seminar to teach you the techniques required in the day to day operation of any corporation. What we will teach you will be with you for the rest of your careers and enable you to climb the corporate ladder. I'm sure at least one of you will make it to the position of Chief Executive Officer.

"We at Future Leaders Consulting pride ourselves on our one-on-one approach to learning. Our method is not just one of us lecturing you on techniques. Our method is teaching you those techniques and then giving you practical experience in implementing those techniques through the simulations we'll put to you to solve.

"Now, we know you all come from varied backgrounds, so we don't expect you to grasp every concept just from the instruction sessions."

He pointed to the six women standing to one side.

"One of these training assistants has been assigned to each of you. She will be available at all times to explain a concept or to assist you in your solution to the simulation. It is important for you to understand they are not going to give you a solution to the simulation in question, nor will they suggest a means to a solution. They will only clarify what you have learned in the instruction sessions so that you understand and can devise your own viable solution.

'Now, I'll introduce you to your individual assistants and give you fifteen minutes to get acquainted. At nine, they will show you to our training room."

My assistant was a cute little brunette named Miranda Saleen. She was dressed in a blouse with two buttons open at the neck and her skirt stopped a little below mid thigh. From the hem down, she was slender legs in nylon and black patent leather heels. She smiled when I told her I was Mark Berger.

"It's great to meet you, Mark. Berger is a French surname. Is your heritage French?"

I said I wasn't sure because my family had been in Central Illinois for at least seven generations. She smiled again.

"Well, I'll bet you are French. You look French too, at least a little. Well, let's walk down to the training room so we can get started. This is going to be a busy week. We'll have four days of training and on the fourth day is a simulation that's going to require using everything you've learned during the other three."

The training room was a little larger than the conference room and had windows on the long side that faced Lake Michigan. On each short side was a row of tables with chairs and the wall behind the tables had wainscoting up to about three feet from the floor. From there to the ceiling, the wall was paneled with white, glossy panels. What looked like a chalk tray on a school blackboard was at the bottom. I'd read in trade magazines about "white boards", but I'd never seen one before. Apparently a couple of the other men had. They had picked up markers from the tray and were writing on the boards, then erasing the writing with what looked exactly like a chalkboard eraser.

That lasted for a couple more minutes until our instructor walked into the room.

"Welcome to you all. As I said before, I'm Todd Marx, but please call me Todd. I'll be your instructor and lead you through the seminar. What we're going to discuss today is advanced manufacturing techniques. There's coffee and tea by the windows. Feel free to get a cup when you want one. Oh, and your assistants will give you a lunch menu. Please select one or more menu items and then give the menu back to your assistant. She'll take care of ordering lunch while were having our discussion."

He went on for about three hours talking about the history of mass production from Eli Whitney's musket contract in 1798 all the way up to Toyota's current manufacturing processes. He had a VCR, one of the original types that used a huge tape cassette, and he'd show about ten minutes of tape about a process, then shut off the machine, and begin explaining what was the same and what was different.

It was boring as hell. I'd already learned everything he was talking about, some of it as far back as high school, some of it in engineering school, and the rest in in-house workshops conducted by my company. We'd already implemented several of the newer techniques in our own production lines.

It was tough staying awake. A couple of the men did nod off a few times. Three kept refilling their coffee cups and then staring out the window at Lake Michigan for a few minutes before going back to their seats. I stayed awake by listening to the two men who kept asking questions of the instructor. They were stupid questions they should have already known the answers to and I found it funny how they tried to look interested by asking them.

"Todd, how did Eli Whitney manage to make interchangeable parts for muskets when there were no accurate measurement instruments available back then?

"Todd, is it true that Henry Ford really didn't invent mass production? I mean, that's what we were all taught, but it seems to me that he just stole the idea."

"Does Toyota really make parts that accurately? I know from my own experience that a ten percent reduction in tolerance means ten times the cost to manufacture. How can they make any money?"

Each question sent Todd into a fifteen minute spiel that never really seemed to answer the questions.

"No, Eli Whitney didn't make interchangeable parts as we know them today for his demonstration. He had a team of gunsmiths hand making parts so they would interchange, but that proved his concept was correct. He did go on to make muskets that needed less hand fitting than before."

Todd then went into a long explanation of why the technology was difficult to implement, but not how Whitney managed to do so. Then he answered the question about Henry Ford.

"Yes, Henry Ford did borrow elements of several production processes from others, but he was the first to put them all together."

After that came thirty minutes of Todd explaining each step in the manufacture of the Model T Ford and how the production techniques were applied. After that, he explained how Toyota makes tight tolerance parts without really explaining how they did.

"Yes, Toyota does indeed make parts to very small tolerances, but they do so by understanding the various processes and designing parts to maximize the capabilities of their equipment.

Then there was a thirty-minute explanation of statistical process control, a subject I'd spent a week in another seminar learning. Basically, all Todd said was Toyota averaged the dimensions from each machine and picked the best machine to make the part. It was obvious he didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

By the end of Todd's presentation, it was time for lunch. I was glad I'd ordered a salad with chicken. After that morning, anything heavier would have put me to sleep for most of the afternoon. A couple of guys had ordered steaks. Most had ordered something in between, like a grilled chicken sandwich with chips.

I finished with lunch and Miranda handed me another menu for lunch on Tuesday.

"Just order what you want. If it's not on the menu, I can take care of that too. Just write in what you want at the bottom."

I picked another salad, this time with ham. Miranda left with my menu just as the instructor walked back in.

"OK, now it's time to practice what we've learned. Your assignment is to design an automobile and the process to make it. Now, obviously, there isn't enough room here to do that so we've developed a simulation. To make the simulation more interesting, we're going to divide you into two teams of three. You'll stay with that same team throughout the seminar. At the end of today's seminar, you'll appoint a spokesperson to explain your design and demonstrate your process. We'll see which team has the best solution.

"Ah, I see your assistants are back, so let's get started."

I was put on a team with a quality engineer named Bruce and a man from Human Resources named Collin. The instructor gave us a few minutes to get acquainted, and during that time, I learned that Bruce had a degree in statistics and Collin had a degree in sociology. Bruce seemed a little bit of an egghead to me, and Collin was a typical HR person. He seemed to be agreeable without being overly friendly.

After the introductions, the instructor clapped his hands.

"OK, now that you know your team members, let's get started with the simulation. Assistants, would you please bring out the simulation materials."

I don't know what I was expecting, but I sure as hell wasn't expecting a box full of Lego bricks. Most were your standard Legos -- square or rectangular bricks of different sizes, but in a separate box there were also some with little axles on each side and a bunch of wheels that would snap onto those axles. In another box were Lego bricks with steering wheels and little men and women.

There were some chuckles around the table.

"I used to play with these when I was a kid. This'll be fun."

"How are we supposed to design a car when everything has square corners except the wheels?"

The instructor then gave us the go-ahead, but things didn't go ahead. Everybody on both teams was trying to put bricks together to make something that looked like a car. That included me. After a couple of minutes, I had put together bricks that looked reasonably close to being a car complete with a steering wheel and a driver. The other two also had something resembling a car, and were arguing about which was best.

I waited for another five minutes, laughing to myself the whole time, before I finally said, "Look, we're not going to get anywhere unless we work together. Let's vote on which design we think is the best from the standpoint of looking like an actual car as well as something we can design a process to make."

Bruce, the quality engineer, had a design that looked pretty good, but it had a lot of parts and kept falling apart when he tried to roll it on the table. Collin's design was actually better than mine. It had fewer parts, still looked sort of like a car, and it didn't fall apart. When we took a vote, Collin and I voted for his design and Bruce voted for his.

I said now that we had a design, we had to figure out how to manufacture it, so I asked Collin to build another one so we could see how he did it.

It took us two hours to develop a production line and diagram it on the white board, mostly because Bruce kept arguing that his design would be easier to build. By the time we'd agreed on how to put the damn thing together, I was pissed. Teams didn't work when all the team members didn't at least support the plan, and Bruce wasn't supporting our plan at all. It looked to me like the other team was having similar difficulties.

At four, the instructor said it was time to present our design and demonstrate our process, and we'd have half an hour to do that.

Collin had been elected to present the design since it was his. He did a fair job, I thought. Then it was time to demonstrate the process. Bruce had been elected to do that part, and he fucked it up royally.

Collin built the base, I put on the steering wheel and driver, and Bruce put on the axle blocks and wheels, but he kept screwing up the wheels. When he did, he'd just smile and say, "I told you my design would work better". We were supposed to build fifty cars, and I was happy when the last car was rolled to the staging area. I was also pissed because I figured our team had failed the exercise.

The other team did their presentation, and it seemed to go better. When that was done, the instructor asked us to take everything apart and put the pieces in the appropriate boxes. That done, he said we were free to leave, and that our assistants had arranged to take us to dinner.

Miranda smiled when we got up to leave.

"I set us up at a Greek restaurant about two blocks from here. Our table will be ready at seven, so you have a couple hours to yourself. No need to dress up. It's a casual place. I'll be in the lobby of your hotel waiting for you at six-thirty. That should give us plenty of time."