Marty T Hawkins with Warehouse and Operations as a Career, it\u2019s great to have you back with us this week! Wow, we\u2019re already ending week 3 of the new year, I have really been enjoying all the Goals and Plans that\u2019s been sent in over the last few weeks, keep them coming, 2019 is going to be our best year yet! I wanted to mention a couple of podcast that I\u2019m excited about, I feel they\u2019ve helped kick my year off in the right direction. One is the Safety Pro Podcast, Blaine Hoffman does a great job explaining our needs and keeps the topics interesting and for my financial thoughts I\u2019m so enjoying Cindy B Browns Podcast Unlocking the secrets of living rich! WAOC is not affiliated with either show, I mentioned them both last year, I just enjoy them and I learn something new from them each week!
\nWell, lets see, oh here\u2019s a note to self. I wanted to talk about Supervision or front-line management for a few minutes. As we\u2019ve discussed, the first of the year is a great time to do some planning and get our goals lined out and I hear so many comments about, and resolutions regarding stepping into management that I went around to a few facilities to do some follow up with people that may of made those comments last year. And how impressed I was to find several of them had done just that, I spoke with 2 individuals that had been promoted to Shift or department leads and 3 brand new supervisors that had set their goals, planned them out and, by following those plans, they had achieved the positions they shot for! I also spoke with 4 individuals that I thought would make great managers one day, that I had visited with early last year. I wanted to see if they had changed their minds or if they felt they\u2019d hit a wall or maybe if life and just gotten in the way, maybe they\u2019d just adjusted their plans a bit! One gentleman stated he\u2019d just gotten busy, he was loving his job, really enjoyed his task and simply didn\u2019t want to leave it. He was really contributing to the company, his management team was giving him all the resources he needed to make a positive impact and in his words \u201cthere\u2019s not presently a position in management for his department and his new plan is to continue being innovative, reducing expenses and growing within the company\u201d. I can\u2019t argue with his plan, sounds like a great success story to me!
\nI spoke with 3 others that, well, they all 3 admitted they just hadn\u2019t followed their plans. It\u2019s hard, we\u2019re serious when we write those goals down but it takes so much follow through doesn\u2019t it? That\u2019s why I feel it\u2019s so important, it\u2019s just imperative that we look at those sentences every morning. It\u2019ll help us push through every day. One of the gentlemen, and I get it, he was feeling a little defensive about the whole subject, stated to me that he couldn\u2019t just give himself the promotion, right? My answer was Absolutely you can give yourself the promotion, if we don\u2019t who will? We laughed a bit, but really, we do give ourselves our promotions. We let our managers know what our goals are, we ask them about our progress, we check in with them every month or quarter about our strengths and weaknesses, our progress. And we strive to do the best job we can do, all while educating ourselves to our tasks and our industry. We are earning those promotions, by supervising ourselves we will be noticed, and we will advance. We\u2019re promoting ourselves!
\nEach one of the new leads or supervisors commented about how difficult or challenging their new positions were. Everyone agreed that the first big hurdle was figuring out how to separate those old friendships and their new responsibilities and how that was much more difficult than they had planned for. The second thing everyone noticed was that decision-making weight on their shoulders. One of them told her story about overtime. She had a friend that needed the extra hours, but she had another employee that was just flat out more productive than h...