Situation
Our client is one of the largest and best known manufacturers of complex, specialized architectural building products in North America.   The company consistently outpaces its competition with innovative and trusted brands, patented designs and aggressively priced products available across a broad multi-channel American distribution network.

Adam Zak has been retained to conduct an executive search for the company’s new President, who will assume overall leadership responsibility and full accountability for its operational and financial performance.  Critical to success in this role will be proactive, effective collaboration with parent company functional executives and sister division leaders, capturing and maximizing enterprise-wide business synergies. The position reports to the parent company’s President and CEO.

Are you ready to step up to President?
If you are an experienced General Manger with a successful track record comprising  at least 20 years of progressively more challenging, well-rounded business leadership experience  – delivering a minimum of  4-5 years of stand-out P&L successes   – we’d like to hear from you!

Why You Want This Position
Do you have a passion for the voice of the customer?  Do you take pride in your commitments, your fairness, integrity and the highest ethical standards in your choices and actions? Do you value innovation and embrace bold change to build and sustain market leadership? Do you cultivate broad, deep relationships with stakeholders, personally strengthened with your own shared values and common goals?  Are you committed to environmental stewardship and making a positive impact in the communities where your people live and work? And finally, are you driven to deliver outstanding operating and financial business results using the quality process to achieve continuous improvement?

Key Requirements
• Proven, successful General Manager, with minimum 3-5 years’ full P&L accountability, likely for at least a $250 million revenue business unit.
• Experience in both branded and commodity product businesses.
• 20+ year progressive, stable work history, balancing a blend of general management, operations, marketing and/or product development roles.
• Demonstrated success leading in a highly matrixed, team-based organization.
• Business process improvement leadership experience (Lean); ability to define, communicate and drive teams toward targeted objectives in a complex business environment.
• Poise and professionalism, combined with executive level skills in critical thinking, influence, communication, making change happen; with a hands-on knack for just getting things done.

Adam Zak Executive Search,  (847) 304-5300  Inquiries,  responses to AdamZak@ceoRecruiter.com    Primary Web site at http://LeanRecruiter.com  Or link via  http://LinkedIn.com/in/adamzak

Introducing an Amazing Opportunity
Our client is one of the largest e-commerce organizations on Earth, striving each and every day to be Earth’s most customer-centric company for consumers, sellers, and enterprises.  Organized into two principal business segments, North America and International, this enterprise has time-and-again demonstrated its dedication to sustained long-term growth and profitability – simply by paying extraordinary attention to its customers. Even since that very first day it opened its doors for business.

By serving consumers through retail websites, selling millions of unique products with laser-like focus on selection, price, and convenience.  By constantly striving to improve operating efficiencies to continuously lower prices for customers. By delivering evermore easy-to-use functionality, fast and reliable fulfillment, and outrageously great customer service.  That’s our client.

The company also offers programs which enable independent sellers to sell their products via company websites or their own branded websites, offering that same level of unparalleled order fulfillment execution services.  And, finally, our client also serves developers and enterprises of all sizes through its web services operations, which provide access to technology infrastructure enabling virtually any type of business on Earth.

So, it should perhaps go without saying, but our client is absolutely at the leading edge of today’s global e-commerce environment, and their businesses are intensely competitive, rapidly evolving, and an immense amount of fun to be a part of.   Can I interest you in taking a closer look?

Position Overview
The Director, Global Lean Six Sigma Operational Excellence is responsible for implementing our client’s comprehensive business improvement system. Which we’ll call BIS for now, even though there’s a top-secret internal name to be revealed later.  And, for enabling the company’s world-wide operations to significantly benefit from productivity gains derived from Lean Six Sigma Operational Excellence.

The role is highly visible and assumes primary responsibility for implementing continuous improvement across all business functions and all business units of the company. Reporting to the SVP of Worldwide Operations, the Director will exercise considerable judgment to identify and execute strategic continuous improvement plans and tactical project implementation and completion processes.

Key Responsibilities
The Director, Global Lean Six Sigma Operational Excellence will  facilitate and guide the application of BIS methods to process improvements with world-class quality levels in an organization experiencing constantly exploding growth.  As well, the Director will need to motivate and lead others to succeed under the challenging conditions of an extremely deadline-driven environment.  These include a team of Lean Senseis who will conceive, develop and integrate the innovative solutions and programs necessary to achieve these improvement targets.

Working closely with our client’s technology teams, this position also will merge highly sophisticated company systems with Lean Six Sigma principles.  The Director will need to be comfortable and savvy around leading-edge technology and adept at leveraging company capabilities in order to maximize the positive influence and impact of the BIS.

In somewhat more detail, our Director will:

• Partner with senior business leaders to develop and lead the continuous improvement strategy world-wide, across multiple sites.
• Drive the creation of focused standard work productivity and quality initiatives specific to the needs of the business teams and regions to meet and exceed business plans.
• Define and deploy the appropriate metrics to measure both productivity and process quality, providing meaningful feedback to the operations.
• Provide both strategic and tactical leadership regarding continuous improvement project selection, scope, definition and performance, to ensure alignment with business (Hoshin) strategy.
• Mentor and guide operations business teams in their ability to develop and execute daily, weekly & monthly action plans that increase quality, inventory accuracy and customer service.
• Instill long-term sustainability of the BIS by making its principles, policies, practices and language an integral component of standard work across global operations and by developing formal BIS education/training vehicles across the board to site champions, managers and company associates.
• Drive continuous improvement culture change through collaboration and communication regarding best practices knowledge sharing, internal and external benchmarking, talent development and overall, a visibly passionate and vocal advocacy for hands-on Lean leadership.

We expect greatness from all of our people. We expect them to accept and conquer challenges that may seem overwhelming at first glance. The greatness in people comes out only when they are led by great leaders.

Akio Toyoda
President
Toyoto Motor Company

Lean Recruiting. Period. Adam Zak Executive Search embraces the lean philosophy as our own, making it the cornerstone of our executive search mission. We know your market, are connected to the lean manufacturing/enterprise world, and can help you build an outstanding management team. Our in-depth lean and operational expertise at the senior leadership level dramatically enhances our ability to understand the issues you face as you transform operations from traditional to Lean, customer-focused, systematic and sustainable.

Success: Measured By Repeats and Referrals. As a specialist firm with highly selective relationships, Adam Zak Executive Search is virtually unrestricted when it comes to finding the best candidates for you, wherever that may be. Working one-on-one with the principal of the firm, you gain exceptional search execution and management, and critical guidance during the interviewing and negotiating process. We have an outstanding 90 percent success rate, and more than 80 percent of all new engagements derive from satisfied clients and candidates in the form of repeat search engagements and referrals.

Our firm selected Adam Zak to conduct an ambitious search for several executives simultaneously. The choice we made was a good one in light of the results that were realized and the speed and efficiency of the searches. Top notch candidates, expeditious process and professionalism throughout. Adam is a real pro and a pleasure to have on our team!

Larry Wolfe
Vice President Administration
J.B. Poindexter & Co., Inc.

Placing Lean Leaders. Propelling Lean Business Success. Adam Zak Executive Search will only accept search assignments that we can complete successfully. Among searches conducted during the past two decades are those for CEOs, COOs, Presidents and General Managers; Vice Presidents of Operations, Lean/Continuous Improvement, Engineering/Product Development, and beyond; and a multitude of Director-level roles in LeanSigma, Manufacturing, Sales & Marketing, TPM, Finance & Accounting and Human Resources. Anywhere Lean principles can impact your business. Perhaps must impact your business.

Your Success Begins With Adam Zak. Since our inception, we’ve emphasized continual improvements in both operations and our own knowledge of the concepts and practices of Lean thinking. We’ve actively participated in a variety of Lean-oriented activities and engagements, both informal (Kaizen events) and formal (seminars, conferences), to stay on top of the Lean world, its cutting-edge developments and the thought leaders shaping the Lean and operational excellence (OpEx)landscape. And then, of course, there are the several hundred successful executive search engagements we’ve conducted over the last 17 years. For clients who are probably a lot like you.

Call Adam today at 847.304.5300 . Let Adam Zak Executive Search demonstrate exactly how you benefit from our value-based search process and our promise to deliver the precise senior-level Lean talent you need. In Lean Six Sigma/CI, Operations Management, Supply Chain Management, and at the C-Level in your organization.

Adam Zak, Lean Executive Search. For your Lean Enterprise. Bridge to Lean Executive Leadership.

The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both.

Zen Buddhist Text

The Master of Lean also pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, making little distinction between the waste which may be found in his professional or his personal endeavors. Indeed, his pursuit of the elimination of all that is non-value-added literally knows no boundaries.

Adam Zak.
Lean Executive Search.
Bridge to Lean Executive Talent.

Operational Excellence is really a catch all label for many different “best practices”. Lean on the other hand is a very specific set of interlocking practices, tools and behaviours derived from a very clear reference model. Lean grew out of years of practice and experimentation at Toyota and at companies in other sectors that have followed their example. It did not come from applying theoretical insights to business practice.

Correctly understood, lean is a much more fundamental and comprehensive approach to solving business problems and creating value for customers. It is also a great deal more than engaging employees in continuous improvement and eliminating waste.

One of the key things that distinguishes Lean is its scope – which encompasses the whole value creation process – such as a global supply chain or an end-to-end patient journey. Instead of developing new support systems – such as  better forecasting or decision support systems – lean focuses on the actual  work that creates the value customers pay for, which lean thinkers call value  streams.

Lean  brings many different tools to bear so each value creating step can be  performed right first time on time, then links the steps together in a physical  flow or through pull signals and then levels the workload to align capacity  with demand. As the primary value creating work begins to flow lean applies  these tools to synchronise all the supporting activities that enable the  primary value stream to flow and all the elements a customer needs to solve  their problem – such as the test results, medications and therapies for a  hospital patient. This in turn requires the right lean management to ensure the  work can flow according to plan, to escalate issues and unblock obstacles to  flow and to support root cause problem solving.

The net  result is a value creation system designed back from the customers’ definition  of value and around the activities that create this value, more accurately and  with far less wasted effort and cost. While most organizations cut their teeth  leaning their existing activities the true potential of lean comes from the  opportunity to redesign the next generation products or services and the value  streams that deliver them without the drag of existing assets. Manufacturers  are for instance now looking to local rather than distant “low wage” suppliers  and polyclinics are now offering services previously only available in big  district hospitals.

The other  thing that distinguishes lean is its depth. The more activities are  linked together and synchronized and the physical or time buffers between them  are removed the more the operation of the whole systems depends on the skills,  behaviours and direction of every employee.

On the one hand such an integrated system multiplies the probability of interruptions that must be responded to quickly. On the other hand it provides extremely valuable feedback on the causes of these interruptions and other changes, which  may otherwise be hidden or lost. It is precisely to leverage this feedback that  the core lean skills are not just the tools and techniques, but the use of the scientific method to define and diagnose a problem, understand the facts, try several countermeasures and check which of them solved the problem. Because solving problems can only be done by combining a detailed knowledge of the work with the context of the problem these skills need to be learnt by every employee, not just the experts. Developing these skills and using this  experimental approach to constantly improve the performance of each value  stream is learnt by doing rather than in a classroom.

In order to enable value streams to flow across facilities, departments and organisations someone has to take responsibility for creating the conditions for collaboration between all the actors involved. Lean chief engineers, project managers and value stream managers carry the responsibility for the performance of their product, project or value stream while the authority over the resources needed to accomplish this remains with vertical department of function heads. The keys to making this work are agreeing the right metrics for tracking the operation and performance of the system as a whole and creating the right visual management context in which to gain agreement from all parties on the facts of the current situation and to commit to a jointly agreed plan going forward. The team then reviews deviations from the plan very frequently, unblocks any obstacles and captures any learning for the future. Lean thinkers use visual management everywhere precisely because it reinforces collaborative behaviours.

Highly transparent and interdependent systems throw up literally thousands of possible things that could be improved across an organisation. The skill of a lean leader is to be able to set the direction and to focus everyone’s efforts on the vital few things that will make the biggest difference to the organization, its customers, employees and shareholders. This means being able to translate organizational goals into measurable gaps that need to be closed and using strategy deployment to create a dialogue down the organization to agree the actions that will contribute to closing these gaps, so these can be adequately resourced while others are deselected. It also means diagnosing and addressing the underlying causes of instability – such as the amplification of orders passed upstream or discharge delays causing queues for admission to a hospital. Finally leaders must act to use the freed up capacity or cash to reduce costs and grow sales without requiring additional capital.

This simply excellent analysis contributed by Daniel T. Jones, Chairman, Lean Enterprise Academy, UK. If you are the kind of Lean Leader Dan describes here, we’d like to know you and more about your career accomplishments, goals and objectives.

Adam Zak. Lean Executive Search. Bridge to Lean Executive Talent. Bridge to Lean Career Opportunities.

I’ve just been reading  that the slump in U.S.  manufacturing is now deeper than the 1991-1992 recession, meaning that the U.S. is now in  the sad state last experienced in 1981-1982. Meanwhile Japanese manufacturing,  except for a few successful car companies like Toyota and Honda, is falling back into  recession and European manufacturers are feeling intense distress as well.

It’s therefore not  surprising that we at LEI have been getting a lot of requests recently to help  companies find lean expertise for harder times. Unfortunately, we can’t  do what many of you would like: find you just the right person to join your  company or just the right consultant to share his or her learning curve with  you. We decided at the very outset of the institute that we would not be  consultants ourselves, that we would not be headhunters and that we would not  recommend headhunters or consultants.  What we can do is to  suggest simple guidelines for finding the lean “sensei” (Japanese for  “teacher”) you may need.

1. Start by asking  whether you want to hire a senior manager to lead your lean leap as an employee  or whether retaining a consultant would be better. The third approach is simply  to do it yourself with the managers you have now, and our workbook series at LEI is designed to give you the tools you will  need.

2. If you want to hire someone, look at successful lean firms and  figure out who was responsible for the transformation.  (A good headhunter specializing in lean may  be able to help you find good candidates.)

But be  careful: we’ve seen many cases of a lean firm like Toyota where managers really only need to  maintain a system set up by others some time ago. Taking these  “steady-state” managers — very successful in an established lean  environment — and asking them to create order out of chaos in your environment  may be asking for more than they can deliver. So be sure that both the lean  skills and the ability to create change are equal to the job before you make an  offer.

3. If you want to hire a  consultant, ask yourself whether you want:

• an expert in what Mike  Rother and John Shook call “process kaizen” who can apply specific  techniques to specific problems (like cell design or 5S or standard work), or;
• an expert in what  Rother and Shook call “flow kaizen” who can tackle entire value  streams, from a single model line to a whole company, or;
• what I call a  “kaikaku” specialist (a real revolutionary) who will show you the big  picture, challenge all of your assumptions about your business and thoroughly  stir things up. Possibly you can find one person who can do all three, but be  sure what your priorities are or you are likely to be disappointed with the  results.

4. Once you are sure  what you want in a consultant, check the previous work of your candidates  carefully by visiting firms where they have been involved for a considerable  period of time. Did they get sustainable results? And could they diffuse their  knowledge within the client company? Or did they behave like classic skilled  tradesmen who will solve your problem but never tell you how it was done so you  will always need to call them back? (We call this latter phenomenon  “consultant dependency.”)

5. Once you are sure you  have the right consultant or transforming manager, ask yourself how you are going  to internalize their knowledge and diffuse it across your business.

We continue to be amazed  at how many companies think that once they retain a highly skilled consultant  they can simply set the lean transformation on autopilot and wait for lean thinking  to deepen and spread. By contrast, the smart company assigns some of its  smartest people to follow the sensei’s every move, record the techniques and  methods, and then systematically diffuse these across the entire business.  (Even Toyota  did this with Taiichi Ohno, who was highly resistant to writing down the  principles and techniques of TPS. One of the early assignments of Fujio Cho,  the current Toyota  president, was to follow Ohno around and make sure everything was recorded.)

6. As you systematically  record what your transforming manager or sensei is doing, challenge him with  more and more difficult assignments on harder and harder problems. Stated  another way, never ask him to solve the same problem twice. Instead ask your  sensei to solve a specific problem once, then challenge your people to solve it  the second time, perhaps with a bit of sensei coaching. This is the way to get  the best use of your sensei and a good sensei will respond to the challenge.

These are simple rules  and we know that they work. Together they constitute a simple  “process” — that magic word — for finding the help you need. We  wish you luck!

Jim Womack, co-author of “Lean Thinking”, is the founder and former president of the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI). LEI is a consulting company,  information resource and host of multiple seminars regarding lean  manufacturing.  

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no no else can see.

Arthur Schopenhauer