When Jack Welch was the Vice President of the Manufacturing division of GE, he made everyone wear a white shirt. Those that were below a certain management level could not wear a red tie. He believed that you had to earn the right to wear a power color like red.
This is just one of the lessons I learned from my time spent with Orville Saling. He is the Director of Operations and Management and Public Works. He also is in charge of the Marana Regional Airport. We spent most of the day just talking about what O&M does and the responsibilities of the airport.
O&M is responsible for all the maintenance of the facilities and public infrastructure in the Town. This means roads, sidewalks, landscaping, signs and signals, and even homeless camps. The maintenance crews fill potholes and replace broken sidewalks, stripe the roads, place or repair signs and signals, and landscape the medians and sides of the roads. These guys even do the landscaping on the interstate to increase the standard. They get some of their work orders from citizen calls of potholes or other things. Sometimes these are issues that the HOA takes care of, so if you have a complaint call them first.
I was curious how the whole process works, and when the maintenance department takes over on a project. Orville told me that when a project is being developed the Town and the developer agree on a warranty time for the project. This is usually 2 years. Meaning that during the first 2 years, once the project is completed, the developer will take care of any of the maintenance issues that may arise. There are dedicated inspectors that go out and see where potential problems may occur and keep those things in mind when anticipating the warranty turning over.
Repairs are done based on a priority system based on what is in the best interest of the Town. A small pothole on a residential street is important and will be fixed, but if there is something that is blocking traffic or causing serious accidents that will be fixed first. Roads that have schools or hospitals or fire stations all have a higher priority than those that do not.
We then went out to the airport. It is primarily a business and recreational airport. There are hangars for personal planes and capabilities for jets to refuel. When anyone famous/wealthy comes in they fly to the Marana airport, and are then limo-ed to their destination. Oprah, John Travolta, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Ted Turner have all flown into the Marana Airport. There are special accommodations made by the catering companies and airport personnel when these high profile people come down. Seeing the dirt road the limos pulled up on was pretty impressive. Only Oprah could make a municipality put in a new dirt path. In all seriousness, the airport is really cool. It is an outlet for people who are recreational flyers to spend time in the air. It is run by a Fixed Based Operator that manages the planes and the buildings, while the Town collected a percentage of the gross from the company and the fuel, as well as money from the lease. The Town does maintain the runways and taxiways. There is a master plan to expand this airport to include more room for hangars and business flights, but there is no desire to bring in commercial jet liners.
I also went through the signs and signals (see Vickie's picture of how big the street sign is) and learned about how they acquire street signs and the standards that are upheld for any sign in the Town. I also talked with Fleet technicians about how they fit into the whole department, by keeping up on the maintenance of any vehicle in the Town. They were working on a police motorcycle when I was in the shop.
My favorite part of the day was talking with Orville about his time with Jack Welch. They both started at GE at the same time and Orville worked with him for years. Orville was one of the first people to conduct a GE workout for problem solving, one of the most renowned methods in management! Learning about management from someone like Jack Welch is invaluable. Orville has taken Jack's hardline style and relaxed it quite a bit for his own career. Orville still believes in the 10-80-10 theory that 10% of people are with you and should be nurtured, 80% are meh about anything, and 10% should be eliminated because they can cause problems within an organziation. These are things that I have studied and chatting with someone who was there on the front lines was amazing!
Orville has done a lot of stuff with environmental auditing and was even a co-writer of Title IV of the EPA!! Part of the Clean Air Act. We are talking some serious talent here.
Lessons: make sure to eliminate muda (waste) in your organization and make your processes poke yoke (mistake proof). Problem solve in the immediate future and try to be predictive for the long term management of your organization.
Here is a quick PPT on GE and the tools they use for management.
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