Kirby Griffin: Linking Leadership Directly to Operational Performance

The North American manufacturing industry has become unpredictable, and the uncertainty of outside forces has made operational performance more critical than ever. How efficiently and effectively does your organization turn resources like time, money, and people into valuable products or services? Improving operational results is essential for staying competitive and achieving long-term success.

But boosting operational performance often feels like a complex puzzle. Where do you start? Many companies focus heavily on processes and technology, but often overlook a crucial element—their people.

What if the key to unlocking better operational outcomes lies in developing strong leaders and nurturing talent within your teams? Insights from a conversation on the “Accelerating Operational Performance” podcast with industry expert Kirby Griffin shed light on this connection. Kirby, the Senior Manager for Talent and Learning Development at Graphic Packaging International, brings over 35 years of experience helping organizations achieve real business results through leadership solutions and employee development. You can listen to the conversation from the podcast here or watch it here.

His experience, spanning from frontline team member to advising executives, confirms a vital link: effective leadership and strategic talent development are fundamental drivers for accelerating operational performance. Let’s explore how.

The Undeniable Link: How Leadership Drives Operational Performance

Why is leadership so critical for achieving strong operational results? Think about the teams you’ve been a part of or observed.

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Rarely does a team succeed in spite of its leader. More often, it’s the team not succeeding because of the leader, not succeeding because of the direction, the support, or the education that a leader is providing them.”

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We’ve all heard the saying, “a team is as strong as its weakest link”. Sometimes, that weakest link isn’t a team member lacking skills, but the leader themselves. Effective leadership provides the guidance, resources, and environment necessary for a team to perform optimally and achieve its operational goals. Conversely, ineffective leadership can directly hinder progress and lead to poor operational outcomes.

Kirby emphasizes that there is a clear proportional symbiotic relationship between leadership and the success of the team. Whether it’s providing clear direction, offering necessary support, or ensuring the team has the right skills and knowledge through education, the leader’s actions are fundamental. He firmly believes—as do we—that leadership, effectiveness, and efficiency impact the outcome.  

Key Takeaway: Don’t underestimate the power of leadership in your quest for better operational performance. Investing in developing effective leaders is investing directly in your organization’s ability to execute efficiently and achieve desired results.

What Fuels Success? 3 Pillars for Improving Operations

Beyond strong leadership, what fundamental elements contribute to the success of specific programs or initiatives aimed at improving operations? Kirby identifies three core pillars that underpin success, not just for structured programs, but for effective leadership in general.

Pillar 1: Timeliness in Response

Speed matters when addressing operational issues or opportunities. Whether it’s a training need, a production problem, or a chance to improve a process, being there and responding at the earliest possible time is crucial. Delaying action can allow problems to fester or opportunities to slip away, hindering progress towards operational success.

Pillar 2: Accuracy in Solutions

While speed is important, accuracy is paramount. Avoid a trial-and-error approach (let’s try this, let’s try that). Instead, focus on getting an accurate solution as soon as possible. Finding the right fix quickly prevents wasted time and resources, leading to more efficient and effective operational improvements.

Pillar 3: Adding Value

Any solution, training program, or operational change must contribute positively to the bigger picture. The goal is to ensure that whatever action is taken adds value to the organization. Addressing a problem or providing training is good, but it’s truly successful only if it leads to tangible benefits for the business and enhances overall operational performance.

Key takeaway: Being timely, accurate and adding value are just good foundational elements for education as well as being a leader. Keep these three pillars in mind as you design and implement initiatives to boost your operational results.

Developing Your People: The Engine of Operational Performance

While processes and technology are important, we need to agree that it’s the employees who ultimately drive operational performance. Investing in developing their skills, particularly leadership capabilities, is crucial for accelerating operational results. But how do you effectively identify and nurture talent for maximum impact?

Identifying Key Leadership Qualities for Better Operations

Certain leadership qualities are fundamental for success, enabling individuals not only to excel in their current roles but also to take on roles of greater scale and responsibility. Kirby highlights several core elements:

• Resilience: The ability to bounce back from setbacks is vital in dynamic operational environments.
• Collaboration: Effective teamwork across departments smooths workflows and enhances overall operational efficiency.
• Learning Agility: The capacity to learn quickly and adapt fuels continuous operational improvement.
• Inspiring Others: Leaders who can motivate their teams achieve significantly better operational outcomes.

These attributes allow leaders to effectively support their teams. As leadership responsibility grows—from managing 4 people to 40 or 400—the impact of these qualities exponentially grows.

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“You think and you know that a manager gets their work done through others.”

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Understanding Potential vs. Performance for Operational Roles

When developing talent, particularly for succession planning, it’s vital to distinguish between current performance and future potential. Kirby offers a clear definition: Potential is just the ability to get results at the next level, or simply, the ability to handle greater scale and response.  

A common mistake is confusing the two. 

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“If somebody wasn’t performing, it was assumed that they didn’t have potential when in fact, there are other factors that could have led to that non-performance such as a job mismatch or something like that”.

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Therefore, don’t automatically write off underperformers; investigate the root cause. In succession planning, a key shift is moving from identifying everyone who could do a job to pinpointing who should be in that role based on a deeper assessment.  

Leveraging Strengths for Peak Operational Performance

A cornerstone of effective talent development and management is understanding and utilizing individual strengths. Kirby stresses that an essential attribute of being a good leader is understanding the strengths of the employees on your team and being able to manage the work using those strengths.

Think of it like coaching a sports team: the people on the line have different strengths and skills as opposed to the receivers, the running back, and the quarterback. Assigning tasks and roles based on what people do best optimizes team operations and leads to better overall performance. By focusing on strengths, you put the right people in the right positions—the ones who should be there—to achieve peak operational results.

Key takeaway: Strategically develop your people by nurturing leadership qualities, accurately assessing their potential separate from current performance, and leveraging their individual strengths to place them in the right roles. Focusing on these aspects of talent development is the most effective way to drive better operational results.

Navigating Challenges to Achieve Operational Excellence

You may now too well that the path to operational excellence isn’t always smooth. Organizations often encounter roadblocks that can derail even well-intentioned initiatives. Understanding these common challenges and how to navigate them is key to achieving sustainable operational improvements.

The “Slow is Fast” Principle in Operational Initiatives

One significant challenge arises from the pressure for immediate results, especially with methodologies like Lean and Six Sigma.

To explain this, Kirby uses the example of A3 problem-solving, a structured approach where later steps involve carefully reviewing, tweaking, and standardizing solutions. These crucial steps take the most time, but are essential for ensuring countermeasures actually work. However, the pressure to fix things now can lead organizations to rush, enacting countermeasures “as soon as possible, and not even see if they were working”. This approach contradicts the pillar of finding accurate solutions.

While managers and executives understandably “want this solved immediately, ” Kirby emphasizes a counterintuitive truth: sometimes you have to slow down to go fast. Taking the time to properly analyze, test, and validate solutions, even if it feels slow initially, leads to more robust and lasting operational gains.

Avoiding Assumption Traps

Another common pitfall is acting on untested assumptions. Kirby shared a personal setback:

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“One area that set me back a few times was moving on assumptions rather than testing or validating the assumption. So I would think that I had come up with a solution for a learning need or opportunity in the organization. And instead of talking to a peer about it, getting some consensus among the stakeholders, or getting some empirical evidence to support that, I just pushed it out.”

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The antidote to assumption traps is validation. Before rolling out significant operational changes or new initiatives, take the time to:

• Test your ideas on a smaller scale if possible.
• Talk to peers and gather different perspectives.
• Get consensus and buy-in from key stakeholders.
• Look for empirical evidence or data to support your proposed solution.

This validation step might feel like it’s slowing things down, but as Kirby learned, “the fastest way to get somewhere is to go slow”. Validating assumptions before launching ensures your efforts are well-directed and increases the likelihood of successful operational initiatives.

Key takeaway: Resist pressure for quick fixes and embrace a “slow is fast” mindset by thoroughly validating solutions before acting. This avoids assumption traps and ensures operational initiatives are well-directed and sustainable.

Aligning Teams and Goals for Streamlined Operational Performance

Even with great leaders and skilled teams, achieving peak operational performance requires alignment. When departments or individuals work towards different or even conflicting goals, friction arises, and the overall operation suffers. Streamlining performance means ensuring everyone is pulling in the same direction.

Breaking Down Silos with Shared Objectives

Why do departments sometimes seem to compete rather than collaborate? Often, it’s due to a lack of alignment or a shared objective. This frequently manifests in Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). A department might have a KPI they can completely control, which seems good in isolation. However, if that KPI doesn’t add value or it’s not in the shared priority stream or the shared objectives of an organization, it can create problems.

Kirby offers an example: a warehouse focused on the percentage of clean rail cars upon shipping. While cleanliness is important, focusing heavily on this specific metric might detract from the primary goal—getting a roll of paper off the reel and getting it to a converting plant. When departmental goals aren’t aligned with the larger operational flow, silos form. Breaking them down often requires establishing what that shared objective or priority goal is, which requires cross-departmental collaboration, sometimes needing intervention from higher management to define.

Focusing Training on Operational Impact

Alignment also applies to support functions like training. Measuring training success merely by “percentage complete” misses the mark. Kirby points out the need to move towards measuring application and results, referencing Kirkpatrick’s levels of training evaluation. Did employees apply what they learned (Level 3)? Did it lead to better results (Level 4)?

The true measure of training effectiveness isn’t how many people attended, but its contribution to better operational performance. Training initiatives should be designed and measured based on their tangible impact on operational outcomes.

The Manager’s Role in Engagement and Performance

Aligning individuals and teams often comes down to the manager. Echoing findings from organizations like Gallup, Kirby emphasizes that the manager is going to be the most important person and has the greatest impact on an employee’s engagement. And engagement is directly linked to productivity and operational output.

How can managers foster this crucial engagement, especially across diverse teams with different needs?

Actively listen! Managers and leaders must actively listen to the needs, concerns, and what employees say. This isn’t about solving generational differences or complex motivation theories; it’s about understanding their specific team’s unique culture and needs. Taking the time to genuinely hear employees and then acting on that feedback (where appropriate) is fundamental to building engagement and driving better performance. As Kirby notes regarding engagement surveys, participation rates are less important than “what does the employee say and how do you act on it?”.

Key takeaway: Focus on shared objectives, ensure training drives real results, and actively listen to your teams. Managers play a pivotal role in creating the alignment needed for streamlined operational performance.

Putting People at the Heart of Operational Performance

Accelerating operational performance requires more than tweaking processes or implementing new technologies. As Kirby’s insights highlight, achieving sustainable operational results hinges significantly on your people. Effective leadership, strategic talent development, and thoughtful execution are the true engines of improvement.

Remember these takeaways for enhancing your organization’s operational outcomes:

• Leadership is Paramount: Recognize the direct link between strong leadership and team success. Invest in developing leaders who can provide clear direction and support.
• Develop Talent Strategically: Focus on identifying key leadership qualities, understanding the difference between potential and performance, and leveraging individual strengths to put the right people in the right roles.
• Be Timely, Accurate, and Add Value: Ground your initiatives in these three pillars for maximum impact.
• Navigate Challenges Wisely: Embrace the “slow is fast” principle—take time for validation and avoid acting on untested assumptions.
• Align for Success: Break down silos with shared objectives, ensure training delivers tangible results, and empower managers to listen and respond to their teams actively.

Improving operations requires this human-centric approach, and that’s where we come in. Our programs at Unique Training & Development focus on developing capable leaders and engaged employees. We teach your leaders how to foster an environment of collaboration and continuous learning, building the foundation for achieving lasting operational excellence.

It all starts with a conversation, so don’t hesitate to reach out and ask about the different leadership development solutions we offer to help you accelerate your operational performance.