Joe Park, the Global Reliability Director at Novelis and 2015 Mainstream Conference speaker, discusses some of the most often overlooked and neglected components to driving excellence in maintenance and reliability management. He shares his best practices to ensure you have the right people, in the right role at the right time.
Four characteristics to evaluate
Individuals within an organization have four critical characteristics that I consider: attitude, aptitude, skill set and leadership. Which of these are the most critical? Which does your team value? How do they work together to create an effective, or not so effective, individual or team?
I personally believe attitude is the most important. Attitude comes from experience and is learned. Attitude includes the evaluation of people, issues, objects or events and those evaluations are positive, negative or uncertain at times. Attitude can be influenced by an organization’s norms, but once a person matures into the workforce, they enter an organization with what I call attitudinal tendency.
Grading on a bell curve
Skills, attitude and leadership can be illustrated on a spectrum in terms of positive or negative influence and the magnitude of influence that these people have an organization. The majority of people fall within the neutral attitude standpoint and have a good or not-so-good skill set. This group doesn’t usually set the theme or direction for an organization, but should be your target audience to drive change within your organization.
The most influence tends to come from people with strong attitudes, either in a negative or positive direction, and excellent skills. People who can take an organization in the wrong direction are those with an excellent skill set, negative attitude and strong leadership (left side of the curve). On the other hand, people with excellent skills, positive attitudes and strong leadership are they people you want to empower and put into a place of leadership (right side of the curve).

 
It’s all about understanding people within your organization and where they fall in the bell curve. This is a key step towards understanding how an organization needs to progress and who you should engage to make that happen.
Most people are good eggs
In my experience, most people want to do the right thing. There are very few people that I refer to as devoutly hostile, or those on the far left side of the curve.
Most people who fall in the center of the bell curve are looking to see what direction leadership is going. In fact, some people that you characterized as negative may really want to do the right thing but are disenfranchised by negativity and a lack of leadership.
Joe Park is the Global Reliability Director at Novelis and past speaker at Mainstream Conference.