On the shop floor or on the assembly line, the hourly technical expert is a valuable human resource. But successfully moving a strong technical expert into an effective line leader role is no small accomplishment. Too often the gap between what a strong individual contributor can do technically and what they need to do as an effective people leader is not realized until after some damage has been done.

At Amway's Operations facility in Ada, Michigan, the Crew Leaders -- first-line, hourly leaders -- weren't being adequately prepared to move from working as a peer on the line, to a leader of the line and people.

Development Team Diversity

When Dave Buttrick, vice president of Ada Operations at Amway, expressed concern about the leadership capabilities of his crew leaders, the Global Leadership Development Team saw this as an opportunity to develop 64 front-line leaders, who lead approximately 1500 manufacturing employees. Building an hourly leadership development program required strong collaboration between leaders in the Ada Operations division and the Global Leadership Development (GLD) team.

The project lead from GLD worked with plant managers and Buttrick, identifying three plant supervisors that became the Development Team. This team was intentionally diverse in several ways. The three supervisors were each from different plants; their time at Amway ranged from three years to thirty-two years, and their experience as supervisors also varied, one having only worked at Amway, others having transferable skills from other companies. This assignment was intended as a development opportunity for the three supervisors, which helped solidify their investment in the success of the program

Operations Support & Buy-in

From the beginning, the development team knew that their work could not be done in a vacuum. In order to get widespread support and buy-in, there would have to be structures in place to allow for frequent communication with key stakeholders; those whose understanding of the program would be critical to its success.

The first thing the Development Team did was create a consultant team that had representation from HR, Operations and GLD. These consultants were invited to meetings, included in status report updates, and frequently reviewed key decisions made by the Development Team in areas that warranted their unique perspective or expertise. HR provided a generalist who had responsibility for Ada Operations and worked very closely with the VP on a regular basis. The manager from the largest plant, with the greatest number of Crew Leaders, offered a valuable Operations perspective from a more strategic vantage point than the supervisors on the development team. The GLD Manager provided additional support and extensive experience developing this type of program in a call center at another company. These three resources were kept informed through status reports from the development team, one on one conversations, and regular email communication.

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