When speaking with people, I often use the terms “sectors” and “industries” interchangeably and incorrectly. Despite the numerous industries I have worked in, there are countless more that I haven’t explored. Interestingly, many industries are worried about using outsiders. Meaning they’d rather rely on those with specific industry experience. Off-topic – I chuckle when I reminisce about my time living in PEI and how, despite being a Maritimer, we would still be called “CFA’s”, or Come From Away-ers. Although often said in jest, it happened frequently enough to give off an outsider vibe.
But I digress. I wrote years ago that, as someone who gained my manufacturing experience in the Aerospace world, I often heard of the friction between the Aerospace and Automotive Industries. Why exactly, I’m not sure. Rate of production? Or competing engineering disciplines?
Similarly, associating manufacturing (or production) processes with healthcare services can cause those professionals to question the intention and value. The telephone, television, and radio industries had quite a rivalry at one point. And lest I open up a can of worms when comparing the private and public sectors for almost anything (education, healthcare, administrative services, etc.). Or Private vs NFP?
With core fundamentals, regardless of industry, seasoned professionals can use their existing skills and knowledge to assist an organization. Yes, there will always be some “the devil is in the details”. However, in more senior positions, it should be less relevant.
I’ve often heard from other leaders or individuals that you can’t help or be successful if you don’t know the job specifics. For a front-line leader, I largely agree that some foundational knowledge of the role is required. It helps to gain respect, foster team-building, and facilitate cross-training. Senior leaders? I think it’s admirable and worthwhile to understand the basics of positions in scope, but I don’t believe they need to be fully understood, certainly not from steps 1 to 48 in an SOP.
Case in point. I’ve worked in three sectors: secondary, tertiary, and quaternary, spanning thirteen industries – five in each of manufacturing and services. When I 1st jumped from service (telecommunications) to manufacturing (aerospace), was it a leap? Absolutely! Discussing the latest in predictive dialers, ACDs, and DNIS/ANI data flow through to discussions on stator vanes and turbine blades, machining capabilities (grinder vs lathe vs EDM), and escapes (defective products in the field) was quite the change in terminology and concepts. These are the devil in the details for each industry (not necessarily the company).
However, many fundamentals still held. Providing leadership, adept communication, team building, proper planning, root-cause analysis, corrective actions, project management, and change management were always consistent. The need for and ability to include a business operating system to monitor, course-correct, and identify new improvements and technologies to help the business grow in line with its strategy, provide more value to the customers, and be more efficient from a quality, cost, safety, or delivery perspective, was always consistent. That’s a lot of similarities spanning so many industries, wouldn’t you agree?
Every industry change brings something new and different. Different technology, customers, processes, and those subtle nuances, but a lot remained constant. Regardless of when I moved into hydraulics manufacturing, computer storage, medical laboratory, food manufacturing, SaaS or yes, consulting, there was always more that remained familiar as there would be new.
The key for me, and I suspect many others who have dipped their toes in multiple industries, is three-fold:
1) Having the humility to know what you don’t know and count on those SMEs to fill in the gaps and respectfully question legacy and “the way we’ve always done it” ideas.
2) The aptitude to quickly get comfortable and knowledgeable with the key aspects of the business (customers, technology, processes, to name a few)
3) The ability to leverage an onboarding plan to get up to speed quickly to provide value.
For the latter, my onboarding (whether a role or engagement) consists of speaking with the key stakeholders and understanding the issues, obstacles, and priorities. It’s talking with leaders and individuals. As required, it’s job-shadowing roles I’ll be reviewing to ensure I understand the details behind the value-added work, processes, and measurables. It’s hearing from the customer. It’s listening and observing – both the spoken and the unspoken. Then, and only then, should the actions begin. Sometimes it takes a couple of weeks, other times a few months. I must share an important point. The time needed is based more on the scope of work than on the industry. These steps have helped me move quickly from industry to industry with success.
Back to the original question. Why do so many companies look for leadership or consulting expertise in their industry? Is it comfort? Doesn’t that come with the risk of not being outward and future-looking? Most successful companies welcome diversity and a variety of backgrounds to try and reach the best possible set of outcomes and directions. Is it that “we’re different”? Yes, although only to a certain (small) degree. No two people are identical, and that automatically would make companies different. Culture – hopefully. Policies – maybe. Chances are, someone else in the world is doing very similar work to what you are. Do you want to provide something on time, with quality and value, to a customer? That makes you part of the 99%+ of companies in the world. Is it because there is a need for deep knowledge of the core processes? Isn’t that for SMEs and front-line employees to be able to understand, since they will always be the experts?
I believe many organizations think it’s all of the above, especially #2 – “we’re different”. In my experience, that can’t be further from the truth. Identifying and porting best practices (I still refer to the Honeywell term SWIPE, Steal With Integrity, Purpose, and Ethics) is an example where you want to get outsider perspectives. Doesn’t it help to create a new operating paradigm? Outsiders are more comfortable asking the “dumb” question, which, maybe in hindsight, isn’t so dumb (and yes, I know, there are no dumb questions). Companies can get stale and stagnant. What’s the best way to change that? Introduce something (or someone) new and different.
Regardless of industry, companies have three basic needs:
1) A requirement to differentiate oneself and provide value to customers
2) Profitability – long-term, sustainable financial returns, and
3) Strong team players who demonstrate the right competencies and skills to support #1 and #2
Can an outsider contribute to these aspects without industry knowledge? You know my answer. Maybe a learning curve could be avoided with an industry SME. However, the value of an outsider isn’t determined by the scope of what they don’t know, but rather by the scope of what they do and how quickly they can apply it to achieve positive outcomes.