Harnessing staff tension at the custom metal fabricator

FMA Annual Meeting attendees were asked to fill in where they felt they fit within each spectrum of tension under various circumstances. The wider the shaded area, the more varied one’s tension is in different situations. Based on material from Idea Farm Co-op, Phoenix.

“We firmly believe in the old saying, you’re either growing or shrinking. You can’t stand still for very long.”

Edwin Stanley, vice president of operations at Fort Payne, Ala.-based GH Metal Solutions, made that statement at The FABRICATOR’s Leadership Summit, part of the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association Annual Meeting, held in March in Scottsdale, Ariz.

That saying has been around for decades, and it seems to ring true enough—but why? Why can’t a business just keep steady, neither grow nor shrink? Theoretically, a fabricator can employ the same number of people for years, keep its current contracts, or replace lost revenue with other jobs. Revenue may shrink a little one year, grow a little the next, but on average it rises just enough to cover staff pay raises and needed capital investments. Can it really be this simple? Can the focus be on sustaining things as they are? Why focus on growth?

Of course, as anyone in this business knows all too well, customers demand more over time, and they aren’t necessarily willing to pay as much for the work as they have in the past. Assuming this, a fabricator that doesn’t grow won’t be able to sustain itself, as the market pushes prices downward.

In custom fabrication, pricing pressure has become a fact of life. It comes from the usual culprits, like shops sending out unrealistically lowball bids for work. But it’s also coming from fabricators that add capacity through process improvement and new technology. These shops essentially produce more with less.

Pricing pressure has spurred continual change in this business, be it hunting for new orders and new customers (top line) or uncovering better, more efficient ways to serve those customers (bottom line), or both. In fact, it must be both. As Stanley and other fabrication managers have said, you are truly growing or shrinking in this business. If you’re standing still, something’s amiss, and you won’t be standing still for long.

This reality made Tamara Christensen’s presentation at The FABRICATOR’s Leadership Summit more relevant than ever. Based in Phoenix, Christensen founded an organization called the Idea Farm Co-op, a firm that essentially helps people work better together.

A generation ago her presentation probably wouldn’t have connected with the fabrication audience. After all, her talk dealt with abstract, very human topics—far from the “quit complaining and just get it done now” fab shops of the past.

But metal fabrication is changing. Experienced employees are retiring, and fabricators are having to recruit a younger, and often very different, employee; hence the engaged reception of Christensen’s presentation. Everyone talks about how finding talent is such a challenge, about how they’re looking for good employees who fit in and work well with others. But how do you define that, exactly? Christensen’s presentation gave attendees new insight.

She focused on what she called the “six tensions of transformation”: knowledge, risk, assessment, pace of change, ambiguity, and the playing field. The tensions come from the personal interaction between people who effect change.

These tensions don’t make much sense until you see the spectrums they represent. The knowledge tension determines how people learn, via facts or feelings. Those who learn “with facts” prioritize the what. Facts can be quantified, scrutinized, and used as an objective foundation for moving forward. Those who learn “with feelings” prioritize the human experience, including how people’s beliefs and values affect how they process information.

The other categories are somewhat straightforward. Risk maps one’s fear of change; on one end of the spectrum is “fear,” the other is “faith,” a willingness to try something new without proof or certainty of success.

Assessment maps how one perceives outcomes. On one end of the spectrum is “failure,” a fixed mindset focused on failure or success; the other end is “fuel,” in which outcomes aren’t viewed by their level of success or failure, but by their learning value. From a “fuel” perspective, any outcome is an opportunity to grow.

The pace of change tension is self-explanatory; “frozen” lies on one end of the spectrum (analysis paralysis), “fast” is on the other.

Ambiguity maps how people adapt, with “familiar” on one end (dependence on known, comfortable, traditional approaches) and “foreign” on the other (willingness to try unknown, unfamiliar approaches).

Finally, the playing field tension describes how people perceive, well, the playing field. Is it a competition or collaboration? On one end of the spectrum is “fierce,” where competitors are driven to remove potential threats; on the other end is “friends,” where people consider divergent points of view and look for mutually beneficial outcomes.

Here’s the core takeaway: Tension isn’t bad. In fact, without tension, it’s difficult for a company to change direction. Two people from opposite ends of the spectrum—facts versus feeling, risk versus faith, and so on—create potential energy that propels them toward change.

“Fundamentally, as forces pull the rubber band in different directions, you create potential energy,” Christensen said. “The reason the rubber band has so much kinetic energy when you let go is because it’s been stretched in opposite directions. It’s that stretching that gives it power.”

Of course, stretch too much and the rubber band snaps—not good for any organization. The trick is maintaining a healthy balance of tension. Consider a fabricator with people who all think alike. They don’t stretch that rubber band, and the business just keeps plodding along. It doesn’t change and soon becomes irrelevant and shuts its doors. Fabricators with the right tension adapt and evolve, though not always successfully. But they’re ready to stretch the rubber band again, build tension, and move forward.

Christensen summed it up this way: “If you’re experiencing great tension, then you’re experiencing opportunities to really innovate.”

The next FMA Annual Meeting will take place March 5-7, 2019, in Nashville.