Manufacturers today are navigating through the eye of the storm looking for some glimmer of light to guide them. Their profits are low, unemployment is running at an uncomfortable pace, and purchasing decisions of customers appear uncertain. Most manufacturers are left bobbing in a sea of questions asking themselves, “How do we survive these uncertain times?”

During these turbulent times, an organization’s leader is as symbolic as the lighthouse that resides amid stormy waters. These figures must rise above unstable conditions and confidently serve as a bright navigational light for those at sea.   

It takes a leader with clear navigational routes, performance indicators, and confidence to chart the direction of a business. This courageous leader will revisit his or her strategic course and create new points of competitive advantage that will emerge ahead of those who wait for the storm to pass and to resume “business as usual.”

When charting this strategic course, leaders need to acknowledge the three current changes to the manufacturing world:

• Today’s economy offers global solutions and changes at a breakneck speed.
• Buying decisions will become unstable with the availability of information through technology.
• The necessity to drive costs and compress time will run at a blistering pace.

Due to these overwhelming industry complexities, leaders have gravitated toward simple, internal solutions, and with that desire, many have turned to single-solution scenarios to solve complex problems. However, the majority have been disenchanted with the success of these solutions. As a result, more manufacturers have adopted a more encompassing approach and are focusing around four perspectives. These four perspectives are aligned with a common mission to increase business value and solve customers’ problems and issues.

• Customer excellence
• Value-adding internal processes
• A responsive learning culture
• Optimizing financial and business results

Manufacturers who are implementing these perspectives are insisting the organization respond with creativity before capital, and therefore, turning the hierarchal organization upside down. The organization is then customer-tuned and process-focused. Information in these businesses moves up and down the value-streaming processes and is monitored by those closest to controlling change--the entire workforce. As a result of this thinking, middle management roles are fundamentally changed.
     
These manufacturers recognize the improvement journey has no finish line but will admit the starting point was painful. The common denominator among these companies is realizing their current state is no longer tolerable and the pain is deep enough to muscle through change. 

While navigating through the improvement journey, manufacturers have seen results from managing under a few new rules. 

Knowledge-sharing. The goodwill of the new-age company is its ability to efficiently cross-pollinate ideas and then successfully convert ideas into profit.

Effective decision-making. Manufacturers have witnessed the speed in which the market changes, therefore they must respond quicker with concise decision-making.  

Focus on customer perceived value. Profitable customers matter. Acquiring new customers is much more expensive than satisfying existing ones. 

Recruit and retain the talent. Talented people in the organization create value. 

Capture the power of collaboration. Unrealized opportunities will emerge through knowledge exchange and alliances which will grant new capabilities. Organizations need to acquire more understanding through others.   

Build a responsive organization. As emerging technology provides lower costs of information exchange, the organizational structure will be entitled to respond differently. In general, they will be less hierarchical and more tuned to internal value streams.

Build waste-free processes. With the customer in focus, internal processes are built that represent only value-adding activities. 

Develop leaders. Without multiple leaders, the company will never reach its full potential. These leaders will rally the teams to achieve new levels of performance and push through turbulent times with optimism and purpose.

Manufacturers know when this squall passes, their businesses could have changed. But, with leaders that provide the vote of confidence and reason to proceed in unfavorable conditions, the storm may not seem so fierce. It is those leaders whose buoyancy will light the way for all to follow.