The Winning Link

The Winning Link, A Proven Process to Define, Align, and Execute Strategy at Every Level, by Billy Ray Taylor, McGraw Hill 2022

Want to be on the winning side every time your team tackles a new project, or shoots for a new market, or just tries to hold the line?  Right now, the force and intelligence, and the sheer strength of Billy Ray Taylor, otherwise known during football times as "The BT Express," and the founder of  LinkedXL, a consulting and training company, is on your side, coaching, strategizing and showing you the way. Using good and bad examples drawn from his 40+ years of corporate experience, thirty of which were spent as Director of North American Manufacturing at Goodyear, Mr. Taylor has been there, seen what lack of a workable plan and/or a disorganized, disengaged workforce can do.  He sits us down and delivers his playbook in clear and actionable steps that will feel familiar - challenging, but doable.

Starting with the Playbook,  Mr. Taylor takes us through his essential winning steps:

1.  Defining winning

2.  Developing your strategy

3.  Aligning to win

4.  Cultivating ownership

5.  Executing winning

6.  Building a culture of continuous improvement

7.  Governance

Along the way, he illustrates the Playbook with warnings illustrated by failed attempts - early experiences where he was thrust into unknown territory.  "It may not be apparent from this narrative," he says, "but each time I took on a new leadership challenge, I was scared to death. "   At age thirty-eight Mr. Taylor moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina to fix a tire problem.  A Goodyear plant with a $372M budget and 3100 union employees was in trouble - scheduled to produce 38,000 tires per day, but only hitting between 30,000 and 31,000 units, many of which, Mr. Taylor recalls, were the wrong tires!  The solution, laughed some employees, was simply that tires needed to be nothing more than "round and black and out the back!"

But the young manager knew better, and how he managed this uphill grind in a union shop is a story in itself.  Along the way he studied The Toyota Way and The Goal, and later lean methodology, but in truth, Mr. Taylor brought his own equally powerful strengths to the game.  He is huge - well over six feet with weight tipping the 250 pound range; he is not afraid of direct eye contact, and, as someone just recovering from cancer surgery when we met, I can say he has a big heart, all of which combine to get a manager some street cred.  But add to that his burning insight and a well-practiced Playbook, and its now clear that Goodyear had unknowingly brought in just the right guy.

Make Your Goal Extremely Clear

38,000 tires, the right ones, on time, per day

38,000... 38,000.

First things first -  the big 8000 unit gap between production goals and the daily fractured reality needed to be clear and repeated so that it never left the minds of every plant worker.   

         "I needed everyone in the Fayetteville plant to understand that winning meant making 38,000 high-quality tires that met specifications for each order.  But I didn't want to be the  person who told crowds of workers this over and over again, drumming it into their heads until they tuned me out from boredom and annoyance."  

The solution? A bright yellow football jersey emblazoned with the magic 38 number for everyone in that plant.  On the back of the "Fayetteville 38" jersey was printed the word "choice"  - because he needed employees to realize that their factory had to become every customer's top choice.  On one sleeve was Goodyear's winged foot logo, and on the other sleeve was the union emblem!  Shocking, but brilliantly effective, in truth, A Winner!

         "You understand your goal and critical performance indicator and you're committed to transparent leadership.  It's time to figure out how you'll all work to meet your                                       organization's goal." 

For this next step Mr. Taylor details a purpose map, SOAP (strategy on a page), without which, he warns, any organization - large or small - will flounder.  "Be careful," he warns, "that you don't confuse your organization's purpose with its goals.  Your company's purpose is over-arching and unchanging... ", but "a reality assessment is the next part of a purpose statement.  Fayetteville needed to deeply examine and understand the gap before it chose and developed solutions and/or fixes."  

In succeeding chapters the author takes readers through what he considers the first three stages of winning - defining your purpose and goals, developing and employing a strategy to reach those goals, and executing the strategy throughout the organization.  He dedicates a chapter to his work on maintaining and progressing with continuous improvement, but this last piece, Governance, is often not considered.  Its the difference between the temporary thrill of completing a successful kaizen event, for example, and transforming an organization with deep and lasting, visible changes.  "Governance is the glue of operational excellence, the consistent practices that keep a company executing its strategies and continuously improving," with emphasis on the word practices, "a bit like physical therapy!"  Governance practices are physical therapy for your operation - stop your daily exercises and you are liable to relapse; keep up with the daily regimen and after a few months movement will get easier, smoother and more automatic, and wouldn't you love to see your plant working at this level of health?

Governance, or keeping up your good physical therapy health, advises Mr. Taylor, is also hard work, and as he saw at Goodyear, requires continued attention.  "Hard on the process, easy on the people," he says, and "what you accept is the standard," "protect home plate," "safety is the greatest value leaders can offer their people, " and "housekeeping is critical to both safety and quality."  If you dare, read his section entitled "Consequences of Poor Leadership," because unfortunately these leaders are in fact everywhere, and sometimes we are just stuck with them.  Not surprisingly, this last chapter is the most difficult because it truly shifts responsibility, after all the fixes and moves, to management.  There is no escaping the power and influence of good and bad managers.  

The Winning Link in less than 200 pages sets out a workable, successful model of good management that the author believes in and continues to share with new organizations.  One of his most likeable positives as covered in this book is his lack of repeated and habitual use of words like lean and teams, umbrella terms that clearly now require more credible and age appropriate up-dates. Instead,  Mr. Taylor offers working specifics drawn from his own manufacturing background, hardcore walkable approaches and solutions.  

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers,  patriciaemoody@gmail.com