Manager Profile - Changing Attitudes

When he started his job, strict rules and inflexibility ruled his in-plant. Today it's one of the most customer-friendly departments on campus.

Monday used to be a red-letter day at Grand Rapids Community College. In fact, it was the only day when red ink—or green, or blue—touched the in-plant's presses.

"They only ran colored ink on Monday," says Doug Miller, recalling his first days at the in-plant, 18 years ago. "There were very strict guidelines as to what got done when and by whom."

Miller's arrival changed all that. Since taking over as director of Printing and Graphic Services, he has upgraded equipment, increased color printing and changed the attitudes of both employees and customers. These are impressive results from a man who got into printing purely by accident.

Back in the 1960s, Miller's high school wood shop teacher, weary of Miller's unsuccessful woodworking efforts, advised him to transfer into print shop instead. To Miller's surprise, he took a shine to the trade.

"I was pretty good at it," he reveals, "unlike trying to square up a piece of wood, which I was pretty bad at."

Ironically, despite his bad luck with wood, Miller's first job after graduation was with Thompson Cabinet Co., in Ludington, Mich., as a spray painter.

"It was just a horrendous job," he recalls—so bad he decided to give college a try. He enrolled in the printing program at Ferris State University, ending up with a bachelor's degree in printing education. His first job was running the in-plant for the Meijer Stores retail chain.

After seven years there, Miller took a sales position at Addressograph-Multigraph Corp. The commissions flowed in for five years—until the Xerox 9200 appeared on the scene, threatening sales. Miller saw the writing on the wall and left to join Compugraphic Corp. He did well for a year, until corporate downsizing put him out on the street.

By then he was getting tired of the fluctuating income he was generating as a salesman. So when Grand Rapids Community College, one of his Addressograph-Multigraph clients, asked him to replace the retiring manager of its print shop, he took the job.

And what a job he had in store.

Strict Management

"When I came in the shop was actually dying," he recalls. "They were losing money hand over fist. The management was so strict and so inflexible that people were going outside to get their work done."

In addition to the Monday-only color printing rule, the shop could not print on coated stock, and it spread its seven employees out inefficiently over two shifts.

So Miller went to work. He eliminated the second shift, bought a two-color Ryobi that could print on coated stock, and increased color printing. He arranged for just-in-time paper delivery and used his sales experience to call on department heads and convince them to send work to the in-plant.

"The biggest problem I had was changing the attitudes of not only our customers but our staff," he says. It took years of discussions and team-building exercises to get his staff to abandon their past inflexibility and start putting customers first. His efforts paid off.

"We're highly spoken of on campus as one of the best run organizations," Miller says. As a result of this new attitude, the college rewarded the in-plant with the right of first refusal for all print jobs.

Today the in-plant has 16 employees, including five graphic designers. It uses both a Xerox DocuTech and offset presses, and it added a platesetter to improve turnaround time and cut costs.

Miller credits the Association of College and University Printers (ACUP) with giving him some of his ideas. At the 1999 conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., after listening to a speaker describe his school's "Yes We Can" attitude, Miller went home and put the same slogan into use.

"We don't say no to people," Miller says. "We figure out a way to do what they need."

ACUP changed Miller's life in another way, too. At the 1996 conference in Fairbanks, Alaska, Miller met another in-plant manager, Melva Christian, of the University of Oklahoma. The two were married three years ago.

Though fond of sailing in nearby Lake Michigan, Miller recently sold his boat and bought some land north of Grand Rapids. When he's not spending time with his two daughters and five grandchildren, he and his wife enjoy spending weekends on the spread, just 10 miles from his home town of Ludington.

"It's kind of like going home," he says.

by Bob Neubauer