The View from 50,000 Feet

To lead your in-plant in the right direction, you have to understand how upper management perceives you. Here is one administrator's view.

By Ray Chambers

Several years ago I managed the in-plant in a large state agency that operated several high-speed forms presses. Supply and paper costs were built into our budget by administration, and we had very little input into the budgeting process.

One year, not too far into the budget cycle, it was apparent that we were going to run out of money for paper before the end of the funding year. I went to my boss and explained the situation to him, fully expecting him to agree that keeping the in-plant in paper was vitally important to the successful operation of the agency and find some money. Imagine my surprise when he looked at me and said "if you've got paper for three months and it's six months to the end of the funding year, I guess you'd better run your presses at half speed."

I've never forgotten that message. Printing was important, maybe even strategic, to the operations of the agency. We were efficient, we had high customer satisfaction ratings, we did good work and we saved the state a ton of money. But at the end of the day we were not a "core" process, we were a support process. From my boss' view at 50,000 feet, running out of forms and letterhead was not as important as some of the other things on his plate.

Our True Responsibilities

I think about this story a lot. Technology and innovation, the really neat things that go on in our lives and in the printing business, can be seductive. They make us think about how much more efficient and effective we could be if only we had them. After all, don't bigger and faster presses increase productivity and lower unit costs? Doesn't the digital storefront make us more accessible to our customers? These are powerful influences, but are they leading us away from our true responsibilities?

We are all managers, and the management process is about planning. Scanning the environment, both from the printing/document management side and from the perspective of your organization's core business, is a critical component of management. In short, we need to know what business we are in, what critical changes are likely to occur within the next 12 to 18 months, and how those changes impact the services we provide to our organizations.

The Organization's Strategy

As managers we realize the value and importance of understanding where things are going, but we need to view that change through the proper lens. We need to look at technological innovations in the light of the organization's overall communications strategy. It doesn't make sense to upgrade equipment to improve productivity when the organization is moving in a different direction.

An effective manager will build an operating plan on the strategic initiatives of the organization. What good is direct-to-plate if the organization is moving to variable image processing or increasing Web-based communications with its customers?

As an administrator in higher education, I follow trends that affect the operations of my college. Things like changing student profiles, the learning and communications styles of the new generation of students, and the policy and regulatory environment will all affect the operations of the college and its in-plant. I expect my managers to follow trends in their areas of operation as well.

Together we need to blend these perceptions and build a strategy that meets the overall needs of the college. In doing so, we will need to recognize some of the things that might make sense from an operational perspective may only contribute marginally to the educational outcomes of the college.

Management is about planning, but it's also about making hard choices, and sometimes the things that make sense on the operational level don't look so good when viewed from 50,000 feet.

What's Best for the Organization?

There was an interesting discussion recently on an Internet bulletin board. An in-plant manager lamented that he was forced to place a job with an outside vendor because that vendor's price was significantly lower than that of the in-plant. His point seemed to be that his cost structure placed his shop at a disadvantage, and using the vendor to reduce costs to the organization somehow hurt the in-plant.

To me this position begs the question: What is best for the organization? If the commercial source were the low-cost source, why wouldn't you use it? The role of the in-plant should be to provide high-quality print collateral for the parent organization at the lowest cost. Very few, if any, shops can be the low-cost producer on every type of order. The role of the in-plant manager becomes one of recognizing those jobs that are not a good fit for his/her equipment and buying them.

Frankly, what's best for the in-plant may not be best for the organization. The in-plant manager's job is to scan both the internal and external environments for trends, then recommend changes that leverage innovation to support the mission and strategic imperatives of the organization. Sadly, this institutional view seems to be missing in some of our operational plans.

I mention this because it serves to illustrate the frustration administrators sometimes face with operations managers. West Texas ranchers have an expression: You ride for the brand. Riding for the brand is employee loyalty. It means everybody is focused on the same goal. Everyone is working toward the same outcome. Everyone is willing to put personal accomplishment aside to support the core purposes of the organization.

When you ride for the brand, you look past the short-term goals of your unit and focus on the strategic needs of the organization. This may include outsourcing work to a commercial shop to reduce overall costs to the organization.

As we look at trends for the next 12 to 18 months, we need to look past the improvements in print and document processing and focus on ways to leverage those innovations to make a direct, bottom-line contribution to the mission of the organization. That means we need to ride for the brand by proactively and aggressively exploring the needs of our customers—our organization—and synthesizing those trends with organizational need.

Now more than ever we need to be low-cost producers and we need to document those savings. We also need to proactively search for lower-cost alternatives, whether they come from adopting innovations or recognizing that there are times when outsourcing is the better alternative. That's riding for the brand.

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Ray Chambers, MBA, is vice president and chief information officer at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pa., where he is responsible for academic and administrative technology services, planning and strategy development. Mr. Chambers formerly served as assistant vice president for Information Technology at the University of Louisville. A frequent industry speaker and author, he has served in leadership positions with IPMA, Xplor International and the Association of College and University Printers (ACUP). He is co-founder of SmartShop Solutions, a consulting firm for in-plants in higher education. He may be reached at chamber@juniata.edu