An O3 Success Story

Bottom line: Most resistant person to One on Ones was the person who took forty minutes the first time. Fantastic!

Full story:

Definitely not going to pull the "You guys'll never believe this" card, because duh. But I'm a new frontline operations manager at a fortune 500 logistics company. I've been with the company for 3.5 years, a manager for three months now (half of which, off and on, has been spent travelling for training). Of my 18 directs, I've got three of what are essentially team leads, a few long haul drivers, and a bunch of material handlers. For the slow rollout of one on ones, I brought them up first to my team leads. One was very open to the idea, one was open but "meh", the third was very hesitant. His wording was "I don't really have much to say, I just come in and do my job.". "Okay." was my response. Still, he did the right thing and picked a time off the schedule.

Did my first one with him today. Asked him "What's on your mind?"

He began his answer the same way: "You know me, I don't have too much to say. Though actually..."

I knew I had him at that point.

He went on to talk for forty minutes about a few various issues. All of which are targets of mine since coming on to the operation here. All of which he clearly cared a lot about and desired more communication on. I gave it to him, and when he left he had a little bit of a smile. I joked at the end "Dude, you know, for the guy who doesn't have much to say, we just talked for nearly an hour."

"yeah, well..." and then he walked out the door.

Again, not going to say "you guys'll never believe this" or "I can't believe this worked.", but holy crap. It's definitely a testament to the system.

Thank you Manager Tools crew, and thanks to everyone who kept them going with their support before I showed up so that they'd still be here when I did.