Lessons from Executive Leaders: Build Systems that Drive Operational Excellence
Predictable performance remains a rare asset in modern manufacturing leadership. Many senior executives oversee operations where stability depends on the quick reflexes of talented individuals. This environment forces leadership into a constant state of reaction. Resolving immediate operational friction frequently takes priority over strategy and capital efficiency.
Fighting these daily fires often consumes an entire shift, leaving senior leaders with little room for strategic thought or long-term growth.
During the past year, the Shop Floor, Top Floor Talk Show sat down with executive-level experts to examine these exact challenges to tap into the collective knowledge of the industry to help manufacturing leaders bridge the gap between plant floor operations and boardroom strategy. We wanted to move beyond the surface-level “how-to” and understand what it truly takes to build a leadership infrastructure designed for proactivity rather than reaction.
Our conversations revealed a common pattern: many organizations fall into a ‘Hero Syndrome’ trap.” In this environment, systems heavily reward the “red cape” leader who swoops in to solve a crisis. While these rescues might satisfy immediate revenue goals, they rarely improve the underlying business. True progress requires moving past these one-time saves to ensure that the same issue never happens again.
Below, we’ve synthesized some strategic lessons from our expert discussions that will guide executive leadership through 2026. These insights shift the focus from the red cape of a hero to the quiet discipline of a well-designed system.
Redefining Success: Building a Performance Architecture
Manufacturing success requires moving away from simple production quotas. Senior leaders must build a performance architecture that every employee understands. This architecture should be driven by a clear purpose. Rick Davis, Chief Manufacturing and R&D Officer at Morgan Foods, notes that winning is what the team defines as winning. Success happens when goals are not simply dictated by a single leader.
Rajeev Seth, Director of Operational Excellence and Asset Reliability at Mondelez International, describes success as a daily mindset. He advocates for a Zero Loss culture. Seth argues that operational excellence is a marathon rather than a project. A marathon requires long-term cultural shifts, not 12-month timelines. This mindset forces teams to think about how they work every day.
Anne Trobaugh, Vice President of Quality and Customer Experience at American Woodmark, uses a North Star to guide her team. Her primary tool is an operationalized Customer Experience dashboard. This dashboard focuses on delivery, product quality, and response. Delivery means cabinets arrive on time and complete. Product quality ensures the items meet specifications. Response means fixing issues correctly the next time they occur.
Seth emphasizes that leaders must communicate these results company-wide to reinforce alignment. Making the customer experience the main thing aligns the entire organization. This alignment must happen both horizontally and vertically. Horizontal alignment involves every function in the organization. Vertical alignment ensures everyone from the vice president to the operator is connected to the same purpose.
Executives should evaluate their current management systems. Do your systems align every associate toward a single vision of winning? Will they be sustained if you leave? If the team does not own the definition of success, the architecture will fail.
Beyond Measurement to Control (Thermostats vs. Thermometers)
Executives often manage their operations through a rearview mirror. They rely on lagging indicators that report where the business has been rather than where it is going. While these figures are useful for financial reporting, they provide little help for daily operational control.
Dr. Rebecca Teeters, Senior Vice President of Business Supply Chain at 3M, compares these lagging metrics to a thermometer. A thermometer tells you the temperature of a room after it has already changed. Instead, she champions “Thermostatic Metrics”. These are indicators that allow leaders to adjust the “temperature” of a process in real-time. By focusing on these inputs, an organization can influence the outcome before a failure occurs.
Rajeev Seth further categorizes this data by differentiating between Key Activity Indicators (KAIs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
| KAIs | KPIs |
| Measure leading activities that drive results | Measure past results (e.g., monthly volume, scrap) |
| Leading indicators | Lagging indicators |
| Influence performance | Report performance |
For executives, the challenge is to audit the relevance of their current data. A dashboard that only reports yesterday’s failures is little more than retrospective reporting. Actionable information must trigger a response. Senior leaders should ask if their current systems give them the power to adjust the process today or if they are simply watching the temperature rise.
The “Squeeze Play”
Stability in manufacturing requires a shift from addressing individual incidents to managing the entire system. Senior leaders often struggle with recurring failures because their organizations only solve problems at a micro level. Effective leaders use a systemic approach to eliminate entire categories of waste.
JD Marhevko, a vice president with extensive experience in quality and operations, advocates for a method she calls the “Squeeze Play”. This strategy involves resolving immediate back-end issues while permanently managing front-end systems so problems cannot re-emerge. By applying this pressure to both ends of the process, a leader ensures that the middle—the actual production—remains clean and predictable.
However, leaders must avoid the temptation to automate their way out of a broken system. Thiago Roveri, Director of Quality at RR Donnelley, warns against the “Run Before Walk” trap. He notes that implementing a sophisticated ERP or digital solution before fixing foundational processes merely transfers manual problems to a faster system. For a solution to be effective, the underlying process must be standardized and documented first.
To achieve this, executives should tap into the diverse expertise on their shop floors. Rick Davis noted that operators often include former nuclear engineers and doctors with deep analytical skills. Anne Trobaugh also prioritizes gathering these diverse perspectives to strengthen the overall strategy.
Executives must evaluate their organization’s orientation to solve problems. Are you currently optimized to solve surface-level symptoms? True operational excellence requires macro-level analysis that treats every defect as a failure in systemic design.
Boardroom Translation
Technical quality improvements often fail to get funded because they are not translated into financial terms. Senior leaders frequently view functions like quality as overhead costs rather than value drivers. To change this perception, quality and operations teams must partner with finance to speak a unified language of margin, capacity, and return on investment.
JD Marhevko, Vice President of Quality at ZF Group, teaches her teams a simple rule: “Show Me the Money”.
For example, reducing scrap:
- Lowers material costs
- Frees plant capacity
- Reduces overtime labor
- Improves margin visibility on the general ledger
When these impacts are validated by the finance team, a technical initiative becomes a credible business case.
Data is the most effective tool for securing executive buy-in. Anne Trobaugh found success by identifying what leaders are not yet aware of that impacts their specific goals. She uses high-level metrics, such as warranty as a percentage of sales, to demonstrate the true cost of quality escapes. When leaders see that operational issues put their quarterly targets or customer relationships at risk, they are more likely to provide the resources and personnel needed for a digital transformation pilot.
Executives should expect their teams to meet the standards of boardroom communication. Decision-makers often operate in what Marhevko calls “short attention span theater”. If a proposal cannot be conveyed in a clear, concise one-page overview, it will likely be ignored. Senior leaders should ask themselves if their operations team can currently justify their next initiative with a business case a CFO would sign immediately.
The Habit of Systemic Leadership
Sustainable operational excellence is not a project that can be checked off a list. It is the outcome of a leadership infrastructure designed for proactivity rather than reaction. As Dr. Rebecca Teeters notes, a heroic act is only truly finished once the systemic gap that allowed the crisis has been identified and closed. Progress requires a commitment to designing standards that are so reliable that failure becomes nearly impossible.
This shift requires senior leaders to embrace the “marathon” of cultural change, looking beyond quarterly pressures and incentives. Success involves moving away from temporary projects and focusing on the ways an organization operates every single day. Leaders must act as coaches who mentor their teams in systemic design, rather than just distributors of answers.
Every executive can begin planting the seeds of this new culture by identifying one area where they can make the work easier for those around them. By choosing to be a system architect instead of a firefighter, you build an organization that thrives on stability and continuous improvement. True excellence is not found in the red cape of a hero, but in the quiet discipline of a well-designed habit.
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