Second Line of Leaders: Why Owners Stay Stuck, and How to Build the Next Line

What is a Second Line of Leaders, and why does the owner need it?

A Second Line of Leaders is the group of managers just below the owner who can run the plant without him. They plan, review and decide on their own. Without them, every problem comes back to the owner, and he stays stuck in daily work.

Ask yourself one question: if you took a holiday of 15 days, what would stop? For most owners the list is short and clear. Purchase orders would wait for a signature. Prices would not be quoted. Payments would wait. The customer would not get an answer about his order.

Ask the same question one level down. If the production manager is away for a week, the daily plan, the first-piece approval, the overtime list and the reply to a complaint all wait for him.

This is the picture of how much of the company still sits on one person. We have written about the first symptom in our article on why the business stops when the owner is away. This article is about the cure.

Promoted, but doing the old job

In most MSMEs people are promoted for being good at their work. The best operator becomes the supervisor. The best supervisor becomes the production manager.

But their eight hours do not change. The new supervisor still stands at the machine, correcting offsets. The production manager still sits at the computer, making the daily report. The owner still approves small purchases.

They have a new title. They do not have a new role. A Second Line of Leaders is built when the eight hours change.

Routine hours and development hours

Every working day has eight hours. They are made of two kinds of work.

• Routine keeps the plant running: the daily report, job cards, chasing material, answering status calls.
• Development makes the plant better: reviewing the report and acting on it, training a junior, a project to reduce setup time, root-cause analysis, planning next year's capacity.

Routine is needed every day. But routine alone never grows the company.

The higher the level, the larger the share of development hours.

A person works at the distance he looks. If a production manager spends his day making the report, he thinks about today, not about two years ahead. That is the real cost.

The 2-Hour Shift

When a person moves from lower management to middle management, two routine hours must become development hours. He no longer prepares the report. He reviews it.

You can see whether a person has become a leader by looking at his day. If his eight hours have not changed, he has a new title, not a new role.

Here is a simple example. A supervisor is promoted to production in-charge. He uses 45 minutes a day of his new development time on one project: a setup trolley, pre-set tools and a checklist for one lathe. Setup time falls from 60 to 40 minutes. With two setups a day, 40 minutes of machine time comes back every day. This is an example, but the logic is real: development hours pay for themselves.

Routine hours keep the plant running. Development hours pay for themselves.

Report-Review-Action: where the second line works

Each level has its own job in the chain. The shop floor gives the data. Lower management prepares the report. Middle management reviews it and takes the first action. Top management takes the final action.

If one level is missing, the chain breaks. The most dangerous case is when the top does not take part. The reports come, the meetings are held, the reviews are done. Everything looks fine from outside. But nobody holds the long view, so nothing big moves. That is why we say: the owner's development hours make the difference between a half-working system and a full one.

How to choose and prepare the second line

1. Ask three people for names. Ask top management, HR and the head of each department to name one person from their area, with reasons.
2. Look at people three ways. Skill, long-term intent to stay, and how easily the person can be replaced. Grow those with high skill and high intent.
3. Start with six or seven people. A core group is enough at first.
4. Train them on the move from junior to senior. Teach management skills and how to run meetings.
5. Give every role a backup. For each task, name the primary and the secondary person. If there is a primary with no secondary, his first job is to train one.
6. Train the successor. A person who trains his own successor is the one who grows.

Mistakes we see often

• Training without handing over work. The person learns, but his day does not change.
• No example from the top. Workers copy what they see. The owner's own meetings, reviews and habits are copied down the line.
• The "I am busy" line. If senior people say they have no time, the second line never gets built. That line has to go first.
• Moving the overload down. Handing over tasks without removing anything from the junior only shifts the problem.

How to start in your plant

1. Write down what would stop if the owner were away for 15 days.
2. Do the same for each head of department.
3. Pick one head and fill in his tasks. Mark two that can go to a junior.
4. Block two hours a week for his development work, and protect them.
5. Review monthly. Ask: what moved down, and what new work came up?