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Host Sean Frost is joined by experts in the manufacturing industry to discuss bringing big ideas to life. Join us every episode for a deep dive into manufacturing trends, processes, innovation, and how to be successful in the ever-changing world of manufacturing.
Ep12_StephenBlake_final
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[00:00:00]
Sean Frost: ~Alright, ~ Welcome back to another episode of Inspiring Innovation. It's released the second Tuesday of every month, and please like, subscribe, comment what you like, what you want to hear more of. We're open to feedback and want to keep this relevant to our audience of supply chain professionals, of project engineers people that bring our, products to life.
~So~ Today we have the honor of hosting Command Sergeant Major Stephen Blake~ So looking forward to having today's guest on really excited about having him here and in honor of hosting a command sergeant major, ~ a distinguished veteran whose career has spanned over decades of dedicated service to the United States [00:01:00] Army.
Sergeant Major's journey took him across the globe from Germany and Korea to combat zones in Southwest Asia Iraq,Afghanistan, where he led thousands of both peacetime and war. His leadership roles culminated as the Command Sergeant Major of the U. S. Army Sustainment Command, overseeing the global network of brigades and battalions, advising on personal matters, including maintenance, logistics, and training.
So since retiring in May, 2012, Sergeant Major has continued to serve supporting community of veterans and programs with the same vigor that he brought to the Army and we're lucky to work with him at Polo Custom Products. He's a great man. Can totally understand how so many people followed him and that he kept tons of people alive, America's sons and daughters.
So we're really excited to have you on today. Welcome to the podcast, Sergeant Major.
Stephen Blake: Oh, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.
Sean Frost: ~Well, can~
~you tell us about,~
Stephen Blake: ~Good.~
~ ~
Sean Frost: ~what's that?~
Stephen Blake: ~It's a humbling opening statement here, but I am retired now. But go~
Sean Frost: ~Yeah. Oh yeah. No, you're semi retired. ~You work for Polo Custom Products and you've been [00:02:00] amazing in, in working with the government and our military. And so we'll dig deep into that today, but can you tell us a little bit about your journey to becoming a command sergeant major and the experiences ~that~
that shaped your leadership style?
Stephen Blake: Yeah. So to be honest, when I started the journey in the military, I would've never thought I'd be a sergeant major. I didn't know what was in front of me. I just kept my head down and kept going forward. I was looking ahead, what's next? What's next needs to be done. What obstacles coming at me. First it was five troops, then a hundred troops, then a thousand troops, then ten thousand troops, and then just thousands.
And so you don't look back, you just keep looking forward. So the journey was incredible. I'm honored to have made it with the men and women that I journeyed it with and it's not one person's journey. It's everyone because you're joined together at the hip. No, that's the one thing about being in the military,
it's a family and it's an incredible organization.
Sean Frost: Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you so much for your [00:03:00] service. What inspired you to pursue a career in the military and how did you, how did your initial expectations compare to your actual experience?
Stephen Blake: I was hungry. I was hungry. I was actually a poor boy from West Virginia. I probably weighed 130 pounds. I was worried about whether or not they was even going to let me in because I was underweight, and then they turned me down three times. I did not have, I was a high school dropout at the time. They wasn't taking anybody that didn't have a high school diploma
and so to wind up where I wound up at the end of that journey, knowing that all the obstacles were in front of me from the beginning, I would have never believed it in a million years. But once I did get in there, because I was hungry, and because I knew that there was no looking back. It was just forward the whole time.
The whole 30 years was just keep moving forward. Do whatever the next obstacle is, just do it.
Sean Frost: That's awesome and so did that take a little bit of [00:04:00] persuasion then? Without the high school diploma, and being hungry, and testing, and all that kind of stuff?
Stephen Blake: As a matter of fact, I had to agree on my initial sign in at the time that I would obtain a high school diploma within two years of joining the military. So I signed the contract saying I would do it and actually, before I finished AIT, about 16 weeks later, I had my high school diploma because during the day, I would go to school to learn how to be a mechanic in the military, which I already knew how to be one.
And so at night, I would go to the school study hall thing and study for my high school diploma and so before I graduated and left Advanced Individual Training as a young private, I had my high school diploma within that, that one month period at the end and so, you know, I just never, I just knew that's what I wanted to do.
Yeah. First person in my family to get a college
Sean Frost: yeah
Stephen Blake: Good thing, too.
Sean Frost: yeah. That's congratulations. That's [00:05:00] amazing, and, and it's awesome to hear that story and I've, the, just your approach of taking it one chunk at a time and one mission at a time and when the next step is an amazing process, which will help us, dig into what we'll talk about more today and project management and manufacturing at large
but could you share a pivotal moment? or challenge in your career that significantly influenced your approach to leadership and project management?
Stephen Blake: Yeah, so I thought about this question very hard and I can look at it, I'm going to look at it from a manufactured perspective, but it also has a life perspective. So in the military, they teach there's three styles of leadership. Authoritarian, Participative, and Delegated. Authoritarian is somebody who tells somebody that's what you're going to do, that's how you're going to do it.
I don't want to hear a thing, just go do it. Participative means I'm participating in the event, trying to get the outcome to influence the outcome and delegative means that I have enough trust and confidence in my subordinates to [00:06:00] delegate that authority to them to accomplish the mission, although I'm still in an overwatch mode.
So here's what I know. I know that you can't be any one of those styles of leadership. You have to be all three. There are times in your life where that if you don't use the authoritarian style leadership, people could die. If you don't, if you don't participate, they won't learn. And if you don't delegate, they won't feel like you trust them
and that's true in manufacturing. You have to have all three of those when you're in project management. You've got to encourage the growth of the people underneath of you because you can't manufacture it all yourself. You're just the lead. But you, the more you teach them, the more they can manufacture, the farther you get down the line to being delegative all the time.
You're less authoritarian and less participative, although you will always want to communicate, but you're finding out you can delegate more and more because now what you've done is you have a trained, experienced workforce working for you every day.
Sean Frost: That's a great [00:07:00] answer. Yeah I've never heard anyone say all three, but it does take that. That's really great. Can you share insights into the critical success factors for manufacturing projects, especially early development phase and when you're working with military technical specifications.
Stephen Blake: Yeah, so just realize that each project's different, each project's got different requirements and there's always a huge learning curve. So from the beginning, now going back to our leadership style, we know we've got this learning curve and the object is we have to communicate those specification differences
and we have to get everybody on the same sheet of music so now that we can become delegated in that project but you're going to hold on to things a lot longer in the beginning before you turn loose of it to make sure that you're getting, you're not missing something major in there and by communicating often is where the trick is.
Okay, and it's not just, a little bit here and a little bit there. You've got to [00:08:00] aggressively know, don't leave a, don't leave a meeting without somebody knowing who is it. Who has got the task, what they're supposed to do, and how it's supposed to be accomplished, and what the expectation of the end result is.
And if you do that, then you'll be able to manage those more complex programs but if you don't and then it'll just go on and on and on.
Sean Frost: Yeah, I've seen some of those technical specifications and some of the interactions around them. It takes so many smart people to A, build those out, and B, to to them and to interpret the language and so it's definitely a learning curve, and I'm always amazed at it. How many smart people it takes to come together and hit these timelines.
~ How do you effectively, Oh, go ahead.~
Stephen Blake: another comment on that is that I've read a lot of them. I just don't, that doesn't mean I understand every little piece of it. So by people asking questions [00:09:00] and being inquisitive about specifications. Then together is how you solve what the expectation is by asking questions
but first of all, you have to read them. You have to try to understand them and if you don't, then you go back and read them again and you ask and that's the biggest part of the challenge. A lot of times if you can't encourage subordinates to feel like they can come and ask you, they won't and they'll get stuck and it'll cause delays.
It'll cause confusions, miscommunications. So the key here is to have an open dialogue about those specifications, and the requirements,~ and the requirements, ~those contract requirements.
Sean Frost: That's great. So ~I, ~we touched on this a little bit, but how do you effectively manage and align multidisciplinary teams? We work with engineers, designers, quality assurance, professionals, supply chain people to ensure a seamless project execution.
Stephen Blake: So the biggest, for me, the biggest part is each one of them brings something else to the table, so I know [00:10:00] what their piece is and because I know what they're supposed to be bringing to the table, I know what to ask them and how to guide them to make sure that well, did you see this? Did you notice that?
Did you notice that the contract required this and that? And so by doing that you bring them all together. Also, it's not everything is discussed openly in a forum in front of everybody else. So sometimes you just got to pick up the phone and call that individual and say, let's me and you talk about where we are in this project from an engineering perspective,
from a supply chain perspective, from a quality perspective, and have I given you everything you need to be successful? And if I haven't, tell me what that is, so that I can knock that tree down for you, so we can chop it up and the communications is the key and that is, don't just wait for a meeting, if it wasn't talked about in there, it ain't important.
Have those individual phone calls, and have those emails and, you know, I don't mind email, but once in a while, I like talking to a [00:11:00] person and I like talking to them a lot because then that way they know me and I know them and they know what I, what kind of person I am, what I expect from them, but they, then they also learn, hey, look, this is the kind of person that I can talk to and ask a question and we can do positive things together.
So I would tell you communication is the key.
Sean Frost: Absolutely. Yeah. There's not many criticisms I've heard of less communication would be good. It seems to be the opposite trend almost anywhere I've been.
Stephen Blake: Yeah, email doesn't give you the tone. It don't give you the passion that you can't relate. So emails are fine for administrative purposes, but they're not, it's not a substitute for accomplishing things. It's really not. ~That, that, ~that interaction with people, whether it be over MS Teams or Zoom or whatever, you need to have that.
Sean Frost: Absolutely. Yeah. As a salesperson, I can appreciate relationships and I think some people might not love it as much as we do but I do think that it's important, especially when there's [00:12:00] things that they could bring to the table that they weren't. Weren't able to mention in a meeting or didn't feel like it was the right setting too and to help move the projects forward.
So really great advice. What challenges have you faced in ensuring the product meets a stringent technical specification provided by the military and have you overcome some of those?
Stephen Blake: standards are standards especially from a government perspective, the government has thought through what it wants, why it wants it. You may not understand it. The fire retardancy may be there to protect the person from getting burned, or the coating that's on the cloth may be there so that person is less visual at night under IR circumstances, which is a life or death thing for a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine.
So it's not for us to question the standards. It's for us to understand what the government's asking for. But here's the big, but the government's not always on the cutting edge sometimes. Those standards are so old, there's something better out there. We shouldn't be afraid to say, Hey, look, this [00:13:00] is not only cheaper, it's better, it's more available, because you're asking for this specific thing, and it does exactly the same thing, so we should be able to communicate that back and forth.
That same dialogue we talked about earlier is also the dialogue that we need to have with the government. A lot of times the contracting officers in the government, they're taking the requirement from the requirement agency. The requiring agency's got a technical expert. The technical expert's the one that put the requirement in there in the first place
and sometimes you have to push that flag back up the pole to say, Hey, look, did y'all ever think about this? This is better. Can we discuss it? Can we take a timeout and have a conversation on it? But, if the government doesn't want to, or if it isn't that beneficial to them, then It's a waste of time. We need to build it to the standard that the government is asking for.
So unless there's something that's standing out like a knot on a tree, we need to give them that. But those technical specifications, they're complicated. But listen, once you [00:14:00] have your people trained, and once you've started driving forward in that process, okay, everything can be overcome. Hey, look, we made it to the moon.
We can do anything. We're going to Mars. We're out in the universe. Mankind can do a lot of things, and so as far as manufacturing goes, ~you think about~ you think about all the steps that went into manufacturing stuff for NASA, where we were back in the 60s and 66 or 68, and where we are today. in 2024.
So we've come a long way.
Sean Frost: Those are really great and inspiring points and, yeah, ~it's ~if we can get to the moon, we can make some textile products. I'm fairly certain of that. ~Yeah, well and~ at the same time too, what you said, I, like, all that had to be manufactured for that stuff in the 60s to get to space, manufacturing is hard. I heard someone talk about that recently where they said, ~um, ~that all the movies are made by the people that designed the shoe or the product or innovation.
[00:15:00] And it's and. And that takes skill too, but making it is significantly harder work. And they should make a movie about manufacturing because it's it's incredible to see people overcome the challenges that inevitably come up and make something to spec. It's it's difficult work in there.
We have some great people doing it at Polo. From your experience, what are some key project management strategies that contribute to the successful delivery of manufacturing projects for the military?
Stephen Blake: I've covered it already, but here's my prompt. Be seen, be involved, and be approachable. That's it. If you're all of those things and everything's being coordinated, it's like a dance. It's gonna happen. It may not happen seamlessly, but it's gonna happen, and it's gonna happen in a reasonable way with less mistakes.
More information, your team's going to get stronger, but you cannot manage any project if the people never see you and they don't know you. And you can't manage it if you're not approachable. [00:16:00] And you can't manage it if you're not involved because they're not telling you everything because you're not known at all.
Because there's filter communications at each level. But nobody can filter it if you're out there looking around. When I managed a multi million dollar project, those people saw me every day. I went back to my office at night to do all of the administrative paperwork, but during the day, I was out there on the project, being seen, looking for those things that needed to be done.
Because I got a whole workforce there during the day. They need to know what to do, they need to have guidance and direction by walking around with my subordinate supervisors, and looking at that contract from outside of the box, we were aggressively, making huge changes. That were seen by the government as very positive.
And so manufacturing is no different. Our supervisors has to be seen on the floor. The employees have to know them. They have to be involved. They gotta know, they gotta be able to listen to when something's just not going as well as it [00:17:00] could because somebody's afraid to say if we did this instead of that, we could make this better.
We could make it faster. We could make it cheaper. We could do it with less steps. We could eliminate steps. You'll never see those things if you're not be, if you're not being seen, if you're not being involved, and if you're not being approachable by your employees. That's my main thing for that right there.
Sean Frost: ~Yeah, no that's great. And, um, ~there's something amazing about a manufacturing floor. The buzz in the air the machines humming the people doing different steps. It's always inspiring to get in and talk to people and see what they're working on
and the, to see what, even from a development standpoint to see what test needs to be done at which stage so that the next thing can move on. It's always it's my happy place. So I, I appreciate those words of wisdom because I think they, they are meaningful to the associates, to the team, to the people, doing the development of the product
and I think there's a lot to what you just said.
Stephen Blake: ~So I would add one~
Sean Frost: ~ could you discuss, oh go ahead, yeah, please do.~
Stephen Blake: [00:18:00] I'll add one more piece to that. What we have to remember is that the people have jobs, everybody has their job and people like, people are proud of what they do, especially when somebody's manufacturing they know is going to a soldier or a sailor, or it could save a person's life, or give them the cutting edge to save other people's lives, fire an emergency and so on.
So people take pride in what they do, and by you going around and having those discussions with them, and showing them you care about what it is they're doing. They have more pride in what they're doing that all lends to productivity. People being happy in their work, and being happy about what they do.
Not everybody's made to be a pitcher. Not everybody's made to be a catcher. No, everybody plays a different role and by that, people, it's good that they know that you're proud of what they're doing for you, and that it, that you're glad that they're proud of what they do. So pride is a big [00:19:00] part of any manufacturer and their employee.
~And I'll leave it at that.~
Sean Frost: ~No, ~it's a great point, and to an earlier point that you made too, these are products that people are betting their lives on and, so that is something to be proud of, and yeah, I, all great stuff. Could you, and we've talked about this a little bit already, but could you discuss a particularly challenging project that you've overseen and the lessons you learned from managing its development phase?
Stephen Blake: Yeah. For one specifically for Polo was early on years ago, y'all did a project called the Enhanced Parachute Drop Bag. Now, this bag was used by the Special forces and some of those sneaky guys and it carried their equipment and they would drop it down on a long tether when they went on airborne operations.
Now this bag had multiple layers of drawings and multiple straps and webbing with complicated stitching and all that and when the package came from the government, the technical data package came from the government, it had a lot of errors [00:20:00] in it. It wasn't an easily manufactured item and this company, I saw this company, Polo, do whatever it took, whatever it cost, to straighten that product out, so that those people that were using that to bet their lives on that piece of equipment, got exactly the best product possible
through that manufacturing process and I would just tell you that each drawing it was multiple complication levels within those drawings and those specifications. The webbings were different, this one could be burned. This one couldn't. This one required a back stitch, a block stitch 301 stitch. I mean it they were complicated and so each piece also you couldn't put this together before that it all had to be in the right process and the right flow and so I know that was a success story for Polo, but I also know it was a very difficult project for Polo and it was a huge lessons learned for the manufacturing process within the company.
But as far [00:21:00] as I can think of non military wise that was one of the hardest projects I saw so far.
Sean Frost: Yeah, that's a great one and appreciate you sharing that with us and, in terms of supply chain management, what are some unique considerations when sourcing material for military grade products?
Stephen Blake: Well, Right now, I would tell you that having a a mature supply chain is critical, especially in the textile industries because of Barry. The Barry Amendment forces us to buy over a certain dollar amount of material from being processed, grown, and produced in the United States.
Which is a good thing, but at the end of the day, it's also can be expensive, but if you don't have competition in the market space for those items now in the supply chain, ~one of~ one of my takeaways for a mature supply chain is even though they are suppliers of the raw materials that we use to build the product, they're still partners in our manufacturing process, [00:22:00] especially in long term contracts.
And when we get a buy in for a bid on something going to the government, our supply chains should be buying in and going with us because it's a long term thing. They stand to be our supplier for that textile, for the delivery of that product to the government and guess what? Controlling inflation and prices, some things are uncontrollable.
But, we suffer together to make sure that we've got a realistic price going together to win these contracts and that's a buy in, and you do that through a mature supply chain. You don't do that by pigeonholing yourself into just one or two suppliers and I know that Polo has a great supply chain team that has done that
and sometimes we've got to, we've got to continue to grow and mature our supply chain process to make sure that we're getting the best value, not only for us, but that's given us the competitive edge as a manufacturer, but we're getting also the best value for our nation.
Sean Frost: [00:23:00] Absolutely. No, that's great and we are lucky to have a really great supply chain team and they've got really robust processes and and yeah, at the end of the day that's value for the country's sons and daughters.
So, How do you ensure that quality is maintained throughout the manufacturing process, especially when dealing with complex military specifications?
~Yeah,~
Stephen Blake: goes right along the same lines of what I've discussed already. I'll give you an example. I can talk to the quality manager all day long but now I'm assuming that the quality manager knows each step that the quality supervisor and the quality people, the inspectors on the floor have seen and done.
When you've got multiple factories, that's not always true. It's also the same same thing as pick up the phone and talk to the people on the ground that's doing the quality inspection. The quality manager is talking to the quality supervisor who's talking to the quality inspector on the floors.
[00:24:00] You need to have that same relationship we talked about earlier, where you're being seen, being involved, and communicating with them because as a quality person, guess what? They're more than likely the first person to see something that isn't as good as it could be. Or, it's a game changer, that if we just change this, we can make a drastic change to the process and save time and money and all that
~and ~but if you're not talking to them and you're not involved with them in that process, especially when it comes to specifications, the earlier they can communicate to you that there's something that isn't clear, it isn't just right within that specification, the earlier that you can solve that issue or that problem. That relationship there and the last thing I want to say too, Sean, about that is this, we have to encourage that mistakes are okay, but solutions are better. It's okay to make a mistake, but having a solution for a mistake, to prevent it from happening again, is better.
Sean Frost: [00:25:00] Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's uh, I think touched on two things that we've talked about on this show before, which is early bad news is good news and then it's okay to break things and reiterate and~ and ~to pivot and to keep and learn and get better from it. ~ ~
Stephen Blake: ~Yeah, but just keep doing the bad~
Sean Frost: ~ This has been,~
Stephen Blake: ~ I said~
Sean Frost: ~no, you go ahead. ~
Stephen Blake: to keep making a bad thing just because that's what they told you to do is stupid though. You know what I mean? We have to stop and know it's okay.
Sean Frost: Yeah.
Stephen Blake: Admit this is wrong and we're not going to continue to waste material and time because we need a solution and so that's why I said the solutions are better.
Sean Frost: Yeah. Yeah. We serve several different industries and we always talk about the fact that we can be agile and be that kind of nimble arm of our customers that, a lot of times are very large OEMs and have a lot of bureaucracy and I think the US government ~out, outweighs ~outweighs our customers in that sense.
I think the military budget is probably one of the larger budgets on the planet. So it's [00:26:00] incredible to see you navigate that terrain and might throw you a little curveball here, but is there anything that you'd care to share about, what your role was as a command sergeant major and what you were managing at the fort that you were serving at and some of the lessons that you took out of that where you ended your career?
Stephen Blake: Sure. ~My, ~my role every command sergeant major's primary role is to take care of the soldiers and their families. To provide for them, to make sure that, when that general's looking up, that Sergeant Major's looking down because the people that are taking care of things are the ones that are below you there on the ground making things happen.
When I say down, I don't mean looking down on 'em, I mean being watchful for them and so that Command Sergeant major communicates to that leadership, early on in the process to try to save lives. I'll just tell you the most important thing is that, think about it this way.
America's mothers and fathers trust leaders with their sons and daughters. [00:27:00] There's no greater honor than to have somebody trust you with their son or daughter and so I always ask myself in all the years I've served, how would my mom and dad expect for this leader to treat me and take care of me, and protect me, and mentor me, and grow me up into be the man that I am
because, although my dad had me for 20 years, the Army had me for 30. It matured me into the person that I am and because of that, it's the most important role any leader plays and when you look up as a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine in your life, and you look up, and you see a leader, there's only one question you're asking yourself.
Do I want to be like him or her? Or I don't want nothing to do with being like him or her and so what you have to do is you have to know that you're that kind of leader that they want to be like and they respect you but at the same time, they listen to you because they trust you [00:28:00] and because that trust can never be broken
because the minute you break that trust with those soldiers, you've lost everything. You've lost everything in your life and so trust, it's all about trust. It's all about faith and confidence and they will drive through the gates of hell for you if they trust you and that's that's the role of a Sergeant Mayor.
My biggest fear in my life from that vantage point, I will share this, is them not listening to me. When I tell them I see something coming, and they just don't listen and when they don't listen, my biggest fear was I'm gonna lose somebody but you can't control everything. You have to trust them as well as they trust you.
So I'll leave it at that.
Sean Frost: That's a really powerful note to end on, and and a lot, I think anybody listening could take a lot from that, Sergeant Major, and I'm truly inspired and truly grateful for your service and that I get to work with you and that I get to have weekly [00:29:00] conversations with you and ~it ~we're really grateful and so thank you for being a guest today. This was absolutely perfect and so I'll just close this out with ~with ~thanking our audience for tuning in and for listening this far and~ and ~for subscribing, for liking the podcast and for commenting so that we can bring in guests that you might
like to hear from and talk about topics that would be of value to you. Sergeant Major, thank you so much for joining us today. This was great.