A New Book
On Lean Manufacturing
From Manufacturing &
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A New Order Settles Upon The National Association of Manufacturers: Q&A With NAM's Top Leaders
BY RICHARD A. McCORMACK
editor@manufacturingnews.com
A large turnover in the staff at the National Association of Manufacturers has left many NAM old-timers questioning the organization's management and direction. As much as half of NAM's professional employees have departed since the arrival of Gov. John Engler of Michigan as president in late 2004. Many of those who have been associated with NAM for decades wonder how effective NAM will be as a proponent of manufacturing under the new leadership. Not to worry, says the new management team at NAM. The organization is on an upward trajectory. Some agree. Some don't.
The shifting political tide in the nation's capital and upheaval in the manufacturing sector has driven NAM's new senior management team to seek input from its members on its future direction. But that overture has raised eyebrows within NAM's ranks. A survey developed by an outside consulting firm sent to all of NAM's members was not vetted with employees, raising questions among the association's staff concerning their role in pursuing policy goals in their areas of expertise.
"Is it a poll?" asks one NAM employee. "We don't know what it is. Are we going to change our policy based on it? We don't know. We have never been told. We're being completely kept in the dark. They said a survey went out but they wouldn't send it to us. Why?"
A second, separate survey sent only to members of NAM's board seeks input on how well Gov. Engler is doing his job. The first survey question to the NAM board members is: "Please indicate whether you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of John Engler." The second: "Overall, how would you rate the job John Engler is doing as President of the National Association of Manufacturers?"
This separate survey raised eyebrows among staff members wondering why such questions need to be asked. But NAM's senior managers note that it was Engler who requested those questions be in the separate survey to board members.
It has been just over three years since Engler was recruited to one of Washington's premier lobbying organizations, and the management makeover is complete. In conversations with a dozen or so people who work at NAM, current board members, those who have recently left and other Washington trade association officials who work closely with NAM, there is a sense of concern about NAM's direction and a desire to see the NAM story told.
Current senior managers brought in by NAM president John Engler wonder why the press is interested in internal personnel matters and policy choices. But even those on staff who speak highly of Gov. Engler say issues regarding turnover and political orientation are worthy of an article -- so long as there is nothing mean about it -- because the internal workings of NAM impact the organization's ability to achieve policy goals favorable for manufacturers.
"There is always discontent in the ranks," says one NAM employee. Whenever new management arrives, there is going to be a shakeout, no matter what type of organization it may be. "You have people who didn't like the way they were being treated or like the new structure, which is very much like a governor's office, and they left and new people came in. It's the normal way of things," says one NAM worker.
But some of the senior policy people who have recently left are adamant about saying NAM is losing institutional memory; that the specialists who are leaving take with them contacts in the Washington policy community, along with the ability to form coalitions on the wide range of issues that are important to manufacturers. Without these employees, NAM is less effective in influencing policy, they say.
"We've lost a lot of very good people and I guess the board is finally starting to notice," according to one NAM employee in a letter written to Manufacturing & Technology News. "I can tell you the members are noticing."
Other senior NAM officials who recently departed claim that the new managers do not value the input of staff. One former policy specialist said that in his time under Gov. Engler he was informed of the governor's activities in the area he staffed only once.
Additional tensions within the organization have surfaced with press reports about the pay level of senior managers. The new managers are making two to three times more than their replacements. "Not everyone's pay has gone up," says one current staff member. "It surprised us here in the rank and file when that information was disclosed."
Others argue the changeover in staff has infused the organization with fresh blood, and that Engler truly likes to be around and to mentor younger, energetic people who are not going to make working at one trade association a life-long career. There is no shortage of people who want to work at NAM, they say. "The old rules of employment throughout all of America are gone," says a NAM worker. "If people are in a comfort zone, there is no comfort zone any more and I think the organization reflects it."
The changeover in staff is occurring at a time when there is substantial churn in Washington, with conservative Republicanism as defined by George Bush and Tom DeLay out of vogue. Engler, a conservative Republican, was hired during the height of that era, prior to the Republican loss of Congress in 2006 and the meltdown of the Bush presidency. Can he work well with Democrats?
NAM has always been a Republican organization, despite the Democratic orientation of its previous president, so Engler's political leanings are nothing new or unusual, say his boosters. "Things are fine at the NAM," says one employee. "Money continues to come in. We continue to address the issues of the day. John's top issues are the top issues of the country: energy policy, workforce development, infrastructure. We will all be involved in health care. I think the ship of state is fine here."
Yet a sense of unease persists among those long affiliated with NAM, particularly within its membership outreach efforts. Recruitment of new members has become more difficult given the struggles facing domestic producers, say those who spent years in the organization. Some years ago, there was an effort to boost NAM membership to 20,000; but staffers say membership has dropped below 12,000. The bigger companies are paying more in dues and the smaller companies remain concerned that NAM is beholden to them.
"All of us [at NAM] are all of a sudden involved in a strategic planning exercise," writes the NAM employee to MTN. "They just gave us these goals and told us to break out into teams and develop strategies. We hear the goals came from our Chairman's Council...If you look at the goals, you'll notice they're trying to do all the things we are not now, like being non-partisan: Ha!!! A leader in coalitions? We used to be until everybody left and now we're not."
In a memo to staff, NAM says that in its "Preferred Future, By 2011 the NAM
- "Is an international thought leader on manufacturing issues and policies
- "Is known as a nonpartisan organization
- "Has the most up-to-date dynamic grassroots program available
- "Has an effective political program
- "Is the leading builder in the business community of critical coalitions."
Manufacturing & Technology News editor Richard McCormack recently sat down with NAM's top management team to discuss these issues. Among those participating were Jay Timmons, senior vice president of policy and government relations, Michael Hambrick, senior vice president of communications, and LeAnne Wilson, NAM's chief operating officer.
Question: NAM staffers say they were not told about the questions concerning policy issues on the survey that went out to your membership. They say they don't know what will come from the responses to the policy questions.
Wilson: There has never been a survey that has gone to all members designed to get the kind of feedback we were looking for. Our general counsel has been here for 29 years. She said they have never hired an outside firm to help us develop the questions so that they are not leading either one way or another and that can help us to predict what the key policy issues are going to be down the road. We always think we know, but it's always helpful to have Republican and Democratic strategists advise you. So they [PollingtheNet.com operated by McLaughlin & Associates] wrote the questionnaire. The questionnaires that [NAM] policy, communications and membership people had used before tended to be very specific to their issue areas. This was more broad-based to give us an idea of what our members feel about certain things.
Q: Will you change policy based on the survey results?
Wilson: We are member driven. We have a process. If the survey will indicate that we need to go a certain direction, then that will also be reflected through the policy process.
Timmons: It's more a question of emphasis. The policy is created through our policy-making process. We have our constitution. We have board committees and then member subcommittees that develop policies that the board eventually approves. This survey addresses public policies already in place to see what emphasis the members want us to place on them and how much advocacy they want us to put forward.
Wilson: We asked our members: "What are your top priorities?" We listed various public affairs or member outreach programs and we asked those to be ranked in terms of their effectiveness. We also talked about what, if any, type of political program we should be pursuing. NAM currently doesn't have a PAC. One of our key member outreach programs, the congressional plant tours, was eliminated in 2006. That was the best hands-on experience for congressional staff to see how manufacturing really works, but it was eliminated with the new lobbying law.
Q: One NAM staff member asked: Why are employees being "kept in the dark" by your not sharing the survey with them?
Wilson: We talked about, we were going to do the survey, and then the day it went out I sent out an e-mail to every single NAM staffer saying here is the cover letter. I pasted it into the e-mail and said I want to make sure that you are aware that it has gone out. I wanted to alert you in case a member asked you. If you have any questions call me. I had one person call me and ask if they could see the survey. I said I'm not going to give it to you, but you can come and look at it. We had two people who did. I said come on over: we've got it you can look at it. There was no secret about it, none whatsoever.
Q: NAM policy people said they were left out of helping craft questions about the policies that they help shape.
Wilson:That's true. I'm not going to deny that. But the survey was not written by us here at NAM. It was written by professionals. It is the first time that I'm aware of that we've hired outside professionals to do a comprehensive of our members. We gave them the list of issues, but they were current policy. There wasn't new policy there. We were basically asking for them to rank them on what is the most important.
Timmons: The other thing about that is we had outside professionals develop the survey and we reviewed it and made suggestions for changes.
Wilson: Our chairman and vice chairman reviewed it. The survey was the idea of the senior management team as we were working through the strategic planning process. Early on we decided to do this.
Q: Why was there a separate survey sent to board members asking about John Engler's performance as president?
Wilson:That was John Engler's idea.
Q: There's a rumor the board wanted the survey done because there is so much dissatisfaction among members and staff with the direction NAM is headed.
Wilson:The board couldn't be more pleased. We get e-mails constantly praising us for the work that we've done, particularly energy. We got one the other day saying that Gov. Engler should run for president. There are people in this world who like to make themselves look better by tearing others down. We saw that in Lansing. This is one of smallest large towns in the country.
Q: There is quite a bit of talk about the loss of really talented people from the NAM staff.
Wilson: Tell me. Give me the name of one that's been named as being a super talented person that has been lost. I'm serious, help me with that -- who hasn't been replaced with a person of equal or better skills.
Q: I couldn't tell you because I don't know who their replacements are.
Timmons: It's not that people didn't have talents.
Q: The concern they raise is that the people who have left had extensive institutional memory and contacts so that NAM has become less effective in policy circles.
Wilson: I come back to our metrics. We've achieved and produced more successes at least since we've been measuring. Here's my problem, there are no metrics from the time before I got here, except for the dues level, which is nice, and we can't do the rest without that.
Q: Can you give me some examples of successful metrics?
Wilson: Dues revenue increased in 2007 by 5.1 percent, we anticipate, now our books haven't closed for the year. We've had a 36 percent increase in traffic to NAM.org. Our blog has had a 50 percent increase this year. Our radio show America's Business is now in over 86 markets. We have had 20,000 downloads of the podcasts. One of our goals was to research and promote steps toward solutions to problems. We've done our white paper on energy and our advocacy piece and this has been the number-one issue we've been involved with. On infrastructure, we have a coalition already developed and working. On workforce issues, we have a white paper that has been written on manufacturing a high-performance workforce. Our Women in Manufacturing has published a book. Our health care paper is in draft form. In trade, we've done a ton on trade this year.
Timmons: With the Peru vote we have been extraordinarily active. The Governor himself has been active with [House Ways and Means Committee] Chairman Rangel on the labor agreement that was made.
Wilson: On export controls, back in 2006, the Governor recognized this as an issue and we announced a working group earlier this year and have come up with some recommendations that are close to being announced.
On legal reform, we have been involved in more than 40 amicus briefs. We held a symposium before the state supreme court justices in January. Our state legal reform entity American Justice Partnership has spent a ton of money in the states where they have achieved successes in Wisconsin, Louisiana, South Carolina and Michigan. They were instrumental in either electoral or policy legal reform victories. We were able to defeat the jail initiative in South Dakota. With regard to our advocacy efforts we have been able to expand our government relations team to focus on Congress and the administration. We've hired Aric Newhouse [as vice president of government relations], Sen. George Voinovhich's [R-Ohio] chief of staff. We hired Ryan Modlin, who worked for Rep. John Dingell [D-Mich.]. We promoted Bob Shepler to help with our Senate outreach. Jay and I have friends from our gubernatorial times, so we've reached across the aisle as well. So does John Engler. And we're right now in our ozone strategy and are reaching out on a bi-partisan basis.
Q: There is a strong sense that you are a partisan organization.
Timmons: The organization was perceived as that before John Engler got here. We've made a concerted effort to move away from that. That was the first thing he said to me when I got here -- that we need to be an organization that is reaching across to both sides of the aisle in both houses of Congress. And we put a pretty concerted effort there.
Q: Here's a quote from a NAM staff member: "Big fat pay raises for the top executives." There is a sense that senior managers are making so much more money than their predecessors.
Wilson: We are market driven.
Q: Having worked closely with NAM for the past 14 years prior to the arrival of Gov. Engler, policy people seemed self employed. NAM was very entrepreneurial. Policy staff knew the key people in their issue area and pursued what they believed were the issues most important to the manufacturing community.
Timmons: That may have worked at one time but when you have a member-led organization and members are demanding more and more accountability and more focus on the issues that they care about in exchange for the dues that they pay, then every organization in this town has to go through a re-evaluation process, where they look inward and determine what will make them stronger. That is what has happened under Gov. Engler.
Hambrick: What is implicit in what you're saying about entrepreneurial and the definition of that is that everybody is a free radical and there is no discipline: there is no order and there is no agenda. I've been involved in a lot of entrepreneurial activities and there is much more discipline needed than in any other situation. You need that discipline. That is what has been brought to this organization and that is what makes it much more effective than it has been.
Q: Can you talk about the turnover of staff?
Timmons: Every successful organization has gone through change. Gov. Engler made the decision that he was going to work with the organization as it existed and try to raise the bar and the expectations so that we were better serving our members and becoming an even more effective organization. NAM was effective but we wanted to make it more effective, but by doing that -- by setting higher standards -- sometimes people decided that they wanted to work elsewhere.
Wilson:Turnover was across the board: it's not just our lobbyists. It happened in our accounting department. It happened in our field and national division. In our member programs. It was an equal-ask across the board for everyone to step up and to be held accountable. So we're measuring how we are doing. In the world you were talking about, it's hard to measure if you even have success. At least now we can put measurement behind each of these goals and objectives to see that we're meeting them. At the same time, an organization has to decide to change direction if the measurement isn't meeting the standard you require.
LeAnne Wilson, NAM's Chief Operating Officer, has been affiliated with NAM President Gov. John Engler for more than 20 years. She began working for Engler in 1985 when he was the Michigan state Senate Majority Leader. She worked for the Senate Republican Majority Committee, the "Bush for President" campaign and as the deputy director of Bush-Quayle '88 campaign in Michigan. She was appointed by Engler to serve as his director of the State of Michigan's Washington, D.C., office and was the state's liaison to the White House and the Michigan congressional delegation. When Engler chaired the National Governors Association, Wilson represented him on various committees.
Jay Timmons, NAM's senior vice president of policy and government relations, was the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee from 2002 to 2004 where he worked in conjunction with President Bush's re-election campaign and the White House Office of Political Affairs. "He led successful efforts to strengthen the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate to its largest margin since 1928," says his bio. Timmons was chief of staff to Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) from 2001 to 2002. From 1994 to 1998, Timmons was Gov. Allen's chief of staff, "the youngest person in Virginia history to hold the position," according to his NAM bio. He was Allen's chief of staff in the House of Representatives from 1991 and 1993. Prior to that he worked in the George H.W. Bush White House. He was state chairman of the Young Republican Federation of Virginia in the late 1980s and was state chairman of the Ohio College Republicans from 1982 to 1983.
Michael Hambrick, NAM's senior vice president of communications, worked in the network news business for most of his life before buying and operating several radio stations in the southwest. "A veteran senior advisor to numerous state and local political campaigns, Mike brought his experience in media and message development from the campaign trail to the classroom, leading communications strategy seminars for Washington insiders and elected leaders around the country," says his NAM bio. "He served as a media advisor to Fortune 500 CEOs, members of Congress, locally elected officials and leaders of NGOs." He was the writer and host of "Freedom Line with Mike Hambrick," a two-hour weekly radio news program dedicated to protecting individual rights. He produces and hosts the America's Business radio program that is syndicated in 84 markets across the country.
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