A Principled Path to Personal and Professional Transformation
4 MIN
Principles helped Robert Ray overcome personal and professional challenges.
Childhood was a challenge for Robert Ray and his four siblings. The oldest son of a struggling single mom, he lacked resources and role models. Even so, Robert was intent on achieving a better life for himself. His goal was to become the first in his family to graduate college. When a dismissive guidance counselor told him, “You’ll never make anything of yourself,” he became even more determined to earn a degree.
But shortly after he started college, Robert’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. He had to drop out and get a full-time job to pay her medical bills and provide for his siblings. “I felt my first responsibility was to be there for them,” he said. Robert was 18 when he started as a material handler at the nearby nylon plant in Camden, South Carolina. A short time later, his mother died.
Frustrated with the hand he had been dealt, Robert began making poor choices. He could feel his future slipping away. He realized he needed a fresh start. When his siblings no longer required his full support, he decided to enlist in the Army. “I quickly learned there are three rules for military success: Be on time; do what you're told; and make sure everybody around you is safe,” said Robert. “Having people tell me what to do, when to do it and where to be provided a stability I had never known. It helped me to start finding out who I really was.”
During his 14 years of service at home and abroad, Robert served alongside others from vastly different backgrounds – many of them with much healthier family dynamics. He began to see a richer range of possibilities. After being assigned a role as an instructor, Robert realized he had a passion for training others. “I loved that ‘a-ha’ moment when people ‘get it’ and you see the lightbulb switch on in their eyes. It’s addictive,” he said.
When Robert left the Army in 2007, he returned to the nylon plant in Camden, now owned by Koch through its acquisition of INVISTA. It was tougher than he expected to switch from the Army’s rules-based culture to Koch’s principle-based approach. “Koch shares many of the same values as the military, such as integrity and accountability,” said Robert, “but there are some huge differences. Instead of always being told what to do, suddenly I was expected to use my own judgement.”
Making decisions felt strange to Robert, who struggled for years to grasp several other aspects of Principle Based Management, such as challenge and bottom-up vs. top-down. His knowledge started to grow when he became a control room operator, but his understanding and application of PBM soared when he became a production trainer.
Just as it had in the Army, his role as an instructor leveraged his passion for helping others develop their knowledge and skills. Robert also sought out others who were willing to help him self-actualize. These included an operations manager who challenged him to read about PBM and how Koch applies principles. Of particular value was the time that manager made to coach Robert on how to apply PBM in his role. As Robert gained personal knowledge and confidence, he found it led to new opportunities and more responsibilities. “Those principles lit a real fire in me,” he said.
Robert's responsibilities included training new “spinners,” the employees who operate large spools of fiber. One of their biggest challenges was learning how to re-string a fiber spool when the filament breaks. Robert had to wait for a filament to break – an unplanned event – before he could help a trainee learn how to respond. Further, he was told to limit these training sessions to just 30 minutes. Not surprisingly, this intermittent approach meant a new employee usually needed at least six months on the job to reach proficiency. “It wasn’t effective or efficient. There was a lot of wasted time and frustration,” said Robert.
To help solve this problem, Camden’s leaders reached out to Dane Laughlin, an INVISTA employee in Wichita who was experimenting with virtual reality (VR) as a way to accelerate training. “When I presented the idea of using VR in Camden, I got a lot of perplexed looks,” said Dane. “Fortunately, our leadership supported this experiment, which gave us a chance to see if it worked.”
“Those principles lit a real fire in me.”
Robert was not only skeptical, he was a bit intimidated by the high-tech platform. “I kept thinking, this isn’t going to work. It’s not realistic. How is a video game going to help us do serious real-world training?” Despite his misgivings, however, Robert did his best to help Dane create a simulation that replicated the work environment at the plant. When Robert finally donned the VR goggles to take a “test drive,” he was, as he put it, “blown away. It literally felt like I was standing on the spinning floor, working on the machine.” Robert quickly became a believer in how VR could transform the way plant employees learned.
After some fine-tuning, the VR program was rolled out to spinners. It became a resounding success, reducing new-hire training time to just three weeks. This $125,000 investment is saving the plant an estimated $1 million annually. “Despite his doubts,” said Laughlin, “Robert didn’t dig in his heels. Instead, his approach was, ‘I'm willing to be open-minded as we run the experiment and test the hypothesis.'”
Robert has become a passionate advocate for experimenting with emerging technology. Today, he is a technical project manager for Koch’s Spatial Technology team. “I’m helping employees across Koch look at immersive technology tools, better understand their potential value and, when appropriate, build and implement them,” said Robert.
When he reflects on his own transformation, Robert is amazed. “This is a huge organization. The fact they let somebody like me, with no college degree, be part of the conversation and help drive change this way, just blows my mind.” The effect of Robert’s continued transformation extends well beyond the workplace. “Once you experience the power of applying principles, it spills over into every aspect of your life,” he said.
“The fact they let somebody like me, with no college degree, be part of the conversation and help drive change this way, just blows my mind.”
For example, when Robert’s children wanted his advice on what college courses to take, he said, “I’m not the one to ask about college courses.” But he did offer them this advice: “Look for something that fulfills you. Do what you’re good at and what you love so that you can contribute.”
Robert insists that Koch’s principles “have made me a better person and helped me become a better parent. They have also enabled me to give my kids a very different kind of life from what I experienced growing up. It was principles that helped me overcome barriers and will help my children do the same.”
Give it a Try
The power of these principles happens through application. There’s no substitute for learning as you apply.
- Suggest three new ways you or your team could share ideas and knowledge.
- Build a new knowledge network.
- Identify areas where you can contribute more. What ideas or skills can you apply to help innovate and transform?
- How did Robert’s application of the transformation principle influence his approach to training new employees? How can you do the same in your role?
- How are you applying your personal knowledge to help solve problems, identify opportunities and discover better ways of doing things?
- What emerging technology in your field should you be considering? If you’re not aware of any, where should you look?