From Zero to Tool Industry Dominance: Milwaukee Tool's Path to Leadership

How do you remodel a 100-year-old model like Milwaukee Tool, taking it from the again of the pack in market share to the main maker {of professional} energy instruments and tools?

“You don’t do it by setting goals you know you can achieve,” says Craig Baxter, group president of TTI Canada.

“Very little that’s great has ever been achieved by setting easily achievable goals, I’m a strong believer in audacious goals,” says Baxter. “I love that word. An audacious goal changes everything. It changes the way you think, the way you plan, the way you behave. It changes your entire approach.”

Sixth in a five-horse race

If anybody would know from expertise concerning the energy of audacious goal-setting, it’s Baxter.

In 2007, when he first joined Milwaukee Tool, the corporate’s merchandise have been barely on the radar as a job website resolution.

“We were sixth in a five-horse race in terms of the market share of professional cordless tools,” Baxter remembers. “My first audacious goal was committing back in 2007 to make Milwaukee the number one brand of professional power tools in Canada by 2017. To achieve that meant we had to grow at least 20 per cent a year for 10 straight years.”

Under Baxter’s management, Milwaukee Tool didn’t simply obtain that purpose—they smashed it. “We’ve compounded at 24 per cent for the last 16 years,” he says.

Leading by inspiration

But whereas Milwaukee Tool’s steady innovation is important, Baxter credit his workforce–and the unbelievable spirit of teamwork and collaboration he got down to foster–for these unbelievable outcomes.

Having taken the corporate from lower than 100 staff in 2007 to virtually 800—“we have single-digit turnover” Baxter notes—he’s decided to construct the absolute best staff and the absolute best work tradition.

“My job is to create an environment where talented, ambitious people can flourish,” he says.

For Baxter, that each one hinges upon management. “The predominant leadership style today is command and control,” he says. “But that style is never going to lead to extraordinary results over the long term. And that’s because great people simply don’t want to be controlled.”

To Baxter, one of many nice ironies in workplaces at the moment is that business acumen and area of interest expertise change into much less necessary as individuals climb by the ranks and tackle positions requiring management. “Supply chain, inventory, and metrics are all things that need to be managed. The problem is a lot of managers treat people like they’re things. Leaders need to focus on the inspiration piece, not the management piece when it comes to people,” he says.

To that impact, Baxter himself teaches management programs, handing all the way down to TTI’s rising and skilled managers his tenets for uplifting audacious efficiency–issues like robust communication, constructing belief by sharing the credit score and accepting the blame when issues don’t go as deliberate.

“If you don’t understand how to get the best work out of individuals, then extraordinary results will be incredibly difficult to achieve,” he says.

“Great leaders are able to inspire people to become the absolute best version of themselves, and in so doing, they’re able to stretch for audacious goals.”

Powering the job websites of the long run

This give attention to management is a components Baxter believes can energy Milwaukee Tool for the subsequent 100 years.

“Cordless is an arms race,” Baxter acknowledges. “Our vision is a cordless job site—and by that I mean everything from a small renovation to building a tower downtown. Our vision is to have every single application on that job site powered with a lithium-ion solution brought to you by Milwaukee. We want to replace other batteries, replace hydraulics, replace pneumatic air, replace gas and cords. Any source of power on the job, we want to replace it with one of our solutions. In five years, I see us providing solutions that are beyond anybody’s imagination on a job site,” Baxter says.

With such a terrific staff and robust leaders on his facet, it’s one more audacious purpose Baxter believes is inside attain. “Just look at what we’ve brought to market so far. You can only imagine how many solutions and the type of capabilities we will provide in the future. We are just getting started.”