I am sure some of you are looking at the title and wondering to yourself, what in the world is Mike talking about this month?

It is all about selling your ideas to upper management. The thought and idea came about many years ago when I worked for Burlington Industries, at the time the largest textile manufacturing company in the world by at least two times. We, in the maintenance and engineering departments, were always struggling with how to convince upper management to consider implementing and trying some of the wonderful methods we had in mind. Methods to improve and modify the 'old school' culture of maintenance, being one of 100% reactive work, to one of a proactive culture rooted in a strong preventive maintenance attitude and world class maintenance theories.

What we came up with was term that was coined by a gentleman named Pete Little, who worked on our corporate staff. Pete said, "If you can't get the management support for improvement programs you should initiate the 'Midnight Bulletin Board'." The Bulletin Board, as he described the concept, was to find proactive articles, graphs, and metrics that described the proposed program. Ones that described in detail how to pull it off as well as the expected results and leave them on your skeptical manager's desk, under his office door or, if brave enough, tack them to the shop bulletin board.

The theory here is to find a way to begin changing the attitudes and cultures by showing examples of methods to change cultures that have been successful in other organizations.

So good luck, be careful and don't get caught...unless of course, you want to get caught!