Most of us hire people to fill a slot -- a given role. That happens all too often because we hire in a reactionary mode, to someone leaving or to sales growth.

We talk about cross training, but often don't provide it for a number of reasons: no time, will have to pay person more, or not sure what we will need are just a few.

If your company talks about sales mix impacting productivity or other measures like on-time delivery, it often reflects a lack of flexibility or agility with our work force.

Cross training employees can be expensive, but can pay for itself every day. Random or time-filling cross training will likely be expensive and not pay for itself, ever.

Operations leadership are well served by creation and maintenance of a widely visible cross training matrix. The matrix starts with a picture of each employee on the Y axis, and the names of the various relevant skills on the X matrix. Where the picture and the skill intersect is the information about that person's level of mastery of that skill.

Now review what that list of relevant skills should include. Some simply name machines, but often there are subsets of skills for a given machine that are important and not equally mastered by all. Rather than worry about perfect, create the list of skills that seem to make sense at the start.

Now, it's time to indicate who (the pictures on the Y axis) has which skills (the X axis entries). Most find it helpful to define categories, like "run with supervision," run without supervision," "perform setups," and "train others to operate." These classifications will vary depending upon your business and staffing models.

It is time to fill out the matrix. You can look across and see who is capable of what, and look vertically to see who all is skilled in a specific machine or task.

You've created the "current state" matrix. That tells you what you currently have. What's next?

How will you keep this accurate? The fact that John Doe ran a machine a year ago doesn't mean he is still qualified at the same level to do so again. How does your re-verification effort work?

Similarly, you don't need everyone cross trained in every machine or skill. How many do you need for flexibility and to support growth?

Each column should indicate a number for the goal skilled personnel. You may need 3 trained on Machine 1 and 6 trained on Machine 2. These numbers are based on product demand, engineering intentions, the number of shifts, and other factors.

Your current state matrix, combined with the target number for each skill, makes visible the needs of the organization for appropriate cross training. This is a live document, as new skills are added, people lose skills over time, and our expected needs change.

Operations is responsible for capacity planning and management of people, equipment, and processes. The cross training matrix I have just described to you is a simply and important tool in that effort.

When I worked for TRW in the 1980's, the company required everyone with purchasing responsibilities to take the Chester Karrass negotiating course. At that time it was 100% focused on the assumption of a zero sum game, where whatever the other "side" got came directly from you. Win-lose. Since then companies have come to understand that successful suppliers are required by successful customers, and vice versa. Win-win became the order of the day.

Unfortunately, that understanding itself often ebbs and flows with near-term earnings, and for too many companies it has yet to extend beyond the commercial supply chain.

Every business has five constituencies: customers, suppliers, employees, investors, and the community at large. The concept of community extends into the future. Every responsible company considers all five when making major decisions. Too many leaders focus first on investors, and then on customers, and then perhaps on suppliers. If there's money "left over" the employees may get a raise or a bonus. The community? Well, if there's still money left over, maybe we'll donate to something or fix that fence.

Managing costs is integral to long term success. Managing costs is not the same as stretching payments to vendors, taking discounts not earned, or laying off highly skilled employees when times are tough. Poor processes, guestimate specifications, slow time to market and unverified products, ineffective onboarding and training, accepting bad orders or customers, staying with suppliers uninterested in improving your success, firing suppliers without investing in their success, ignoring local schools — these, and more, are all significant contributors to poor financial performance.

Consider what it takes to be a company that the best want to work for, suppliers energetically support, customers seek out, long term investors chase, and that the community is thrilled to have. You can't get there without being profitable. But being profitable doesn't put you there either. Profits are important. They can and should be derived from well considered decisions, not short term ones to maximize today's numbers.

As you consider significant decisions, I encourage you to ask yourself: 'what is the impact likely to be on all five of our constituencies?" If all five benefit, now and in the future, it's an easy decision to make. If not, consider both the short and long term impact on each of them. Then make the right decision, which might well not be the one that maximizes profits.

To focus solely on maximizing profits is a strategic mistake that few of you can afford to make.

Phil Spector was a very successful music producer and songwriter, who was also convicted of murder and serving a long sentence when he died in prison.

Talented people can be bad people.

Talented bad people can also do good things.

Phil Spector produced the famous Ike and Tina Turner song "River Deep - Mountain High." He knew how controlling Ike was, so he created a unique contract for this work, paying Ike Turner $20,000 to stay away while giving credit to both Ike and Tina Turner. That seems like a talented bad person doing a good thing.

We all know the story of Ike repeatedly beating Tina, until she escaped one night with no money and no where to go. Working long and hard at low-end jobs to keep herself and her children fed, she knew that she was a really good singer. Still under contract with United Artists she released solo albums, none of which succeeded.

The UAR contract ended; she signed with EMI in the early 1980's, and as they say, the rest is history.

It is easy to be impressed by talent, even when that talent is covering significant character flaws, ergo Ike Turner and Phil Spector.

It is easy to overlook world-changing talent when it pushes a mop bucket, like Tina Turner.

How much talent do you reject because it doesn't look like the talent you normally hire? How much talent do you keep, despite toxicity, because it can hit the high notes?

We all know, whether we like it or not, that culture eats strategy for breakfast.

So why do we live with toxic workers? Not one of them anywhere in any role for any organization is worth it. Many of us choose to be optimistic, hoping that the person will improve.

How long is enough? One day? One month? One year?

Every minute you accept toxicity as acceptable behavior you are driving away everything that is good about your organization. No level of skill can outweigh that.

Your organization may be filled with Tina Turners looking to escape because of the Ike Turner or Phil Spector you choose to retain.

What's love got to do with it?