New AICC Chairman (CONT’D FROM PAGE 24)
staircase. Stop trying to recruit believers. Start creating them, one supervisor relationship at a time. The Bigger Picture One more thing. The integrated producers aren't the villain — they're built for volume, and they run that lane well. Our lane is different: complex, custom problems that need craft, flexibility, and a person who knows how to say yes when the easy answer is no.
Value Three: Build A Tradesman, Not Just A Trade This is the one I care about most. We have a labor problem in manufacturing, and I think we tell ourselves the wrong story about it. The line in a lot of boardrooms is that young workers don't want to work hard, that they want things handed to them. I'm going to push back on that, hard. The workers coming into our plants watched their parents get downsized. They watched institutions break promises. They're not anti-work — they're anti getting tak- en advantage of, and that's not irrational. You can't recruit your way past a trust deficit. Trust is built by front-line lead- ers who know their people, organize the work, and define excellence — which is exactly why leadership develop- ment isn't an HR initiative. It's a market strategy. Here's the other thing I want to say plainly: we need to stop saying “working in a box plant” and start calling it what it is. Boxmaking is a trade. It's skilled, it's technical, it's taught person-to-person like any craft worth learning. We've been selling that short for years. The ladder only works if the rungs are visible. Young workers will not climb what they cannot see. So say it out loud — production associate to operator, operator to shift lead, shift lead to supervisor, supervisor to superintendent. Put it in writing. Show them the whole
I also want to say a word about technology, because it comes up every time I talk to owners about workforce de- velopment. AI and automation are coming into our plants. Some of that is already here. And I hear a lot of anxiety about what it means for workers. Here's my honest view: technology doesn't replace the story I'm telling today. It creates more room for the parts of the work that actually need craft. The judgment calls. The complex jobs. The customer situations that require CONTINUED ON PAGE 28
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26 October 12, 2026
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