Moving the Boxes Won’t Fix It: Ashley York on Technical Communication and Leadership

There are people you invite to speak because you have a topic. Then there are people you invite because you know whatever they talk about is going to be worth hearing.

Ashley York is in that second group.

I told him that when we’re talking about speakers through AEM’s Product Safety and Stewardship Committee, his name comes up with a fairly simple recommendation: get Ashley. We can figure out the topic.

No pressure, right?

Ashley leads global technical communication at Manitou Group, working with teams in the US, France, Italy, and India. He brings together a background in technical writing, training, and project and program management. He also builds things, performs, coaches his kids, and has spent a significant part of his life singing barbershop.

So we had plenty to talk about. Including a question that sounds administrative until you’ve had to deal with it: where should technical communication live inside a company?

His answer was more interesting than a department name.

Good at it. Didn’t like it. There’s a difference.

Ashley’s engineering plan started in about fifth grade, with a K’Nex roller coaster and a teacher telling younger students they were watching engineers at work.

That was enough to get him interested. He spent the following years heading in that direction, including building small combat robots and eventually studying mechanical engineering at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.

Then he got far enough into the plan to realize he didn’t actually enjoy a major part of it.

He could handle the math and the technical work. He just hated doing it.

That’s an awkward discovery when you’ve spent years telling yourself what you’re going to be.

The change came through a technical communication class. A professor noticed his ability and asked whether he had considered a double major. Ashley started looking back at the things he had enjoyed most: writing, speaking, forensics, communicating with people through his involvement in Key Club.

He described it like the plot twist at the end of a movie. Once you know the ending, you realize the clues were there the whole time.

Instead of taking on a second major, he changed majors. Technical communication let him keep the part of engineering that interested him, understanding how something works, and combine it with the part that came naturally: helping somebody else understand it.

His path even included time at Ken Cook, my former employer.

I always like asking how people got into this field. You rarely get a straight line. You get somebody who likes machines and language, or teaching and problem-solving, and eventually discovers there’s a job where those interests belong together.

Ashley found that job. The people who get to learn from him benefit from it.

The culture shows up in the work

When I asked what sets Manitou apart, Ashley started by apologizing to his marketing colleagues.

That is usually a sign you’re about to get an honest answer.

He didn’t come back with a polished product pitch. He talked through the balance he sees in the equipment and the way the company treats people. Earlier, he had described something he values about working there: having the flexibility to be present for his wife and three daughters.

He coaches, participates in community theater, and has a life that would be difficult to fit around a company that only liked work-life balance as a phrase.

His experience at Manitou, he said, has been that the culture actually makes room for it.

I pushed on that because I think it matters to customers, too. I make buying decisions based partly on the company behind the product. How do they treat people? What happens when you need help? Can you get the thing serviced?

I also shared feedback I’d heard from dealers about the serviceability of Manitou’s skid steer products and the information available to support that work.

That belongs in the conversation about what makes a product valuable.

The manual, the training, and the person who can explain what to do next are part of the experience of owning a machine. Somebody has to make all of that work.

Which brings us back to Ashley’s team.

“Global” includes the people who are asleep right now

Ashley described a change Manitou is working toward: becoming a global company with a French headquarters, rather than a French company with a global presence.

It sounds like a small wording change. The practical difference is much bigger.

If every meeting happens during headquarters’ workday, whose participation becomes difficult? If a global standard gets written in one language first, who has to wait to understand it? If the team wants a single convenient contact, which regional perspectives are being left out?

Ashley was careful about this. He wasn’t describing colleagues who don’t care. He was describing people whose normal habits create obstacles for somebody else.

That’s harder to address than it sounds. People can support becoming more global and still want to keep working in the way that’s most comfortable for them.

I understood exactly what he meant.

When I was based in Singapore leading training for a global organization headquartered in America, I was taking meetings at 2 a.m. because that was when the American team worked.

Apparently “global” and “available during our office hours” can end up in the same sentence.

We eventually used more specific meeting times and recordings to help people stay involved. We talked about how shared conversations in tools like Teams and Slack can help, too, provided people can actually follow the thread.

I also brought up conversations where I’ve used AI tools to translate Japanese into English in real time. There’s a slight delay, and sometimes a regional expression still needs explaining, but being able to have that conversation is useful.

I’m optimistic about what those tools can make easier. Ashley’s examples also make clear how much depends on the habits around them.

A translation tool can help someone understand the discussion. You still have to include them in it.

Let’s talk about football.

My background is in training and education, so I asked about grouping technical training and technical publications together. Should they sit under one roof? Who should lead them? Where should the whole thing report?

Ashley sees technical communication as a hub that needs strong relationships across the organization. Engineering, after-sales, marketing... all of those connections matter.

Then he brought in a football analogy.

You have my attention.

Imagine an offensive-minded head coach. The offense is doing well, but over time the defense starts to suffer. Even with a good defensive coordinator, the head coach’s attention and priorities influence where the team gets stronger.

The coach may be very good. The team may still need a change to get the balance right.

Ashley sees something similar happening with technical communication. Put the team inside engineering and those relationships naturally get more attention. That can be valuable. But while you’re getting better connected to R&D, the connection with after-sales can start to weaken.

He described being conscious of that as his own team moved into engineering. He wants to cultivate the relationships outside his reporting line because those are the ones that can become easier to overlook.

That’s the part I liked. He wasn’t pretending there’s a permanent organizational arrangement that fixes this.

He was open to moving the function as the organization’s needs change. A move can be useful. It still requires someone to notice which relationships need work.

You can put everybody in the right box and still have people who never talk to each other.

The information has more than one job

This is where the conversation got particularly useful.

Ashley talked about knowledge management as a responsibility that needs to be clearly understood. He wasn’t sure whether the best answer would involve a particular piece of software. He was very clear that the work was bigger than choosing a tool.

Technical content can support a service manual, a training program, marketing material, or a future assistant helping someone operate a machine. The information has uses across the business, even when the teams using it report to different places.

That raises some practical questions.

Who is responsible for the content? How does it move between teams? How do people know what they can use, and who needs to be involved when it changes?

For a simple example, imagine a procedure changes. The manual gets updated, but the training team is still teaching from the earlier version. Both teams can be working hard. Both can believe they’ve done their job. The person trying to follow the procedure ends up dealing with the gap.

That’s why Ashley’s point about responsibility matters. You need a shared understanding of how the information is managed, wherever the department happens to sit.

I brought it back to leadership, process, culture, and tools.

We spend plenty of time on the tools. I enjoy that part as much as anybody. But buying software doesn’t make the other decisions for you.

Somebody still has to decide how the work will happen. People need to understand their responsibilities. Leadership has to support the process when it becomes inconvenient, and the culture has to make collaboration possible.

Otherwise, you’ve purchased a very expensive place to continue having the same problem.

For anybody working toward AI-assisted training or service, this is worth paying attention to early. The information you want an assistant to use already has people, responsibilities, and processes around it.

Understand those before you start building.

Of course there were fish costumes

I knew Ashley had been involved in barbershop singing. What I wanted to know was how you get into that in the first place.

His father joined a chorus in Wisconsin, and Ashley asked to join him when he was about five. He found himself onstage singing with men whose ages ranged all the way up into their eighties.

That is a fairly wide peer group.

He loved performing, and music stayed with him through school and into college. In Milwaukee, he joined Midwest Vocal Express, where the performances combined serious vocal work with elaborate themed sets.

One of those sets involved being an aquarium full of fish.

Technical excellence. Creative expression. A fish costume. Ashley apparently found a way to cover quite a few interests at once.

What stood out was how he explained the appeal. He loves things that combine creativity, communication, and technical skill. That was true of the singing, and it was true of the career he found after changing direction at MSOE.

More recently, he’s been putting that energy into musical theater, his church’s worship team, and activities with his children.

I get that. My kids’ interests shape how I spend my time, too. We talked about robotics, soccer, and theater, including my kids’ involvement with Milwaukee Youth Theater.

You get to keep doing something you enjoy and spend time with your family. I can see the appeal.

Tip of the Cap

Ashley’s Tip of the Cap went to the people helping others become better leaders.

He talked about the influence of Kiwanis and Key Club when he was younger, and the lessons in servant leadership that stayed with him. He also recognized Leadership West Bend, the program his employer had invested in him attending, and the opportunity to learn alongside people from local businesses and nonprofits.

What he appreciates is people teaching others to lead with care, compassion, and a sense of responsibility.

His point was simple: leadership is about serving the people you lead...