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The Challenge

The Challenge

We are getting close to being in a position of complete saturation in the jobs market. We now have more jobs open than we have workers looking for a job. That has not happened for a long time.

We now have over 6,000,000 jobs open across the country.

The most recent Gordon report, from Edward Gordon, one of our colleagues who focuses on training and education, said:

“Today is a watershed era similar to the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Then new methods of production required more educated workers. The factory system and the consequent growth of American cities sparked the development of public schooling at the local levels, that in turn led to the passing of compulsory schooling laws at the state level. The United States was the first nation in the world to institute compulsory tax-supported public education, and it was a key component in the economic and industrial expansion of the United States. It was history’s first comprehensive education-to employment system.

The spread of computer technology in today’s workplaces is again raising the demand for a more educated workforce. While there are some pockets of progress, too many Americans are not receiving the education needed for 21st-century jobs and careers. Our education-to-employment system clearly needs re-invention, but entrenched bureaucracies in business, education, and government stand in the way. Too many components of American society are caught in the blame game, instead of working together to find solutions.

There were deep divisions in American society one hundred years ago. Just as today, immigration and economic inequality stoked tensions. Yet as community after community discovered that the pain of defending the status quo was greater than that of systemic change, solutions were forged. I believe that we are at this point again. The United States was founded and still stands because of our belief in a better future for all. Americans have overcome formidable obstacles in the past. We can do it again!”

One of the keys here is the education to employment system. We are not satisfying the needs of our employers.

You have all read that I believe greatly in apprentice programs and mentorship programs as a means to get motivated people with good attitudes into the workforce. You also know that I am a huge fan of the German apprentice programs. Every year about half a million Germans enter the workforce through these apprenticeship programs. Apprenticeships are one of the foundations of Germany’s manufacturing prowess. Felix Raunier, a professor ate the University of Bremen, says even the US has started to notice. Raunier says “US society has stigmatized vocational education, so most parents see college as the only path to status and a good career for their children.” Ludger Deitmer, is international research coordinator at the Institute of Technology and Education at the University of Bremen. He thinks that vocational training should be one of the medicines, perhaps the key medicine, in how to make America Great Again.

Companies in the US are not completely on board to this approach. Apprentices, in Germany, earn income as they work in companies and go to school. There is a partnership between the schools and the employers.

Marilyn Hewson, Chairman, President and CEO of Lockheed Martin, recently testified “to a new and pressing challenge: the shortage of skilled workers to fill the jobs being created by robust growth.” One survey by Industry Week found that nearly 40% of the aerospace companies believe that the skills gap has had an “extreme” effect on their ability to innovate and grow.

Last year the administration created the apprenticeship Task Force and issued an executive order to identify and remove the bureaucratic and regulatory impediments to apprenticeships. Apprenticeships help workers train on a specific craft or skill that a company needs. Lockheed Martin is creating 8,000 apprenticeship and workforce development opportunities in the next five years.

Let’s bring this back to our Industry.

Should you employ a High School student on a part time basis, as they continue to go to school, so that they can learn what happens in your dealership and if they, and you, think there are opportunities. If there are then together, the apprentice and the company, can develop a plan. You can explore specific learning programs that local Junior Colleges and Vocational Schools offer. You can work with the schools to create new classes to fit your needs.

As Hewson says; “it is up to this generation of leaders in government, industry and across society to invest in and to develop a workforce equal to the global challenges ahead. It is now time to act across every sector to ensure that every worker has an opportunity to grow, achieve, improve, train and excel over the entirety of their careers – regardless of where they start, where they work, or how high they aspire to go.”
Should you have apprentices working in your parts department? Should you have apprentices in your service departments? Absolutely.

The Time is NOW.

A Reintroduction

A Reintroduction

We are very pleased to announce the latest news from Learning Without Scars.

Our goal here at Learning Without Scars is to provide cost effective, comprehensive, content-rich dynamic learning products. We have developed these programs from the classroom programs which we used and which evolved from our training assignments worldwide over the past thirty years. These programs have been used in our classroom programs attended by over ten thousand people worldwide. The content has also been derived from our consulting engagements with several thousand dealers across the world.

In the past several years, online learning software has advanced to allow the online based learning experience to become much more effective. It has allowed measurement of the content absorbed by each student, even when their teacher is not in the room with them. We have adapted these learning software programs to our training and learning products. The foundation for all of our learning programs is a subject specific program we call Learning: On Demand (LOD.)

The Learning: On Demand (LOD) products cover specific learning objectives through four stages; preparatory reading, a pre-test, an audio video presentation consisting of a slide show with audio tracks and film clips inserted at strategic positions throughout the programs, as well as a final assessment of the learning absorbed. There are currently more than eighty of these programs. Each program requires an investment of two hours from each adult student. At the conclusion of each program there is a program evaluation.
The Learning: On Demand (LOD) products have been used as a foundation for our job specific programs, called Planned Specific Programs (PSP), as well as our Virtual Classroom programs (VCR). They are also packaged in our management training programs which we call Planned Learning Programs (PLP).

With the Planned Specific Programs (PSP) we are providing training opportunities to specific job functions. Each PSP provides four different programs requiring eight hours of learning. We offer twenty-two of these programs across the parts, service and product support selling and marketing groups. Employee development within the job functions spans three years and cover different levels of learning; fundamentals, advanced and professional.

The Virtual Classroom (VCR) programs which will be introduced in 2019 are for individuals identified as earning a “fast track” of training. This is a four-year program with each year requiring ten hours of learning. It is intended that the VCR programs will be capped with the final year of the Planned Learning Programs (PLP).

There are eight learning products available in the “Planned Learning Program. (PLP)” The intent of the program is to provide a path for individual professional development for the management and supervision of the Parts Business and the Service Business over the course of three years. There are also Learning Products available for Product Support Selling and Parts & Service Marketing groups. The planned program (PLP) provides ten classes each year which requires an investment of twenty hours of personal time from each student.

We at Learning Without Scars are pleased to present to you our latest learning model, tailor made for 21st century employee development, in these extensive and comprehensive Learning Without Scars programs.

The time is now.

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Automation

Automation

Are you noticing the changes?

The world is becoming even more confusing and complicated as we are faced with increasingly rapid and dramatic technological advances. The most disquieting aspect of it now is that it is not just physical activities, using robotics for example, but now it is cognitive skills as well.

We are surrounded by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Autonomous Vehicles (AV), and Disrupting Demographic Destinies (DDD). Things are changing very rapidly.

This is sometimes called the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

We are also seeing this affect different generations in different manners. From Millennials to Baby Boomers these technological changes are viewed very differently. And not everything is positive.

The technology around us has been something that millennials have grown up with and they are very comfortable with it. Baby Boomers not so much. But there are other aspects of technology that are beginning to come under more critical scrutiny. It seems that social media has the same effect on the brain as alcohol and drugs. You get a hit of dopamine, the very same response in your brain to alcohol and drugs, every time you get a response to your posts. Think about that for a moment.

Technological advances, particularly in cognitive activities, are not going to be slowing down anytime soon. Robotics will be coming to your operations. Order processing in the parts departments have been changing over the past four or five decades. I first saw an automated distribution center in Stuttgart, Germany. It was a Kodak plant. When I walked in the warehouse the lights went on. There was not one person in the building. This was the central distribution center for Kodak for Europe. When an order was entered, at any region in Europe, for which there was a need for a “part” robots went to work. They were given instructions by computer and they then went out to the warehouse, found the right aisle, turned into it, found the right elevation, went up to it, found the specific location and centered in front of it and then it picked the parts. They scanned the units and in so doing they were able to pick the correct quantity. It was very eye-opening experience for me. That was 1973.

Today, a friend of mine, who currently works for Google, has multiple patents pending where he can control the cursor of your computer only with his eyes. No mouse, no keyboard, exclusively with his eyes. Imagine that? Just pause and think about the prospects of things to come when there are inventions and innovations taking place like that already in the works.

The problem with all of these advances in technology seems to be that we are not realizing the gains in productivity that should be a byproduct of these changes. After all the main indicator of productivity gains is the average hourly wage. That hourly wage is starting to increase again after a few decades of gradual declines. That is not a good thing for society as a whole as the haves get more and the have nots struggle more.

As a society we need to work on solving this productivity problem. I have often said that we spend trillions of dollars on technology but very little on sociology. How society evolves to embrace the new technologies and jobs will be interesting to observe.

Today there are more job openings than there are people looking for work. The employment participation rate is finally starting to grow again after nearly a decade of decline. New and younger employees approach their lives in different ways than my generation. They are less patient than we were in their progress in a company. They want to be constantly learning. They are very curious – often asking the magic question “Why do you do it that way?” They don’t like the answer “because that is the way we have always done it.” They also want to continue to learn, to continue to grow as individuals. If they aren’t learning something from you they will leave. Gone are the days when people would think that when they left school learning was over. Today it is just the beginning.

With more job openings than employees to fill them we are on the cusp of some big changes in wages. John G Fernard, an economist at the Federal reserve Bank of San Francisco is quoted as follows – “You could meet the demand for a while by hiring workers, but with the unemployment rate at 3.8%, eventually you are going to run out of easy-to-find workers. Because workers have other opportunities, you end up having to pay them. And once you see wages going up, you say -We have to become more productive to cover our costs.” We are right at this point today. What is interesting to note is that the last time productivity grew dramatically was also when unemployment was at 4%.

This Fourth Revolution, is about adapting yourself to the New Realities of the work place. There will be differing methods, and processes, and systems brought into life. That will also require more adaptable employees. People who will embrace change because that is what they expect to happen. A constant evolution of work. This will focus on the customer and their needs and wants and also about being the “Lowest cost supplier of the highest value products or services.” That will only be possible with talented, well trained, properly paid loyal employees.

We are presenting you with the learning tools. You have to provide the opportunity to your employees.

The Time is NOW.

 

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The Learning of Tomorrow Is Available Today

The Learning of Tomorrow Is Available Today

At Learning Without Scars we are on the leading edge of internet-based employee development. We have developed Industry specific programs within the capital Goods Industries. We are following in the footsteps of the Khan academy, learning for elementary, middle school and high school students, and Udacity, a more recent platform for University learning specific to the technology Industry.

We develop our programs from a subject specific beginning. Each of our programs follows a similar path. A pre-test, the learning program and a final assessment.

Using In-depth personnel assessments help business identify the specific skill level and knowledge of each employee which also allows them to develop on a timeline of their choosing. These assessments present twenty multi-choice questions. This allows the employer to place each employee along one of our many learning paths. The results help you identify potential top performers in key areas of sales, finance, operations and leadership. Employers can leverage this knowledge to transform their company, ensure specific competitive advantages and in the end to realize significant sales and profit growth. Each of our video programs contains slide content, audio tracks matched to the slide and we insert film clips during the programs to break up the learning and provide emphasis on specific aspects of each program.

Learning is becoming more of a life long program with tools such as these. No longer does an employee have to attend a school at night or weekends, they simply sit in front of their computer. There is no shame in the learning process. Often in classrooms students don’t ask questions when they don’t understand a specific topic. In the online world there is no embarrassment in asking questions, as many times as the student desires. The important truth is that each student wants to learn, they want to understand the content and in the online world it is easier for them to accomplish.

Each program is assigned a badge. There are four categories of badges; sales, finance, leadership and operations. As the student’s progress through the various programs they accumulate badges. This accumulation leads to higher levels of skills and knowledge and this is recognized with a learning status; platinum, gold, silver and bronze. Each student then is recognized for their specific knowledge across the four disciplines. Those disciplines cross the parts business, the service business, parts and service selling and parts and service marketing. Each employer can see the status of each employee. They will have a much better understanding about what the student knows before hiring or in the annual performance review.

This is the learning platform of tomorrow. However, it is currently available at Learning Without Scars. So what is holding YOU back?

The Time is NOW.

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Management Mentoring and Coaching Program Conclusion

Management Mentoring and Coaching Program Conclusion

Last week, we covered the second portion of our tailored mentoring and coaching program with the instructional videos/skype sessions description.  This week, we cover the third, and final, portion of our individually tailored mentoring and coaching program.

For this final part of our program, we provide each manager with individual Work Assignments.

Establishing assignments is aimed at furthering the learning experience. Learning is about remembering and with these work assignments we can establish a deeper base of understanding. These assignments will be specific to the job function with which we are working. They will fit into the alternating weeks of the overall program. Implementation is a crucial element in committing knowledge to memory, thereby furthering the learning of each manager.  A key component in achieving any learning objective is in the implementation of the knowledge acquired.  These work assignments are designed to put that newly gained knowledge to work.

This approach will be discussed with the Company to develop a strategy which satisfies the needs of the Company, as well as the needs of the individual who will be the subject of the mentoring/coaching.

The program will continue weekly, alternating between a Learning On Demand program and then a film with work assignments injected at the appropriate time in the program. This will continue until the program is completed. This will be adjusted to satisfy the needs of the individual to be coached.

The price of this coaching/mentoring program will be established on a case-by-case basis. It will be dependent on the time involved and the assets utilized.

There you have it: our Management Mentoring and Coaching Programs.  Keep this in mind for those managers and supervisors you want to cultivate to become your heroes.

The time is now.