Learning Without Scars is an IACET Internationally Accredited School

Ron Slee

CEUs are issued by organizations accredited by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET), which is widely recognized for supporting high-quality standards in continuing education and training programs. Earning these CEUs signals to employers, clients, and peers that you are committed to professional growth and have completed rigorous, accredited educational programs. IACET accredited programs are highly structured and outcome focused, meaning you receive training that is carefully designed, measurable, and relevant to your field.

Choosing Quality Dealer Education That Meets Dealer Employee Needs – Part II

Dealers have many choices when they are looking for education for employees. Technical colleges provide an excellent starting point for those students interested in becoming equipment technicians. Attending a high-quality college technical program will shave years off the process of becoming a qualified shop or field technician as opposed to on-the-job training. Caterpillar, Komatsu, John Deere, and Case all offer solid accredited two-year college equipment technology programs. You can find additional information on many other top industry accredited college programs by contacting The AED Foundation.

For non-technical positions, two- or four-year general college management, finance, or accounting programs are a possibility. A number of associations and educational companies offer options such as webinars, seminars, or self-study curriculums. These can certainly be fine, however, when looking for education that provides comprehensive position- and industry-specific skills and knowledge, some dealers can still find it quite difficult to locate relevant education resources. This is a valid concern throughout the industry. What is needed is specific education that connects academic knowledge with the specific requirements for everyone’s job. At Learning Without Scars (LWS), we believe that is best accomplished with continuous learning designed to meet individual needs as determined by job function assessments.

Education needs to provide solutions to several dealer scenarios:

  1. For your current employees, as equipment industry environments, technology and processes change, continuous learning is required to adapt and be successful, both at the individual and company levels. This is especially true as people pursue their career paths.
  2. When “promoting from inside,” you want to adequately prepare your employees for success in the new job. Needed job specific education is part of that process.
  3. When hiring from outside, you want the process of “hire to job competency” accomplished as soon as possible. It is difficult and expensive to find and train the right people for a given job.
  4. If you are dealing with a remedial situation, you want to have that person equipped with additional skills and knowledge as soon as possible to help them succeed.
  5. Job vacancies create situations where there is a lot of stress for others in the department. Workflow and quality can suffer in the meantime. It is important to address this situation as soon as possible.

Learning Without Scars is uniquely positioned to help dealers address these situations.

  1. LWS products are relevant to farm equipment, construction equipment, forestry and mining equipment, medium and heavy truck, diesel engine, and power generation industries.
  2. All classes are compliant with the U.S. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
  3. All educational products are conveniently offered online 24/7 including taking assessments and classes and obtaining results. This helps people better fit education into their busy schedules.
  4. Certifications are offered in five key subject areas, parts, service, sales, marketing, and customer service management. Course recommendations are also available for selected sub-job categories of the above subject areas.
  5. LWS classes are fully accredited by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET). This organization is responsible for the initial development of CEUs, and the establishment of the ANSI/IACET Standard for Continuing Education and Training CEUs. We are the only one in our industries that offer accredited CEUs which can earn Academic Credits.
  6. Our Learning Programs and Certifications are structured to be easily incorporated into dealer continuous education programs. LWS can advise you on how to accomplish this.
  7. Before students start their classes with LWS, a job function assessment is provided to determine their current learning needs. Eighteen job assessments are available. That way, their scheduled classes will align with those assessed needs.
  8. Class content and delivery methods are cutting edge to provide the latest in best practices, meaningful metrics, and an engaging and interesting learning environment. This includes AI and new online tools that enhance student experience. Assessments are provided in during each class, and a final assessment is given at the end of each class to validate learning.
  9. New classes offer training in Electrical and Electronics, Flatbed (ITF) Training, Supply Chain, and Marketing – Marketing Research.

Learning Without Scars is an industrial education company that provides specialized, job function based online training classes, job function skills assessments, and lectures. Products are designed for manufacturers and their dealers, as well as independent businesses in the construction equipment, heavy truck, agricultural equipment, engine and automotive industries. Training is aimed at improving dealer parts, service, sales, marketing and customer service operations through qualified people that are knowledgeable in using operational metrics and current market and operational best practice methods.

Click here to request more information or learn how we can help you.

The Case for Continuous Dealer Employee Education – Part I

Most of us are believers in “continuous education,” right? We understand that our environment is constantly changing. That includes both state and federal politics and regulations, technology, industrial processes, economic and seasonal business cycles, interest and inflation rates, and a host of other variables. We have to keep up with these business “currents,” so we can anticipate and respond appropriately as changes occur.

Though most of us are “believers,” one has to ask how that translates into reality in the day to day lives of our businesses. It’s more common than some think that the approach winds up being:

  1. When things are good, we’re too busy to focus on employee education.
  2. When things are not so good, we can’t absorb the cost of employee education.
  3. Our employees don’t want or need education; on-the-job training is good enough.
  4. If we educate our employees, our competitors will steal them from us.
  5. Manufacturer training is all we need; the “laws” don’t require employee training.
  6. It’s difficult to find education opportunities that focus on my dealer’s needs.

This is unfortunate, though, because when you actually look objectively at the data supporting continuous education, the real question becomes clear, in other words, “what is the cost of not educating your employees?” Not educating employees…

  1. Can set your business and its employees up for so-so results or failure. You can set individual goals for efficiency and productivity, however, do the employees know what success looks like? Do they have the knowledge and skills to implement processes and procedures that can actually achieve the results you desire? Where will they learn best practices and the performance metrics that can help them improve?
  2. Will encourage employee turnover. Several years ago, my own research on this indicated it was not unusual for a dealer to have 10% -15% turnover annually. More recent data indicates that number has climbed even higher. You have goals for your business but never forget that many of your employees also have goals for their careers and their families. When you promote someone, you want to know that they are well prepared for that job and continuous education really contributes there. Having employees know that you have a career path for them offering various possibilities and know what it will take to “get there,” is a strong incentive for them to stay and not just chase the next dollar with competitors.
  3. Impacts succession plans for key positions in the dealership. For example, we have heard a number of anecdotes about great technicians that don’t transition well into parts manager, service manager or product support positions… just to name a few. It’s true in other operational areas as well. You can improve that dynamic if you talk meaningfully with employees about where they are and where they want to be. People can be thrown into the water to see if they can swim, or you can ensure they are well prepared ahead of time to assume leadership positions. Other factors like mentoring, cross-training and stretch assignments also factor in, but continuous education should be a part of your employee development program to give them every opportunity for success as their career paths develop per individual development planning done in the context of strong employer-employee relationships.
  4. Impact other programs that are beneficial for your dealership. Employee turnover was discussed earlier. Employee reward systems also can contribute to your retention programs. Continuous education can be a foundation for such rewards. Excellent educational performance, attaining relevant certifications, and trying learning to identifiable project and program improvements can be incorporated into performance reviews, pay increases and criteria for promotion opportunities.

I hope this blog encourages you to look into the benefits of continuous education more. Ongoing company educational programs require commitment that starts with top executives and extends into the grass roots of the company. The program needs to be assigned to one person who believes in education and is held accountable for planning, implementation and results. If done correctly, the success of the program will be obvious, and grow and grow over time. I would encourage equipment dealers and those in other industries to incorporate continuous education into their foundational plans for success.

Look for Part II of this blog,

“How Good is the Education you Provide for Your Employees? – Part II

Learning Without Scars is an industrial education company that provides specialized, job function based online training classes, job function skills assessments, and lectures. Products are designed for manufacturers and their dealers, as well as independent businesses in the construction equipment, heavy truck, agricultural equipment, engine and automotive industries. Training is aimed at improving dealer parts, service, sales, marketing and customer service operations through qualified people that are knowledgeable in using operational metrics and current market and operational best practice methods.

Click here to request more information or learn how we can help you.

A “No or Low Hire, No or Low Fire” Economy – An Industry Solution?

In the United States we have a challenging economic situation. GDP grew at an annual rate of 2.1% in quarter 1 of 2026, slowing to 1.5% in quarter two. Inflation (CPI) is currently at 3.5%, still above the fed’s target of 2.0%, leaving people to worry about upcoming federal funds rate decisions. The June unemployment rate was 4.2%, though June total nonfarm payroll jobs only rose by 57,000. By most measures, finding a job right now is tough. Numerous articles in the media lately have characterized our current United States labor situation as a “No or Low Hire, No or Low Fire” job market.

When I first started in the equipment industry over 20 years ago, it was already apparent that the U.S. had a severe technician shortage. I am not pleased to report that today we still have a severe shortage. Let us look at some numbers published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in its Occupational Outlook Handbook. For Heavy Vehicle and Mobile Equipment Service Technicians, it shows median pay of $63M or over $30 per hour. Employment shows projected employment growth of 6% or 15,700 jobs from 2024 to 2034. That translates to 21,700 openings for these technicians annually over the decade. My current research and years of workforce development experience at The AED Foundation tell me that those numbers are way on the low side. What this data also tells me is that the equipment industry has a job solution to the “No or Low Hire, No or Low Fire” job market dilemma for young people and those interesting in making a career switch. It also says to me that more than a few in the industry remain a bit too complacent in pursuing those people and selling this job opportunity. Yes, for those that know me, I am talking about industry technician recruitment efforts again.

Recruitment starts at the dealer. I am not talking about someone who does HR part time and puts a job ad in Indeed! What is needed is a continuous, multi-faceted recruitment program based on future projected needs over a selected time. It is fine to advertise your job opening in various media, but I recommend including the following in your recruitment efforts to grow your own technicians.

  1. Work with your local technical college equipment technician programs. Hiring their graduating technicians is only a start. Get to know the program heads and instructors and find out what their program needs are. Get to know the students as you explore program needs with which you can assist.
  2. Are you not happy with the curricula of the technician program(s) that you see? Have your dealership represented on the program’s Advisory Board by someone with decision authority? This is an opportunity to help chart the program’s future directionsand plan for what resources will be needed, and how they can be obtained. This also gives you a voice as to how the program can structured to help meet your dealership’s current and future needs.
  3. Help to recruit Advisory Board members from manufacturers, suppliers, other dealers, and other industry participants. The broader the representation, the more effective the Board’s advocacy can be. Yes, other dealers too. This is a place where the collective mass and available resources of many supporting companies will benefit all. Your share of these benefits will be directly proportional to the effort you put in.
  4. It is no secret that heavy equipment programs that are expensive for colleges to offer tend to need more resources than many colleges can provide to truly offer excellent programs. That is where the equipment industry members come in. Programs need operating equipment, simulators, electrical and hydraulic training boards, diesel engines, static parts for disassembly and reassembly, and other teaching aids. The Advisory Board members working together collectively can provide resources to meet these needs. They can also approach manufacturers and suppliers to donate items and funds to obtain the program materials required.
  5. Help the technical schools recruit new students. This is important! Though much progress has been made, the technician image still suffers from years of bad stereotypes and misinformation. Go out and visit the middle schools and high schools. Offer job shadowing days. Talk to the teachers and students. Be there when the schools sponsor career day events. Hold events for students and their parents at your dealership to let them get to know about the industry and its opportunities. Give them a chance to “see and touch” the iron. Show them the computers and sophisticated technology. Let them know that equipment technicians are truly highly educated professionals. Develop excellent marketing materials and work with the schools to generate awareness of these careers, create actual interest, inspire positive industry career decisions, and motivate students to action. Inspire students and parents to start thinking about the heavy equipment industry as a genuine career possibility offering the opportunity to attend a good technical college, obtain a professional job with good pay and benefits, have stable employment, and have the ability to pursue various career paths. Do not forget working with parents. Remember that “Dad” cares, and “Mom” is always a key career decision influencer for her sons and daughters.
  6. Students have some real “barriers to entry” for a technician career. For those that need help, help them. Offer summer jobs and/or paid internships to enhance their basic skills and knowledge and help with tuition and fees. Ensure they know about the student tool discount programs available to them from major tool suppliers like Snap–On, Matco and Mac Tools. Some dealers help them buy the typical $3-4,000 or so initial tool set prescribed by the college that they will need. Many dealers work to grow their own technicians with loans or scholarships for tuition, books, and fees. Some allow those students to “work off those loans or scholarships” in return for committing to work for that dealer for a period of time after graduation.

Another dealer employer benefit is that when you are involved as described above, you have the opportunity to see the students’ work and progress. You may see students that you decide to sponsor with an eye to hiring them at graduation. That can certainly give a dealer an edge in the recruitment process after graduation. There is no magic here; as with many successful programs, it is hard work. The efforts must continue both in good and challenging industry environments, but it is worth it to create a continuous pipeline of highly qualified technicians.

Learning Without Scars is an industrial education company that provides specialized, job function based online training classes, job function skills assessments, and lectures. Products are designed for manufacturers and their dealers, as well as independent businesses in the construction equipment, heavy truck, agricultural equipment, engine, and automotive industries. Training is aimed at improving dealer parts, service, sales, marketing, and customer service operations through qualified people that are knowledgeable in using operational metrics and current market and operational best practice methods.

Steven A. Johnson is the Director of Sales & Marketing at Learning Without Scars.

Learning Without Scars is an industrial education company that provides specialized, job function based online training classes, job function skills assessments, and lectures. Products are designed for manufacturers and their dealers, as well as independent businesses in the construction equipment, heavy truck, agricultural equipment, engine and automotive industries. Training is aimed at improving dealer parts, service, sales, marketing and customer service operations through qualified people that are knowledgeable in using operational metrics and current market and operational best practice methods.

Click here to request more information or learn how we can help you.

EVERYONE IS DOING THEIR JOB – So Why Aren’t We Getting Better Results?

A Paper by Mark Fitzsimmons

Managing Director, 360 Degrees Management Consulting

The Meeting Looked Good

Many of us have attended a meeting like this.

Sales reports a strong month. Operations says productivity has improved. Finance confirms that costs are under control. Customer service reports that most cases were closed within target.

The slides contain data, and most indicators are green. Every department appears to be doing its job.

Then someone asks a different kind of question: Why are customers leaving? Why are employees exhausted? Why does routine work require executive escalation? It seems we are working harder without becoming much better?

The room becomes quiet, It’s not because the numbers are necessarily wrong, but because each number describes only one part of a larger reality.

The Customer Does Not Experience Your Departments

Consider a commercial customer whose truck or piece of equipment stops operating. Service schedules an inspection. A technician diagnoses the problem. Parts discovers that a component is unavailable. The supplier provides an uncertain date. Warranty requests additional documentation. The salesperson tries to preserve the relationship but has little influence over the repair.

Everyone may be following the approved process. The customer is still losing money.

Inside the organization, the work is divided among functions. From the customer’s perspective, there is only one question: When can I operate again?

The same pattern appears in healthcare, government, construction, technology, manufacturing, and professional services. A patient moves through several departments, each completing its responsibility, while the complete journey remains confusing. A project delivers the specified system, but adoption is weak and the promised benefit never appears. A call center reduces handling time, but customers call back because their problems were not resolved.

Organizations divide work because specialization is necessary. But customers, employees, and communities experience the result of how those specialties work together.

The Mistake: Measuring Motion as Progress

Most organizations are not short of metrics. They track revenue, margin, productivity, utilization, cycle time, customer satisfaction, defects, turnover, schedule, budget, safety, and risk. These measures can all be useful.

The danger begins when they are treated as independent truths.

A metric improves

While the system worsens

The missing question
Productivity rises Errors and rework grow Was the work right the first time?
Utilization rises Waiting time and queues grow Did we preserve capacity to respond?
Inventory falls Parts shortages and downtime rise What is the total cost of availability?
Cases close faster Repeat contacts increase Was the customer’s problem resolved?
The project is on time Adoption and benefits lag Did delivery create value?

A central principle of Outcomes by Design™ is that results emerge from relationships. Revenue is related to capacity. Speed is related to quality. Utilization is related to responsiveness. Inventory is related to reliability. Project delivery is related to adoption. These are all part of an ecosystem with interrelated parts that impact each other in ways that metrics do not always capture in a visible way. A leader who sees only one side of the relationship may improve the number while weakening the outcome.

Every Metric Is a Quiet Instruction

Metrics do more than describe performance. They direct attention. Attention shapes decisions. Decisions shape behavior.

Tell a service team that speed matters most, and people will move faster. Tell a sales organization that volume matters most, and people will sell more. Tell a department that budget variance matters most, and managers will protect the budget. These responses are not evidence that people are careless. They are evidence that people take leadership signals seriously.

The useful question is not simply, “What does this metric measure?” It is, “What behavior would a reasonable person adopt if they took this metric seriously?”

That question often explains behavior that leaders have been trying to correct through reminders, training, and escalation. When a behavior is repeated across capable people, the problem may not be motivation. It may be design.

What the Evidence Tells Us

The data reinforce the argument.

The findings come from different disciplines, but they point in the same direction. People lose connection to meaningful work. Projects complete tasks without realizing benefits. Customers become frustrated by the effort required to navigate organizational complexity. The visible metric may improve while the lived outcome deteriorates.

The American Society for Quality’s 2025 Cost of Quality report makes a related point: poor quality hides in rework, delays, warranty, complaints, returns, and other failures that conventional accounting may scatter across departments. The most expensive work in an organization may be the work that must be done twice—but never appears on one line of the dashboard.

A Better Way to See Performance

Leaders do not necessarily need a larger dashboard. They need a more coherent view of reality.

Begin with five questions:

1. What outcome are we trying to create?

Describe success from the perspective of the customer, employee, stakeholder, or community—not merely the department.

1. What outcome are we trying to create? Describe success from the perspective of the customer, employee, stakeholder, or community—not merely the department.
2. What relationships make that outcome possible? Identify the people, functions, suppliers, systems, decisions, and handoffs on which the result depends.
3. What are we measuring: activity, output, or outcome? Calls answered are activity. Cases closed are output. Problems resolved and trust restored are outcomes.
4. What behavior do our measures encourage? Pair every important measure with a balanced measure: speed with quality, utilization with responsiveness, cost with reliability, delivery with adoption.
5. Who is watching the whole? When everyone owns a piece, no one may own the outcome. Assign responsibility for seeing the end-to-end result.

This is where organizational clarity becomes a competitive advantage: clear goals, visible data, an understanding of the system, and the ability to make better decisions. Cohesion leads to clarity. Clarity makes intentional action possible.

Better Results Begin Between the Boxes

Most leaders do not need to demand more effort from people who are already working hard. They need to make the outcome clearer. They need measures that reveal relationships rather than conceal them. They need to pay attention to the places where customers wait, employees struggle, responsibility fragments, and locally sensible decisions combine to create an irrational result.

That is both the problem and the opportunity.

Every meaningful improvement begins when curiosity becomes stronger than certainty. Instead of asking, “Who failed?” leaders can ask, “What made this result likely?” Instead of pushing each department harder, they can improve the relationships among the parts. Instead of celebrating a green dashboard, they can ask whether the system created an outcome worth having.

The purpose of measurement is not to make every number look good. It is to help people see reality well enough to change it intentionally.

Better outcomes rarely begin with a new dashboard. They begin with a better question.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Fitzsimmons is Managing Director of 360 Degrees Management Consulting. His work helps leaders create clarity from complexity, strengthen the relationships among the parts of their organizations, and design better outcomes across strategy, operations, projects, leadership, and continuous improvement.

Why We Created an Employee Development Business

Ron SleeIn many capital goods companies, employees receive basic training when they are hired. They are shown how to do the job, told they will become faster and make fewer mistakes with experience, and then left largely on their own. Over time, employees often develop shortcuts that make the job easier for them but do not necessarily meet the job’s intended purpose. This problem is made worse by weak or unclear job descriptions across much of the dealer supply chain.

After initial onboarding, many employees receive little or no ongoing training to build the skills and knowledge needed to perform at a higher level.

That is the problem Learning Without Scars is designed to solve. Our internal purpose is to help employees discover and develop their personal and professional potential. To do that, we created a series of Skills Assessments, or CSAs, organized by job function. We divide dealership operations into five areas: parts, service, selling, marketing, and customer service. We offer six assessments for parts, six for service, four for selling and marketing, four for customer service, and two for technicians. Although we do not provide technical training for mechanics, we created brand-neutral technician assessments that measure technical knowledge across key areas. These assessments cover roughly 95% of the work hours in a dealership.

The capital goods industry is broad, covering construction equipment, automotive, agricultural equipment, material handling, mining, engines, aircraft, boats, and more. The supply chain is global and complex, as the COVID-19 pandemic made clear. Because each sector uses its own terminology, we adapt our materials to fit the language and needs of specific industries.

Over more than 30 years of training and evaluating student understanding, we have seen wide differences in performance, skills, and knowledge within the same job functions. About 35,000 students have participated in our classroom, webinar, and online programs. Their results showed major differences not only between groups but also across regions, including Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa, South America, China, India, and Russia. Those variations convinced us that the industry needs greater standardization, especially from a customer service perspective.

People often say customer loyalty no longer exists. I believe the industry contributed to that loss by failing to provide consistent, high-quality customer service. In 1980, I helped create job function descriptions for parts, service, product support, sales, and marketing with AED, the Associated Equipment Distributors. We compiled those descriptions, prerequisites, and standards in the Product Support Handbook.

I later created the Product Support Best Practices Handbook for AED. It examined the processes, methods, and systems used in product support and identified better ways to perform the work. The approach was similar to applying total quality management, which later evolved into Six Sigma and then 5S.

The wide variation in skill levels led us to develop a certification program. We began with leadership roles in each of the five departments and plan to expand certification to every job function. The program has four levels: prerequisite, basic, advanced, and master-level progression, with increasingly difficult assessments at each stage. Managers must first achieve at least 40% on the prerequisite assessment to enter the certification path.

Our goal is to work with manufacturers and associations over time to establish national standards for every operational job function in capital goods dealerships.

The Time is Now

Who We Are at Learning Without Scars

Ron SleeLearning Without Scars began in the early 2000s as the successor to Quest Learning Centers, which we founded in 1994. In 2015, we closed the California company and formed Learning Without Scars LLC in Hawaii. My use of computer-based training grew out of the consulting business I started in Canada in 1980. After moving to the United States in 1983 to run a software company called EBS, I expanded my consulting work through dealer operations reviews. Those reviews helped me identify problems, develop options, and implement needed changes. Because implementation required employees to learn new processes, methods, and systems, training became a central part of my work with dealer organizations.

In 1994, economic pressures caused most operational management training to be put on hold. Original equipment manufacturers and dealer associations viewed training as a discretionary expense, so they stopped offering most operational programs.

That summer, I spent July and August using IBM ViaVoice to dictate eight 250-page textbooks: three for parts, three for service, and two for sales and marketing. Drawing on fourteen years of consulting experience, I invited ten dealers to attend and critique pilot classes. Their feedback helped me refine the material into eight two-day courses. Each course addressed four core dealership areas: operations, leadership, finance, and selling. The two-day format was divided into four-hour blocks, with each area receiving four hours of training. Delivered over three years, the program provided six two-hour segments for each core area.

In the early 2000s, another economic downturn shifted demand toward webinars. As a teacher, I was not enthusiastic about webinars because I could not see or interact with students directly. Even so, we adapted by creating one-hour webinars, each focused on a specific subject. In effect, I divided each two-hour classroom segment into two one-hour online sessions, expanding each class from six segments to twelve webinars.

While conducting webinars, I experimented with ways to make the experience more engaging for students. I developed a delivery approach using a laptop, projector, remote control, and large screen. I could advance the slides, turn off the presentation, step in front of the projector, and speak directly to the audience to reinforce what they had just seen. This approach reflected teaching methods I learned at McGill University when I began teaching in 1964. One method was “show, tell, show, try”: show the material, explain it, show it again, and then let students apply it. Another was “with assistance, to assistance, to solo,” like pilot training. First, the instructor sets up the task; next, the student performs it with the instructor present; finally, the student performs independently.

Webinars have opened a new way of thinking about training. I began putting these one-hour segments online, which was still unfamiliar territory for Internet-based training. To make it work, I had to identify, evaluate, and implement a range of new software tools.

That evolution led to Learning Without Scars as it exists today. We provide Internet-based training for the capital goods industry. My daughter Caroline, who holds a master’s degree in education and works as a full-time teacher and curriculum advisor in California, prepared our application to IACET, the International Accreditors for Continuing Education and Training. IACET approved us as an accredited provider, allowing our classes to award continuing education units, or CEUs. Students can present our certificates to technical schools, vocational schools, community colleges, and public or private universities around the world. We are proud to be the only company in the capital goods industry with this accreditation.

The Time is Now.