Learning from Old Lessons

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Learning from Old Lessons

In today’s guest blog post, we introduce Bruce Baker on the topic of learning from old lessons.

Bruce holds a Masters in Industrial Psychology and is a behavioural business strategist, coach, and change agent. He brings you a wide-ranging skillset in business operational design, planning, and execution, with significant success in leveraging the only growing capital asset a business has– its people.

With over 23 years of experience working with Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies in a wide variety of industries, Bruce focuses on working closely with anyone from new entrepreneurs, business owners, CEOs and their leadership teams.

Your time with Bruce will give you new and fresh insights as he rejects traditional methods of business coaching and consulting while providing you with a very unique and enlightening perspective on how to view and build your business. Bruce will work with you to see what your business is made of and then recognize and address its strengths and vulnerabilities, allowing it to grow with minimal or no risk at all.

Learning from Old Lessons

I would like to welcome those of you following the Learning Without Scars blogs. Welcome to my musings on what is called the Chronicles of Business Leader. My name is Bruce, and I work with Business Leaders and their leadership teams to help them scale-up, start-up, or fix-up their respective companies.

In my blogs, I will focus on discussions I’ve had with business leaders about their challenges and how they have and are becoming successful.

Previously I discussed the reason for ongoing business failure. This is due to a single focus on the non-human aspects of a business (systems, tools, programs etc.). The focus must start with the human element first (i.e., Business leader/C.E.O.) and then the non-human factors. When the business leader understands and identifies with a solution, success is inevitable!

The experience I had this week highlights the usefulness of a powerful tool and technique. Using this tool positions a business leader for massive success.

Many call it “being discipline,” “maintaining focus,” or “not being distracted.” These terms apply to business success but have not aided the business leader.

This week, I want to share an experience I had with a business leader named Robert. Rob owns and operates a mid-sized heavy equipment dealership business he started up almost 10-year ago. I’ve been working with Rob to help him scale his company for over four months now.

When Rob and I started talking, he struck me as an intelligent and well-read man. He could rattle off all the latest and greatest business and leadership books and related tools and systems. Business leaders I had and continue to work with referred Rob to me as I was “the guy who helped business leaders achieve instrumental success.” I asked Rob why he had not used any of these great ideas and best practices he learned about in the books. His response to me was simple but not surprising. He said, and I quote, “I can’t seem to find the time, and when I have some time, I get distracted by other things. I may have a challenge with Attention Deficit Disorder…not sure.”

Regardless, Rob’s business was about to tank if he could not take what he knew and make it a reality in his company. I gave Rob a concept and tool a few weeks ago that made all the difference in him gaining traction.

The concept and tool are not new but initially came from a person named Dwight D. Eisenhower. As many of you know, Dwight was the 34th President of the United States. Before becoming President, he served as a general in the US Army and Supreme Commander during World War II. He had to make tough decisions about which of the many tasks he should focus on each day. This led him to the Eisenhower principle, which prioritizes urgency and importance. Go to www.Eisenhower.me/Eisenhower-matrix for further information.

So, how did Rob benefit and continue to benefit? Simply put, most of us are told to work on our time management skills. Frankly, the term “time management” is not aligned with how our human brains work. I said this to Rob, and he was taken back by my comments asking what the solution was if not for managing one’s time. I asked Rob how many people he knew that attended a time management course and were great “time managers”? Rob smiled and said, “true enough, but what then is the solution?” I responded and said, “task/action management.”

Actions and the commitment we make to take these actions are tangibles that our minds are designed to handle well. The brain can take hold of and then work through what and why something needs to be executed.

Asking “why” a task/action needs to be executed uses the powerhouse combination of the logic and emotion that makes action happen. Without the rational and emotional elements working together, failure to execute continues.

So how did Rob make this successful? Well, like most humans, once suggesting this to Rob, it was the last time we spoke about it after a few weeks. Yes, this was by design, but for a good reason. I followed up with Rob in one of our sessions a few weeks later and asked how his “Action Management” was coming along. He responded by saying, “it’s not.” I told him that this was normal and not to give himself a hard time about it. I then worked with him to show how he could make execution happen. This is how I explained it to him:

  1. Actions in any business are almost all important/relevant in some or another way. Trying to make a specific task less or more important is challenging for Spending time figuring out the amount of “importance” takes up a lot of energy. This makes people abandon their commitment to making something happen. Why? Because all these “important” tasks accumulate in our heads and stay there. This creates an emotional lens when making decisions increasing stress and feeling overwhelmed. The next thing we know is that we have done nothing to achieve traction in the business. So how do we distinguish all these important actions and avoid inaction?

 

  1. This is where the level of “urgency” falls into the The word “urgency” doesn’t always engender a feeling of “calm” for many. The term “urgency” means the time to execute an action/task(s). Start by asking yourself if the task/action is important/relevant. Then, ask how “urgent” the task is (i.e., when the task must be completed). Splitting this in your mind separates the emotional from the logical. This is where the “magic” starts to happen!

The sheer number of items Rob had on his to-do list was staggering! No wonder the poor guy was paralyzed! Rob’s list (and I kid you not) had over 130 items, and to no surprise, each item was “important.” So, I commented, “If everything is important, nothing is…”

We worked through the to-do list for about two hours. In a matter of days, Rob managed to achieve traction on what needed to get done. He has started to make profound impacts in the business and has begun to see significant results. Rob’s interpretation of himself shifted from being disorganized and distracted to someone entirely different. He now has his weekends to himself and finally started to increase his business volume in a matter of two weeks! This success is and continues to be due to Rob connecting the positive impacts a tool and system have on himself and his business. This impact has also created a snowball effect that has enhanced his team’s performance and other areas of his business.

Last week, Rob mentioned that the number of sales leads that week increased by almost 45%. He said this was due to him “finding time” to work on a lead magnet that finally produced results.

For more information on the tool and process, please email info@4workplaces.com

I hope you found this information helpful and look forward to seeing you again soon.

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Why Things Always Go Wrong

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Why Things Always Go Wrong

Why Things Always Go Wrong

This week, Ryszard Chciuk gives us a recipe for success in his blog post on why things always go wrong.

Do you want to have a successful year? Do you want to become a better person? Listen to what Ron Slee is saying to you in his first vlog in 2021 and do it, because The Time Is Now. The time for reading books.

If you are able to read only one book during your whole life, and you want to achieve true satisfaction, both in business and life, read The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull (both of them born in Canada of course).

The Peter Principle:

In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence

What is incompetence? Perhaps you have heard of the nurse who says to the patient: Wake up! It’s time to take your sleeping pill.

First time I read The Peter Principle was in 1977. It was really funny to observe my superiors and colleagues through the Laurence Peter glasses. The book is written in the Mark Twain style so it’s OK to laugh, but you’d better take the content seriously. At that time nobody told me it would be the most important book in my life. Later on, I read it again and again, usually every few years. Also, I read it each time I had an opportunity to get a new job. Why? Nobody likes to make a fool of oneself. I also never wished to be an incompetent person. And believe me, it is not easy to recognize whether you are already only one step below your level of incompetence or perhaps not yet.

Each of us spends his life in a hierarchy and everybody is subject to the Peter Principle. As Peter Laurence claims, in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.

You are not allowed to hurt your employee. So, be careful promoting him to another post, even he is very eager to. Imagine your best technician is getting a chance to manage a team of field technicians. For many years he was solving the most difficult problems with customers’ machines and he was proud of it. Are you sure he will also be happy and competent as a supervisor for another people? Maybe he is destined to become the Chief Diagnostics Specialist? I know, this is obviously about a career path and your HR department should be able to support you in this matter. Are you sure the HR specialist is still below his/her incompetence level?

Let’s jump out for a while from business. In democracy we have rights to vote. Why there are so many totally incompetent politicians occupying posts which are so important for the safety and well-being of the nation? Do you think you are still one step below your level of incompetence as a citizen of your country?

Are there any exceptions from the Peter Principle? The third chapter in the book has a title Apparent Exceptions.

What about super-competence? Standard incompetence is only a bar to promotion to higher post. If you are super-competent and your superior reached already his/her level of incompetence you will probably soon be fired due to the violation of the first commandment of hierarchal life i.e., the hierarchy must be preserved.

The people who have reached their level of incompetence are everywhere, so who turns the wheels? Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

The final question: is there any way to protect your own organization from reaching the total level of incompetence? Yes, two things could prevent this happening: that there should not be enough time available, or not enough ranks in the hierarchy.

***

Do not decide lightly to read The Peter Principle. This is just a book, but I have to warn you using words of Raymond Hull:  The decision to read on is irrevocable. If you read, you can never regain your present state of blissful ignorance; you will never again unthinkingly venerate your superiors or dominate your subordinates. Never!

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Are Bricks and Mortar Going to Survive the Internet Era?

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Are Bricks and Mortar going to Survive the Internet Era?

 

During the past fifty years, most of my work life in this Industry, one of the most significant

‘barriers to entry” in the equipment industry, and in fact, capital goods industries has been the ownership and control of proprietary information. For instance, where to buy a part. A specific part, a bearing, for example, was purchased from an authorized dealer typically because the consumer did not know of any other source. Repairs and Maintenance were the exclusive domain of the authorized dealer for a similar reason. There was no availability for the independent mechanic to service manuals and technical literature. There clearly has been a radical change here hasn’t there? Just ask Google or another search engine whatever you want and they will typically have an answer. Even Alexa or Siri or Bixby will give you an answer on your cellular telephone.

Let’s start with some facts. In the US the standard in the retail sales Industry used to be 10 square feet of store space for every person in the country. In 1998, after a substantial increase in the square foot assigned to retail sales, the retail sales per square foot had dropped from $200.00/ft2 to $150.00/ft2. In 1999 the International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management reported that consumers’ shopping time was down 31% and monthly mall visits were down 47% with stores visited per mall visit down 57%. Clearly something was going on here.

While this was going on Amazon came onto the scene. They started business on July 5, 1994. From that launch date the impact that Amazon has had on retail sales has been nothing short of amazing. In 2019 Amazon had a market share of e-commerce in the USA of 52.4%, Non-US was 5.7% for a worldwide market share of 13.7%. In that same year, 2019, e-retail sales accounted for 14.1 percent of all retail sales worldwide. This figure is expected to reach 22 percent in 2023.

I first used the internet in 1973 through a Service Bureau in Canada via a business called I.P. Sharp Associates. Ian had direct real time access, on line, to all financial data worldwide through the stock markets. He also provided international associations, such as the World Bank, direct access to financial information. He later sold his business to Reuters who kept the news piece and sold the financial piece to what is now provided by Bloomberg. At that time there was no AOL. The general public was not on line yet. That is only forty-five years ago.

Today many business systems offer online “portals” for the public to search through for a part or information on a repair or maintenance for equipment. Today there are a multitude of businesses from whom you can purchase just about any part you need from an alternate source to the authorized dealer. In automotive Genuine parts through their NAPA stores is a direct competitor to the authorized car dealers. In many cases, as Forbes once called it “at a price that will make you weep.” In maintenance and repairs we have seen Mr. Muffler and Midas Muffler forcing the dealers into providing their off brand technical services like Mr. Goodwrench. In the construction equipment world in North America surveys are conducted nearly every five years and that data tells us that maintenance has been completely moved away from the authorized dealers. In fact, labor market share, depending on market area ranges from 8% to 15% of the total labor available. Of course, there are outliers in both directions. The parts market share is not more than 40% any more when in the late seventies it was in the range of 80%.

In 1980 one of the first internet-based buying options was brought out to the market. That parts ordering portal never achieved a portion of the dealer parts business in excess of 10%. Notice the difference between the Amazon model and our model. Amazon started with books and sold their books at a lower price than the local book stores. Even Borders, a major book store retailer was a victim of Amazon. They are no longer in business. What did Amazon do that the authorized equipment parts suppliers didn’t do. They lowered the prices. Their logic was when the customer is the coproducer of the work, they deserve to get a better deal. No one has as yet tried that approach as an authorized dealer. The aftermarket suppliers have already lower prices at their disposal.

So, there is the dilemma. I hope you can see it coming. It is that light in the tunnel of the train roaring down the track. Are you going to sit back and let the internet-based businesses penetrate even more into your parts and labor business or are you going to do something about it?

The Time is Now. If not now, when?

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What is the Future of Work?

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The Future of Work

What is the Future of Work?

In this article by Sonya Law, we examine what is Human Resources’ Role in the future of work?

The catalyst for this article being the Pandemic which continues to disrupt businesses forcing them to: Stop, reset, recalibrate.

Human Resources role in the future of work is multifaceted and requires a pivot away from old thinking to a leading role in guiding and enabling managers to develop, as Amy Scott would put it, ‘radical candor’ conversations that directly address what people need in order to achieve their potential and the company as a whole to achieve its Strategic objectives.

In 2021 organisation’s that will thrive will have the difficult conversations with empathy about diversity and inclusiveness.  Will have courageous conversations that give direct feedback to employees about their performance.  Human Resources role is to educate people managers in a Holistic Approach that requires them as leaders to bring their whole self to work, to care personally about their people and address people’s physical wellbeing, mental health and desire for social connectedness in the future of work.

Be prepared to tell people what you really think and be challenged in return, fulfill your morale obligation as a people manager, an example of this would be when giving employee’s feedback about why they were unsuccessful or overlooked for a promotion within the business.   Or when an employee’s request for flexibility is denied.  When people are given a standard answer, it does not respect the employee or the value they bring to an organization and does not inspire or transact discretionary effort which drives high performance.

We are told as managers to be professional and if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say it, this old thinking whilst nice, polite and civilized, serves only our own comfort.  It does not encourage and nurture talent.  When an employee is given guidance, direct and respectful feedback on why they did not achieve a promotion, or more money, they then are empowered as they have a choice whether to take on that feedback to aid their growth, learning and development within the organization.  Being overlooked for promotions, or raises, is a key reason that employees exit from organizations.

Flexibility is the new Stability in 2021.  During the Pandemic, organizations who are exploring a long-term commitment towards flexibility, embracing technology and a willingness to be open minded to new ways of working will thrive in the future of work.  It is not a one size fits all, a holistic approach guarantee’s that the conversation is heading in the right direction. It does not need to be perfect, in fact their will be some trial and error and testing of different scenarios before a solution is landed, employees know when you are genuine and authentic.

Human resources role in coordinating the future of work will require many leadership skills, adaptive, inspirational, affiliative, coaching and democratic.  These different leadership styles present an opportunity to look at the employee experience through different lenses as we contemplate what the future of work will look like.  Who is doing it well – designing workplaces to engage employees, during pandemic?  The following are two examples for you to explore; – Axel Springer in Berlin, Germany What’s the status of the new Axel Springer building in light of Corona? – YouTube and the Smith Group A Holistic Approach for Returning to the Office After COVID-19 – YouTube.

Human Resources lead the culture of the organization and play a pivotal role in guiding and monitoring key people metrics by way of a culture dashboard that gives quantitative and qualitative insights into the culture.  Culture surveys are the most common method used while another approach is to get out from behind the desk and walk the shop floor and get out in the field with technicians and customers to understand where the pain points are and what is needed to take the organization forward acting.  This approach also gives some valuable insights into how to solve customers and more broadly societies problems.  This particular approach informs quality and engineering in terms of innovative product design and service as to why there is churn in customers, or what it is that your customers like and what differentiates you from your rivals which informs the sales and marketing investment and spend.  This is particularly important in future marketing to Millennials whom are motivated by creating value and connection with the company’s values, vision and mission.

Human Resources Managers, who will do well in the future of work are able to adapt their communication style to influence all key stakeholders of the senior leadership team, quality, engineering, technical, sales, customer, finance and CEO’s to be a true Strategic Partner.  Human Resources in the future of work needs to orientate away from just benchmark and best practice towards realizing its potential to create, deliver and capture value throughout the whole organization through guidance of the human capital effort towards achievement of strategic objectives.  This is Human Resources that embraces soft and hard metrics to deliver bottom line impact in the way of revenue per headcount, which is a measure of how well we are utilizing our headcount to deliver a return to the shareholders.

High performance organizations who have adopted this holistic approach that values people, extracts discretionary effort, promotes from within and develops its human resources potential will be successful in … future of work.

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What is your PEOPLE strategy? When should it begin?

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What is your PEOPLE Strategy? When should it begin?

What is your PEOPLE strategy? When should it begin?

In this week’s guest blog, Don Shilling addresses your business and asks the question “what is your people strategy?” Not only that, when should it begin?

What is the “definition of a expert”? . . . . . I once heard that an expert was a factory rep at least 50 miles from home who was at your business to give you advice!

As I put words down on this page, I am in admitting I am not an expert. I just like to share thoughts and if you think they make sense then you can figure out how to implement them.

We have all gone through the exercise of developing a business strategy. Most sound a lot alike . . . .  and after we have meetings and cover the walls with Post-It notes or flip chart pages our “Strategy” may be to Increase sales by 5%, or perhaps develop a new store location in new and active part of our territory, maybe we will upgrade 30% of our vehicle fleet, or our focus might be looking for that new idea like taking on a new product line. Your team I am sure puts a lot of effort into this exercise and at the end of the day it all makes sense and gives you a map for the future.

Sometimes our strategy includes elements related to people and sometimes perhaps it is brushed off! The interesting thing is each strategy, like it or not, has to include people. The people who we either need to be hired or the people we must challenge to change to fill the new roles we need to execute this new bold strategy.

Today in our current environment it might take 60 to 180 days to fill a skilled position if you can find that person at all. As I mentioned in a blog before, we grow our own skilled technical people and that takes much longer than just a couple of months. Whether you promote from within or just need to re-train existing people it takes just as long. We must be prepared to admit this will probably be our weakest link in our strategy and address it far in advance of the annual Strategy Session if we want any of our strategies to succeed.

In an earlier phase of my career I was CEO of my organization back when I spearheading strategy development. I soon realized that was not just HR’s job to fill positions, it was mine! Not to “micro-manage” HR or replace them but to assist HR in getting involved with “People Attraction”.

Now People Attraction can take on many forms. We did the same everyone does, we checked our wage packages, our benefit packages, we talked about culture and we did employee rewards programs, reviewed our facilities to make sure they were safe and comfortable for our workforce.  We all have to do that!

However, I felt compelled to go beyond that. I started by getting involved in local Technical Colleges where we might find our next employee.  We tried serving on Advisory Boards and helping connect with these Institutions on a more intimate basis. We got involved in the local Chamber of Commerce committees that dealt with employment practices and trends. Made an effort to get involved with State Technical Education Agencies to see what was going on and to give advice and donations of resources where it made sense to promote our industry.

Last but not least I got involved with our local Workforce Development Council. In our State it is Governor appointed and encompasses a cross section of people and agencies in the State where we get to together and work to solve workforce issues. In most cases we have developed recommendations to our State legislature in development programs to attract, educate or retain our workforce. I have testified numerous times to Legislative Committees to spell out to them the needs of business and industry in our region and promote the things that will improve our workforce efforts. For example, last session we got a law passed to make tuition reimbursement to an employee not subject to income tax and we help enact a program to provide State matching dollars with private dollars for “High Demand Jobs” tuition education reimbursement.

This was kind of a “hidden” part of our strategy. Has it worked you might ask? I think so. As frustrating as it can be to deal with a cross section of leaders from industry, labor, education and government it is worth the effort.

Now when we sit down and set a strategy where perhaps we think we need a half dozen additional skilled employees to increase our market penetration it becomes an attainable goal and not a goal where are the end of the year, we have excuses for its failure. To sum up – as an Executive in your organization you must get involved and become part of the Strategy before there is a Strategy! Good luck.

Challenges to Leaders Are All Around Us

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Challenges to Leaders are all around us.

We are living in an era of great change: socially, politically, environmentally, technologically and in nearly every aspect of our lives. This presents wonderful opportunities for us while at the same time it represents threats. As a nation while we are excitedly and anxiously awaiting events and advancements we have had to deal with the pandemic. This has given us time to reflect on how we live our lives, how we do things and what is important. Most of us are not creating these events or advancements – there are other people and businesses doing that for all of us.

But we have to navigate our way through these changes. Change is not something that mankind has embraced easily over time. Change, although positive in the long run, can be daunting for most of us in the short term. When we put into perspective the world in which we live and compare the changes we are experiencing to previous generations we sometimes think we are moving ever faster in the pace of change.

However, the rate of change that we are experiencing is an exponential curve that really started to have an impact in the mid 1800’s. Let me share a short story here. The electric engine arrived in the mid-1800s and industry immediately starting replacing steam engines with the new electric engines. This was a very dramatic change.

Yet most Industries did the same thing. All that we did was change the engine from steam power to electrical power. We didn’t change much in the way of the methods or procedures at all, that was left for another generation. You see, these two events, changing the power source AND changing processes and methods would have been too much to absorb in society at one time. It took a new generation before new processes and methods were changed and then productivity change accelerated.

It seems like resistance to change can be so powerful, that it can hold back productivity gains. This begins to make sense when we realize that the changes that are made that increase productivity, to some degree increase risk for the work force. So, leadership becomes even more critical when we are faced with times of great change.

The time is now.

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Strategic Planning for Key Accounts

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Strategic Planning for Key Accounts

Strategic Planning for Key Accounts

Virtual Selling Tips related to Vital Selling Regimens by Don Buttrey, President of Sales Professional Training, Inc. In this week’s guest blog, Don shares with us some strategic planning for taking care of key accounts.

Dealing with market potential becomes a challenge in the virtual world as well. Using data and information is critical. Your business systems can help you here. Take advantage of these condition and circumstances to become much smarter on how you manage you time and business.

Strategic Planning for Key Accounts 

  1. Focus primarily on accounts that are less impacted by the pandemic to assure quicker results in these accounts that already have a long selling cycle.
  1. However, it may be wise to pick at least one or two strategic accounts where business may be stalled short-term –but that have significant long-term potential. Now is an ideal time to do the legwork and create a path for future business. Now is a chance to build trust and solidify relationships. (whereas before, they had little or no time to spend with you.) Giving them time and offering creative ways to prepare for future growth now, proves that you are not just a partner in the good times. Show them that you are focused on their business in good and bad times – instead of just taking orders selfishly and forgetting about them! In difficult economies, focus on expanding influence and growing your market share. When it picks up again – you are well positioned!
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Emotional Intelligence – Accelerating Team Performance

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Emotional Intelligence – Accelerating Team Performance

Emotional Intelligence - Accelerating Team Performance

This week’s guest blog from Sonya Law covers the link between emotional intelligence, and a leader’s skill at accelerating team performance.

Recently I attended an event featuring Daniel Goleman leading authority in Emotional Intelligence, who covered Team Performance.

What is a LEADERS ROLE in setting goals in 2021?

  1. Give people clear goals.
  2. Free to get there in their own way (Empowerment).
  3. Immediate feedback – so they can self-correct mid-course.
  4. Set stretch goals for those that are motivated by Challenge.

There are Six Types of Leadership Styles: Visionary, Coaching, Affiliative, Democratic, Pacesetting, Commanding.

People and teams want to be inspired and this comes from Leadership.  The Visionary leaders have a strong sense of their own purpose and can articulate shared goals and inspire team spirit.  This will be particularly important in attracting Millennials – whom will want to be inspired and work for companies and buy products that ‘make a difference’ and contribute to the greater good of society and the environment will be important in branding and marketing in the future.

An Affiliative leader knows the importance of building social capital and will take time to listen to their people and will implement any change seamlessly; a Coaching style leader will engage regularly in banter with their team and through it builds loyalty and staff retention in organisations. And a Democratic leadership style encourages collaboration which builds commitment which has productivity and innovation benefits.

It is the responsibility of the CEO, Human Resources and Senior Executive Team to use your Culture Survey results and feedback from your people to tailor your recruitment and selection strategy to ensure the leaders you hire close the gap on where the deficit is in your forecasting in 2021.

The last two are defunct from Daniel Goleman’s perspective and are ineffective in inspiring and accelerating Team Performance.  Pacesetting leadership style is where the leader is an excellent individual contributor and has a high work output but fails to inspire others.  The command and control while effective in the military may not be enough to inspire the next generation of millennials.  As baby boomers exit the workforce this will also pave the way for organisations to place emphasis on inclusivity and diversity in workplace culture.

Key in business leaders in 2021 will be Emotional Intelligence, self-awareness – is the foundation the basis for Emotional Intelligence (EQ).  It’s a cognitive control that moderates our behavior and interactions with people and enables us to connect, engage and influence people and business outcomes which are essential to people leadership. It also improves executive decision making but it is not everything there is also gut feeling which is the wisdom of your experience.  When reaching any executive decision, you probably have relied on one if not all of these things, your gut instinct, data (logical brain) and engaged your emotional intelligence.

So how do you build a Culture of Emotional Intelligence?

  1. Hire people who have emotional intelligence and Korn Ferry has some good assessment tools and 360-degree feedback.
  2. Review your people’s emotional intelligence at performance reviews.
  3. Build it into your culture through learning and development.
  4. Coach leaders in Emotional Intelligence.

It poses the question:

  1. Should we hire for technical skills (IQ) or soft skills (EQ) which is more important particularly when we are hiring for technical roles and future leaders?

The answer is both, you all have come across an engineer who is brilliant but unfortunately you can’t put them in front of a customer or client because they lack the people or communication skills (EQ).

So, what’s it worth to you?

Your reputation with your customer and future leadership talent pipeline.

For more information on our classes and assessments, please visit us at Learning Without Scars.

 

 

Room for Improvement

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Room for Improvement

Room for Improvement

This week’s guest blog from Ross Atkinson covers all of the ways in which we can still find room for improvement in our processes. 

In my last blog, I entertained the concept of reviewing processes. The idea was that a dealership should look at their processes on a regular basis to validate that what and how things are being done is still relevant and to avoid that dreaded word complacency. Just because you’ve always done something a certain way, even successfully, doesn’t mean that improvements are not possible. Most everything is in constant flux – people change, customers change, systems change, businesses change and technologies change; so why would you believe your processes should remain the same?

A good example is customer statements. Do you still print and mail them out each month? Have you considered emailing them and saving a lot of time and money? Even better, why not give your customers access to their statements and invoices through an internet portal along with a lot of other important information? Are you stuck in the “we have always done it this way” or the “our customers won’t accept this” rut? Or maybe you simply haven’t reviewed the process to ask yourself if there is a better way? If you are not leading the process improvement wave, you’ll always be playing second fiddle to those who are leading the way.

In my experiences in the heavy equipment software industry, dealers were always coming up with an improvement, workflow change or system modification that would make their processes better, saving time or filling a business need.  However, it was never a single dealer coming up with all the ideas.  It usually went hand in hand with how progressive a dealer and in a particular area they routinely focused on.

So, if you are struggling to come up with a process improvement idea, look to your industry peers.  There’s no shortage of dealer meetings or group software training sessions or picking up the telephone and asking other dealers how they do it. There’s no shame in taking advantage of their knowledge and experiences so you don’t have to. It doesn’t mean you need to do it exactly the same way but if it inspires you to think outside the box, it’s worth it!

You also need to know that an improvement doesn’t have to be huge; even a subtle change can have a positive impact on your business. Have you ever thought about analyzing what it takes your staff to process a parts invoice? You might be surprised with what you discover. It might be lack of constancy amongst your staff or a lack of knowledge requiring some education. Maybe your staff can improve their interaction with the system, reduce the number of steps and speed up the transaction time. Imagine if you could eliminate just 10 seconds for each invoice; do the math and realize how much extra time your counter staff will have to better service your customers!

So, are you up for the challenge? There’s always room for improvement. The onus is on you to make the commitment of reviewing, identifying and implementing process changes.

For more information on our classes and assessments, please visit us at Learning Without Scars.

Coverage and Account Priority

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Coverage and Account Priority

Coverage and Account Priority

Virtual Selling Tips related to Vital Selling Regimens  by Don Buttrey, President of Sales Professional Training, Inc. In this week’s guest blog from Don Buttrey, we explore the importance of coverage and account priority.

Call reporting can keep us on track but staying on top of the action is much harder from the home office. It is all too easy to get interrupted at home, or to lose the prioritizing system when we work in our traditional professional spaces.

Coverage and Account Priority

  1. In this slower market, set an aggressive deadline to call through all the current accounts under your responsibility. Stay in ‘front of mind’ even if their business is slow or on hold.
  2. Periodically you should re-prioritize your accounts to adjust to market changes and other dynamics. During this pandemic, re-prioritize your accounts to focus on accounts that are less impacted and offer immediate sales potential. Some customers or segments are actually doing better in this current downturn. Focus on the right accounts and markets NOW. (This also applies to your selection of Strategic Accounts – see next)
For more information on our classes and assessments, please visit us at Learning Without Scars.