The Foundation of Learning

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The Foundation of Learning

Too often in the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, work and family and friends, we have our head down and we are trying to get through the day without being killed. Everything is such a rush. For most of 2020, a year which we hope to get through, we have been stuck. Too much to worry about, we don’t know what is going on, we are getting bombarded by conflicting messages on all the media, social media fan the fire further with well-meaning (for the most part) people sharing their opinions. We no longer feel as if we are in control of our lives, if ever we were.

The school age people are in flux as well. Virtual learning has become commonplace without having education re-imagined and redesigned. Most teaching is in front of a computer screen talking as if the teacher were in the classroom with the students. The students are sitting in front of their computer screen, which many students had never had before, over inconsistent networks bored to tears. We are social animals we need to interact with people in real time live.

Some learning platforms were ahead of their time. The Khan Academy, founded in 2008 has 100 million registered users. Sal Khan, the founder, states that virtual learning cannot replace classroom learning. In the “virtual class the students are missing out on the social and emotional benefits from in person classes.”

But the Khan Academy provides significant guidance on their learning platform in how to learn.

  • Students practice at their own pace, first filling in gaps in their understanding and then accelerating their learning.
  • Teachers can identify gaps in their students’ understanding, tailor instruction, and meet the needs of every student.

I believe that is the very foundation of learning.

Teachers and students able to identify “gaps” in the students understanding of a specific subject and then tailoring the instruction to meet the needs of each individual student.

At Learning Without Scars the foundation of our employee development platform is what we call “Job Function Skills Assessments.” We call these our Comprehensive Skills Assessments.

We offer a range of assessments for the Parts business, the Service Business and the Selling and Marketing aspects of the Parts and Service businesses.

You select your Department by scrolling down on that landing page. Then, all that is required is that you select your current job function and you will land on a brief write-up telling you what the assessment is about.

Each assessment, other than our technician assessments, consists of 90 multiple choice questions. These questions have been selected from the internet based subject specific classes that we offer. The student is given a time limit of an hour to complete the assessment. The time restriction is another indicator of the knowledge and level of skills that the student has on their specific job function. Upon completion of the assessment the “student” is given a score.

From that score, and the thousands of skills assessments already completed by our clients, we are able to identify the “Gaps” in the “students’” knowledge and create a specific “Learning Path” for each “student.” (more on that in the days to come)

Our Learning Platform follows the same logic as is employed by the Khan Academy. We determine the gaps in the individual employee’s skills and then create a customized learning path for each of them.

This is how we have established “Our Foundation of Learning.”

We have 32 of these job function assessments and the results we have seen to date are extremely exciting.

Next blog we will talk about the specific ways that a business can use our Skill Assessments. The choice you make on “Individual Employee Skills Development” is of critical importance to your business, your customers and most importantly to your employees.

The time is now.

Why Do We Need to Change?

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Why Do We Need to Change?

Robert Quinn says “One key to successful leadership is continuous personal change. Personal change is a reflection of our inner growth and empowerment.”

It’s important to evolve and to adjust as we grow deeper in the knowledge of ourselves and those around us too.

But why are people afraid to change? Why is change so difficult when we all know it’s inevitable?

James Belasco and Ralph Stayer, authors of the book “The Flight of the Buffalo,” couldn’t have said it any better “Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving that up.”

This week let’s think about the changes we’re afraid of making in our own lives. Are we overestimating the value of the very things we hold near and dear to us? Are we underestimating what the future may hold? Something to think about. Let’s be more aware of the need for change.

Today we finished an upgrade to our Learning Without Scars website.

We would like to invite everyone to come take a look at our new layout here.

Brian Shanahan, of Shanahan Strategy, with whom we have been working on our websites for ten plus years, has done a terrific job for us.

This change allows our clients to utilize e-commerce to purchase any of our Learning Without Scars products. It also shows a different focus on learning by utilizing our Skill Assessment Tools. From the scores achieved on the Job Function Skills Assessment we now offer a “Learning Path” recommendation of classes to take in order to improve their Skills Level. Those classes have been reorganized and the layout of their presentation has also been re-imagined here.

With the change to the website we have focused on getting in place many of the things that our clients have requested of us so far:

  1. Simplicity
  2. Ease of Navigation
  3. The ability to complete transactions online
  4. Excitement on the site

You will ultimately be the judge. But we are pleased. You will be hearing a lot more about this each day. We hope you take some time and look at the new site and give us any feedback you wish. We would welcome your help in keeping us as the most comprehensive and current employee development platform in the Industry.

The time is now.

All offerings are available at learningwithoutscars.org. Contact ron@learningwithoutscars.org if you would like to plan for a custom program.

Internet Learning

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Internet Learning

Over the past ninety days the planet has been suffering under a serious virus. Nearly everyone has been affected. Some of the results to the economy and societies are starting to come in with analysis on the longer-term impacts.

  • The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that the US will see $7.9 Trillion in lost economic growth through the rest of the decade.
  • The World Bank predicts global domestic growth will shrink by 5.2% in 2020.
  • The World Bank expects 70 – 100 million people will be pushed to extreme poverty.

There are many statistics and forecasts being made now about the longer-term impact of this virus and shutting down the world’s economy.

And then we come to education.

There will be a wide variety of forecasts and statistics made here as there are some serious competing self-interests at play. Research conducted by McKinsey & Company shows that the shift to remote learning could set the average student back seven months academically. I suspect there are many reasons for that conclusion and many ways to overcome that difference.

Students and teachers alike struggled with the switch to remote learning after schools were shut down. By their midlife, people who graduate during a recession are also less likely to be married, more likely to be childless and face a higher chance of death than those who did not.

However, what this indicates is that we have to develop better tools for this new wave virtual teaching and schooling – from pre-school to high school. The Khan Academy programs, processes and courses are a good model to consider. They have provided free world-class education to 90 million learners since 2008.

Similarly, EdX, a non-profit created by Harvard and MIT, offers MOOC’s (massive open online courses) and interactive classes in law, history, science, engineering, business, social sciences, computer science, public health, and artificial intelligence. During this economic shutdown “Every faculty member is going to be delivering education online. Every student is going to be receiving education on line. And the resistance to online education is going to go away as a practical matter.” James N Bradley, chief information officer at Texas’s Trinity University. Goldie Blumenstyk, from “The Chronicle of Higher Education” suggests this is more than a Black Swan moment it is “more of a catalyst for online education and other ed-tech tools than decades of punditry and self-serving corporate exhortations.” Going further she says “It seems safe to say that this will be not only enormously disruptive but also paradigm changing. The “Black Swan”, that unforeseen event that changes everything is upon us.

Unfortunately, this will not all be good news. A lot of professors will simply video-conference lectures supplemented by emailed assessments. In truth it will be some time before we can draw any conclusions on what forms of learning the education elite will adopt. Will this rapid disruption produce better results? Only time will tell.

In the Industries, I serve dealers who have not been strong advocates of employee development. They have typically believed that they hired the skills and that was all that was needed. That ship has sailed. With the rapid advances in all aspects of engineering and manufacturing, of materials and ceramics, and computerization and telematics it has become very evident that the skills required to stay current have expanded and changed rapidly. That means adult education is something that equipment dealers are going to have to embrace going forward. The Associated Equipment Distributors Foundation published a goal for the Industry of 80 hours of training for each employee each year. Very few dealers meet that goal. I believe it should be 160 hours.

In an earlier blog, I wrote about how to assign your time each day at work. I started from a position put forward by Dirk Beveridge, he was presented to a sales meeting at a client of mine and he got my attention in simplifying my life in how I manage time. Time was, is now and will be forever, the enemy. The older I get the more this becomes true.

I look at time in blocks – to be precise five blocks.

  • Review Results
  • Working with people to improve performance
  • Communications
  • Process reviews
  • Personal growth.

The personal growth item is the one that I have to fight with every day. There is always something that I view to be more important that self-improvement. It is not that I don’t need improvement, I really do, it is that that other thing always seems more important. It is like exercise. How many of us actually invest our daily time on our health and self-improvement? We all know the answer. So, what are you going to do about it? This “shutdown” has allowed a lot more introspection than normal times. I hope this is a subject that you are thinking about. Your employees need the same push to improve themselves. That is where Learning Without Scars fits in to the employee’s life. It is at the time of their choosing, it can take as little as two and a half hours, and you can measure the improvement in their skills. And on top of that it is $125.00/course or assessment. If you don’t invest in your own personal development and you don’t encourage your employees to improve theirs, how long do you think it will take before your customers notice.

The Time is Now. If not now when?

The Power of Information

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The Power of Information

When I was in University, we had a computer room on the top floor of the main building. Somewhere through the first year some students, for one reason or another, took over the computer room and threw all the data cards out the window to cascade down on the streets and be lost forever. That was all of the data for student records and other University data. Imagine that? How would you make out if all of your data was lost like that?

The problem, in my mind, is that there are very few in the parts and service business that would be able to tell you that their data is secured. Imagine that? Some of us have had to recreate systems that had checkpoint recovery. This is a system where all of the data on the system files are backed up at a check point. Perhaps every five minutes. When the system went down you had to try and recover the last transactions and re-enter them to the system.

How would you make out today if that happened to you? Let’s take a different turn and talk about the records for our customers. The name and address, the machine ownership, the calls, the likes and dislikes, and call history for instance. How are those records kept and secured? I will hazard a guess that your sales force knows about THEIR customers, but the Company not so much. Not a very good position to find yourself in at any time let alone today.

Marketing data is every bit as important as financial data or parts and service transactions yet we don’t do much about it at all. Instead we have executives and managers that do it all according to their experience and abilities. We have very powerful algorithms established to manage parts inventories and standard time and flat rating. Yet we do things for marketing, managing the equipment sales force and market coverage in a rather casual, this is the way it is done manner.

Someone once told me that the market leader does not want change. They have things under control. It is the businesses that are trying to grow that have to change the paradigm. They have the rattle the status quo. That couldn’t be truer nor more important to change than today.

We need to have better data to make good decisions is a common statement. I don’t agree with that at all. We need to have good data, that I agree with, however, we need to have good information to make good decisions not data.

What about our employees? What do you know about them? What kind of data do you keep on them? Of course, there is payroll history, and then there are letters in the file recording poor behavior, perhaps you have performance reviews. But what do you know about them? Your employees are the people that bind your customers to your business. Do you have enough of them to do the job you are asking them to do? You probably understand that personnel expense is the highest expense that you have and you try to keep it as low as possible. Even if it means that you over tax your employees.

What I am asking is very simple. What do you do with the information that you have to have to run your business?

  • Is it secure?
  • Can it be recreated?
  • Do people control the planning and operation of your business based on their knowledge and experience? Or do they rely on data and statistics and information?
  • Do you know as much about your customers as your sales team?

Please take this seriously as it is a serious situation. Please think about this. Your current and future success depends on it.

The Time is Now.

Millennials and the Work Place

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Millennials and the Work Place

The other day I was having a conversation with a friend and colleague about communicating with the audience for our Learning Without Scars business. An associate of ours has stated “Ron, everyone knows you. But they don’t know you.” He wants me to make a series of film clips with short stories about my career. How I started teaching, how I got into this industry, my early involvement with Computers and Dealer Business Systems, etc. That is not normally something that I like to do.

So, I asked my friend if this was something that would be a good idea and his answer surprised me. He said “for people over the age of forty-five probably, but it doesn’t do anything for millennials.”

He told me a story about a millennial that they employed who asked him what his future held. That stopped him cold, as it would most of you. We don’t typically think about or have structured programs for career path. We all kind of just wing it. Millennials are smarter than that and much less patient than my generation was at the same age. I applaud them for that. They want to know if they are going to be given opportunities. A chance to learn and develop. No, I don’t mean the corner office without any skills. That is the exception not the rule.

I wanted to continue with the theme of the past three or four blogs on the changes in learning and the path going forward.

We just put up our Job Function Assessments in Spanish and today the French language will be up as well. That means that we will have thirty-two job function assessments available, excluding the technicians. We also have ninety-four classes. Let’s talk about how we put this together.

Once an assessment has been taken for the employee’s specific job, they get a score. That score will put them into a Skills Category; Basic, Core, Advanced or Expert. In the next phase of our website development, hopefully it will be completed this summer, we will be providing navigation help in the form of short surveys. Most websites I have seen contain a lot of very beneficial and useful information. However, most of us have to find our own way to get to what we are looking for from the site. We want to do it differently.

First, when you arrive on the site there will be a short film clip welcoming you and asking you what it is that you are interested in viewing on this visit.

  • Is it an assessment?
  • Is it a class?
  • Have you already taken an assessment and you want to advance?

Your answer will bring another film clip to further assist you.

Second will be another question. Which department are you interested in seeing?

  • Parts
  • Service
  • Selling and Marketing

With the answer to that question we can take you to the next step.

If you selected an assessment the web site will deliver the assessments available for that department. You pick your job function and you will receive a description of the assessment and given the option of enrolling.

If you selected a class there will be another film clip and we will have another question. What learning category is of interest? Customer Service, Finance, Operations, Selling or Leadership. The website will then deliver the classes for that department for that learning category. Your choice will take you to a description of the class and give you the option of enrolling.

If you have taken an assessment, we already know the department, now we will ask you which job function assessment you took. With your answers we can place you in a skills and knowledge category level for that job function; basic core, advanced or expert. The website will then deliver the classes available for that skill and knowledge category that will allow the employee to improved their skills. They can pick from the classes recommended, get the description and if they so choose, they can enroll.

All enrollments are e-commerce ready and they will have their class or assessment put into a shopping cart. They can either continue shopping or pay by credit card and go forward.

I am explaining all of this because the millennials will be given an “active learning” opportunity.

  • They will know what their particular skills and knowledge level is for their job.
  • They will know what classes they need to take to improve their scores.

In other words, they will be control of their own destiny.

That is what my friend told me that they wanted. I think everyone wants to have some control over their lives and their job opportunities and are rarely given that.

What do you think? Please let me know with a comment. Thanks.

The Time is Now.

Random Thoughts

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Random Thoughts from the Past Week.

Tthis month, June 2020, is my 40th anniversary in the Consulting Business. I am amazed at that and thankful that I made a living doing it. For the record I still want to make a difference in the lives of dealers and employees in the parts and service world. And… I am still confident enough to think that I can. So as an observer of the world I live in let me share some observations with you.

  • Surveys are showing that professionals would prefer Online training to Classroom training by 75% to 25%. We are counting on that at Learning Without Scars.
  • The thinking is that 50% of the Universities and Colleges in the United States will go bankrupt in the next eighteen months. Is that a good thing?
  • Hewlett Packard is giving online meditation and mindfulness services to employees: nine Thousand employees spent five hundred thousand minutes on the application.
  • Esther Yang, Global Benefits Manager for BlackLine said, “As we transition to a virtual or fully virtual or dispersed environment, we needed to make sure we still continue to create a culture where we are connected.” How do you do that?
  • How does an individual who is WFH – imagine an acronym for “Working From Home” (sometimes we can be crazy, can’t we?) separate their lives between work and home?
  • Lindsay Crittendon, head of the Headspace for Work program said “Businesses are increasingly seeing the importance of addressing the impact that chronic stress has on people – or on their bottom lines from lost productivity, healthcare spend and attrition. What about the cell phone that is attached to us 24/7 and emails and texts and even phone calls happen 24/7?
  • Most people that have worked with me, been in a classroom with me, or clients of mine have heard my three questions of my coworkers and also of client employees.

 

My coworkers were asked very regularly:

  • What do I do that you like that I do and you want me to continue to do?
  • What do I do that you don’t like that I do and want me to stop doing it?
  • What do I do that doesn’t really matter to you?

I often ask my client’s employees for input. They know a lot more than people give them credit for so I ask for their help with what I do. What are Five Things You Identify in the following categories?

  • To Improve Operations
  • That are a Pain To Do
  • That Would Make Your Job Easier

The Time is Now.

Learning and Knowledge Retention

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Learning and Knowledge Retention.

Since my early days in teaching athletics first in a Country Club setting and then at University, I have always been intrigued by how people learn. In the earliest form of learning, as a parent or a preschool teacher, the tried and true methodology: – Show – Tell – Show – Try. We start by showing you what we are going to teach you. Then we will tell you what we just showed you. Telling a story is usually the best method here. Then we will show you again. Finally, you will try it yourself. Depending on risk and degree of difficulty we might even get into a “with assistance” – “to assistance” – “solo” type of structure.

It works. It has always worked. But today we have a lot more knowledge and examples of learning methods to draw upon. And they really help, if we design the learning experience properly.

Some points to start with and consider: – Chanty Hyder, an intern at Survey Anyplace provides us six high level results of their surveys.

  1. The storage capacity of the human brain is virtually unlimited.
  2. The mind needs to be exercised like any other muscle in the body.
  3. Our attention spans are getting shorter. We are bombarded with more things online.
  4. You are never too old to learn
  5. After one hour, people retain less than 50% of the information presented
  6. To learn. The brain builds on existing knowledge

I started teaching in a classroom at a very prestigious University. I was teaching students in the Physical Education Majors how to coach and teach water sports. We used seventy-five-minute lectures, followed by seventy-five minute “in the water” case examples of the lecture content. Two and a Half hours, three days a week. Tough duty. I had a class size of between 16 and 32 students, with one sometimes two teaching assistants.

At Learning Without Scars we started with a three-day classroom format, eight hours each day. That evolved to a two-day, fifteen-hour format. Within that structure we had four blocks of specific operations learning.

Then webinars arrived when everyone tried to reduce the cost of learning for equipment dealers. The webinars were first seventy-five minutes which we then shortened to one hour. I really didn’t like the webinar approach as a teacher as I could not see the students. As a teacher I rely on visual signals, facial or body language, to determine actual learning and comprehension.

Then we used a 3D camera and we broke the learning sessions down to ten to fifteen-minute increments, sometimes these increments were as short as five minutes BUT never more than fifteen minutes. At those breaks I would turn off the audio-visual presentation and appear in camera and talk to the group of students.

Today, we have Skype, and Zoom, and Microsoft with Teams and Google providing software that allows us to see each other and share screens and emulate a classroom type of experience. This has helped in the learning process.

That still requires a schedule that the students and the teachers have to fit in to their daily lives. That is where internet-based learning takes over. Learning is available when you want it and where you want it. You can fit the learning into your life and your schedule.

So back to Ms. Hyder and her points in the paper “7 Facts You Didn’t Know About Your Memory and Knowledge Retention” I referenced above. This is how we have designed and continue to refine our classes.

Each class follows a similar format. We have a Pretest to ascertain the understanding each student has about the course content before they start the class. Then we will assign reading materials, then they enter a slide show with embedded audio tracks. This segment will end or sometimes will have a film clip inserted into the segment. Then there is a short quiz. Then another segment sometimes with a quiz or perhaps a short survey or a short essay. Each segment is approximately ten to fifteen minutes in length and a class consists of eight to ten segments. Finally, there is an assessment of the learning of each student at the end of the class. We require a score of 80% in order to pass out of each class and go on to another. The student can repeat the class as many times as they want, however, they can only take the final assessment three times before we block them if they haven’t achieved the 80% score.

This is in keeping with the current “learning and retention” theory in use today. At Learning Without Scars we are constantly researching and adapting. As new techniques and methods are identified that provide better results, we adjust our programs.

I believe, more than ever, that in today’s work environment the dealership must be more involved in training. This training has to be in the most effective and efficient method possible. That way they will be able to attract more talented and motivated employees. One of my Core Beliefs is that Passionate People Perform. Your employees will make or break your business. With talented people you will prevail and provide long lasting high levels of customer service and loyal customers. Without them you won’t. It is as simple as that.

The Time is Now.   

Looking Forward to the Future

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Looking Forward to the Future

These have been unbelievably difficult times. Since we became aware of this Virus the world has been devastated and the lives of many people lost. Those of us lucky enough to have remained healthy have had to be “Locked Down.” We human beings are social people and this has been an extremely difficult time. Many people do not have jobs that translate well to working from home, and are unable to work. They have lost their ability to support themselves. Even with the incredible flow of money from the Federal Government there is widespread fear in their hearts. They are unsure of their ability to be able to eat and live through this catastrophe.

Let’s never forget the pain from this event. We should not just return to our lives as they were in the past. This can be an opportunity for us, even though it has come with pain and upheaval and fear.

Let’s look at our actions. What have we done since the shutdown of our country? How did you and your loved ones get through the days and weeks and months that have passed? How did we care for others in need? We are a resilient people that do not take things lightly. Nor do we give up.

We are going to be stronger as a people, as a nation. We will not be dependent on a foreign source for critical items. Our supply chains are going to change. The international elites that have driven the world for the past seventy years have been exposed. They had no loyalty to anything but money and their power. That goes for many of those in the so-called “deep state.” The unelected technocrats that have been running the government. George Friedman’s book, which I have mentioned previously, “The Storm Before the Calm,” describes this quite convincingly.

But that is the world over which we have little control. We need to pay attention to the world over which we have some control. We must learn from this event and make ourselves better. For some time, I have been lamenting the imbalance between our investments in technology and sociology. We have forgotten the fundamental truth. We are PEOPLE FIRST.

Let’s help each other more. Let’s be more attentive to the needs and wants of our employees. Let’s bring back a spirit of “serving.” Let’s cooperate with each other rather than compete with each other. Let’s never forget how vulnerable we were when this was happening and in fact that we always are vulnerable as individuals. Let’s be honest, with everyone including ourselves. Let’s be responsible for ourselves and accountable for our performance. And let’s step up and be people of character. That’s how this country was built. That is the way we used to be. Let’s get started on the path to a brighter future.

The Time is Now.

Business Models

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Business Models

Since 1980 when Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker fixed the high levels of inflation with a drastic increase in interest rates we have been operating on a “cost control driven” business model.

This model now needs to have a dramatic review and update.

  • I don’t believe anyone can make money by reducing costs alone.
  • We are driven by sales per employee metrics to the point of obsession.
  • We have beat up supply chains to extract costs.
  • Just in time inventories supply chains are the norm.
  • We have “computerized” business processes, moving a paper form to an input screen. We have not improved them.
  • We have concluded that market coverage is too expensive and seen precipitous reductions in market share as competitors have taken our customers by simply calling on them.
  • We have taken on incredible levels of risk thinking low interest rates are with us forever.
  • Rental inventories have grown and money has been made without the offset to risk abatement.
  • With market changes the escape valve for too much inventory is nowhere in sight.

Now is not the time to have the technocrats and managers, alone, determine what needs to be done to improve business. Now is the time to include and involve every single employee in this effort. Never forget that the employee doing the job should be the one that knows that job better than anyone else and to ignore them is not only wrong but truly a shame.

The Time is Now.

Dollar Time

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Dollar Time

We are all on “lock down” today. Some of us are working from home, using communications and virtual software tools, while some of us are going into the office or workplace. Let’s use this time as effectively as possible. So, if you have time think about your job. What can you do, should you do, to make it better? What do we do to eliminate duplications, minimize mistakes, decrease expenses, increase sales? Make a list, talk with your coworkers about it. Let’s do something different this time. Send me your ideas. Send it to ron@learningwithoutscars.org. After a week or so I will consolidate all these ideas and put them in a table and send them back to you. Then you can look into making the necessary changes that you identified or someone else suggested. Let’s make time as effective as we can.

The Time is Now.