Your Company Legacy and the Digital Dealership

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Your Company Legacy and the Digital Dealership

Tonight, guest blogger Mets Kramer continues to educate us on all the digital aspects of our business with a look at your company legacy and how it fits in with the Digital Dealership.

“In the past, the model for an organized business was a phone and a Rolodex (younger readers can Google what that is). The new digital platforms like your Website, CRM and marketing tools are now the modern Rolodex”

When my team started our marketing efforts, I was stunned to learn there were over 15,000 equipment dealers of all sizes, in North America.  A huge number of these dealers were small organizations, of 1 to 5 team members, who do great business buying, selling, or renting equipment.  In this blog, I want to address the value of Digital Dealerships and brand development for small organizations. This is especially important for those of you who started your dealership and are trying to find ways for your business to support you into your future.

Over the past few years, I have been lucky enough to work with many small dealers. I admire their tenacity; it takes a lot for these dealers to take their own fate into their hands. Often these dealers are smart and entrepreneurial; most come from larger dealers.  They saw a gap in the market, a niche, they could exploit and make a good living. Now their future depends on how well they execute.   For most of these dealers, their eventual legacy will be what sustains them into retirement and their future generations.

So how does this relate to the Digital Dealership?

One of the great things about the digital revolution in our industry is the potential to become, with a little investment, more than a person with a Rolodex. The Digital Dealership, or your digital presence, can help you extend your legacy well into the future in several ways.

  • First, your digital presence is like having an extra team member or sales rep. You’re existing and new customers can learn about you, answer questions they have for themselves and initiate communication with you all by going through your digital profile. I have seen lots of small dealers work hard to keep up with quotes, rentals and inventory information in a very laborious way. Each time sending emails with additional information like pricing. A well created digital presence can take some of this burden off you. Now, even if you are a team of one, you are actually a team of two, or even three. Creating and investing in a Digital Dealership establishes an effective sales path that’s open 24 hours per day. Now, you can focus on getting out to see customers instead of being stuck behind the desk.
  • Second, for a small growing dealership with big aspirations, a digital presence and platform helps you standardize. In many cases over the years, I have come across great dealers who are heavily dependent on one or two key salespeople. Usually, these key players are the owners, or a highly effective salesperson. The problem with this situation is repeatability. If one key person exits the business, it’s hard to recover. Creating a digital presence and a standard process, including CRM, makes your business repeatable. It lets you add new team members, set a standard operating practice so you can repeat what’s working, with new people. Your Digital platform can help to transition your customers and maintain the goodwill you’ve built over the years.

By creating a digital presence and developing a consistent brand, you become more than just a one-on-one relationship. Your hard work over the years, and that of your team, creates a legacy which can be easily understood by new people joining the team. This lets your customers feel like they are still dealing with the original creator of the business, who they first trusted to serve them.

More and more, we see new business relationships initiated from digital platforms. Buyers are looking for solid information, in addition to knowledge and great service.  In the past, the model for an organized business was a phone and a Rolodex. The new digital platforms like your Website, CRM and marketing tools are now the modern Rolodex. They help you organize and maximize the efforts you have put into the business for many years. Now you have the tools to have your business support you into the future.

To build is to have something that lasts; to create a legacy.

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Job Shock: Part Six – The First Half

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Job Shock: Part Six – The First Half

Job Shock: Part Six – The First Half

Edward E. Gordon, the founder and president of Imperial Consulting Corporation in Chicago, has consulted with leaders in business, education, government, and non-profits for over 50 years. As a writer, researcher, speaker, and consultant he has helped shape policy and programs that advance talent development and regional economic growth. This week, he continues his blog series with Job Shock, Part Six – The First Half.

Gordon is the author or co-author of 20 books. His book, Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis, is the culmination of his work as a visionary who applies a multi-disciplinary approach to today’s complex workforce needs and economic development issues. It won a 2015 Independent Publishers Award. An updated paperback edition was published in 2018.

Solving the Pandemic & 2030 Employment Meltdown

RETAIN Case Studies: Partnerships Rebuilding Local Employment Pipelines

The June Gordon Report provided an introduction to the general characteristics of regional public-private partnerships focusing on economic and workforce development or RETAINs. Across the United States RETAINs have many local brand names.  RETAINs bring together enlightened community leaders from many industry sectors. They cooperate in developing initiatives that provide career education and information to students and retrain incumbent workers to meet the skill demands of workplace technology changes. The goals of RETAINs are to strengthen local institutions and competitive companies while providing local residents with better job opportunities.

There are many paths to pursuing these objectives. Here are examples of RETAINs that are continuing to develop programs that address the talent challenges in their communities.

Manufacturing Renaissance, Chicago, Illinois
For the past 38 years Manufacturing Renaissance (MR) has been recognized as a leading expert, advocate and practitioner of policies and programs that support the manufacturing sector as a primary strategy for reducing poverty, expanding inclusion, and sustaining middle-class communities. MR has currently developed programs in three areas: Career Pathway Services, Policy and Advocacy, and Economic Development. Here is a snapshot of MR’s Career Pathway Services:

Manufacturing Connect. MC is a program designed to expose, inspire, prepare, and support youth and young adults to pursue career pathways in manufacturing.  MC is a community-based program serving in-school youth, ages 14-18, to provide high quality, career pathway programming including career exposure, technical training and work experiences to help young people start and keep good paying jobs in manufacturing.

Young Manufacturers Association. The YMA serves as both a network and a program for young adults, aged 18-29, who are pursuing careers in manufacturing, in-between jobs, in training or interested in starting a career in manufacturing. Through regular meetings and social events, they support one another as peers through training, transition into permanent employment, professional and life skills development, and balancing personal and work life dynamics. The YMA as a program provides services on an as-needed basis, including career coaching, wrap-around supports, employer liaison to help troubleshoot issues that come up at work, and technical training. Together, the YMA network and program are serving the untapped talent and potential that young adults specifically represent to their communities and their current or future employers.

Instructors Apprenticeship for Advanced Manufacturing. IAAM was developed in partnership with the Chicago Teachers Union Foundation and the National Institute for Metalworking Skills to train the next generation of great machining instructors to be technologically, culturally, and pedagogically competent in the machine shop classroom.

Career Pathway Services is not a traditional workforce development program. MR draws heavily from a youth development and social services orientation to engage youth and young adults who typically may not identify or seek out manufacturing as a pathway that can assist them in achieving their life goals. MR introduces young people to the sector, finds a variety of ways for them to relate to peers already in the sector to help illuminate what could be possible for their future. No matter what they ultimately choose, young people benefit from having a network of professional and social support, work experiences, technical and professionalism skills. For those who enroll in our training program and choose to pursue a career-track job in manufacturing we support them as much as possible through training, job placement and beyond to help ensure their success.

MR is expanding its reach in Cook County and showing the way for other RETAINs to begin similar efforts. It illustrates that for a RETAIN to be successful there must be strong cooperation among educational entities, the business community, unions. government agencies, and non-profit partners.

High School Inc., Santa Ana, California

The initial impetus for the creation of the High School Inc. Academies Foundation came from local business leaders in the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce. Starting in 2003, members of the Chamber of Commerce held discussions with school districts officials on how to raise student achievement. The result was a partnership involving the Chamber, the Foundation and the Santa Ana Unified School District. An official “Memorandum of Understanding was signed by all three partners in May of 2006. This agreement outlined the responsibilities of each partner for the development and operation of the High School Inc. program.

The first six High School Inc. Academies began in 2007 on the campus of Santa Ana Valley High School in the Santa Ana Unified School District. The district’s Career Technical Education (CTE) department conducts monthly meetings with High School Inc.’s staff to maintain the continuity and effectiveness of the academies.

At Valley High School the High School Inc. Academies merge both academic and technical skills through Project Based Learning (PBL), competitions, mentorships, and business internships. Because of the success of the High School Inc. academies, there has been considerable growth in the school district’s creation of career pathways in business and industry sectors. These pathways start as early as sixth grade in the school district’s intermediate schools and send students into the waiting High School Inc. Academies.

The number of Valley high school students categorized as “socioeconomically disadvantaged” in 2008 was 80 percent. However, with the help of talented teachers and staff members, and the existence of High School Inc., Valley High School has raised the level of achievement for all Valley high school students.

Mary Tran, Executive Director of High School Inc. reports that the six High School Inc. Academies have grown from an enrollment of 96 students at its start in 2007 to over 1,572 students in 2019. The Academies boast a 98% high school graduation rate. In the past year there have been 160 professional internships for seniors. The number of students receiving “Industry Certifications” after a minimum of two years in the program was 511, with over 319 students participating in business/industry themed competitions. Students in the 2018-2019 received over 950 hours of volunteer time from business and industry representatives. The program has received numerous awards and recognitions including the prestigious “Golden Bell Award” given to High School Inc. in 2014 by the California School Board Association.

Jack E. Oakes, an officer on the Board of Directors for High School Inc., says “High School Inc.’s development has produced the realization that, before students can be College and Career Ready, they must be ‘Achievement Ready.’ Students reach this new level of preparedness by being motivated to strive at or beyond their potential. The High School Inc. model ensures that students are Achievement Ready before they graduate and pursue higher education and careers. The reforms at Valley High School embrace the mission of High School Inc. ‘to empower youth and strengthen communities through education and business partnerships.’”

Summing Up
Each organization profiled here has continued to evolve to meet the challenges posed by technological, economic, and workforce shifts. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted American life at many levels. It opens up new opportunities for many communities to use the RETAIN model as their first step toward a more knowledgeable workforce and the better paying jobs of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The last segment of “Job Shock” will focus on why the 2020s will be a crucial decade for building a skilled workforce. As the nation emerges from COVID-19 shutdowns, the disconnect between needed skills and available jobs is gaining increasing attention. The time has arrived for RETAINs to take the lead in rebuilding education-to-employment pipelines in communities across the United States.

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Potential Employees

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How Do Potential Employees Find Careers in Today’s World?

Through the past month or so Ed Gordon has been exposing his Job Shock series. A very sobering critique of the labor market and the potential employees out there today. Most of the dealers that I talk with these days are extremely concerned with their inability of being able to find and hire qualified people for their job openings. In fact, job openings are growing and the ability to find anyone is getting very difficult.

There are elaborate, and in some cases rather exotic, “packages” being created to induce people to join a dealership. Signing bonuses and retention bonuses have almost become ordinary for technicians anymore. And what about management and succession planning? It appears that the leaders in our Industry between the ages of 55 and 75 have paid more attention to their own compensation packages than to the ability of their companies to smoothly transition to the next generation. There was, generally speaking, no succession in place.

If we go backwards to a period in the twentieth century between 1920 and 1940, we have a serious economic depression which was preceded by the “roaring” economy. From the 1950’s through the 1960’s we had a slow growth and stabilization after the world war. The “greatest generation” was frugal and family oriented. Then the 1960’s and the beginning of “laissez faire” attitudes and the slogan of “if it feels good do it.” Coincidentally, they saw the arrival of a credit card and the decoupling of monetary policy from the gold standard. The rate of change was rather gentle but a foundation was being laid for the coming years.

In those previous generations there were typically five different stages in the career of an employee. It was predictable and iterative.

  • Exploration
  • Establishment
  • Middle Career
  • Late Career

Those terms are all rather self-explanatory and the transitions from one to another were also quite simple to see and obtain. It was a matter of increasing skills and knowledge, through schooling and training and experience. If you get that done then you will have opportunities for progress in your career.

There is another change, or transition going on now. Today more and more businesses think they hire talent and that is all that is required. If there needs change the employee is let go and a new one is hired. There is no need to train their employees or send them off to schools and classes. Similarly, today’s employees think that once they get a job, they are done with the need to continue learning or improving their skills.

Think about both of those positions in the world we live in today. Consider the rate of change, which is on a very steep exponential curve. It is actually amazing to contemplate that people think that they can stay in place with your skills and knowledge and not need to be continuously learning. Similarly, for a business not to be investing in their key contributors is just as amazing. What are they both thinking about?

There is a quotation from Goethe that I appreciate. “Things that matter most should never be at the mercy of the things that matter least.”

A Skilled Workforce – the thing that matters most. Is being held hostage to Investing in Employee Development – the thing that matters least.

A Skilled Workforce, the employees I call your heroes, is required to serve your customers and satisfy your vendors. Without these heroes the dealership is in jeopardy. We have seen in the last thirty of so years a stunning level of consolidation. In part due to the need for vast amounts of capital to support the businesses. This is due, in large part, to the rapid run up prices for the equipment and products sold. There was also a need to invest in “systems” that were necessary to operate the business properly. Imagine, if you will, managing a parts inventory using a manual card system, the Kardex.

Now we are in our current market. There is a shortage of skilled people required to operate the businesses. The Universities and other education institutions are not delivering job ready skilled people as they once did. Capital Goods Dealerships are required to establish apprentice programs and mentoring or coaching new employees. Employees are having to adapt to the fact that their skills and knowledge will be measured with more precision and regularity. There is no easy path to more money or opportunity anymore. A true meritocracy is in its infancy. But make no mistake it is coming and more quickly than we can imagine today.

Learning Without Scars has responded to these changes and transitions due to the fact that we have listened to our customers. They have told us that they wanted to be able to measure the skills of their employees to determine what training is required to have the employee become more effective in their work. We have created the Job Function Skill Assessments as a result. These objective assessments have a score which determines the functional capabilities of each employee. Objectively. No opinions or favoritism or nepotism. These scores categorize the skills into four different levels; Developing, Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced. We have processed several thousand of these assessments to date, and have less than 2% of the employees in the Advanced skill level. We have found slightly more than 50% of the employees have a Beginning Skill Level. The employees were able to do the job they were taught to do. Process Orders but they didn’t know how to sell. Employees could do the repairs they were told to do but had few if any Diagnostic Skills. They could place Stock Orders that the system created but they didn’t know how to expedite for shortages, like the supply chain issues we have today. And there are as many more examples as there are tasks to perform. At Learning Without Scars we have also created Subject Specific Classes to allow each employee to overcome the “gaps” in their skills. This is the appropriate tool for skills and knowledge development for the needs of today.

Go to our Podcasts and listen to the audio explanation of the Job Specific Assessments (https://learningwithoutscars.buzzsprout.com/1721145/8055798-job-function-skills-assessments) as well as the Subject Specific Classes  (https://learningwithoutscars.buzzsprout.com/1721145/8139328-subject-specific-classes). That will provide you with all you need to know to be able to take advantage of these “up-to-date” business tools designed to help in the development of your employees skills and knowledge.

It is more than important for your success, that you have a skilled and trained workforce, it is critical. As they say you have to “have the right people on the bus” to get to your destination.

The time is now.

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Learned Helplessness

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Learned Helplessness

In tonight’s post, guest blogger Bruce Baker walks you through a struggle we are seeing all around us: learned helplessness.

Many business owners and CEOs we partner with suffer tremendously due to being in a state of learned helplessness.

It is astonishing to see people that reach out to us at Workplaces simply because they are in a state of pain and the challenges they have or perceive they have don’t have a resolution.  After lengthy discussions, the challenges they have “tried everything” to solve become less daunting and transition into something inspiring. At least four out of five times, we have the privilege of partnering with these individuals to better their business situation and ultimately achieve the goals that they work so hard to achieve. Unfortunately, once they experience solving these challenges (something they never thought possible) and, of course, do their “celebratory dance,” they fall right back into their learned helpless state due to a new challenge they face yet again.  This constant state repeating itself seems to be a drug that people seek to justify the pain of their challenge and their perceived inability to solve it.

As time goes on, the more resilient the Business owner/CEO inevitably becomes, the more they transition their business and themselves to an ongoing and sustainable state of success. This is not because they now have “better business tools” necessarily, but because they reduce falling back into a state of learned helplessness.  Those who persevere and learn this new conditioned response to challenge and, at times, failure becomes more successful consistently.

To conclude, I wanted to share a powerful story (author unknown) that I have always turned to when I feel this way and need a path back to a positive state. The story goes like this:

As my friend passed the elephants, he suddenly stopped, confused because these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at any time, break away from the ropes they were tied to, but for some reason, they did not. My friend saw a trainer nearby and asked why these beautiful, magnificent animals just stood there and made no attempt to escape.

“Well,” he said, “when they are very young and much smaller, we use the same size of rope to tie them and, at that age, it’s enough to hold them. Then, as they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free.” My friend was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds, but because they believed they couldn’t, they were stuck right where they were.

Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something simply because we failed at it once before?

How many of us are being held back by old, outdated beliefs that no longer serve us? How many of us have avoided trying something new because of a limiting belief? Worse, how many of us are being held back by someone else’s limiting beliefs?

You do not deserve to feel this way!  Your business should be a source of pride and achievement for you, whether you are significantly challenged today or are feeling helpless because you can’t find a solution.  Don’t let your ego and your feeling of learned helplessness be your guide in building your business; you will fail and not return. Instead, reach out to someone you trust, someone that will hold you accountable and show you that the solutions you seek are not far away.

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The Five Bs for Baby Boomers

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The five Bs for Baby Boomers to cultivate a culture of innovation

In this week’s guest post, Sonya Law offers an explanation of the five Bs for Baby Boomers and the ways in which they can help to cultivate a culture of innovation.

What’s the most important part of being a leader today?

It’s not about being the smartest, wittiest, or being politically astute.

It’s about being innovative, leveraging the talent of the people around you, and thinking beyond today to solve the future problems that society will encounter.

How the best leaders make everyone smarter is to utilize the talent of everyone in the organization through effective listening, communication, and collaboration.  The book Multipliers by Liz Wiseman explores why some leaders drain capability and intelligence from their teams while others amplify them to produce results.  Post the pandemic, the number one skill employers seek in their people is Innovation.  Prior to the pandemic, we expected innovation to be the top skill for startups and tech firms but now it is a requirement of all employees in today’s world.

However, those for whom being innovative, open-minded, curious, and experimental comes most naturally that is Millennials, are being overlooked which erodes agility.  Especially in work environments where both Millennials and Baby Boomers cohabitate, they are often not on the same page and speaking the same language.  In some cases, not all, Baby boomers think Millennials can’t focus are distracted by their mobiles, and are not motivated or ready to be taken seriously.  So how do we get baby boomers and millennials working together to better understand each other and leverage their combined talents, we everyone serves each other.

The five Bs for Baby Boomers when communicating with Millennials:

  1. Be an empathetic listener
  2. Be prepared to give informal feedback more regularly
  3. Be clear about the goals and connect us with our WHY
  4. Be socially aware of how we are making a difference in the world and share these good news stories on social media
  5. Be open-minded to take a different route and open to using digital platforms as a collaborative workspace

The most comfortable with technology are Millennials so why would you not capitalise on this if we are to be smarter aren’t we best to leverage what they know?

Millennials are digital addicts and want to do and share everything online whereas baby boomers in most cases they draw a line between their work and home lives and do not necessarily live out their entire life online, across multiple social media platforms.

This disconnect is real and endangers the passing down of valuable knowledge cultivated by the baby boomers and all their hard work they have poured into organisations, at the risk of this not being passed on, legacy yes but innovation no.  If we could harness the knowledge of the baby boomers, this intelligence could be used to inform the innovation of the future.

In a global economy where we are experiencing climate change and pandemics, the challenges that we are facing together are the responsibility of our leaders to unblock your people.  To leverage the talent of all the people to think tank, unlock potential, work more innovatively, learn to fail fast and move on, adapt, grow and thrive if we are to compete.  The success off the backs of the baby boomers’ hard work has laid the foundation on which to build, so let’s build in collaboration into our workspaces that leverages the talent across the whole organization.

So why not leverage technology to innovate, collaborate and even assign tasks and set priorities?

Stratappsaas.com is a connected workspace that facilitates innovation and enables execution of the strategy in real-time, where everyone works on one connected workspace, a focused workspace that eliminates inefficiencies of switching between emails, apps, and static documents and is especially attractive to millennials, who want to use technology as a platform to get work done and share ideas.

This idea of leveraging technology is not only useful for Millennials it is a practical one given the shift toward hybrid work models and work from home becoming the norm, the need for technology to enhance communication, collaboration, and execution has become a necessity.

The five B’s for Baby Boomers are applicable for all leaders in attracting, motivating, and sustaining talent in any workforce.

Especially at a time when there is a war for talent in a candidate short market.  It is also a good idea for leaders to get familiar with spending time away from the desk, especially true of Baby Boomers who prefer to man their post but a step away from their command-and-control leadership style can be refreshing and good for innovation.

Remember the last time you went for a long walk how good it felt, to clear your head and the solutions came up freely, this is what progressive leaders practice, it is expansive and visionary.  This big picture thinking inspires innovative thinking and essential to staying ahead of the curve in coming up with better products and services for your customers.  If we get too stuck in the weeds of operations and forget to step out and come up with new thinking it stifles new ideas and innovation.

It is good to seek new thinking and challenges, but stability also matters too, so it is a blend of the two generations – baby boomers’ steadfastness and the millennials’ enthusiasm – which will inspire the future of work!

Leaders who leverage the talent of all their people will cultivate a culture of innovation … take care of your Millennials and they will solve the problems for you!

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Job Shock, Part Five and a Talent RX

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Job Shock, Part Five: Solving the Pandemic & 2030 Employment Meltdown with a Talent RX: RETAIN Partnerships

Edward E. Gordon, the founder and president of Imperial Consulting Corporation in Chicago, has consulted with leaders in business, education, government, and non-profits for over 50 years. As a writer, researcher, speaker, and consultant he has helped shape policy and programs that advance talent development and regional economic growth. This week, he continues his blog series with Job Shock, Part Five and a Talent RX.

Gordon is the author or co-author of 20 books. His book, Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis, is the culmination of his work as a visionary who applies a multi-disciplinary approach to today’s complex workforce needs and economic development issues. It won a 2015 Independent Publishers Award. An updated paperback edition was published in 2018.

The COVID-10 pandemic has triggered widespread doubts about the future. The U.S. job market is in chaos. At the end of April 2021, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported an unprecedented 9.3 million job openings across many business sectors. Might this finally be the right time to start anew and find fresh solutions to the skills-jobs shock now underway?

Today’s unprecedented economic upheaval presents an unprecedented opportunity. There are millions of unemployed on the one hand, and rapidly evolving job-skill needs on the other – providing a way for the former to solve the latter’s problem. Communities across the United States have a diversity of underdeveloped talent. They badly need local pathways that promote equity by offering high-quality educational opportunities that are accessible to everyone. This means providing more students and workers with enhanced talent development programs aligned with personal aptitudes and interests and the needs of local businesses and organizations.

The current U.S. labor market is in desperate need of more people who have developed their cognitive, interpersonal, and leadership skills. People who can problem-solve. These people aren’t going to drop from the skies. You can’t click for brains. How can we successfully prepare more people for the skilled jobs of today and tomorrow?

RETAINs

Across the United States at least 1,000 non-profit groups have organized to reinvent local talent-delivery systems. These public-private partnerships bring together a broad cross-section of community groups, such as parent organizations; chambers-of-commerce; elementary, secondary, and higher educational institutions; workforce boards, regional economic development commissions; local government units; unions; service clubs; foundations and other non-profit social welfare agencies. (See Figure 1.)

To provide a descriptive term for such organizations, we coined the term Regional Talent Innovation Network (RETAIN). They have many local brand names, such as The New North, High School Inc., the Vermillion Advantage, ConxusNEO, and Manufacturing Renaissance.

RETAINs began in the 1990s to respond to the economic erosion of their communities. Instead of seeing their young people move elsewhere for employment, they sought to retain them in their communities. Keeping the population stable also enabled communities to retain local businesses and thus stop the erosion of the tax base. Once these communities built a skilled workforce, they could attract new businesses to locate there.

In the short term, RETAINs build a network in which local businesses collaborate with training organizations, educational institutions, and in-house training departments to provide training for vacant jobs and to upskill current employees. This both enables employees to move into higher-skill/higher-paying jobs and enhances the profitability of local businesses through the more efficient use of new technologies. Access to pooled resources make these training collaboratives particularly beneficial to smaller businesses that cannot afford to provide their own in-house training.

In the long-term RETAINs update educational programs at all levels starting in elementary schools and extending to a wide variety of post-secondary options including certificate and apprenticeships programs. They work to harmonize existing educational programs and devise new ways to fill in skill gaps. RETAINs help reconcile funding streams and secure new revenue to integrate K-12, career education, higher education, and adult training. (See Figure 2.)

We agree with a Wall Street Journal editorial (June 9, 2021) that failing public K-12 schools are the “root cause of America’s skilled-worker shortage.” K-12 schools are locally controlled. The purpose of a RETAIN is to foster communication and cooperation among diverse community sectors. Many students today lack motivation as they find schooling too abstract and unrelated to the “real world.” K-12 students and teachers need active connections to local employers in order to learn about the education and skills required for careers in today’s workplaces. Local businesses need to interact with public and private high school students through sponsoring career education programs, internships, and other activities that allow students to explore career areas that align with their aptitudes and interests.

RETAINs see themselves as joint partners in community building and in the renewal of the U.S. free enterprise system. They are rebuilding the pipeline that connect their community members to the job market. The keywords here are “bottom-up collaboration” – defined as a joint authority, joint responsibility, and joint accountability among all the partners.

RETAINs Can Make a Difference

The good news is what we can expect if RETAINs are instituted across America to rebuild the U.S. workforce. (See Figure 3.) In 2030 the U.S. economy will support about 170 million jobs; 128 million of them will be high-skill or mid-skill jobs. RETAINs can increase the expected 56 million high/mid-skill workers by retraining 30 million additional workers and preparing 10 million more students for skilled employment.

Combining these job-ready workers with additional automation will reduce the number of vacant jobs across the economy. There still will be a substantial, but not an overwhelming number of surplus workers. However as more communities use the RETAIN model to sustain job-ready workforces, the number will fall. The American middle class will grow again as high-wage employment rises.

Moving Forward

The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened Job Shock in the United States and around the globe. It has disrupted schooling leaving the economically disadvantaged even further behind. Millions of workers have either changed jobs or faced unemployment. Education and training solutions are more vital than ever before. RETAINs can be an important force in preparing students and workers for positions in America’s fast-paced, technologically driven, knowledge economy. Regional development can better support broad economic expansion and ensure that the United States remains a highly competitive global economy.

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Some Personal Post-Pandemic Thoughts

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Some Personal Post Pandemic Thoughts

 

Tonight, Managing Member Ron Slee shares with us some of his personal thoughts about the post-pandemic world.

For some time now I have been wondering about what happens to the workforce once we come out of the pandemic fears and returned to normal. Of course, I don’t truly believe we will return to the old normal. I think there is a new normal. I am a baby boomer born in the 1940’s so I have seen a few economic disruptions. I am also one who has been shouting out about the fact that we spend trillions of dollars on Technology but near nothing on Sociology. In the same vein, I have long been concerned about how we as a society in the United States seem obsessed with work and succeeding (even though we cannot properly state what success means).

There was a wonderful Cadillac ELR Coupe commercial in 2014 with the actor Neal McDonough. Watch it on YouTube. The reason I want you to watch this ad is that it reflects how we “used to think” about work and our lives. We worked. Long hours and sometimes six days, we traveled a lot, we didn’t see our families enough. We were a driven society with success being measured in Status and Money. I have never really been driven that way. When I was working as an employee I was always asking “why do we do things that way or this way?” Then when we started on our business, I was just trying to make enough money to live. Starting your own business when you are 33 years old is not the easiest of tasks. I never really was working for success, rather it was survival. I don’t think I was alone.

Today, we have a much smarter and less tolerant workforce. They won’t put up with as much as my generation did by a long stretch. And I think they are right. I moved my family from Montreal to Vancouver, from Vancouver to Edmonton, from Edmonton to Denver, from Denver to Palm Springs and more recently we moved to Honolulu to get ready to retire, I think. During my years in the consulting world, I averaged over 150,000 air miles a year. If you think that is fun, think again. 8,000,000 miles later the pandemic hit and I returned to living with my family 24/7. It was wonderful. The up-and-coming generations will not put up with that kind of life. They shouldn’t. There is a lot more to life than the treadmill many of us put ourselves on to make a living.

From some recent reports, I have read between 25% and 50% of the workforce does not want to go back to the office. They want to continue to work remotely. Further, they have seen that working remotely costs them a lot less money, some $5,000/year in lower expenses. Some companies are adjusting the compensation so that employees work remotely, they pay less. On top of that, many in “my generation” want to see the employee in the office so that they know they are working. Yes, that is true. Some teachers are sitting in classrooms teaching virtually but they have to do this at the school for whatever reason. It doesn’t make sense to me. There is a major shift going on. Strip malls have lost a lot of tenants. Empty stores are everywhere in America. I am not sure they will ever come back to the “old normal.”

I have long said “life is simple, it is people that mess it up.” I don’t believe that any employee will leave their current employer if they feel that they are valued and a valuable team member contributing to the success of the company and driven to serve people: customers, vendors and coworkers. I honestly do believe that the leadership of anything is the major cause in the employee satisfaction world. Bullies are still out there but their time is quickly coming to an end. Charismatic, caring people that are committed to the success of their employees will, hopefully, become the “new normal.” It is time to step away from micromanaging our teams.

The issue of compensation will come up. I don’t believe that people will leave a job because of their pay, IF, the pay is commensurate with the skills and the market. Don’t try to take advantage of your employees by not paying them properly. One small example. I left a job and gave my employer 60 days’ notice. I was not leaving for money; in fact, I was going to make exactly the same amount of money. However, during those sixty days I was offered to have my salary doubled, to be given a company vehicle and to have a membership in a golf club. As my wife said, “they are trying to buy you.” I didn’t stay. Many employees are in the same situation. They DO NOT get the proper level of pay. That needs to change. It needs to be fixed. There are many sources to get comparable job descriptions and salary and compensation studies. The US Department of Labor has all of those facts. You can typically find them in your local library.

This is a time of significant change, and the rate of change is accelerating. Don’t pay attention to your leadership alone, it is ALL of the employees who make your company successful. It really is quite simple. Treat everyone with respect and it will come back to you. I only ask that you think about it a bit more than you do at the moment.

The time is now.

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Your Interpretation of Time

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Your Interpretation of Time

In tonight’s post, guest blogger Bruce Baker walks you through your own interpretation of time, and what that interpretation can do to you.

Your Interpretation of Your Reality Is Taking You Down!

Human behaviour has always been based on our primary instinct of avoiding loss at any expense.  If we can acquire equal gain, we tend to be satisfied and move on with our merry lives.  When people feel that they are about to lose something or have lost something, our primary drive kicks in, and we try to compensate for this loss.

There is, however, a difference between loss aversion and risk aversion. As a business owner, this is where I encourage you to pay very close attention. Risk aversion is your perception of the utility value of a monetary payoff that depends on what you have previously experienced or what you expected to happen. For example, the last time you decided to pay for Bookkeeping services (your previous experience), you paid a lot of money, but the Bookkeeper made a bigger mess. (Your perception of the utility value of this service and the level of monetary payoff). Moving forward, you would rather do it yourself.

As our instant gratification mindset gains more traction, so does our interpretation of time change – suddenly, time is interpreted as being a lot shorter!   With shorter perceived periods to prevent loss and reduce risk, our reaction to fear also increases not only in the sheer number of times we react to fear but the intensity of how we react. This intensity destroys what comes naturally to us and our ability to be creative and build tremendous value for ourselves and the others we serve.

This has profound implications for a business owner scaling up, starting up or fixing up a business.  I continuously find myself working with CEOs that are constantly on edge, struggling to grow their business or, in many cases today, trying to prevent their companies from going down the proverbial tubes. What is even more profound is what got them to this state: short-term and reactive thinking based on their interpretation of risk and potential failure.  Being in this perpetual state of loss or risk is not something new but being in this state continuously and over short bursts is what we need to be concerned with.  Business leaders are always convincing themselves that “if I get this fixed now, all will be good” or “I’ll get back to the customer before the end of the day” or “I’ll pay some of this now and hopefully pay the rest at the end of the month.” The list goes on and on.

One of the primary reasons we end up “multi-tasking” or “switch-tasking” is the need for an instant fix based on an inaccurate interpretation of time.  All this has achieved are businesses that are built with short-term solutions or quick fixes.

To take this a step further, business owners are not just confronted with one or two competing priorities but many at the same time.  Franklin Covey’s Important vs. Urgent model is outstanding and always a tool I reference with my clients. Although a great tool, I continuously find that it is only useful if we understand our interpretation of time and how we behave as a result, as described above.

If we live in a world requiring instant gratification and quick fixes and respond to this as a business by operating this way, we are only preparing for one thing, failure.  We run our businesses based on this behaviour based on our interpretation of time and the risk of loss as a result. If our expectations are short-term and superficial based on who we serve, then the nature of our decisions and our state of mind will respond accordingly.

Returning to Franklin Covey’s Important vs. Urgent model, trying to distinguish the importance and the urgency of the task just doesn’t cut it. When we are in the classroom or with our business coach or consultant, it seems logical and rational to think this way (i.e., tasks classified into their level of importance and urgency). As soon as we return to “the field,” we return to solving problems and making decisions based on instant gratification and quick fixes. Our natural need to want to be accepted and not rejected forces us into the same old vicious routine – reacting to every single demand that needs to be resolved.  The business owner, in turn, responds to this as a risk that needs to be managed and if not “now” or “very soon,” the overwhelming reaction of loss aversion kicks in again.

Society has only been successful in times when we have been able to cooperate and align our expectations.  We are a society today and subsequently a business community that has evolved into the “me” culture that works on their individual needs and expectations, which are now governed by the need for instant gratification and instant resolution. As such, we respond to each other this way which requires any small business that either wants to scale, start-up or fix-up to respond the same way, failing, not only the business failing but the business owner failing, which in most cases causes a breakdown in their lives in general.

It’s time that business owners realize that this elusion of time and their response to their interpretation of risk and fear of loss is not a sustainable reality. If we think that this short-term reactive and superficial culture is the “modern way,” I hate to see the state of business and the value of service to each other over the next decade or so.

I can tell you without a doubt that business owners that I have and continue to work with that have finally realized the extent of this problem for themselves and are now thriving. You may ask what I define thriving as? Their levels of stress have drastically decreased, their creativity has drastically increased, and the value they deliver to their market has improved significantly.

Take a leap of faith, and I can guarantee you that you and your business will thrive as well!

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The Skilled Employee Challenge

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The Skilled Employee Challenge

This week, Ron Slee takes readers through the skilled employee challenge, after a particularly illumination conversation with a fellow industry professional.

Recently I had an online chat with a talented executive in this industry in which I have spent most of my career. After reading through the Job Shock series from Ed Gordon he posed an interesting and critically important question. How do we keep skilled employees? It has been reported from knowledgeable people that between 40% to 50% of the current workforce will be changing their employers over the coming decade for one reason or another. He wondered how he could avoid that kind of talent and experience loss in his group of businesses.

That is a tough question, isn’t it? Most of the exit interviews I have conducted over the years and research papers I have read indicate that the separations were caused primarily by the direct boss. Something was off with the relationship. Any separation should be respected and we should learn from it. What could we have done differently for you to stay?

My feeling personally as an employee in two dealerships was that I wanted to be given the opportunity to grow within the business. I wanted the company to provide me the chance to grow my skills and knowledge. Most of you know by now that I never had a performance review. I asked for one every year from every boss I ever had. I never got one. I strongly urge everyone reading this to reconsider the annual performance review. Sonya Law from Australia wrote about it last month and I have pounded on the desk with everyone one of my clients regularly to get them done. Please remember to conduct the performance review at a completely different time than the wage and salary discussions.

Asking the employee what they would like to see happen with their jobs, how they could be made better, what processes need to change, and that kind of discussion, needs to take place, in my mind, very frequently. We used to have weekly toolbox meetings on the shop floor. We have huddles in the warehouse. One of my clients had a morning session before work, before they opened the doors, that involved some exercises and stretching and then a group discussion of anything that anyone wanted to talk about at the time. Every morning.

Now we have a problem with this whole thing. It might be why the performance review doesn’t happen. Most of the people who have a team of workers reporting to them do not know how to conduct a performance review. They don’t want to allow the employees to ask for something that they are not aware is coming. They don’t want to have to allow for changes. They are to some degree comfortable with the status quo. Think about that for a moment. The employee is causing the boss to want to improve something and the boss doesn’t know how to deal with that. Imagine. I had an interesting exchange with a man who I had worked with for more than twenty years. I worked with him in Montreal, Quebec. I worked at attracting him to come work with me in Edmonton, Alberta and then to come to Denver, Colorado both moves which he made to my great appreciation. He was a very talented man. We were in a personal setting with our wives and I suggested to him that I wasn’t hard to work with anywhere that we had worked together. He started uproarious laughter. He completely disagreed with me. He said I was a very difficult person to work with and that completely surprised me. If that was true, I asked him why he stayed with me then. He responded simply because I was constantly searching for better ways to do things and that he loved that about me and the work we did together. I had to do some serious thinking about that one.

I still hold to some basic truths in life. Everyone wants to do a good job, BUT rarely does an employee get told what doing a good job looks like. Even more rarely does an employee get the opportunity to be able to evaluate their own performance on a daily basis because there are no objective metrics or measurements that are shared with each employee about their particular job. That is a truth that has always bothered me. I must have been a challenge. I was fired about six times by one of my bosses. He had a very short fuse. One time I even made it home. The phone was ringing when I got in the house and it was him wondering why I was at home. I told him he had fired me. He said emphatically “get back here right now.” I should tell you that if he were still alive and the phone rang and he said he needed me I would just ask where he was and I would be on my way there. I loved that man. He allowed me to be who I believe I was meant to be.

I don’t know that with the current leadership in business we have sufficient people skills to lead our teams of employees. Too many “bosses” – TELL people what to do. Too often the boss does not know how to do the job. They have never done it. They don’t ask for the employee to participate in making their work lives better.

I used to ask three questions about every six months of everyone I ever worked with:

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

I would also ask each employee regularly, at least once each year what I called the Five Things. Put down on a piece of paper five answers to each of the following questions:

  1. What would you like to do to make your job more effective?
  2. What is it that you do that is a real pain to do?
  3. What would you like to change about your job to make your life easier?

There are two other pillars to my beliefs in people and their work:

  1. Everyone can do more than what they think they can.
  2. Everyone is fundamentally lazy

So that is the start of the answer to the question posed to me above. That is my immediate reaction without a lot of thought behind it. I want to think about it more and provide something more insightful in the coming weeks. But this is a start and I believe it is an important start. It starts with the “leaders.”

The time is now.

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How to map out a strategy to build a culture of respect

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How to map out a strategy to build a culture of respect

In this week’s guest post, Sonya Law explains how to map out a strategy to build a culture of respect in your organization. Respect helps us to treat our most valuable resource – our people – in a way that shows they matter within our organisation.

We will explore how respect is fundamental to building a robust and resilient culture from which to thrive and contribute positively to the wellbeing of employees and deliver a positive customer experience…

As a new employee, we learn respect when we first enter an organisation and this experience is shaped by three things:

  1. Top Management
  2. Observed culture
  3. Teammates.

Top Management

Induction and onboarding are designed to give new employees a road map to follow, on how to get things done in the organisation, who to go to, what tools to use, processes to follow, all forms of our early experiences of culture.

As human beings, we are social animals and we want to fit in and will observe behaviours, language, and actions of all employees.

However, we take most of our cues from top management because we think that if they have made it to the top, they must exhibit the behaviours that we must mimic to be successful too.

Observed culture

It is common to find that when you start with a company what you observe is very different from what you read on their website or were told in the interview.  The number one question employees ask themselves in the induction process is:  Have I made the right decision to join this company? New employees then go on a fact-finding mission to seek evidence that supports their decision to join the company or not?

If what they experience is too much of a shift and they don’t feel respected and supported in their efforts, it will be short-lived and they may leave. High turnover in the probation period is often a mismatch with what was promised at the interview and experienced.  Many people leave a poor culture for a promise of a better one and when it does not live up to what they expected it can have dire consequences.

Teammates

Teammates will project their own experience of the culture having either a positive or negative impact on the newcomer.  An example of a negative onboarding experience would be: when you observe a teammate speaking to a customer disrespectfully and later that day your manager points out that they are a high performer and you should model yourself on them because they are the top salesperson.  This is quite common in organisation where managers will overlook employee’s disrespectful behaviour because they are the top sales performer.

Leaving new employees to their own devices to assimilate and adapt to the new culture is fraught with risk when these three factors are negatively at play, top management, observed culture and teammates.

Tips for assimilating to the culture for the new employee, keep it simple:

  • Adapt – take your time to adjust to the new culture, be accommodating, take lots of notes and develop good habits early on. Don’t get drawn into the politics.
  • Time – take the time to get to know people and build good working relationships. Don’t make snap judgments of people.
  • Speak up – seek support and ask questions when you don’t understand something by raising concerns early you will gain some valuable insights into how open they are to feedback and dynamic they are in coming up with solutions. Remember it is a trial for both employee and employer.

The following are some tips for human resources leaders to orientate the organisation towards a more respectful culture:

Culture is pervasive, it must be driven from the top and have the 100% commitment of human resources and top management to reset the culture towards a more respectful one that is robust and resilient.

  • Role modelling at top management what respect looks like.
  • Accountability framework for those who don’t show respect.
  • Empowering employees to have a voice when respect is not shown.
  • Developing an understanding of what respect is and what it looks like through education and training at all levels of the organisation.

The items that can sabotage a culture of respect are:

  • Employees not feeling safe – to give upward feedback to top management.
  • No clear framework or process for giving feedback – handling grievances and reporting incidents.
  • Self-serving behaviors – ambitious employees who want to look good and progress in their careers and lack awareness about their negative behaviors and impact on others.
  • Disengaged employees – wanting to fly under the radar and appear busy even if they aren’t, to avoid bringing attention to themselves and being in the firing line.
  • Good employees who are mistreated – because they point out disrespectful behaviour.

The wellbeing of employees:

We have heard it many times, organisations that thrive are courageous, they respectfully discuss differences and have a framework to value the opinions of others, respond to feedback, grievances, and incidents in the workplace. These organisations have a culture that is respectful, robust, and resilient. When people feel respected and safe to raise concerns organisations can thrive and it contributes positively to the wellbeing of all employees.

How to map out a strategy to build a culture of respect in your organisation:

  1. Phase one: Gather employee feedback from various business contexts that mirror your organisation and culture – in the way people communicate, specifically relating to respect:
  • Culture surveys
  • Conduct in meetings, interviews, customer interactions
  • Qualitative assessment of induction and onboarding process
  • End of Year Performance review meetings
  • Experiences of giving and receiving difficult feedback and dealing with conflict, is it respectful?
  • Grievance process and employees’ experiences
  • Exit interview data
  • Customer insights survey
  • Seek, social media reviews
  • Behaviors observed on offsite conferences, Christmas parties, and trade shows, etc.
  1. Phase two: Analysis of the feedback to determine the themes that emerge on what respect is in the organisation, current and where you want it to be a future state at senior management level.
  2. Phase three:
  • Define what respectful behaviour is in your organisation, what it is, and what it isn’t in various business contexts, relating to your business environment.
  • Incorporate it into your code of conduct and communicate this to new employees and the wider employee groups.
  • Clear messaging in the communications plan that building a respectful culture is everyone’s responsibility and we all play a part.
  • The accountability framework sits with top management for ensuring that it is robust and resilient and not a tick the box exercise.
  • Leaders to draw a line of sight to customer satisfaction – that as individuals we are not bigger than the organisation, that the support and respect we show each other, will flow through to delivering a positive customer experience.
  • Consider strategies incorporating it into systems and practices like performance reviews that form part of merit and evaluation processes for reward and recognition programs.
  • A scorecard approach for evaluating various business contexts where people meet, for example, business meetings – did we communicate respectfully and engage in a discussion about it listening to each other’s point of view. This methodology could be applied to other business contexts.

Look after your people, treat them with respect and they will treat your customers with respect…

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