Finally, the Employees!

These past three weeks, I have been walking you through our “Back to the Basics” overview.  We have covered the Balanced Scorecard, the Stakeholders, and now we have arrived at our final segment.  Finally, we are going to take a look at the employees.

Importantly, the last major step on the Back to Basics road is the Employees. This is the group of talented hard working engaged people that do the work in your company. How are they treated?

This is not about salaries and wages, or the benefits your company offers. It is not even about working conditions. Those are fundamentals that will be de-motivators if they are not in line with the marketplace and even a touch higher. No, it is about what the employee sees as their opportunity to progress in the company. What is required to get to the next step in their careers? What do they have to do to earn more money?

When an employee performance review takes place is this a staple of the discussion between the direct supervisor and the employee? One of those subjects should be “What do I need to do to get more money?” This is a critical element in employee satisfaction and that leads to employee retention.

The biggest challenge facing every business today is attracting and hiring and retaining talented people. At the moment there are 7,000,000 jobs that are open in the US. Seven Million! Unemployment today in the US is 4.1%

Where are we going to find these employees?

Today there is some challenge in the view that the “older generation” has of the “younger generation.” They don’t have the same work ethic that we had is a comment I hear all the time. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have to open our minds to employees. We have to create career paths for talented people. We have to challenge our employees to get better at what they do. We have to embrace the Japanese approach of Kaizen – continually improving what we do.

As an educator, I taught education for six years at University, and I had some power over the students in that they needed to pass the course to get their degree. On the job we start having trouble. I reference again Patrick Lencioni in his book “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job.” These three signs are Anonymity, Irrelevance and Immeasureability.

Employees should be able to control their own destiny. They should know what the job is and how their performance is measured. This measurement should be objective and the employee and the employer should know how the measurement is done, where the data comes from, and what calculations are involved. It should be so clear that the employee can measure their own performance themselves. Daily, if possible. How well do you do on that basic element?

Then we arrive at employee development. Each employee should have a defined career path. They should understand and accept that this is their opportunity. There should also be a clear employee development plan. We offer help in this area within Learning Without Scars. We have a “Dealer Profile” that we ask our clients to complete.  This Dealer Profile identifies the numbers of employees in parts and service and product support selling by job category. Then we create an employee development program for each job function. We have a three-year program for most major tasks: in-store selling, parts office, warehousing, service inspectors, service writers, service foremen, and service office. We also offer management and supervision training.

So welcome aboard the Back to Basics train. Don’t forget we have to deliver results: for our customers, our employees, our owners, and suppliers.

Ignore this at your peril.

The time is now.

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Your Stakeholders – Back to Basics

This is our second installment in our Back to Basics theme, covering the topic of your stakeholders.  Last week, we began with the Balanced Scorecard and the customers.

The next piece of Back to Basics is the value that we deliver to the stakeholders.

When we talk about your stakeholders, who de we mean?

Simply put, your stakeholders means the employees, the company leadership, the owners, the shareholders, and the suppliers of your business.  Since you have all learned that I like to begin with definitions in order to have clarity in each topic, your stakeholders are the individuals and groups who invest in your business with their time, their money, their ideas, and their resources.  The customers benefit from the commitment of your stakeholders, and your stakeholders benefit from the growth and development of your company and your customer loyalty.

Here we go back to metrics and standards of performance, also known as Key Performance Indicators.  These Key Performance Indicators are Revenue, Profitability, Expense Control, Asset Management and how the department and business performs.

One of these metrics is Return on Assets (ROA). That leads us to next step in the Back to Basics – investments. The owners of the business have to continue to reinvest in the Company if they want growth. The effectiveness of the business to steward the company assets will allow the owners to determine the level of risk they want to take on relative to the future growth opportunities. If the management does not deliver performance then owners will not have much interest in reinvestment.

So how does this tie in to everything we do here at LWS?

Employee Development is a straightforward investment into the business, its stakeholders, and its vision for the future.  Employee Development correlates to employee satisfaction, which has a demonstrated impact on customer satisfaction.  Satisfied employees = satisfied customers.

As you can see, getting Back to the Basics comprises many aspects of your business.  But you will find that the results are well worth the work.

The time is now.

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Back to the Basics: Your Customers

For the last month we have been discussing change and the fact that although it is causing us anxiety it also creates opportunities for the talented, curious, ambitious and hard-working people in our businesses.

Let’s get our heads out of the clouds and return to the dirt. Let’s get back to basics. What is troubling is that many of us don’t remember what that means. What are the basics?

Let me start at the beginning: it all starts with customers.

 

Without your customers you have nothing.

 

How do you think you customers view you? Do you know their perceptions of your business? We use the “Balanced Scorecard” as one of the fundamental tools to help our clients to develop and manage their business. It is also an LOD (Learning On Demand) product in our training business www.learningwithoutscars.org

The Balanced Scorecard, from our perspective, starts with the customer. What are the needs and wants, the expectations that our customers have of us? That is where we start. We use an employee training session as the vehicle, we suggest these programs happen eight times a year and take an hour and a half each. We have all the parts employees or service employees or both together and ask them to make a list of what the customers want.

Don’t interfere, don’t editorialize, and don’t have your thoughts dominate the room – remember EQ here. The leader should always speak last and listen first. Then, after the list is completed you will have similar points on the list. Narrow the list down to a list of unique items.

The following month we have a group of customers come in and we ask them the same questions in front of the same group of employees who made the original list. Don’t interfere with their list. Listen carefully. Make notes and make sure that your customers agree with the list you have created from listening to them.

After this, we have a third meeting where we reconcile the two lists. How similar were they? Which items are the most important? Pick the top five. Then call the customers back and ask if they agree with the top five list. If they do then you can go to the next step. The next step in the Balanced Scorecard for us is Internal Excellence. What do we need to excel at in order to satisfy the customer? This is the first step on the Back to Basics road.

This is just the first portion of what we must do to achieve customers for life.

The time is now.

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Emotional Intelligence in a Changing World

How does EQ fit today?

Charles Darwin was the first to identify the value of emotions as a critical element in the life. Sweaty palms for nervousness a churning stomach for anxiety and other signals. This moved to something called “social intelligence” in the 1920’s identified by F.L Thorndike. In 1990John Mayer and Peter Salovey di the research that led to “Emotional Intelligence.”

The world got onboard in 1995 when Daniel Goleman published his book “Emotional Intelligence.”

At the core of the book is the following statement:

“We are being judged by a new yardstick. It’s not how smart you are but how you are smart. The technical skills or the business expertise that so often propelled people to the top are not the abilities that make you effective in inspiring people, in guiding people, in coaching people, in developing people, in motivating people.”

In an International Study of 515 senior executives delivered interesting results. An individual’s emotional intelligence was proven to be a better indicator of success than having strong technical skills, previous experience and the standard “IQ (Intelligence Quotient).” Dr. J.P. Pawliw-Fry, who works with Olympic athletes as well executives refers to a study of sixty of the top US entrepreneurs that states – “Fifty-nine of the sixty went with their gut feeling first and then backed it up with rational reason when they made important decisions. The gut feeling is real. I t helps people make better decisions.”

Why am I focused on EI this week you ask?

Emotional intelligence can be developed. It can be learned. It is not like your native IQ. It ties back into emotions. As people we can control our emotions. Tough but it can be done. We can choose to express or repress our emotions. This also affects our health. The good old Type A personality has been shown to have increased risk of heart damages.

So now let’s return to the recent theme in this blog – change and technology. Change creates anxiety and employees need to have a good leader to help them overcome their fears related to this change. Without strong Emotional Intelligence leaders will be confronted with resistance to change and even anger at change in the work place. Don’t forget that it is the change agent – the individual who is bringing the change – who is the guilty party in this path of development and change. They are viewed with animosity generally. It is only through strong and effective leadership can this emotional feeling be overcome.

One of the life issues hat I have dealt with in my personal and professional life is exemplified by the question “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” This best viewed with the decision we made to go into business for ourselves when I was 33 years old. I had a comfortable position and had interesting and challenging work and I worked with talented people in a great Company. Yet it didn’t match what I felt were my skills. I was too impatient, needed more speed in process change and faster growth and development opportunities for my co-workers. But that was a large change. From the comfort and security of a regular income to being completely on your own with the skills and work ethic. I am so grateful that we have the courage to overcome our fears.

How about you?

Are you looking at a process, or a method, or a form or a screen that should be changed? What are you doing to make it change and get better? If the answer is nothing then I want you to ask yourself the same question “what is it that you are afraid of?” The answer can be very revealing and if you can overcome your fear imagine the possibilities. You can make your job, your department, your company and the world around you a better place.

The times have changed and they are still changing and the rate of change is accelerating. What are you waiting for?

The time is now.

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Drones and You!

For some time now, the Capital Goods Industries has used global position and equipment monitoring technologies. Last week I talk about the Cloud Based Technologies that were impacting our world. I want to look in a different direction this week.

On March 22nd the following press release got my attention:

China: – Commercial drone data company Skycatch, and DJI, the world’s leading manufacturer of civilian drones and aerial imaging technology, have extended their partnership to manufacture and deliver a fleet of 1,000 high-precision drones for Komatsu Smart Construction.

The Skycatch Explore1 drone autonomously flies over job sites to create highly accurate 3D site maps and models and will be deployed on Komatsu job sites. This map data will be used for Komatsu Smart Construction’s new data service that enables robotic earth moving equipment, used in the earthwork stage of the construction process, to correctly dig, bulldoze, and grade land autonomously according to digital construction plans.

“Conducting a site survey using a drone used to take hours. However, by implementing Explore1, users can carry out surveying quickly and easily. Now it is possible to perform drone surveying every day. Taking off, landing and flight route setting are all automated. Ground Control Points (GCPs) are no longer needed. 3D data is immediately generated and an entire construction site can be visually checked with the 3D map. The Explore1 is a true game changer for the construction site,” said Chikashi Shike, Executive Office of Smart Construction Division at Komatsu.

And some of you didn’t think we were being impacted a lot by technology. Imagine?

How do we keep up? That is an interesting question for many of us. In University I took a minor in Computer Science. We learned to program in Fortran and Cobol. We used punched cards. How old do you think that makes me feel?

The last time I purchased disc drives for a computer center was in the late 1970’s and for the price of $1,000,000 I bought eight-disc drives with removable 44 MB drives and two controllers. You read that right – a million bucks for about 350 MB or storage. The current pricing is about $1.00/GB.

In the early eighties I was running a software business in Denver. They had at their peak over 450 dealers using their software. Caterpillar was offering a product from DDPD – Dealer Data Processing, that took paper input from dealers had it keypunched and returned to the dealer after processing. They did the invoicing, inventory management, everything. With Paper.

Time have certainly changed.

That is one of the challenges that we have faced in our training business. I have personally had to change and adapt. I used to teach at University. I had a classroom, a blackboard with white chalk and a room of students. I talked (some called it teaching) and they listened. In England they called it learning from the pipe smoke of the teacher sitting in a room with the students.

I started Quest, Learning Centers, in the early 1990’s and taught in a hotel meeting room to a group of 25 or so students. It was for me going back to the classroom. But first we had overhead slides. We had “text” books of about 250 pages each that we created using voice recognition software. Voice recognition is everywhere today but it was a rarity in 1992. Overheads morphed into power point presentations.

However, training was a challenge for many dealerships. You see it cost money. Many dealers didn’t want to invest in their employees. The employee was expected to arrive with the necessary skills and they would be taught about the products. That is another “Imagine That” isn’t it?

In many cases that still remains true today. Companies are not investing in employee development as they should. It is quite disturbing actually.

To go full circle, we moved from the classroom to webinars. The classroom was thought to be too expensive and the webinar eliminated travel. The problem with a webinar is that the instructor has no idea what the student is learning. I was not happy about that learning device at all.

Then we explored Learning Management Software (LMS) starting in the early 2000’s,  or what they call the “aughts.” Well the products available weren’t ready for prime time. Today they are amazing at what they can do. Now we can do some amazing things. I know more about what the student is learning using current LMS software than I did in the classroom. It is terrific.

Then we took the slides from power point with audio tracks overlaid to them and had an online webinar. Then we used an extremely capable film company to come to Hawaii and spend a week filming us. We created over 500 film clips that we have embedded into the learning products we put out in Learning Without Scars.

Paul Baumann, the owner of Xfinigen, was excellent at flying drones which is why I was do interested in the Press Release from China talking about Komatsu. He used drone shots for many of our film clips. You can see them on our web site at www.learningwithoutscars.org and select either of the two blue bars to see some film clips. The one on the left shows some of Paul’s talents with drones.

Time have changed and they are still changing. The pace is accelerating. Adapt or Die.

The time is now.

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Cloud Based Technologies

Recently I read an excellent article on the IoT regarding cloud based technologies and the impact that they are going to be having on all of us.

The cloud is impacting all of us gradually and some of us rather strongly and quickly. The technological capability enabling this shift—often referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT), which is essentially an advanced version of the sensor and gateway combination used for years now in other Industries is changing the OEM business model from one of item-by-item sales transactions to an outcome-based service model.

Amit Jain, senior director of product management at ServiceMax, says it this way. “As the old saying goes, what you want is a hole, not a drill. We’re seeing OEMs move into what we call outcomes-based service models where they sell a service-level agreement tied to the desired outcome the equipment generates. So, instead of light bulbs, a company sells guaranteed lumens as a service. Instead of a jet engine, an airline buys guaranteed flight time. We’ve even seen some printer companies selling guaranteed page output versus ink and the device. Customers don’t care about the [OEM] product; they want the outcome those products provide.”

As most of you realize the traditional reactive service model employed by dealers has not taken maintenance seriously. Neither has the Industry been quick to adapt to standard charges and standard repair times. The customer in many cases views the dealer shop as a “black hole.” A machine goes in to the shop for repairs and we are not given accurate completion dates nor accurate quotations. As a result it appears to the customer that we would rather have them call the service department and a few days later a technician shows up to fix it. Because of this, field service has become the main source of service for owners of construction machinery.

For over a decade now we have had global positioning systems in place and that moved to having electronic control units on the machine. Now, like the Automotive Industry we have fault codes reported on the equipment. Going back to Jain: “the capabilities provided by cloud-based mobile technologies enable remote equipment monitoring, automated service requests, technician dispatching and work order closing, which are creating new revenue streams for OEMs by adding value to post-sale warranties.”

He goes further “The indirect effect of proactive service like this is that OEMs get happier customers, which of course has bottom-line impacts across the board.”

Dealers ignore these advanced technologies at their peril. This is not going to be a passing fad. This will become more and more embedded into our equipment and we will be able to do much more accurate remote diagnostics in the very near future.

Every Dealer Business System provider is going to have to adapt their systems to this New Reality.

Every major company in the capital goods supply chain is going to have to change as well.

This is but one more piece of evidence that “the world around us is changing at a rate greater than we are.” The individual who made that quote famous was Jack Welsh. He went further and said that when that happens “the end is near.”

It is time to pick up the pace of change in our businesses and our lives.

The time is now.

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Approaches to Learning

A Great Idea on Learning from a Customer.

Many of you know that we, at Learning Without Scars, are very supportive of new and improved approaches we could be taking with our training platform. That is how we have developed from Management Training, that we first offered with Quest Learning Centers in the early 1990s, to the four different approaches we have in Learning Without Scars; The Learning On Demand Program (LOD), The Planned Specific Programs (PSP), The Virtual Classroom (VCR) and the Planned Learning Programs (PLP).

 

Recently we were approached about an idea a client had who is the Director of Operations of a Bobcat dealership. This talented lady asked if anyone had approached the LOD programs as part of a monthly department learning plan. Of course, at that point no-one had suggested this to us or discussed it with us.

 

She wanted to have each of their stores take the same LOD class. At the end of the month, after everyone had completed the program, they would have a Skype Call or a GoToMeeting and talk about the program of that month. That way each team Member and their Manager would have a clear view of where everyone stood on the knowledge scale. They would have a common understanding of what was expected and share common jargon in communications.

 

What a great idea!

 

They had ten stores with each store having one in-store sales person who handled everything; parts and supplies and rentals. They would get a membership for each store ($50.00/store – total $500.00) and then everyone in the store could take classes for the member pricing. An individual LOD is $115.00/student So if there were one person in each store the monthly training cost would be $1,150.00.

 

She thought that they should take the PSP – Planned Specific Program – which covers four individual classes – but do the classes once a month together. That then morphed into a specifically designed program of LOD’s as she saw the need. This would allow her to create a “personalized” learning program for her business and her teams. What do you think about that?

 

The Time is NOW.

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Books and Reading #MondayBlogs

Today for #MondayBlogs, I want to talk about books and reading and their ability to bring about dramatic change.

Learning is undergoing a radical transformation, although you wouldn’t know it looking at our present school structures and systems. You are seeing the internet transforming schooling. You have the Khan Academy changing the early school years and EdX transforming the Universities of today.

The standardization of curricula designed to create efficiency and accountability may fail to tap the intrinsic motivation of students. It may feel especially restrictive to those who have an intense drive to learn, their intellectual wings constrained by too much structure. Innovators and other change agents are not much interested in the standards applied to schooling.

Innovators wanted to dive deep into topics of their own choosing rather than follow the path of a syllabus. They exhibited a true love of learning – even if they had no love for school.”

This is from Melissa A. Schilling, the John Herzog professor of Management at NUU’s Stern School of Business who is the author of “Quirky: The remarkable story of the traits, foibles and genius of breakthrough innovators who changed the world.”

She also notes the power of reading and of books.

“Their stories (the innovators) also highlight something else: the power of books. Books may not seem as glamorous as recent technology-enabled alternatives like videos and webinars, but few learning vehicles can rival what can be delivered with a book. It is far easier to customize how one consumes a book than a video, lecture, or in-class discussion. These latter alternatives are great complements to books, but not substitutes. You can skim sections of a book to see its overall structure; you can study some passages intensely, re-reading them if you want, and pausing to contemplate. You can also easily move back and forth between text and diagrams in whatever pace and pattern works for your learning style. You can take a book home and read it in bed, or out to a park or coffee shop. This is more important than may at first be obvious; some people function better with some level of background stimulation while others require a setting with as little background stimulation as possible. Allowing people to choose is important. And when a book sits on your shelf, it serves as a visual placeholder that reminds you of its content (a large advantage print books still have over digital).”

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that every serial breakthrough innovator I studied had an outsized appetite for books. Books enabled them to choose the areas of expertise they would develop, and to circumvent barriers that might have held them back.

A few blogs ago we exposed to you the reading list from our consulting web site www.rjslee.com and also the articles we have written over the past twenty-five years. Have a look and do some reading. It will help in your personal growth which is, after all, our goal at Learning Without Scars.

The Time is NOW.

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Change #MondayBlogs

The past two weeks I spent reviewing two great dealers in Europe. One was in Norway and the other in Belgium. They were both family owned businesses with a strong history and terrific presence in their markets.

What I wanted to point out, however, is not how good they are at what they do, nor how skilled their employees are or how well their leadership executes strategies. No, it is how they view change.

Each part of the world seems to view change through a different lens. In North America one would think that American Companies would be right our front about innovation and change. Not so fast. In Canada you might be thinking about the conservative Canadian being more entrenched in tradition and not that open to change. Hang on there. Europe with all the centuries of tradition would be another case. Similarly, the South and Central America, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, Russia and Africa. All areas approach the need to change differently.

Change is difficult and except for a very small number of us would not be part of our lives. We love predictability. We struggle to learn how to live on our own, or the changes required when we get married or have children. We struggle to learn our jobs and get good at them. And once we get comfortable with our lives BAM along comes change.

I grew up in the late fifties and sixties, the 1900 version folks. Do you think the “baby boomers” see and have seen change? For starters think about this: The “Baby Boomers” were the first generation to have credit cards. No matter what you think about credit cards they have had a dramatic impact on the lives of everyone in the developed world. But the element of the credit card that I want to focus on is the unintended consequence of debt. We all have too much debt. Right? Look at governments, then look at credit card debt, then look at student debt. Need I say more?

Next look at Technology. I took a minor at University in Computer Science and learned how to “wire” Unit Record equipment. That is true. Most people would think about Unit Record computing in the same way that they would think about an “Outhouse” and indoor plumbing. But look how far the “computer” has come in the last seventy-five years. The last set of disc drives that I had to purchase cost over $1,000,000 that is right one million dollars. There were two banks of disc drives each four drives requiring a control unit. Each disc drive held a removed 44-megabyte storage unit. That eight-disc drive set up gave me 352 mega-bytes of disc storage and the cost was more than $1,000,000. Imagine that. Today I can buy a thumb drive with 8 GIGA-BYTES of storage for less than $20.00. How about that? Then we have cellular telephones. They are everywhere. They didn’t exist a short ten years ago. And what about AI, Artificial Intelligence? Big Blue, from IBL, beats the best chess player in the world. Watson wins Jeopardy. The self-driving car, the Roomba Robot vacuum, photography and on and on and on.

Jack Welsh, when he was CEO of General Electric is famous for saying “when the world around you is changing at a rate faster than you are, the end is near.” Look around you. The world is changing very quickly and shows no signs of letting up anytime soon.

We need to embrace change as difficult as that might seem to many of you. To resist change is to be run over. So, look around. What could you do differently? What do you do that you don’t even need to do anymore? The world will be a better place and your job will be more enjoyable if you do things more effectively. The only thing in life that we don’t have enough of is time. Take advantage of all the time you are given. Make you job and your world a better place.

The Time is NOW.

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Learning #MondayBlogs

Education has undergone many changes over the years.

From the 1800’s to now learning has changed dramatically. From the days of Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, the heroes of teaching and learning we have been on an interesting road. The quality of education has appeared to be based on the number of PhD’s on the faculty. Nobody talked abut the quality of the TEACHING. That has been one of the flaws of the education system.

In the 1960’s Clark Kerr gave a series of lectures at Harvard that were put into a book called “The Uses of the University.” Harvard had created the “elective” system whereby the student chose the curriculum. This resulted in a lot of people who graduated with very little “learning.” Kerr developed the California system with the UC system on the top, then private Universities, then Junior Colleges. The UC system for the ‘smarter” students to the others at the private to the lower skilled to the Junior Colleges or Technical schools. Imagine.

Yet there still exists a HUGE hole.

Who is it that qualifies the teachers?

How do we measure learning?

Today we have HUGE student loan debt.

How did we get here? When I went to University I paid less than $500.00/year plus books and lab fees. Today we are talking about more than $25,000/year plus, plus, and I am being very gentle. This level of tuition inflation is becoming ridiculous.

There was something else going on at the same time. Parents in the US had been convinced that their children would be better served if they went to a University. They would make more money over their lifetime. As a result, less than 10% of the population had a bachelor’s degree in 1960. That passed 20% in 1970 then 25% in the 1990’s and over 33% today. At the same time, it is said that 50% of the technical schools in America closed for lack of attendance. Quite a commentary isn’t it?

Many ideas of how people think and learn are a mystery to most people. However, at a few Universities learning scientists and computer engineers came together and started to develop educational tools that could be far more effective in teaching and learning. Mark Kamlet, the provost of Carnegie Mellon University, opines that 25 to 50 Universities are the total of the Universities that will survive over the coming decades. That is because teaching and learning are changing. The current universities are creating their own destruction. They are conducting research and they are trying to make things better.

In 1955 Herbert Simon attended a conference at Dartmouth where he and a small group of scientists gave a name to a new field of research called “Artificial Intelligence.” Learning is not a matter of accessing information but rather a matter of organizing and making sense of it. Cognitive scientists started asking the fundamental question. “How do people think and learn?” It is clear that our brain is a very complicated tool. The importance of thinking patterns and expertise means that learning needs to be looked at in different ways. The trouble with this is that this making developing courses very difficult. It is not easy to simulate working environments. Believe me we are in that business. But that is where as a society we are going. The University of Everywhere is here now and will become even more significant going forward.

We are perpetuating the class society with our education system.

Clark Kerr institutionalized this within the California system. If you have access to money you can get into a different school. Not a good approach to anything.

The new barriers of entry should be based exclusively on ability. Wouldn’t that be a nice change? That is where learning Management Software is taking us. That is where non-traditional teachers are coming from. We have to be extremely alert to the changes in learning.

We are mindful of these changes and watch the result of the student assessments from our online programs, not just to evaluate the student but also to evaluate our ability to transfer information. That is where we all have to go. Making learning easier and more effective.

The Time is NOW.