Many of you have noticed my “New Reality” take on business and the economy for the equipment Industries. The dislocations caused in 2008 have not been addressed completely as we transition once more to a new and better opportunity based society.

The challenges we confront have been broadly exposed and discussed from tax policies, to government regulation, to lending practices, to technological changes, and many more. And we need to address the four challenges exposed by Robert Gordon for our economy of; income inequality, debt, education and demographics. (You can see him on TED.com search for him by name Robert Gordon and the name of the talk is; The End of Innovation.)

You have also read me talking about the need for more job preparation coming from our educational options in previous blogs. I would like to expose to you now another element of the New Reality a short film from a Community College. Please watch it and then spend a moment thinking about how this might impact you, your family and your fellow employees.

Click on the line and watch. Make sure you have sound. This video is well done, it explains in pretty easy-to-understand terms why an associate degree or technical education might make more sense than a 4-year degree for people with certain skillsets. The video was funded by Perkins Grant money. https://vimeo.com/67277269

The time is now.

May 2, 2014

Training

Learning Without Scars is morphing

Greetings.

We are going to take this to another dimension. We are in the process of building a new website for learning and learners. It will be the new face of “Learning Without Scars.”

We will launch the new venture July 1, 2014.

We will offer a one stop shop for all learning experiences:-

Internet Based Self Study Programs
Streamed Content Offers
Webinar Registrations
Classroom Registrations.

We intend to offer learning streams for the Parts Business, the Service Business, Sales and Marketing for Operational Departments and Professional Selling.

The Parts Business will have Four Units in the Internet Based Learning Program and over twenty hours of streamed subject specific offers. Registration to our Classroom offerings as well as a wide range of webinars will also be available through this new Company and this new website.

Similarly the Service Business will have Four Units in the Internet Based Learning Program and over twenty hours of streamed subject specific offers. Registration to our Classroom offerings as well as a wide range of webinars will also be available through this new Company and this new website.

For the Sales and Marketing offerings will have Two Units in the Internet Based Learning Program and over ten hours of streamed subject specific offers.

For the Selling Professions we will have Two Units in the Internet Based Learning Program and over ten hours of streamed subject specific offers.

I would like to extend and offer and a request. Please let us know where you would like to have additional learning resources for your professional and personal development. We are seeking your input. Thanks in advance.

The time is now.

April 21, 2014

Service, Training

Standards of Performance Wednesday April 16th @ Noon Pacific

Standards of Performance – WS8

What does it looks like when it is right? Performance in a Service Department must maximize efficiency, quality and satisfy customers. The first step to understanding and accepting what needs to be done is to have meaningful, measureable and achievable standards. How to develop your own standards and yet continue to reach for excellence is the theme in this webinar.

Individual employees want to do a good job yet many do not know what doing a good job entails. This is a fundamental requirement of good management, communicating performance expectations and measures to the employees. In this webinar we will cover the fundamentals exposed by Patrick Lencioni in his important book “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job.” Anonymity, Irrelevance and Immeasureability are the three symptoms of this disease which leads to the “Sunday Blues.”

Each employee can also deliver more than they think they are can yet each is fundamentally lazy. Leadership methods to entice or motivate employees to deliver good performance for coworkers, customers and the Company will be discussed in this extremely important webinar.

Everyone needs to understand what we are trying to do that is true. But it is equally important that everyone accepts that our understanding of what we are trying to do is complete. Without understanding and acceptance we will never get commitment.

The time is now.

April 10, 2014

Service, Training

Shop Floor Scheduling – Wednesday April 16th @ 9:00 AM Pacific

Shop Floor Scheduling – WS7

The customers all want predictable consistent high quality service work. But equally important to them is a completion date for the work you are doing for them. You need to be able to provide a completion date and you need to meet that date. To do that requires very specific activities and deliveries. Parts, labor, supplies, outside purchases all are involved. Learn how to establish and manage shop schedules. To date in most surveys on customer attitudes they indicate that they want “honesty” in the top five. That should tell us that completion dates, which are rarely met is an area that needs a lot of attention.

This webinar leads to the items that are required in developing a schedule that can be met for all customers and internal departments. The typical rationales used to explain away why completion dates are rarely met are exposed and dealt with in a manner that allows acceptance of the need to change approach.

Each day, each technician needs to be given eight hours of labor, but no more than eight hours of labor. This requires each job have work elements that are never more than eight hours in length so that the answer to the question “will you complete everything I gave you to do today?” will be either yes or no. If yes the schedule is intact. If no – that will be dealt with in this webinar.

If you could guarantee completion the work for a customer on a specific date and meet it…. how much do you think your service business would increase? This comprehensive webinar does just that. It exposes everything you need to do to succeed at meeting your “promise dates” or completion date.

The time is now.

April 10, 2014

Service, Training

Flat Rating/Standard Jobs Tuesday April 15tht at Noon Pacific time

Flat Rating/Standard Jobs – WS6

Customers want to know how much the repair work will cost before they approve the job you will perform. We have to provide this important information. In order to do this we must manage our repairs with job codes. We must determine standard jobs and then track them everything time we perform them. Then we can develop a “standard time” which is different than average time. Learn the secrets of flat rating in this very detailed webinar.

The job code structure is where this starts. The manufacturers provide a job code for use with warranty jobs. It is the same logic that dealers must use to manage the repair and maintenance jobs. The code needs to be easy to understand and search out in a file or on a system. Once we have the job codes then the inspections and job structures need to follow the same logic. How to develop the job codes and then utilize them to develop and manage history is a critical element of this webinar.

The determination of the standard time is also misunderstood by most. It is NOT about the average time to perform the job. Learn the perils of assuming all the risk on jobs and how to provide for those risks with standard times. This webinar will be of value to anyone in management who wants to move away from a job shop structure.

Until you satisfy your customer needs you will constantly be explaining things. They want to know the price before they approve the work. They want to know when it will be ready for them to pick up. You cannot answer either question accurately unless you operate with standards jobs and flat rates. Don’t miss this comprehensive review of these two critical elements for service management.

The time is now.

April 10, 2014

Service, Training

Labor Efficiency – Tuesday April 15th at 9:00 AM Pacific

Labor Efficiency – WS5

Efficiency and quality are the two most important performance measures for supervision of a service department. How you measure labor efficiency leads you to be able to manage labor efficiency. The detailed definitions and calculations as well as tried and true methods to achieve high labor efficiency are the hallmarks of this webinar.

When employees are given specific direction the results are impressive. Without it they can be disastrous. The billing efficiency, the amount of time that can be billed versus paid is not the same as labor efficiency. Labor efficiency is owned by the technician but is directly influenced by the methods used to schedule work by the first level supervisor. This brings together inspections, job segmentation, standard jobs coding, and standard job times. Fundamentals of scheduling then can be applied and allow the performance of the work by a service department to become predictable.

Finally the elements that interfere with good labor efficiency are exposed and suggestions developed for each so that they can be overcome. The customer will benefit greatly from predictable completion dates which will be the “intended” consequence of this webinar for all service management and supervision.

Concentrated information that will make a difference if how you operate your service business.

The time is now.

April 10, 2014

Parts, Training

We start in 3 hours

Time is passing by quickly now. It is time for the stragglers to register for our webinars.

The time is now.

April 8, 2014

Parts, Training

24

That was a terrific television series over the years. And a lot happened in 24 hours.

Tomorrow – 24 hours from now – the start of the last four parts webinars happens. Does miss out.

The time is now.

April 7, 2014

Parts, Training

Warning

Time is running out for you to register for the four webinars next week. Don’t miss out on these informative learning opportunities.

The time is now.

April 4, 2014

Parts, Training

Wednesday April 9th, 2014

Don’t miss out on this important webinar. Noon Pacific time on Wednesday.

Standards of Performance – WP8

What does it looks like when it is right? Performance in a Parts Department must maximize productivity, manage assets and satisfy customers. The first step to understanding and accepting what needs to be done is to have meaningful, measureable and achievable standards. How to develop your own standards and yet continue to reach for excellence is the theme in this webinar.

April 3, 2014

TESTIMONIALS

Learning and Knowledge Retention.

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

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

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

The storage capacity of the human brain is virtually unlimited.

The mind needs to be exercised like any other muscle in the body.

Our attention spans are getting shorter. We are bombarded with more things online.

You are never too old to learn

After one hour, people retain less than 50% of the information presented

To learn. The brain builds on existing knowledge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Time is Now.

June 8, 2020

For our Friday Filosophy #2015-19 we are tacking economic concepts and thoughts from a great thinker.

The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.

The world runs on individuals pursuing their self-interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way.

The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm, capitalism is that kind of system.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Well first of all, tell me, is there some society you know of that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed?

The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.

We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.

So the record of history is absolutely crystal clear. That there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.

Inflation is taxation without legislation.

Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it …. Gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience.

The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people.

Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.

And I will close with this one.

And what does reward virtue? You think the communist commissar rewards virtue? You think a Hitler rewards virtue? You think, excuse me, if you’ll pardon me, American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout?

A few of the wonderful thoughts from Milton Friedman. We miss his perspective very much, don’t we?

The time is now.

May 7, 2015