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The Digital Dealership

The Digital Dealership

Tonight, guest blogger Mets Kramer continues to educate us on all the digital aspects of our business with The Digital Dealership.

Over the past months I’ve covered various digital aspects of sales and marketing.  We talked about shifting our mindset from Digital Billboarding to Engagement Marketing.  We looked at how your website is more than just a confirmation of your existence, but a key part of your growing digital presence.   Research shows your customers are now completing up to 85% of their new purchase research before calling your dealership.

Let’s face it, we live in a digital world!  Almost everything we do is digitally enabled, even our most hands-on team members, technicians, open laptops and connect to machines prior to most repairs, and they certainly open them to execute their work at some point.  Our sales teams do digital quotes, get digital contracts signed and transact a sale in a digital system.

In our last conversation, on Ron’s podcast, Ron and I started to look at the general idea of a Digital Dealership.  A dealership not bound by the analog world, but one that recognizes our perpetual digital interactions. It shifts its thinking by starting from a digital perspective.  Imagine a green field dealership – a virtual one.

So, what would a digital dealer look like?  Here are some thoughts

A digital dealership starts by recognizing information is the driving force behind the digital change in how we live and work. The internet is often called the information superhighway and we are all connected.  Access to information is what drives each of us to “Google” something each day, just out of curiosity.  Information is what brings value to an interaction, it connects us with the knowledge we need to execute our work and businesses.

The digital dealership looks at how information flows through the business, from marketing and sales to service and support programs.  It looks at how the information of a customer’s engagement or transactions flow into the business, and then, it does one very important thing.  It looks at where that flow gets broken or disconnected.  Discontinuity, in our digital information flow, kills transactions, so the digital dealership makes sure it doesn’t happen.

In a practical sense, this means the digital dealership looks at how marketing efforts lead to sales, then to initiating and even closing a sale.  Customers have the option to change medium, but the flow doesn’t stop them if they know what they want, it uses information to enable.   On the parts and service side information powers a digital transaction in the same way.  The digital dealership no longer asks its customers for the machine serial number when they call for parts.  The Digital dealer recognizes incoming calls, remembers the customer’s equipment, offers them a digital purchasing options or creates automatic parts carts for common jobs.

In service, the digital dealer has analyzed what is the likely problem via telematics and service history to determine a possible cause, and solution, prior to driving to see the machine.  This is a scenario we have all talked about, but how many of you are working out how to make it happen?

Customer Portals provide customers with 24/7 access to fleet information.  Equipment is linked to product data so customers can determine if it fits their next project.  It provides historical information on service, links to past financial transactions, provides service recommendations for the future and a replacement unit when the hours get too high.   It offers online chat or a button to get a call back immediately so they know someone will be on the line to help them.

In the end, the digital dealer connects all the information about a customer, and their business, together in a seamless process which captures the customer needs and makes it easy.  The dealership’s customers appreciate it, because they get the same treatment in so many other interactions in their personal lives.

The digital dealer uses bricks and mortar, where needed, to deliver a real product to their customers in a digital way, removing many of the traditional limits of territory, and possibly capital requirement limitations too.

Taking your dealership into the digital future may seem like a lot of work, it may seem too futuristic and technical, but each of the items I’ve listed is already available and being done in our industry to some degree.  The difference is the digital dealership combines them into a single experience.

Finally, it is also important to remember that the digital information doesn’t replace the knowledge and experience your team has.   The digital connections merely enable your existing relationships and empower them, making the knowledge gained by your team available to support your customer.   At the same time, the digital connection also enables you to reach more people and expand your presence.

Our industry is on the verge of these transformations.  Closely related markets are already seeing this change.  Will you be one of the first digital dealers in our industry?

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Your Interpretation of Time

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

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

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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Parts Campaigns and Promotions

Parts Campaigns and Promotions

This week, owner and managing director Ron Slee talks to readers about the importance of campaigns and promotions in your parts department.

Have you ever considered the counter or telephone sales job functions at an equipment dealership? High stress, work comes in tsunamis, or there is a lull in the action and it gets tedious. I have bad memories of how much the parts counter and telephone sales job functions can become an endurance test to get to the end of the day. The phone is ringing constantly, customers and others are walking in for service, and they seem to comes in hard and fast nearly all day long. It is almost impossible at times during the day to keep up.

One of the many challenges that I faced was how to make the job exciting. How to put some sizzle into it.

I wrote last week about the fact that we didn’t have enough people to regularly contact all of our customers, and yes that is very true. BUT I want to add to the problem. I want to create some excitement in the department. To make it a “cool” place to work.

In one of our subject-specific classes “What’s Your Why” I ask the question of “What Do You Do? If you are at a party or a church social or a pub and someone asks you what you do, what is your answer? Think about that. Then in the class, I ask them to tell me how they do it. Some can tell me, however, many will struggle with the explanation. But I really stop the room when I ask them “Why Do You Do It?” And I tell them they can’t say it is to make money.

Oh, I sell parts to owners of construction equipment. I sit at a desk and make telephone calls to sell parts and I answer calls from customers wanting to purchase parts. Sounds really exciting, doesn’t it?

So, I asked everyone involved how can I help you with this job? How can I help make this exciting for you? Nobody came up with anything very good. We all agreed on that. So, we talked about it and argued about it and we finally agreed to do something beneficial for the customer and rewarding for the employees. And campaigns and promotions were born. We had fun, which was what I was trying to do and yes, we sold a lot of parts. The group of us, there were eight people on the counter and I started exploring different ideas and we had as much fun designing these things as well as executing them. Then we put together a plan. We called it a Promotion Planning Tree. I have put these campaigns and promotions into many dealers since. I would estimate over one hundred different dealerships around the world.

At Learning Without Scars, we have a Campaigns and Promotions class that goes through all of the ins and outs of putting these programs together. It is a three-hour program with reading materials, pretests, a video of power points with audio tracks and embedded film clips with some ten or quizzes inserted into the class before a final assessment and a customer experience survey leads the students who achieve an 80% score obtaining a certificate of accomplishment.

A little later we started naming these programs – “January Jumps” “February Frenzy” “March Madness” “April Angst” – I am sure you get the idea. Then we started having a Parts Managers Special of the week, month, or quarter depending on what the objective was for that particular program. We had GOALS for all of them. Of course, we paid commissions for these programs but we also built in individual and store competitions. The highest number of Sales, by person and store; the most improved sales performance, by a person and by a store. And we added a “booby prize.” The last place also won an award. This we did only by store. We had a trophy made. Use your imagination for what that trophy should be and go get one made. It doesn’t cost much. Have an award ceremony, and with what we have learned with Teams Meetings and Zoom you can get everyone on the line at the same time. Make a BIG deal out of this. NOTE: We do the same thing for the service department and the product support sales team. Have some fun. Enjoy yourself. It is not unprofessional to have fun, especially when you can get everyone excited about their jobs and create some friendly competition. It is also great to see your high performers get the public recognition that they deserve. We would put our results in the company newsletter. Get pictures taken and frame them (especially for the low-performance store – I never saw a store repeat as a low-performance store – people truly are competitive).

Who said that we couldn’t have fun doing our work, our jobs? Not me. Try it. I am sure you will like it, and yes you will sell more parts.

The time is now.

 

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Job Shock, Part Three

Job Shock, Part Three

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 Three.

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.

Job Shock Part Three: Solving the Pandemic & 2030 Employment Meltdown

Part III: The Kids & Workers Are Not “All Right”

Many students and workers cannot accept the new reality that they are undereducated for many jobs in this decade’s labor market, let alone future ones!

KNAPP has created a robot for warehouses with the dexterity to recognize and sort random items with 99 percent accuracy. Once such robots are put into operation, humans would continue to work alongside them, but the catch is that these workers will need a whole set of additional skills.

“If this happens 50 years from now,” stated Pieter Abbeel, an artificial intelligence professor at University of California, Berkeley, “there is plenty of time for the educational system to catch up to the job market.” The trouble with his prediction is that the COVID-19 pandemic has sped up companies’ plans to further automate workplaces today!

Throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, small business owners have consistently reported that the quality of labor was an important business problem. In a February 2021 National Federation of Independent Business survey 56 percent of the respondents were trying to hire and 91 percent of these employers reported few or no qualified applicants for their job openings.

This situation is the result of outdated regional education-to-employment systems across the United States. They have largely become broken pipelines with an inadequate flow of people qualified to fill local jobs. Unfortunately, this skills-jobs gap has persisted throughout the last two decades.  As labor economist, Kevin Hollenbeck wrote in 2013, “I am reminded of the adage about the frog in the pot. If you put a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will jump out. But if you put a frog in a pot of water and then slowly boil it, the consequences will be dire for the frog. . .. We (workers, employers, policymakers, and politicians) like that frog, have not been alarmed enough by the signals of a widening skills-jobs gap . . . to jump to action, and now we face the dire consequences in the form of a “talent cliff.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has made this talent cliff steeper.  The switch to remote schooling has meant that many students may be behind as much as a full grade level. Jobs go unfilled due to the lack of qualified applicants while more workers remain unemployed for six months or more and the labor-force participation decreases. Clearly the kids and workers are not “all right.” Denial or wishful thinking will not change this job shock reality.

Knowledge Shock

The 2017 film “Hidden Figures” focuses on the lives of three African-American women who NASA hired because of their advanced math attainments. Through making important contributions to NASA’s space mission, these women overcame race and gender discrimination, earned the respect of their co-workers, and secured career advancement. These three women are unsung heroes of the U.S. space race against the Soviet Union.

What was a major reason for their success?  With the long-term help of their parents, each of the women overcame formidable barriers to obtaining the educational preparation that developed their mathematical talents. Education is a shared responsibility between parents and schools. Education should begin at home. Habits of learning should be instilled there. Parents can help a child learn-how-to-learn by fostering each child’s personal talents and interests.

Unfortunately, America’s popular culture does not esteem educators or link educational attainment to success in life. Parents are the primary motivators of their children.  If parents do not believe that doing well in school is very important, neither will their children.

Many parents also believe that their local school is providing a good education to their children. Regretfully this is often not the case. Education levels have not kept pace with skill demands in workplaces.

There is ample evidence that K-12 education in the United States is not providing many students with the educational foundations needed for their future development. Every two years nationwide achievement tests are given to students in grades 4, 8, and 12. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) commonly called the “Nation’s Report Card” is conducted by the U.S. Department of Education. Recent results have been nothing short of alarming.

Students are ranked at four levels: below basic, basic, proficient (at grade level), and advanced (above grade level). The Grade 4 test results in 2019 were: 65 percent read below grade level, 26 percent were at grade level, and 9 percent were above grade level. Fourth grade is a crucial point for reading attainment because in the first three grades’ students are taught how to read, but by the fourth grade, they should have attained a level of reading proficiency that enables them to learn how to learn.

At grade 12 in 2019, 37 percent received NAEP reading scores of proficient or above. However, 30 percent were at the below basic level which was larger than in any previous assessment year. In math, only 24 percent of high school seniors were at the proficient or above levels.

Yet paradoxically the U.S. high school graduation rate has been rising. How can this be explained? Grade-level standards are being downgraded or bypassed. For instance, failing students are enrolled in special “credit recovery programs” that allow them to move on to the next grade or graduate with no or minimal academic standards for a passing grade. Clearly all high school degrees are not equal!

The NAEP scores indicate that a large proportion of U.S. students are not equipped with the basic educational foundation needed for success in post-secondary programs. About 67 percent of high school graduates attend higher educational institutions. After six years only about one-third complete a degree, certificate or apprenticeship.

Many of these students take either the SAT or ACT exams that are designed to access their readiness for higher learning. Between 1967 and 2017 overall test scores on these exams have declined. In 2019 only 37 percent of ACT takers and 45 percent of SAT takers tested fully ready for post-secondary programs.

Higher-educational institutions are compelled to offer remedial education for entering students. About 40 percent of entering freshmen are now enrolled in non-college credit reading, math, or written communication classes. At some institutions over 90 percent of entering students need remedial education. Poor student preparation is also leading to declining quality in higher education.

America does have excellent schools and universities. On the 2020 Social Progress Index the United States ranked first in the world in the quality of its universities. But on this same index, the United States ranked 91st in student access to a quality elementary/secondary education. Over the past decade the decline of the U.S. rank on this indicator has been greater than that any other nation. Unless widespread systemic reform of U.S. K-12 education becomes a national priority, a significant proportion of the next generation of American workers will be under-skilled for employment in the workplaces of the future.

COVID-19 Learning Consequences

Since March 2020 almost all K-12 students have been receiving at least some instruction remotely rather than in the classroom. When the pandemic subsides, what kind of learning losses can we expect?

  •  Millions of low-income and rural students lacked reliable internet access and about 3 million mainly low-income students were not enrolled in school. Many will likely fall behind a full grade level or more.
  • The longer the pandemic persists, the greater the harm to students being taught fully or partly online.
  • Online learning is less effective for younger students as their attention spans are limited, and it also negatively impacts their social skill development.
  • Two major testing services reported that the math scores of elementary students dropped 5 to 10 percentile points in fall 2020. Both noted that their 2020 testing pool was significantly smaller as dropouts or students lacking access to digital technology were absent.
  • High school dropout rates most likely will increase

COVID-19 has also led to a severe decline in enrollments at America’s community colleges. Student enrollment was down 10 percent in the fall of 2020 compared to that of 2019. Because community colleges are an important component of apprenticeship, certificate, and other job preparation programs, this is a significant blow to the development of a more skilled workforce. Moreover, community colleges are the most accessible post-secondary option for low-income Americans whose K-12 education has suffered most due to a lack of internet access.

The Best Time for Education Reform Is Now!

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the Brookings Report “Beyond Reopening Schools” cogently states “it is hard to imagine there will be another moment in history when the central role of education in the economic, social, and political prosperity and stability of nations is so obvious and well understood by the general population.”  Now clearly is the time for local, state, and federal action to revitalize K-12 education in the United States.

It is time to go beyond piecemeal reforms and playing “blame games” if we are to close the widening gap in the quality of U.S. education. There are some fundamental components of quality education that can be learned from the study of the world’s most successful educational systems.

  1. Great teachers: The key to boosting student results is improving instruction. Teachers need to thoroughly know their subjects and then receive extensive training and coaching in instructional methodology before and after they begin teaching. More top college students need to become teachers. To attract and retain these recruits, we need to front-load their compensation so that entry-level salaries are competitive with those of alternate professions. To keep their skills up-to-date, teachers need quality professional development programs throughout their careers.
  2. Effective Principals: School principals need to be educated and trained as both efficient administrators and drivers of instructional improvement. They have a key leadership role in fostering a culture of high expectations in educational attainment for teachers, students, and parents.
  3. Updated curriculums: All states need to mandate strengthened 21st-century curriculums to give more students the educational foundations necessary for high-skill/high-paying employment. To accommodate the diverse interests and talents of students, more options should be available at the high-school level including career education programs and advanced placement courses.
  4. The Key Role of Parents: The switch to remote schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have greatly increased parent awareness of the difficulties teachers face in keeping students engaged and in helping them make progress in their day-to-day learning. This should motivate parents to take a greater interest in the quality of the schooling their children are receiving and cooperate more fully in fostering their children’s daily academic progress.

The Looming Disaster of Job Shock

As low-skill jobs shrink due to automation, underprivileged elementary, high school and community college students will bear the brunt of technological advances. They are under threat of becoming the “technopeasants” of the 21st century.

We are referring to millions of our future workers who deserve an education systemically updated to meet the knowledge and skill demands of modern workplaces. America needs them to become part of a new talent pool for the 21st-century, not the victims of job shock.

Coming Next: “Job Shock Part IV”
Businesses across America now complain about the low skills of many job applicants. Yet, they often resist job training or employee reskilling programs. “Job Shock” will next review this paradox in our business culture and what needs to change to avoid potentially dire economic consequences over the next decade.

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Role-Playing is Essential for Sales Professionals

Role-playing is essential for Sales Professionals

This week, guest blogger Don Buttrey of Sales Professional Training offers us wisdom when it comes to our sales professionals: role-playing is essential! It is easy to overlook the benefits of role-playing in the professional environment, but these benefits cannot be overstated. If you are interested in what you see here today, you can reach out to Don here.

Professional athletes, accomplished musicians, battle-ready soldiers, doctors, pilots, and all professionals know that practice is essential. Pilots practice in simulators. Then after two months of ground training, they need to log more than 1,500 hours of flight experience. Quarterbacks run their patterns over and over.

You play as you practice. And in sales, it is no different.

Jerry Rice had a career as one of the greatest receivers in NFL history. Yet it was much more than just talent or good hands that made that a reality. Jerry had one of the most rigorous workout schedules in the NFL. Plus, we know that professional athletes watch a lot of films! They play back game film to critique strategy and execution. They must constantly improve to compete and win.

You play as you practice. If you want to make the big plays when it counts – your practice regimen is imperative.

So how can a sales professional get that essential practice? Granted, we can’t strap a GoPro cam to our head before meeting with a customer and then watch and critique it afterward. So, the only way to expose dangerous habits or feeble techniques is the method of role-playing. Role-plays are not real-life (and in the back of your head you know the other person is acting or improvising) but stuff will happen. You will see weaknesses or tendencies that you need to address and work on. Larry Bird, NBA superstar observed, “Coaches can talk and talk and talk about something, but if you get it on tape and show it to them, it is so much more effective.”

When you say “role-play”, most new hires start shaking in their boots. Some privately puke. But hey – they are new and probably expect intensive training or proving grounds. Some veterans (who are performing OK) might be threatened or fearful that they will be misjudged or condemned based on someone’s skewed opinions or branded sales techniques that may not apply to their customers or selling situations. A few successful veterans say, “bring it on – watch the master at work!” – only to bomb horribly. All this dread, fear, and mistrust is real. But it is not an excuse to just send your team out on the field every day and hope they are performing as sales professionals. Leaders need to know!

The answer to this need begins by adopting a proven sales curriculum, a standard pre-call planning process, and empowered servant leaders who coach and develop each sales professional with respect and consistency. Then, plan regular reinforcement, skill development and practice . . . on purpose. Put it on the calendar!

As a sales trainer over the last 25 years, I provided a starting point by conducting a sales training camp. I have always required a role-play exercise at the end of my training camps. Once the sales disciplines and the pre-call planning process were delivered in the seminar, a video-recorded and professionally critiqued role-play became the highest impact portion of the learning! The logistics required us to have lots of breakout rooms and equipment for the role-plays, but it was worth the effort. What was accomplished by the manager and I in each breakout room, one-on-one with each salesperson, far surpassed the impact of just lecture or teaching.

The training camp was meant to be the initiation into a regular culture of practice. The hope was that this first experience would remove the stigma and the invisible barrier to coaching. Role-playing should be part of a regimen of regular, ongoing practice! However, after a powerful training event ended, and everyone went back to busy schedules, it usually did not continue.

Today, Sales Professional Training has designed a new approach to training and practice that assures ongoing, sustainable sales team development. How? Well now, instead of a one-time seminar event, our complete sales training curriculum is delivered via web-based E-learning. It is on-demand and is digested and applied in short weekly increments that are processed with the sales manager and the team after each segment. Access to the course for review and reinforcement never expires. Clearly, this is much better than a one-time seminar where the salesperson feels like they are taking a drink out of a fire hydrant!

And here is the best part! The pandemic forced us to see past our paradigms and leverage the amazing technology at our fingertips. I now provide training and coaching for my clients that far surpasses what we could do in a seminar setting. Now, following completion of the E-learning version of The Four Pillars of the Sales Profession, we can role-play ‘virtually’ from different locations or branches. Zoom, Teams, and other virtual formats make it doable. No time, travel, or breakout room limitations!

No excuses.

Sales Professional Training is now offering role-play services! It is easy to implement and schedule virtually. I have been doing this service for other companies –and it is very high impact. They get more personal coaching from me and their manager in that hour than we could ever dream of doing in the logistics of a ‘live’ meeting!

Contact me and we will get role-play practice on your calendar!

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Learning Objectives and Why They Matter

Learning Objectives and Why They Matter

In tonight’s guest blog, Caroline Slee-Poulos talks to readers (and students) about learning objectives and why they matter.

Learning Objectives

If you remember more recent school days, you might be able to recall your teachers sharing your objective before each lesson. Depending upon where you are in the world, there might have been additional information provided to you: content standards, a learning map, a group recitation of the objective (this has a bit more from elementary school lessons than later years, of course).

Did any of you understand what you were doing with those objectives?

It really is a standard of best teaching practices to share the objective/s with students before a class begins. A learning objective is meant to tell a student what they should be able to DO or what they will KNOW at the end of the class. In other words, those learning objectives point you towards concrete actions and specific knowledge that will come from what you are studying. As a student, you should always know where you are going. The simple act of sharing those learning objectives can help you to focus on the subject at hand, and measure the course against those objectives.

How do you know you have mastered the content if you don’t know what mastery in the subject area actually is? As in so many aspects of life, communication is key.

Learning objectives should always be clear, specific, and focus the teaching and learning that will take place during the class.

Look back on your own education. Did you know what you were supposed to know and be able to do at the end of every class? Did your teachers share your learning objectives at the outset of every lesson? Importantly, did the class help you to achieve those objectives?

Learning should be intentional, and the way you are taught should be equally intentional. Whether you are in an online course or a face-to-face program, it is a joint effort taking place between the teacher and the student.

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Job Shock, Part One

Job Shock, Part One

This week, we are proud to introduce a new guest blogger, Edward E. Gordon. In Job Shock, Part One, Gordon is beginning a three-week series of thoughts for your consideration. The founder and president of Imperial Consulting Corporation in Chicago, Gordon 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. 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.

Job Shock Part One: Solving the Pandemic & 2030 Employment Meltdown

Introducing a New White Paper.

Part I: Introduction: Why Read This?

Welcome to the Fourth Industrial Revolution in a COVID-19 challenged world economy. Their combined impact on the U.S. job market will stretch to 2030 and beyond. Say hello to “Job Shock!”

“Job Shock: Solving the Pandemic and 2030 Employment Meltdown” will be released as monthly topical Gordon Reports. This will give readers a greater opportunity to consider their outlook on the future of employment. “Job Shock” will present our most up-to-date research on the future of the U.S. labor market over the coming decade. We will review both long-term and short-term problems and solutions to them that are now underway across the United States. “Job Shock’s” premise is that America’s students and workers are as much in need of knowledge injections as they are of vaccine injections against COVID-19.

Defining the Realities of Job Shock

Technologies that have transformed American workplaces now require higher skills. The United States is not creating more high-pay, low-skilled jobs; it is creating more high-pay, higher-skilled jobs.  Unless we confront the reality of this talent mismatch, we face a decade in which there will be too many unskilled people without jobs who run a high risk for lives in poverty and too many skilled jobs without people. This potentially threatens to undermine the broader economy and increase the social disruption that has already begun.

In today’s job market at least 50 percent of today’s “good jobs” (those with higher pay and benefits) do not require four-year college degrees. These jobs need students who graduate from high school with a good general educational foundation, i.e., strong reading/math comprehension, good written and verbal communication abilities, problem-solving and teamwork skills. Students then need to obtain a career certificate, apprenticeship, or a two-year degree from a technical or community college. We are not preparing enough students for the talent realities of the current U.S. job market.

The United States has millions of well-educated, talented workers.  But the unrelenting demands of Job Shock tell us that we will need to double their numbers over this decade to run our high-tech economy.

Job Shock from COVID-19

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated this skills gap and sped up employment meltdowns. It caused the sharpest increase in the official U.S. unemployment rate ever recorded, rising from 3.5 percent in February 2020 to a peak of 14.7 percent in April. At the close of 2020, 12 million of the 22 million jobs lost at the start of the pandemic had been regained. The December unemployment rate of 6.7 percent reflects the number of workers permanently laid off because of the pandemic. The labor force participation rate also remains low.

But the effect of COVID upon different industries and jobs has been very uneven. The leisure and hospitality sector has been particularly hard hit with its low-wage workers experiencing the greatest job loss. Payrolls for couriers and messengers have increased by over 20 percent.

While many businesses lay off workers, others are struggling to fill job vacancies. Overall U.S. businesses continue to cut job training programs, further widening the skills gap. Businesses are increasing investments in automation and technologies that facilitate remote work. The continuing Fourth Industrial Revolution will further raise demands for workers with the skills needed to invent, use, maintain, or repair advanced technologies.

The COVID-19 pandemic is illustrating that skill shortages can have lethal results.   COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers have hundreds of vacant jobs in such areas as engineering and quality control. There are acute shortages of critical-care doctors and nurses as well as lab technicians to process COVID tests.  How many of the over 400,000 dead (greater than the death toll of the U.S. armed forces in World War II) could have been saved if we had fewer shortages of medical personnel in COVID hot spots?

Also, the skilled people we take for granted to meet our daily needs are in short supply. As computer systems have become more and more central to our daily lives, breakdowns and threats to the security of our private information proliferate. Finding a qualified plumber, carpenter, electrician or medical technologist has become more difficult in many communities. If more effective talent development efforts are not initiated, there is a real danger that the world will not end in a big bang, but that it will come to a slow grinding halt due to a lack of workers with the skills needed to maintain advanced technologies. Welcome to Job Shock!

Job Shock Objectives

The goal of the “Job Shock White Paper” is to raise awareness of the broad scope of the changes needed to equip students with the education and skills needed for 21st-century jobs and careers. And we must retrain workers with the specific skills needed by employers. There are solutions already underway in communities across the United States that can help your local area. But these solutions are not easily available to all.

We see the most promising responses to Job Shock coming from regional cross-sector partnerships composed of business owners and managers, educators, parents, government officials, union leaders, non-profit associations, and others. These partnerships have begun regionalized initiatives to rebuild their outdated education-to-employment systems.

“Job Shock” is a call to action. We need to work together in initiating the systemic changes needed to prepare more people for better-paying jobs and thus create a more equitable and prosperous economy over this decade.

Part II of “Job Shock” will provide an overview of how technology has dramatically transformed workplaces and occupational requirements over the last 50 years. Unfortunately, other parts of American society have failed to adapt to these labor market changes thus contributing to the social unrest the United States is now experiencing.  We invite to submit your questions or comments by email or by calling us in Chicago at 312.664.5196.

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Imagination Can Provoke Performance

Imagination CAN Provoke Performance.

Tonight, our founder and managing executive Ron Slee describes for readers the different ways that our imagination can provoke performance.

As we continue to develop products within our Learning Without Scars employee development platform, I am constantly pushing to find the tools and the means to provoke individual performance from the people who enroll in our classes and assessments. Typically, that starts with me. I am trying to provoke myself to accomplish more. It seems as if I have been on some type of mission my whole life. I am driven to help people achieve their potential. Talk about tilting at windmills.

But that is me. That is who I am. I am constantly looking around the next corner, asking questions, wondering how to do things in a better way. It seems that has been my approach since I was a little boy. I am impatient. I am curious. I am driven. I once asked a man, that I had worked with in three businesses, how easy I had been to work with. He started laughing. He said I was never easy to work with at all. At first, I felt insulted but I eventually understood what he meant. I didn’t like to fail at anything I did. Sometimes it just took a little longer than I wanted.

Years ago, I used to go to bed with a pad and pen on my night table. I would wake up in the middle night and write down some brilliant idea that had occurred to me. You see it couldn’t wait until morning. I might forget it. I stopped doing that when I couldn’t read my writing in the morning. My wife, Marlene, signed me up for acupuncture to address what she called my “busy mind.” The acupuncturist was a wonderful lady named June. After several sessions she called Marlene and told her to stop wasting her money, this wasn’t going to work. I still suffer this way. I am sure that I am far from alone in this regard.

Albert Einstein said that “imagination is more important than knowledge.” Think about that for a moment. Alfred North Whitehead a Harvard professor of Philosophy thought of all education as “the imaginative acquisition of knowledge.”

We are entering into an age of constant learning. Adult education. In a recent Podcast with Ed Gordon, we talked about the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The one we are in at the moment. He put forward two critical points that we have to face about the workforce.

  • Business doesn’t feel they need to train their employees once hired.
  • Employees don’t feel they need to continue to learn once they leave school.

So how is this going to work with the workplace over the next ten or twenty or thirty years? Ed suggests the following outcomes.

  • A third of the workforce will be fine, they are educated and have a purpose.
  • A third of the workforce is undereducated and has no purpose.
  • A third of the workforce has dropped out for whatever reason.

So let us return to the imagination. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “imagination is not a talent of some men but is the health of all men.” In athletics, it is called “Visualization.” You are taught to visualize the result that you want. Our imagination allows us to take flights of fancy. Imagine what it would be like if this happens or if that happens. I am going to hit this golf ball right down the middle of the fairway. I can see the path the ball will follow on the green right into the hole. Use your imagination and think of something you would like to happen.

That is how we can get to the place that we imagine. We turn our imagination into performance. We strive to make real that which we have imagined. If we can only use our imagination and then set goals, or have a sense of purpose, towards accomplishing what our imagination showed us was possible we would all be in a different place.

As I said I am interested in helping each person achieve their potential. The difficulty is understanding what that potential might be. In life, I believe that each person has three attributes that they live with every day.

  • Everyone wants to do well at whatever they do.
  • Everyone can do more than they realize.
  • Everyone is fundamentally lazy.

Think about that. Imagine that is you. Then translate imaginative thought into performance so that you will achieve more than you thought was possible. Then you will start to understand “The Art of the Possible.”

The time is now.

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