We are resurrecting the Insight brand with a new mission. Previously we provided “Twenty Group” services to small groups of dealers, twelve in our case, who had an interest in best practice approaches for their business. We operated many groups for over a decade and appreciated the opportunity to assist in their profitable development. Each group improved their Company net income a minimum of three percentage points and in some cases improved their net income performance by as much as ten points. It is a credit to their leadership that this happened.
We are now in the process of creating an evaluation tool for dealers in a new alliance with Foresight Intelligence, to build on our experiences within the “Twenty Group” framework and our Consulting practice over the past thirty five years.
Foresight Intelligence is our choice as a business partner in this venture. They are experts in turning data into actionable information, which serves both as guideposts and drivers for effective change. Foresight Intelligence have worked with many dealers and enabled them to view all their metrics in a single place, in visually appealing charts that are easy to understand and act upon. Your metrics are easily benchmarked against the best and your improvements are continuously in front of you. This panoramic and in depth visibility is critical in executing our proven strategies to increase performance and profitability.
Together we are building a business model which everyone can have access to and use either via R.J. Slee & Associates or Foresight Intelligence.
We will provide an input template for a participating Company to use, this will be for the dealer to submit their information, either openly or confidentially. That basic data entry will be processed through our “Financial Fitness Models” and the results will be presented to the dealer on line. The key will be a graphic presentation of the dealer position relative to key metrics by department, which we use in our business at R.J. Slee & Associates. This will be the foundation for the “Financial Fitness Model.” This will allow the dealer to evaluate their individual performance against minimum acceptable performance criteria developed through our work with over one thousand dealers worldwide.
The dealer then is welcome to proceed and determine how to improve their operations as they see fit or they can use the services we will provide to assist in those efforts. We are developing a menu of options for the dealer to select from should they desire out assistance. This will range from “Typical Improvement Options (TIPS)” through to comprehensive consulting engagements with “Associated Content Experts (ACE’s).” We are currently building a network of Industry Experts who have retired and wish to be able to share their expertise with dealers.
We are extremely excited about this venture and our relationship with Foresight Intelligence. We will be making more comprehensive announcements as our products are finalized and ready for dealers everywhere to utilize.
The time is now.
Insight has an Exciting Future
We are resurrecting the Insight brand with a new mission. Previously we provided “Twenty Group” services to small groups of dealers, twelve in our case, who had an interest in best practice approaches for their business. We operated many groups for over a decade and appreciated the opportunity to assist in their profitable development. Each group improved their Company net income a minimum of three percentage points and in some cases improved their net income performance by as much as ten points. It is a credit to their leadership that this happened.
We are now in the process of creating an evaluation tool for dealers in a new alliance with Foresight Intelligence, to build on our experiences within the “Twenty Group” framework and our Consulting practice over the past thirty five years.
Foresight Intelligence is our choice as a business partner in this venture. They are experts in turning data into actionable information, which serves both as guideposts and drivers for effective change. Foresight Intelligence have worked with many dealers and enabled them to view all their metrics in a single place, in visually appealing charts that are easy to understand and act upon. Your metrics are easily benchmarked against the best and your improvements are continuously in front of you. This panoramic and in depth visibility is critical in executing our proven strategies to increase performance and profitability.
Together we are building a business model which everyone can have access to and use either via R.J. Slee & Associates or Foresight Intelligence.
We will provide an input template for a participating Company to use, this will be for the dealer to submit their information, either openly or confidentially. That basic data entry will be processed through our “Financial Fitness Models” and the results will be presented to the dealer on line. The key will be a graphic presentation of the dealer position relative to key metrics by department, which we use in our business at R.J. Slee & Associates. This will be the foundation for the “Financial Fitness Model.” This will allow the dealer to evaluate their individual performance against minimum acceptable performance criteria developed through our work with over one thousand dealers worldwide.
The dealer then is welcome to proceed and determine how to improve their operations as they see fit or they can use the services we will provide to assist in those efforts. We are developing a menu of options for the dealer to select from should they desire out assistance. This will range from “Typical Improvement Options (TIPS)” through to comprehensive consulting engagements with “Associated Content Experts (ACE’s).” We are currently building a network of Industry Experts who have retired and wish to be able to share their expertise with dealers.
We are extremely excited about this venture and our relationship with Foresight Intelligence. We will be making more comprehensive announcements as our products are finalized and ready for dealers everywhere to utilize.
The time is now.
Training Tidbits #7
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.
Friday Filosophy v2014-18
All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of the people of their time.
John Kenneth Galbraith
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
Aristotle
Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
Albert Einstein
The time is now…..
Friday Filosophy v2014-17
Compassion and tolerance are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength.
Dalai Lama
The greatest men sometimes overshoot themselves, but then their very mistakes are lessons of instruction.
Tom Browne
A stumble may prevent a fall.
English Proverb
The time is now…..
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:-
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.
Friday Filosophy v2014-16
Once you say you are going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life.
John F. Kennedy
I believe that the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master of that line.
Andrew Carnegie
The power of imagination makes us infinite.
John Muir
The time is now…..
Friday Filosophy v2014-15
A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead and the unborn could do it no better.
Martin Luther King
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.
Peter Drucker
If a man lives a pure life, nothing can destroy him.
Buddha
The time is now…..
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.
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.
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.