Teaching and Learning

/in /by

Teaching and Learning

As many of you know I grew up in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The family rented in the city of Montreal and we owned a small, old house in the Laurentians, about an hour north of Montreal. Our house was on the end of a lake and the lake was home to a Country Club where, as kids, we learned to swim, play tennis, to canoe, play golf and other summer activities. The lessons were $5.00/per month and for that price we received 12 lessons, three a week, that lasted between 30 minutes and forty-five minutes. It was a wonderful way to grow up.

However, from an early age my life was split into two pieces: the city for work and the country for play.

Fast forward to my teenage years and I became involved with teaching swimming, first to children at the lake, and then to students at University. I was very lucky to have been given these opportunities at such an early age. The teaching soon moved from teaching specific skills to allow people to learn “how to” swim to teaching people how to “teach others” to teach specific skills, such as coaching and directing athletic learning. We created a program that allowed prospective athletes to learn the necessary to teach skills of coaching and teaching. I ended up teaching aspiring teachers how to teach at the University level.

I have been involved with teaching for a long time, more than 50 years. Teaching is a very interesting discipline and I have to admit that I love to teach. I love seeing the lights go on when a student “gets it.”

I approach teaching from a number of, in my mind, critical evolutionary steps.

First is “Pictures.”

I believe in “showing” people what the goal is we are working toward. This is what we call, in our classroom work “What It Looks Like When It Is Right.” This is now part of the Building Blocks Level of parts and service management training.

Next comes Story Telling.

I move to telling stories about what it is that they just saw in the picture. A story to describe what the picture was all about. Story telling is an important aspect of nearly everything that we do. Leading people is enhanced with good stories. Selling is all about story telling. Story telling allows the listener to more easily understand what is being taught.

Pictures Again.

A repetitive process to “imprint” the end result on the mind of the student. This is what we are doing, this is how we are doing it, do you see the picture? This allows us to follow my three critical precepts in leadership and also in driving change.

  • Understanding: everyone has to understand what we are doing. What are our goals and objectives?
  • Acceptance: everyone has to accept that what we are doing is the right thing to do. This means that we have to be open to a vigorous debate about our goals and objectives. This is a critical element of leadership and one that is not that common. Allow everyone’s thoughts to be heard and respected.
  • Commitment: Once we have these three steps completed and with strong agreement then we will have everyone committed to making it happen.

Teaching and Learning and…

That takes me to Socrates. Society has a polarity to it. There are competing views on nearly everything that we do and have done. Socrates did not want to get into the debate of what is right and wrong he simply pursued “Wisdom.” In the process he created “philosophy.”

In his approach, in much the same manner as we have created out learning offerings, he constantly was asking questions. What is a good market capture rate? How should we measure market capture? What is a good parts availability? Does that include your overnight delivery or is it right off the shelf? Lots and lots of questions. That is the foundation of how I teach and also how the Learning Without Scars.

Many people, who I respect, and have worked with over the years, say that the name of the Company is incorrect, they say it is the wrong name. The Company should be “Learning WITH Scars.” That could be one interpretation. I want people to engage in a fundamental understand on what they do. That requires thought. Remember Simon Sinek? His book “Start with Why” is truly thought provoking and enlightening.

He asks three basic questions:

  1. What do you do?
  2. How do you do it?
  3. Why do you do it?

The first question should be very easy to state. The second question perhaps a bit more difficult but after all that is what you do every day at work. It is the last question that is the poser. And, NO, the answer is not that you do this to make money. It is never the reason why. That is the result of doing what you do. The better you do it the more money you will receive.

The Time is NOW.

The Parts Business Going Forward

/in , , , /by

The Parts Business Going Forward.

Let me ask a few questions, of you, if I might:

  • What does your future in the parts business look like?
  • Is it a continuation of what you are doing now?
  • Are the results you are experiencing satisfying for you personally?
  • Is that the best you can do?
  • If you can do more what is holding you back?

By now you’re probably thinking, “WOW. That isn’t fair. You ask tough questions.”

Here is something to consider. If you continue to do what you have been doing you are facing extinction. That is a fact. I am 100% in agreement with that statement. Are you?

Let’s have a look at what goes on today. The phone rings or someone walks into your store, what many of you call your branch. An employee, in your parts department, if they aren’t already busy, will greet the customer. They will then proceed to determine what the customer needs. What is the customer doing? Rarely is that question asked. Would that question be helpful? Of course, it would be helpful. Then the parts employee will open up his computer system, if the parts employee knows who the customer is they can proceed to open a parts sales order. If they don’t know the customer they have to ask. And then they find the customer on their business system and then proceed to open a parts sales order.

How about processing parts orders for the service group? Does your technician walk to a back counter? Then a parts employee and the technician determine what parts are required for the work? Or perhaps the technician calls into the parts department and the process is similar to a customer parts sales order. Does the technician order their own parts using an electronic catalogue of the parts and service manuals and enter their parts orders to your business system themselves?

How about an instore display area? Do you have one? How do you operate the instore area? What is the number of customers coming in to your store on a daily/weekly basis to place parts orders? How many parts are sold from the instore displays on a daily/weekly basis?

Finally, we come to the internet. Do you have a facility that will allow your customers to place their orders online? How often are customers looking at your web site? How many customers check on your parts inventory availability? How many customers check your prices online? Do you allow your customers to have access to an electronic catalogue? Do you allow your customers to have access to service manual information online? How many customers place orders online through your website on a daily/weekly basis? Does your business system provide statistics on the number of customers visiting daily/weekly? How about price checks on the same frequency? How about availability checks for the same frequency? If a customer checks prices and availability but does not place an order does your business system notify the parts department daily on which customers were involved? Does a parts employee call the customer when that happens and determine what the customer was looking for and if they in fact found what they needed?

I guess the real question is “Are you working in the business or on the business?”

Perhaps even more directly are you in the order processing business or the selling business?

Or finally, are you in the parts business or the part number business?

The answer to these many questions should provoke some serious thinking.

As Jack Welsh used to say “when the world around you are changing at a rate faster than you are …. The end is near.”

The decisions you make will be with you for a long, long time.

The Time is NOW.

Simple Steps to Big Results

/in , , /by

In our Industry, what is it that we DO?  What is the action that is involved in creating employee and customer satisfaction?  There are simple steps we can take to gain big results.

Employee satisfaction requires knowing what to do – if an employee can measure their own job performance, there is a sense of a job well done.  It may seem obvious, but it is worth mentioning: we all have to know what our job entails.  We need to know what it is that we DO!

This spills over into creating customer satisfaction, because the simple steps each of our heroes will take every day will be what sets us apart to our customers.  We become their partners in business, instead of a vendor or supplier.

There are simple steps to take, to gain those big results.

The time is now.

Talents and Skills

/in , , /by

Learning Without Scars was created to fill a void in the Capital Goods Industries, specifically the light and heavy equipment space.

With technical schools closing at an alarming rate the markets we serve were becoming unable to find the talents and skills they required in the operational areas of the business, parts and service specifically. I have written extensively on the German trade school structures and the benefits it provides German employers. We no longer have a viable trade school preparation for the parts business.

To that end, here at LWS we have developed training programs for the parts counter job functions. We have the same for the parts office and the service office. We also have programs for the parts warehouse, for service writers and service foreman and lead hands. All of these programs were created after dealer customers had expressed a need and a desire to help employee development.

The report from Edward Gordon, a colleague, is a clear affirmation of why we are doing what we do in training.

I would like to pose a question to everyone. What are you doing to attract new employees, to retain the ones you have and to develop all of your employees to meet the needs of future job?

There is a critical need on our Industry. Without the proper number of talented and skilled employees your business is at risk.   

The Time is NOW.

 

Please read this Edward Gordon article.

Knowledge Shock Part V: Job Evolution Causes Skill Shortages and A Search for Solutions

Job Evolution 1970-2010

In 1970 John, whose father was a plumber, graduated from high school. He began working in a Midwestern automotive-parts factory. It had an entry-level job training program and paid him a good wage. At that time, about 66 percent of entry-level jobs in manufacturing and other employment sectors required only a high school diploma. Business management and professional positions required a college education. Also, apprenticeship completion or specific skill-training certificates were needed to qualify for some mid-skilled occupations.

 Fast forward to 1990 when John’s daughter Linda became an office file clerk after graduating from high school. She found out technologies had changed occupational skill requirements in both offices and factories. High school graduation was no longer a passport to the middle class. By 1990, 55 percent of jobs required education or training beyond high school. However, many employers offered workers on-the-job training.

John’s grandson, George, was always interested in cars. After high school graduation in 2010, George decided to seek employment in an auto-production plant. But he was surprised to discover that a largely unrecognized Fourth Industrial Revolution had radically changed entry-level jobs requirements. Robots now performed many repetitive tasks on car assembly lines. George also learned that this local auto factory only sought workers who could operated computer-controlled equipment. Working on teams, they also need needed to have the technical skills required to assemble many different auto models in smaller runs as sales orders came in from the manufacturer’s dealer network. The plant had no entry-level job training. Applicants were expected to be job ready from day one!

By 2010, low-skill jobs had declined to only 33 percent of the U.S. labor market. They were also low paying jobs. The majority of even mid-level occupations now required special career training beyond high school.

Talent Shortages by the Numbers

In 2010 there were about 97 million mid-level and higher skilled jobs across the United States. Yet only 43 million American workers met the general education and career training requisites to fill them.  U.S. businesses made up a national gap of 54 million skilled workers through increasing automation, importing skilled foreign workers, poaching workers from competitors, or exporting higher skilled jobs to overseas locations with the requisite talent pool. Only about 20 percent of U.S. businesses offered job training programs. This talent shortfall resulted in 4 million vacant jobs across the U.S. economy.

Over the next decade the skills-jobs disconnect continued to expand. By 2017 two-thirds of jobs in the U.S. labor market required workers with post-secondary specialized career training. International talent shortages had also increased, making it much more difficult for U.S. businesses to either import talent or find an off-shore location with the needed skilled workers. A global talent showdown had begun in earnest. In 2017 nine million jobs remained unfilled across the United States. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates a loss of $26,000 per vacant job in profit or productivity for a business. This represents an over $230 billion loss to the U.S. economy.

The U.S. talent shortfall is a significant part of a much broader global talent train wreck. The worldwide estimate of 2022 job vacancies range from 45 to 95 million skilled positions. Many recent surveys of American executives place this talent crisis at the top or near the top of management concerns. For example, a 2018 survey conducted by the Associated General Contractors of America indicated that this industry will be short two million skilled craft professionals by 2020. A recent National Association of Manufacturers survey for the first time reported  “attracting and retaining a quality workforce” as the respondents’ top business challenge.This was also the case in the February survey of the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Ninety percent of businesses seeking workers reported “few or no qualified applicants” for open positions.

Two Major Skills Initiatives

Two significant approaches for confronting the escalating shortages of skilled workers are gaining momentum. The “2017 Training Industry Report” (Training, November 2017) showed that U.S. businesses made an unprecedented $23 billion increase in worker training in the past year. Total expenditures rose from $70.6 billion to $93.6 billion or 32.5 percent. The majority of these funds were invested in specific job raining programs for workers rather than in management education programs as in years past. Over the past few months there has been some increase in the labor participation rate. It is an indication that more companies are again beginning to offer job training to new hires. This is opening the possibility of employment to so called “discouraged workers” who until recently have been sitting on the U.S. labor-market sidelines because their skills were not up-to-date.

A second more comprehensive approach to tacking the current skills crisis are regional public-private partnerships focused on economic development and reforming the education-to-employment system. These Regional Talent Innovation Networks (RETAINs) offer a process for reinventing their local talent-delivery systems. In the short term, these cross-sector initiatives composed of businesses, educational institutions, unions, government agencies, and non-profit community groups focus on retraining workers and the unemployed with the skills currently needed to fill the vacant jobs of regional employers. RETAINs are of particular value to small businesses as they offer a viable way of pooling their resources to inform, attract, and prepare skilled workers to fill jobs.

In the long term, RETAINs seek to rebuild the workforce pipeline through raising K-12 educational standards and implementing career-skills preparation programs. Beginning in elementary school students need to be well grounded in reading, writing, mathematics, and verbal communication skills. To accommodate the wide diversity of students’ aptitudes and interests, a wider diversity of high school programs are needed such as STEM academies, career education programs, and pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship options. This means more students will leave high school with solid educational foundations that prepare them to successfully complete the post-secondary career education and training needed to fill today’s and tomorrow’s ever-rising job requirements. It is notable that the High School Inc. Foundation (previously profiled in  Gordon Report) has received the 2018 Citation for Career Education and Excellence from the American Association for Career Education for its leadership role in the development of six career academies at the Valley High School in Santa Ana, California. The High School Inc. Foundation is a good example of the over 1,000 RETAINs now operating across America.

More information on many local RETAIN “brands” across the United states is now available in an updated paperback edition of Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis published by Praeger in March 2018. It offers many case studies of the the accomplishments of these cross-sector partnerships in updating regional training and education programs and thus reviving local economies.

The Urgent Need for Action Addressing the Skills Crisis

Unless business investments in job training are drastically increased and the RETAIN movement grows exponentially, by 2022 the skills-jobs disconnect will have a dire impact on the U.S. economy. America is facing a demographic tsunami of 30 million baby boomers retiring from the workforce. In the cohort of millennials entering the workforce, only about thirty percent have the education and skills needed for advanced technology workplaces, but at least sixty percent need to be at this level for the high tech, knowledge-based economy of 2022.

The Gordon Report “Knowledge Shook Series” has spotlighted some of the most crucial forces behind the jobs-skills crisis. We have examined how American culture across the business community, schools, unions, and parents has failed to keep pace with the significant knowledge expansion required by technology change. We have also seen how popular culture can promote addiction to social media and other internet venues that reduce cognitive development and interpersonal skill growth. Over the past decade Knowledge Shock has morphed into Job Shock as many American workers now fear that escalating technology changes have placed their jobs at great risk. Inventing technology has proved to be the easy part; changing society’s cultural willingness to place education and workforce training on steroids remains very difficult. 

As technology has continued to expand job requirements, simplistic populist solutions for protecting jobs and industries are being advanced by the extreme right and left of the U.S. political spectrum. Populists offer a new form of tribalism. By dividing society into many warring factions, they seek to attack and eliminate the “enemy” opposition rather than pursue consensus through negotiation. This tribalism is in direct opposition to the democratic beliefs and traditions upon which our great American Republic was founded and has developed over the past 242 years. We remain fundamentally opposed to this attempt to undermine U.S. society.

As we contend with this social divisiveness, the American general public needs to be made aware of the urgent need to answer the two great questions of Job Shock.     

  1. Why has technology growth clearly outpaced the knowledge development of the U.S. workforce?
  2. How can we develop a new consensus that will lead to the overall growth of a well-educated American workforce?

The answers to these social issues will define how well we make the historic employment transition that America now faces. Failure is not an option.

Edward E. Gordon is president and founder of Imperial Consulting Corporation (www.imperialcorp.com). His book, Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis, a winner of an Independent Publishers award, is now available in an updated 2018 paperback edition. 

Finally, the Employees!

/in /by

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

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

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

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

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

Where are we going to find these employees?

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

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

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

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

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

Ignore this at your peril.

The time is now.

Your Stakeholders – Back to Basics

/in , , , , /by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The time is now.

Back to the Basics: Your Customers

/in , , /by

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

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

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

 

Without your customers you have nothing.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

The time is now.

Emotional Intelligence in a Changing World

/in , , /by

How does EQ fit today?

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

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

At the core of the book is the following statement:

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

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

Why am I focused on EI this week you ask?

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

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

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

How about you?

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

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

The time is now.

Drones and You!

/in , , /by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time have certainly changed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The time is now.

Cloud Based Technologies

/in , /by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The time is now.