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Job Shock, Part Three

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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This situation is the result of outdated regional education-to-employment systems across the United States.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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Parts Market Capture and HeadCount

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Parts Market Capture and HeadCount

In his blog post this week, Learning Without Scars Founder and Managing Member Ron Slee talks to readers about parts market capture and the headcount.

Parts Market Capture and HeadCount

One of the deep memories that I have is 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 come in Tsunamis: high hard and fast tidal waves. It is almost impossible at times during the day to keep up. This has been especially true since the early 1980s when the Heavy Equipment Dealer business model was changed.

In the late 70s inflation was out of control reaching levels we had never before experienced. Then Paul Volker, when Ronald Reagan was President, decided to fix it once and for all. At some points, interest rates went into levels in the low 20% range. It was catastrophic for many dealers who went out of business due to impossibly high levels of debt. The solution for most dealers was to cut down on people. The personnel expense was and still is, the highest “variable” cost in the business. So, they reduced the number of people on the counter, in many cases eliminated the Product Support Sales function, and cut back on people throughout the dealership.

It should be noted that the parts market capture rates also peaked in the late 1970s and have been in decline ever since. We just have not delivered the levels of customer service that were required by equipment owners and operators. Given our failure to deliver the level of service they had come to expect, they started to look around at the suppliers in their markets.  Our customers found very willing competitors who wanted to sell them parts. Today we are somewhere in the range of market capture rates that are about half of what they were in the 1970s. From the 1970s to the 2010s we lost half of the available parts market to our competition. Rather unbelievable to consider, isn’t it?  For the traditional parts market share leader, they went from the low 80% range to the high 30% range.

To some degree, the problem is that as an industry we don’t have a standard measure of market potential or market share. The equipment sales teams all have market share calculations to three decimal places. The AEM (Association of Equipment Manufacturers) produces statistics regularly for machines, but nothing for parts and service. By not having a measure available the parts department is given a pass on market share performance. We don’t know what the market share is so we don’t worry about it. I strenuously object.

We can determine our market potential and we can calculate our market share but it requires work. It is fundamental work. We have to know the working machine population in our territory. I believe the most significant question to ask today is why don’t I know my machine population? I have long written about, talked about at conventions, taught in classrooms and in webinars and in internet-based classes, the fact that if you don’t know your machine population you don’t know your business. I am very serious about that statement.

Today, less than half of the machine owners in any dealer territory have been contacted by an employee of the dealership. If you don’t believe me, check it out for yourself. Take a list of your parts sales by customer and sort it in descending purchases. The bottom 50% of those customers have not been contacted by an employee of your dealership in the last year.

I know, you will tell me that they didn’t buy enough to warrant the expense of a call. Wonderful. You will tell me they are so small that they don’t matter to you or your business. I disagree. If you are honest with yourself you will agree with me. Every single customer matters. One day they might replace a machine and who will they contact? You? I doubt it. You left them they didn’t leave you and I don’t believe that you deserve to be considered for that reason alone.

The other problem to consider is that you don’t have enough people to do that work. I agree with you. You have cut back on the number of people to the degree that you don’t have enough people left to do the necessary work. At the counter and telephone selling job function, we have become order processors: the men and women working their work with “their hair going straight back.” They never pick up a phone without someone on the other side of the call. Check it out.

In the 1980s I wrote a lot about the dealer models and again I brought it back in the period following 2008. We had a model, we had business metrics and measures, and we had standards. In the 1980s the standard parts sales per parts employee were $600,000 per year. This needs to get adjusted with variables of gross profit and average unit value of the part and the economics of the region. We had a standard of personnel expense in the parts set at 7% of parts sales. Putting that together, we had $600,000 sales per employee at 7% of parts sales which meant compensation equal to $42,000/year. By today’s standards and skill requirements that is low. Assuming a compensation of $60,000 then sales per employee go up to around $850,000.

Make the adjustment and then you have the proper number of people for doing the job the way the job was done in the 1980s. That means that we need additional staff if we want to contact “ALL” of your customers regularly. With new changes in market and customer coverage, you will continue to lose market capture and make yourself more vulnerable to competitors. Is that what you intend to have happen? I didn’t think so.

The time is now.

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Principia for After-sales, Part Two

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Principia for After-sales, Part Two

Today, Ryszard Chciuk continues his blogs on Principia for after-sales with part two of the series.

In Principia for After-sales and a few next posts, I am sharing my way of defining and implementing the main principles (values). This post is about the potential conflict between personal and company values, how I was writing value definitions, and the importance of constant reminding and following of the main principles.

Theoretically, every new employee joining our team brings his/her own values and his/her own life mission. Unfortunately, many people are not aware of what kind of values they are subscribed to. Thus, both they and their employer can make a mistake when signing the employment contract. But from the other side human consciousness is flexible. Hopefully, he/she will soon realize the values of the company are not in opposition to their private values or they are enough convincing to subscribe to them. And their private life missions can be realized ­– to a certain level – by working for the chosen company.

I numbered the main principles because usually, they conflict with one another. For example, which value is more important: profitability of your department or care of people and environment (it covers also safety)? What gets higher priority: integrity or profitability? If you don’t know, the right answer is indicated by the number of the principle on the list (number 1 has the highest priority).

Some time ago I learned from Start with Why by Simon Sinek that values have to be verbs. He is definitely right. I should articulate my No 1 principal “Integrity” with the sentence “Always do the right thing”. The No 2 principle should be expressed with the words “Always take care of your co-worker, customer, supplier, investor and of all kind of life”. The No 3 “Profitability” means “Not everything we do has to be profitable, but without money, we will not exist as the organization”. The No 4 “Excellence” stands for “We are satisfied with nothing less than the very best in everything we do” (I use the same definition as in Enron’s statement).

On each occasion, I was explaining to my people what our main principles meant and I was using examples taken from the life of our after-sales organization. As I mentioned already in the post Future is Now – Part 2, that kind of presentation was usually taking place in the course of the introductory training. It was led not later than several weeks after starting the job. We worked out that unique training program with the kind collaboration of Impact Polka. It comprised of two sessions (two working days each). And it was mandatory for every new employee. As the opening lecturer, I presented there our department’s long-term goals (vision), the main principles (values), and our mission. Later on, the after-sales team members had to hear it again, and again. Additionally, once a year, during the annual company meeting I presented it to all employees of the dealership.

The leader must prove all the time, everything he is doing himself is up to the common, agreed, and persistently promoted principles. Employees mostly follow their leaders. Employees never follow the company values if the superiors break principles, both in a company or private life. You do not need to decorate your company cars with the team values, print it on every page of marketing brochures or curve in the stone tablets. Your customers are to recognize what are your values at every encounter with your crew. Have you ever asked your key customers what are your company values? You can be surprised when you do!

The main principles are not to be changed neither every year nor when a new manager takes over. They will be followed even if the founder of the values list has gone away. But it will happen only in companies having a very strong organizational culture. To be honest, I have not checked if the after-sales team I was in charge of in the past is still following our main principles. This is for a few reasons best known to me, not the main one is that I am not brave enough to find out.

There are plenty of potential values to be chosen. You will find five hundred examples here. As you can see these are only names of values, just words. The meaning of every value you have to define yourself. Why it is very important? I mentioned already that the set of values would make you different from the competition. Yes, they can steal a copy of your main principle’s declaration. But don’t worry, you are recognized as a better supplier of services because you have taught your people what those words really meant at their daily work. And they are following it. And your customers like it.

The main principles list should not be longer than 3-4 items. Too many values are more difficult to memorize and certainly will not be obeyed. Perhaps this is the main problem with the fulfillment of the Ten Commandments.

I have to underline: the content of the values list is not essential. After all, nobody would present himself as inhuman, unfaithful, dishonest, improvident, etc., isn’t it? The only difference between two organizations having the same set of values is how their members follow those principles.

Next time I am going to present the details about the main principles of my after-sales team.

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Role-Playing is Essential for Sales Professionals

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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

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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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Goal Setting

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Goal Setting

Tonight, our returning guest blogger Sonya Law talks to readers about goal setting. 

We will explore here how fostering a dynamic workplace incorporates the macro environment in setting goals where People are at the center of creating your competitive advantage…

As an employee, our manager will set goals for us which flow down from the strategic goals of the organization, and these goals are communicated clearly so that we understand how our performance is measured.  Traditionally this usually takes place as part of a mid-year and end-of-year performance review cycle.  The review is also an opportunity for two-way feedback, for the employee to receive performance feedback that will guide their growth and performance and for the manager to receive feedback on where the employee needs support to remove roadblocks that are limiting their potential, efficiency, and effectiveness in achieving the goals of the organisation.

Human Resources play a dual role, firstly to support employees in setting their GPS and aligning them with the strategic goals of the organisation.  Secondly, to support managers and employees when performance diverges away from the expected behaviors that lead to the achievement of these goals.

Quite often, overlayed are external factors for example the current Global Pandemic, which forces organisation to reorientate towards goals that respond to a changing macro environment.  The Pandemic continues to require us to have a workforce that is adaptable, agile, resilient, and able to respond to new problems and anticipate future ones.  And work creatively to come up with solutions to customer, supply, service, and delivery issues.

Three scenarios that put the achievement of employees’ goals at risk are:

  1. New Manager
  2. New Team
  3. Changes in process and technology.

These scenarios can be navigated safely, with minimal impact to employees when a dynamic work environment is fostered that supports employees to solve problems as they arise.  This grassroots level problem solving, therefore enabling managers to invest more time on the strategic side of the business.

This is a common problem in organisations where management gets stuck in the weeds fixing problems in their day-to-day and not enough time creating value for shareholders.  Human Resources’ role is to work together with the senior leadership team to create flow and foster a dynamic workplace where time is equated across the operational, tactical, and strategic needs of the business.

A dynamic workplace is a space that can easily be reconfigured to meet the company’s needs, accomplished by using resources, collaborative spaces and technology. It is meant to follow an employee’s needs, as reflected in the state of the world.

Organisations that become too linear and micro instead of a macro view, lose sight of the big picture, this narrow focus leads to inefficiencies in utilisation of your human resources and non-productive time that does not generate income to the business and cannot be recovered.  Further cracks start to appear in a reluctance to explore new markets or business opportunities, they leak resources, people, profit, and stifle innovation.  You will see a decline in quality and an increase in rework, warranty issues, product failures, and a damaged reputation, which is value eroding rather than value maximising.

Organisations gain a competitive advantage as compared with their rivals by empowering and enabling their people, they innovate, fail fast, and recover quickly, creating value for the business.

When employees are empowered to make the changes necessary in order to respond to customer’s needs, they can fix customer problems right then and there boosting trust and confidence in the product, aftercare, leading to repeat business.  When managers see their role as removing obstacles and roadblocks and empowering their team and involving them in setting their goals, this ultimately will lead to improved employee and customer satisfaction.

Managers can support the business operation by:

  1. TIME – blocking out some uninterrupted time regularly to ask employees what are their roadblocks and where do they need support
  2. REINFORCING – what we do and why we do it, connecting them with the vision of the company
  3. POSITIVE FEEDBACK – provide employees with positive feedback about their unique and valuable contribution
  4. ALIGNMENT – help employees where there is misalignment with the goals and support them to self-correct
  5. STRENGTHS – play to the employee’s strengths
  6. STRATEGIC GOALS – link employee goals with the strategic goals of the organisation
  7. VALUE CREATION – when you involve employees in goal setting, they will be more driven and committed to achieving them

A few human resources tools that foster a dynamic workplace are:

  1. Career Anchors – supports employees’ re-engagement with their work
  2. VIA strengths – identifies employee’s strengths and how to leverage them
  3. What makes me tick – helps employees to resolve conflict by understanding different communication styles within their team.

The benefits to the organisation and culture in fostering a dynamic workplace are:

  1. Higher levels of innovation
  2. Increased engagement
  3. Greater productivity
  4. Increased customer satisfaction
  5. Improved quality
  6. Lower staff turnover
  7. Stronger financial returns
  8. Agility and adaptability in responding to a changing macro environment.

Ultimately, a dynamic workplace constantly is striving to create a competitive advantage through its People that is unrivalled when it comes to your competitors, that is so unique that it cannot be replicated.  Many products can be replicated but not people, they really are your greatest asset and competitive advantage if you take care of them.  Demonstrate to them with your words, actions, and behaviors that reinforce their valuable and unique contribution to the organisation.

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Job Shock, Part One

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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

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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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Principia for After-sales

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Principia for After-sales

In this week’s guest post, blogger Ryszard Chciuk offers us his Principia for after-sales, and brings us more ways to improve this valuable part of our business.

In Principia for Business I presented my personal view on the foundations of every organization. It was not a summary of the pile of publications on that subject I have read. In fact, I did not find there too many useful tips on how to build a durable and efficient organization.

In this and a few next posts, I am going to describe my own way of defining and implementing the idea of the main principles (values).

One of the main tasks of the founder of a new organization is to define the set of the most important principles binding its members. They should also know the long-term goals (have a look at the post about our vision). After that, they are able to find the proper ways to get closer to the goals. You will help your people in that process by telling them HOW you want to run your business to be different from the competition.

Another two important questions are: WHY you are starting up (Ron Slee explained his WHY in Why do we do what we do) and WHAT you are going to do for the wellbeing of your customers, employees, suppliers, environment, and yourself. Without a clear and public answer for those three questions a new entity is mined and the time bomb is ticking. It is my belief this is the main cause of going bankrupt by so many companies.

When I began to build the best after-sales organization in my country, Simon Sinek was not ready with his great TEDx presentation How Great Leaders Inspire Actions (54 million views since 2009). Just common sense told me that I should establish the main principles for my new team (apart from the long-term goals and mission). Some consultants say it should be done by a group of people. I dare to doubt. Only slaves must obey the rules established by their owners but free people always have a choice to work or not, for a given company. Its founder is entitled to set the main values. However, it is a must to discuss the meaning of values with all employees when somebody breaks any of the main principles. It is also helpful to celebrate when an employee finds a new way of better fulfilling any value.

The main values are important for employees when they have to take immediate action without the support of their superior. Very often they are not even aware that a required ­– in a given situation – behavior is described in detail in one of the dozens of special procedures. The older the organization, the more not understandable procedures, often written in a lawyers’ language.

Big companies define their values on a corporate level. In our case, they were: Quality, Safety, and Environmental Care. They seemed to me too general for the after-sales team I had the honor to create around twenty years ago. I defined the main principles as follows:

  1. Integrity
  2. Care of people and environment
  3. Profitability
  4. Excellence

It is not very common that the after-sales department has its own main principles (values) and purpose (mission) but I believed what I was doing was right. A few years later I found confirmation in Built to Last. Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras: There’s absolutely no reason why you can’t articulate a core ideology for your own workgroup, department, or division. If your company has a strong overall corporate ideology, then your group-level ideology will naturally be constrained by that ideology – particularly the core values. But you can still have your own flavor of ideology, and certainly, you can articulate a purpose for your own sub-organization. What is its reason for being? What would be lost if it ceased to exist? The concept of the core ideology embraces both mission and values.

It can happen the top management of the dealership does not know how they are going to run their business and does not bother about any values. Then CFO, Sales Director, and After-sales Manager lead their teams in accordance with completely different, opposite values. For example, CFO cares mainly about profit, Sales want to increase the number of sold machines, and After-sales are focused on customer satisfaction. The most dangerous is when they do not know each other preferences. Daily conflicts between managers are stepping down to the lowest level of the hierarchy. Employees do not collaborate with their friends working for another department. It is possible to avoid that problem. The managers have to look each other in the eye and tell each other the meaning of their main principles. Of course, their values have to be aligned with those the company founder believed in. Otherwise, it is a great waste of time to work for that kind of organization.

Next time I am going to share my point of view on the potential conflict between private and company values, how to write value definitions, the importance of constant reminding of the main principles…

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3 Reasons Your Business is Not Profitable Part 2

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3 Reasons Your Business is Not Profitable – Part 2

In Part 2 of his blog series, guest writer Bruce Baker continues to break down the 3 reasons your business is not profitable, and what to do about it.

REASON #2: Not Understanding the Flow of Money

It’s reportedly unhealthy for people not to breathe in and out regularly, so why expect this from your business?

 As was mentioned in Reason #1 of the 3 Reasons Your Business is Not Profitable, understanding how your behaviour impacts the outcome (money) is an important place to start. Not understanding how to control the flow of money in and out of the business will remove all the value you gained by working through Reason #1.

Just like the human body breaths oxygen in and carbon dioxide out, so does a business system breath cash in and cash out. The only difference is that humans do this automatically without thinking…most of the time!

On the other hand, a business only has the owner to regulate the amount of cash-in and cash-out of the company. The business owner’s problem is not understanding this rhythm and making decisions that do not lead to profitability.

breathe

Imagine taking a deep breath and enjoying the feeling as you feed your body its much-needed oxygen. Breathing out as much as you can and stopping there…without breathing in for 30-seconds. Not the best feeling in the world! The discomfort we feel is our central nervous system ringing the alarm, forcing us to breathe in again.

If this makes an individual uncomfortable, why would this be expected from a business effectively maintaining the same balance? Sounds logical, but why not simple?

Work through the following exercise to start eliminating Reason #2

#1: On the first day of the week, determine approximately how much money needs to leave the business (i.e., expenses).

#2: In response to money leaving the business, determine your “battle plan” on how you will meet his obligation (i.e., at least break-even). If you cannot, do not sweat it…you have more weeks to work with until the end of the month.

#3: On the last day of the same week, review your accuracy of what money you anticipated leaving the business and evaluate whether your “battle plan” in at least breaking even was effective. Remember, make notes, so each week becomes a more effective week than before.

*Remember… If you do not at least break even for the specific week, no worries! You have more than one week in a month! Leverage this to plan for the week after. For example, if $1,000 more left the business than anticipated, ask yourself how you plan to make up for this the week after.

The more you practice this, the more golden nuggets you will discover about this process and your decisions’ effectiveness.

The purpose of this exercise is to provide you with an intimate understanding of how the money system in your business flows. The fact that the business owner regulates the flow of money in and out of the industry means that a company by default is not a cold non-living entity.

This means that the profitability of the business is directly associated with the owner’s natural behaviours. Attempting to go against your natural way of behaving, ignoring why you behave the way you do, leads to a path of misery and an unprofitable business.

Embrace and leverage your natural human behaviours and do not allow Reason #3 to hold you back from building your profitable business –

REASON #3: Changing Versus Leveraging Natural Habits

To ensure business profitability is to abandon the traditional axiom of  Sales – Expenses = Profit and adopt Sales – Profit = Expenses

 The GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) formula for determining a business’s Profit is Sales – Expenses = Profit. It is simple, logical, and straightforward but not effective in building a profitable business because it does not account for human behaviour.

In the GAAP formula, Profit is a “leftover,” a “final consideration,” or something that is hopefully a pleasant surprise at the end of the year. Alas, the profit is rarely there, and the business continues its cheque-to-cheque survival.

Why is this the case? As noted above, natural human behaviour is not considered. One kind of human bias that most are not aware of is the Primacy Effect (i.e., people’s tendency to place more importance on what they see or encounter first as opposed to last).

It does no good to expect to build profitability and reduce debt if “expenses” are positioned first in the formula as opposed to “Profit” being “second best.” A human being does not work this way, and ignoring this, ends with the business not being profitable.

Placing profit first and flipping the formula to Sales – Profit = Expenses allows the business owner to leverage their natural behaviour and habits. Leveraging our everyday habits instead of changing what we do naturally opens a brand-new world to business profitability.

Another human bias that impacts our ability to be profitable is Parkinson’s Law. Author and historian C. Northcote Parkinson theorized that our demand for a resource increases to meet its supply.

For example, when we are given 2-weeks to do a project, it takes 2-weeks, and when we are given 8-weeks to do the same project, it takes 8-weeks. That is why when given

$1,000 to complete our work, we get it done with $1,000, and when given $10,000 to achieve the same outcome.

Making Parkinson’s Law an asset vs. a liability is immensely powerful in building profitability. By taking profit first, the money available for expenses lessens, and we are forced to find ways to get the same things done for less money.

Work through the following exercise to start eliminating Reason #3

Make a great leap forward by reading a few chapters from my friend and mentor, Mike Michalowicz’s book – Profit First.

 I share the TFR system with business owners in my FREE group –  Profitable Business Owners

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