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Branding #MondayBlogs

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In our Industry, we can identify a brand with a logo, a color, a certain type of visible air filter on a piece of equipment.

But how often do we stop to realize that we are our own brand?  Who we are and what we do, the ways in which we do our work, reflect our individual brand.

Your brand matters.  It matters to your customers, to your team, and to your store.

For this week’s Socrates Says, we are sharing some words of wisdom on your own brand in the video below.

The time is now.

 

Labor Day Wishes #MondayBlogs

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Labor Day is a day set aside in appreciation of the working people here in the US, and in Canada.  Other nations celebrate Labor Day as well, although at a different time of year.

We are proud of the work we do in helping you to become the best version of yourself, and give you the satisfaction of knowing that you are doing your job extremely well.

So, today, on Labor Day, we at Learning Without Scars want to offer our heartfelt thanks to all of you.

The time is now.

Where Should We Begin? #MondayBlogs

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I often say that life is simple, and people make it complicated.

The same is true of our processes and procedures – they can be simple, unless we make it complicated.

Let’s first review one thing I know to be true: everyone wants to do a good job.  No one wakes up in the morning, excited to go to work and do a terrible job.  Everyone wants to succeed and do a good job.

But one key to doing a good job, is KNOWING what we need to do.  This crucial piece applies across ALL industries, it applies to our professional lives and, frankly, it applies to our personal lives as well.  In order to succeed, we need to know what has to be done.

When it comes to repairs for our customers, our Work Order Process has a series of simple steps for us to use to determine what must take place in order to meet the needs of our customer base.

I hope you enjoy this small video tutorial on the beginning of the Work Order Process.

The time is now.

A Good Start #MondayBlogs

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What a great day it is today. Happy Monday to all of you.

There is a great new world out there. In the period following the economic disruptions of 2008, caused in part by government overreach and a lot of greed in the banking Industry, I followed behind the financial management company PIMCO with their “New Normal” program with our “New Reality.” This new reality was a rebirth of the operational aspects of the parts and service businesses within the Capital Goods Industries.

We have made some good progress on many fronts.

In the late 1990’s business guru Peter Drucker mused that adult education was going to become one of the larger needs for business. He further suggested that there would be extremely large growth in the education workforce. We see this with activities such as Khan Academy, with a stated objective of providing world class education to anyone anywhere, and all of their content is free. Then there are other efforts such as EdX, a free education site provided by MIT, and Harvard, Berkeley, and University of Texas, as well as others and CorpU, which aims to unlock the collective genius of an enterprise.

This is where we are making our modest entry with Learning Without Scars.

There is a huge opportunity.

Today, the jobs report gave further evidence of the effects of the recent government regulatory efforts to reduce the burden that has been eating away at businesses everywhere.

Unemployment in the US is 4.4%, which on the face is a good number. But the participation rate, the percentage of the working age population that is in fact working, sits at 62.8%. Stated another way means that 37.1% of the working age population is NOT working. (Note: the participation rate in 2007 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics was 66.4%) The REAL problem here is that there are currently in excess of 6,000,000 jobs that are open in America that have not been filled. According to a recent CNBC survey 46% of Company Presidents and CFO’s believe that “the workforce is not receiving the proper skills training businesses require.” Further, 63% reported having had difficulty in filling skilled positions in the past 12 months.

That is the backdrop against we have created Learning Without Scars, and our new training.  We’ve all experienced great disruption to our “normal,” and in this New Reality we have our greatest opportunity: to learn and provide opportunities for learning to our employees.  You’ve heard me say it time and again – your employees are your “heroes.”  They’ve invested themselves into your business, and they deserve to have your business invest in their knowledge and expertise.

We can create a healthier economic and professional reality together.  It all begins with education.

The time is now.

The Big Reveal!

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Most of you know that we have created a wonderful image of “Socrates” as our Company Logo. A special thanks goes to Joanna Slee-Poulos, who created this image. She is a huge talent. We chose to use Socrates deliberately.

Socrates, who lived between 469 BC and 399BC, is credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy. He also introduced a form of teaching that involves a commonly used tool in teaching in which a series of questions is asked, not only to draw individual answers, but also to encourage fundamental insight to the issue at hand. our learning business. This is a bedrock principle of our learning platforms.

Today I want to introduce our latest entry into the blogosphere, “Socrates Says.”

I would like to thank Jason Brown for his skills in producing this animation. I hope you enjoy it in which case you can “like” this post. Comments are always welcome as well.

Friday Filosophy: Socrates

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Most of what we know about Socrates we have learned from his students, especially Plato.  We know he was a Greek philosopher and a teacher.  From his teachings, we developed the Socratic Method: a style of teaching that involves the asking of multiple, open-ended questions of the students.

It was Socrates who told us, “I cannot teach anyone anything.  I can only make them think.”

As we have learned in the many centuries since then, thinking is the foundation of all learning.

From this Greek Socrates, we have named our Learning Without Scars “mascot.”

lws-owl-logo

We felt that the owl was apt, as owls symbolize wisdom.  And naming him Socrates took our commitment to continuing education into the perfect symbol.

At Learning Without Scars, we are dedicated to continuous improvement for people: managers, supervisors, salespeople, counter people, and every individual working to make your dealership a profitable and effective business in today’s market.

Let us show you what happens when you have highly trained staff who are confident in the job that must be done.

Join us in 21st century, online employee development.  You won’t be disappointed.

The time is now.

Marketing Monday v2015.1

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We haven’t done one of these in a long time.  For Marketing Monday v2015.1 we are catching up.

With the flurry of activity this past year it has been a little difficult to get ahead of the curve. Some of the recent activities:

We have launched learning Without Scars. This has been a very nice step in the progression of our offering learning products and services to the capital goods industries. We have updated all of our classroom seminars: there are eight. We have added to our list of webinars: there are now sixty one. We have started down the road of converting all learning products to a web based platform: we will have seventy five of them. We are moving toward the translations of our offerings first into French and Spanish.

We have developed an internet based replacement for the twenty group business we ran called insight (M&R) Institute. We have created, in a partnership, The Capital Goods Sages. This is going to be an internet business modelling business. This will be available for use in late 2015.

And finally, we have re-purposed our consulting website to bring it in line with our other businesses.

Have a look and let us know your thoughts. We are here to serve you.

www.rjslee.com

www.learningwithoutscars.org

www.thecapitalgoodssages.com

The time is now.

 

Management Musings 2.7 (Reprised) #MondayBlogs

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We are in the process of updating the business page for our consulting, and I wanted to give you a reminder. What follows is our statement of where we are as a group and where we are going. I am as excited now, and as motivated today, as I have been at any previous time in my forty five years working in the Industry. I am truly blessed.

Our consulting business is winding down. I am not aggressively soliciting business like I once did, but will be dealing with requests on a one to one basis. As long as there is interest in my skills and experience I will be more than happy to assist.  Our website, rjslee.com, is still live and active, with ongoing updates to our articles and our recommended reading.  With our reading lists, you can find selections from Business Teachers, or Business Management Tools, and many more.  I like to direct avid learners to that resource, as it can provide foundational texts to motivate you in pursuing your goals.

The Learning business is becoming a much more prominent focus for my time. We are excited about our new venture, Learning Without Scars, and using all the current technology to bring our learning products to the market worldwide. We will be offering ten classroom seminars, forty webinars and ten internet based self-study programs in fifteen different languages. We will be moving to having a YouTube channel and developing a series of streamed products for use by everyone in fifteen languages as well. All of this is being done with a new web page as well. We are working with a terrific partner on this project. Brian Shanahan of “shanahandesign” is the gentleman we have selected to do this work. I am extremely pleased to have found Brian as he does wonderful work. Thank you, Brian.

Our Company Insight (M&R) Institute which has been the platform for the traditional Twenty Group business is being replaced with a new and improved technology driven product. I suspect this new model will become the new standard for twenty group operations in the coming years. This new product is being developed in conjunction with Foresight Intelligence. Dale Hanna, the CEO of Foresight Intelligence, and I are putting the finishing touches on what we believe will produce strong value to dealers in assisting them to be all that they can be. The new product offering will be complimentary and confidential. The dealer will be able to sign on to a model and either identify who they are on not, their choice, enter their information into a “FITNESS” model and receive a “FIRST” results response on key management measures for each of the five major departments within a dealer. The FIRST will show each management measure and a traffic light type graphic with a color code to recognize their performance as out Insight standards. These standards have been developed in our consulting business over the past forty five years in working with well over 1,000 different dealers around the world. The dealer then can go and make the necessary changes in their business without anything further. If however, they want assistance with the click of a button they will be directed to the “FAIR” page will is a series of “TIPS.” Each TIP leads to an implementation process. Each one of the TIPS is a tried and true example of the consulting work I have been doing for the past thirty five years. If the dealer wants further assistance we have developed a network of “ACES.” Each ACE is a retired senior executive from a dealership who still has the interest and energy to continue working in the Industry just not on a full time basis. Dale and I are very excited about this new offering, which we are presenting as the Capital Goods Sages.

I hope that you will find this news as exciting as I do in providing you with it and look forward to continuing to be a part of your team in Product Support.

The time is now

Friday Filosophy #2015-25

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Today, for our Friday Filosophy #2015-25 I am taking a different tack. I am going to give you a summer reading list. Reading is a wonderful activity. You can be transported to different places in the world as well as in your mind. Learning is a tremendously important activity for me. It is one of the key activities in my quest to stay current. Enjoy.

The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere. Author: Kevin Carey. This is an eye-opening read.

“The University of Everywhere is where students of the future will go to college.  Parts of it will be familiar to anyone who’s gotten a great college education, because some aspects of human learning are eternal. But in many respects, it will be like nothing that has come before.” ~ Kevin Carey

BOLD: How to go big and create wealth and impact the world.  Authors: Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler.

“The day before something is a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.” ~ Peter H. Diamandis

Executive Toughness: The Mental-Training program to increase your Leadership Performance.  Author: Dr. Jason Selk

“Mental toughness is the ability to focus on and execute solutions, especially in the face of adversity.” ~ Dr. Jason Selk

The time is now.

I would also direct you to our new business. Learning Without Scars is the Company we created to replace our Quest, Learning Centers, Inc. in the fall of 2014. Check it out at www.learningwithoutscars.org.  There are sixty two different learning opportunities for you to take advantage of and continue your personal growth.  The recommended summer reading is just a part of the advancement of your goals.

Friday Filosophy #2015-4

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Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

 

Booker T. Washington

 

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

 

George Santayana

 

What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.

 

Thaddeus Golas

 

The time is now.