Guiding the Tool Belt Generation to Professional Success

Discover the leadership strategies that are transforming the modern workforce as we sit down with Ron Wilson, a seasoned industry expert who unveils the challenges of steering today's "tool belt generation." Ron lends his wisdom on how to captivate and groom this diverse group for success, incorporating advanced technology and revamped work-life balance expectations. From understanding the nuances of intergenerational work commitment to tackling the phenomenon of "quiet quitting," our conversation provides invaluable insights for those at the helm of dynamic teams.

Building enduring relationships at work is akin to nurturing a financial investment, and today's leaders must excel at both. We explore the pivotal role these bonds play in employee retention, with Ron drawing parallels between supervisors and orchestra conductors to highlight the delicate art of balancing productivity with personal connection. Stories from the trenches bring to life the challenges of equipping salespeople to evolve into relationship managers and underscore the pressing need for empathy and soft skills in the corporate realm.

As we wrap up, Ron emphasizes the continuous evolution of leadership, touching on the benefits of close-knit partnerships with community colleges and embracing AI to enrich job roles. We share pragmatic approaches to fostering innovation, such as regular feedback and embracing new ideas, while also considering the art of modernizing traditional work practices. From the creative potential of 'gamification' in recruitment to the power in admitting mistakes, this episode is a trove of strategies for leaders eager to thrive in an ever-changing landscape. Join us for a journey through the trenches of leadership and leave equipped to inspire a new era of professionals.

Visit us at LearningWithoutScars.org for more training solutions for Equipment Dealerships - Construction, Mining, Agriculture, Cranes, Trucks and Trailers.

We provide comprehensive online learning programs for employees starting with an individualized skills assessment to a personalized employee development program designed for their skill level.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:19

Aloha and welcome to another Candid Conversation. Today we're joined by Ron Wilson, who's got a storied and varied career in the equipment industry along through the product support ranks, and Ron recently wrote us a blog that will be published this coming week and this podcast will be published this coming week as well on the tool belt generation, and I'd like to have Ron explain that to all of us in much more detail because I think he's on to something very significant for the industry. So, ron, welcome aboard. Good to see you from Arizona.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Good to see you. Great, great topic. I didn't quite understand what the tool belt generation is. So I did a little research.

Speaker 2: 1:08

Of course, and us coming from the industry, we think of, you know, putting a tool belt on and we get all the tools for the day the carpenters and woodworking, electricians and technicians. But digging into that, that tool belt generation is much broader than what I realized, and so I did a little search on one of the websites about job titles for tool belt and there's a whole list of those. So there are those, just kind of read a few off of that list. But the auto technician, labor, equipment repair, technician, so those that we can relate to that, what we think of. But getting on down the list, it talks about the Lean Six Sigma Greenbelt. It talks about the exterminator, termite technician, the production plant operations folks, detention officer, LED installer, so those jobs are.

Speaker 2: 2:05

There's many, many more jobs that fall into that tool belt generation. So it's going to help us as far as not the young people coming in the field not needing a college education, but it's really broadening the type of training that's going on through the community colleges and high schools. That's going to far reach many different careers other than just the folks relating to our to our industry, and what that tells me is that our recruitment process really needs to. It's as important now as it's ever been. We really need to understand how do we recruit this generation, the tool belt generation that not only has an interest in the one type of field outside of the diesel industry or the tractor industry, but also within the tractor industry. How do we attract them? So it's still not going to be an easy task on filling our job just because it's the tool belt generation.

Speaker 1: 3:08

In fact, it'll probably be more difficult, because what we're seeing is computerization of just about every piece of capital equipment a washing machine in your home. You go up to it with your phone, you scan a QR code and you can talk to the machine and it'll tell you what's wrong and what you need to do. And I don't know that we prepare the people that are gonna repair those things or the dealers that are supposed to support those things, and it almost could look like there's gonna be a change in the distribution channel from more work directly done by the manufacturer.

Speaker 2: 3:50

That is sure to push and you think about why is that? Why would the manufacturer want to do that? And there are a couple reasons. But the big reason is the dealers are struggling, trying to find qualified people to meet the needs of the OEM. So when they put together this high-tech machine, they put it back out in the field. To me, the OEMs are not bringing the dealers in early enough on the design phase. This is what you're going to need as far as train people to support this product in the field.

Speaker 1: 4:21

Yeah, you mentioned recruiting. That's definitely something that's going to have to be looked at differently, but also leading these people is going to be done differently too, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 4:30

Yeah, yeah, this generation. So some of the characteristics of the generation is that strong-willed, they want autonomy, they're flexible, a work-life balance Okay, well, there's autonomy, work-life balance and some things in our industry. When you've got to work 24-7 and the tractor goes down on Friday and you've still got to go fix it Well, the new generation. Well, I've got plans on Saturday, it's hard that we walked into a place to have the vehicle worked on and the guy says, well, we'll have to wait a couple hours because the guys didn't show up this morning. Yeah, so you know, they kind of do what they want to do when they want to do it, and so it's going to require some different leadership and some type of incentivizing where the employee understands the priorities, incentivizing where the employee understands the priorities.

Speaker 2: 5:23

So how do we blend their priorities of a balanced work life that no doubt we all should have and all deserve, but how we balance that with the needs of the industry, the needs of the business? So much more difficult for the managers and for HR and for the training departments. Training is really it's no longer just about how to fix this or fix that, really is no longer just about how to fix this or fix that. We have to have a balanced training program for technicians that incorporates wrench training as well as people skills and personal skills. There's got to be this balance that needs to be taught in the classroom at the same time of as we're teaching about turning wrenches.

Speaker 1: 6:01

A couple of just personal tidbits. My granddaughter is 22, finishing her master's, and we're having dinner. The other night and I'm talking about her generation, she says, yeah, we have a bunch of people that are quiet, quitting and it's a term that's new to this generation, but it's been a fact for a long time People going to work and only doing what they need to do to get their paycheck to be able to continue. And then another little tidbit my best man was one of the better engine mechanics in Canada. He got married on a Saturday. Sunday he got on a plane, went up to the Arctic for the next two weeks repairing generators.

Speaker 1: 6:40

I don't know that. You'd find many newly married people that would do that today, and I agree with them. You know the work-life balance. I always say it's career, family and person, and the first thing we drop is ourselves, our health, our exercise and that kind of thing to keep up with work. When the pressure gets on, we give up the family too. We start working 12 hour, 13 hour days, and I'm not sure that that's going to be a characteristic much longer, if it is any longer Like Gen Z, gen X and the Alpha like you're talking about. They have a different view on this world.

Speaker 2: 7:17

Yeah, yeah, they do. Yeah, I can remember we had one really, really good technician. He loved being out of town, really enjoyed it, but he had a family life. So we would know, based on the quality of his service reports or based on the sharpness, abruptness that he would call in on something, I was like, ok, get him home, it's time for him to come home. He wouldn't ask for it, we just knew. So we bring him home and have him home and be doing things and I'd say, okay, it's time to get him back out in the field. We can tell the same kind of characteristics they did like being in the office, so it's time to get him back out in the field. So how do we identify individual learning, how to identify that about themselves? And then we as leaders, when it's time to help and adjust and tweak and monitor, and with their work schedule and workload and personal time, and so we have to be much closer to the employees than what we've ever done before.

Speaker 1: 8:13

It's interesting this past Monday, Kurt Pease, who retired from a John Deere dealer in Colorado, worked with John Deere the manufacturer for years and prior to that, worked with Intertractor. Prior to that, he was a consultant in Mexico. He's middle 60s and we're talking about rewards and how they impact people's performance and how we have a series of what we're calling legacy managers who are command and control folks. This is what I want you to do and I don't want any discussion Get out there and do it and then, similarly, bringing new employees in. We use the old-fashioned mentoring approach. I'm going to show you what I want you to do, Then I'm going to tell you what I just showed you, Then I'm going to show you again. I want you to try it and don't change that. Just keep doing it. Get better at it, better quality, faster, et cetera, and that's out the window now. In order to get people to be engaged, feel worthwhile in their work, feel appreciated in their work and that's a completely different leadership style.

Speaker 2: 9:27

Yeah, it is. And the challenge with we've all seen technicians that are really really good and so we promote them into a leadership role and they don't do very well and, as all of us, when we have a difficult situation, we revert back to where our strength is.

Speaker 1: 9:46

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:47

And not necessarily what the best approach is for the situation. So take a great technician supervisor. Things get tough. He wants to help that person fix the tractor, and that's not what the person is asking for. He's asking for help and support in some other approach, and so we have to be able to adapt and change how we teach. It really is important that we take the leadership. Training becomes part of training for technicians. Personal skills training needs to be rolled into. You know, we do what I call silo training. We teach them how to fix tractors, then you go to a different class on safety, then you go to a different class on safety, then you go to a different class on people skill. Well, why not incorporate all three of those into one class?

Speaker 1: 10:30

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 10:33

So it's a different approach, but I think it really defines the ways to apply the new bits and pieces of it to help those who are in leadership, those who are coming into leadership and those employees coming into the job market.

Speaker 1: 10:49

We have, as you know, with Learning Without Scars. We've got about 150 or so classes, five, six hours each, so that they qualify for academic credits. Two classes gets an academic credit at technical, community college, public, private universities worldwide. But the schools are now saying to me we're substituting general education credits with your classes with your credits, because it's got work application, it's got life application and you would think that that would be part of the school approach to life. But it never has been. When you and I went to school, you know we were taught to write cursive. And here's the arithmetic adding tables, multiplication tables. Memorize the damn things. That's not how it's taught today. They have to learn it, they have to understand it and I don't think our technical schools and our community colleges for the trades have it. I think they're recognizing the need to change, but they haven't done it yet and they have a hell of a lot of work to do to get there.

Speaker 2: 11:58

Yeah, there's a place for us as dealers, our training departments, to help those colleges and the high schools those are the vocational high schools be a part of them. They're very hungry for looking for good training material, mentors to work with the students, guest speakers to come and talk about the industry. So for us to fill that gap, we really need to be present and participate with those schools. Very often I've been guilty of it We'll give some old, wore out parts to a school. We gave a transmission like a I don't know 769 truck. Well, five years later that transmission was still there. They couldn't pick it up. So it made me think about, you know, these things that we're donating to the schools. We really need to evaluate what do they really need?

Speaker 2: 12:50

Yeah, some cases they don't know. So it's, it's the training material, it's the tools, it's, it's uh, you know how to teach the kids to read. Read the tool. Electronic tooling now is different than what it was before, and so really we have to be at the table with those schools on a very regular basis and evaluate what they need and what we want them to be focused on.

Speaker 1: 13:12

What's also interesting, ron, is back when I started. Like you've been an advocate of this for a long time, you were way ahead of the pack for a long time still are. In 1969, when I started, we had three apprentice programs going at a time, 18 to 24 students in a classroom and every six months they would roll out. So it was an 18 month program and we'd have three going and we had a 40 foot trailer that we created as a mobile training center and we took that out to a store so that the people in the different stores would have access to the same materials.

Speaker 1: 13:53

But, like you're saying, almost all of it was technical repair. How do you do this? How do you fix that this? How do you fix that? And then to your comment about the legacy taking a good mechanic and promoting them to be a boss. If a technician has a problem, the tendency is not to train or teach or mentor or help the technician to understand how to do it. Get out of my way, let me do it, because I'll get it done faster and we move on.

Speaker 2: 14:21

That exists all over the place, yes, yes, and it's so growing it is, and it we think it's faster to do that way, but it's it really, isn't it. You've taken that leader away from things you need to be focused on, and and then now you've got an employee. They don't want me, they don't, they don't respect me, they don't care for me, and so now it's just a vicious circle we get into. We just we got to find how we get out of that.

Speaker 1: 14:47

Yeah, and the other side of that is everybody talks about why'd you quit. You know, and I haven't seen recent surveys, but it always used to be. It was never about money, it was all about the boss Couldn't get along with the boss. Couldn't get along with the boss, Didn't help me, it was a pain in the butt, blah, blah, blah. And we've got that history for God knows how many hundreds of years Hard to break out of.

Speaker 2: 15:10

Yeah, as a college professor in my first class in ASU in leadership we're talking 75, was Dr Shurkraut and he talked about relationships is like a savings account you can only take out what you put into it and at some point, as a supervisor to an employee, at some point that bank account is going to be empty and the account is closed.

Speaker 1: 15:37

Yeah, that's a wonderful way of looking at it, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 15:45

Yeah, so how do we continue to put deposits back into the relationship with those employees and meeting their personal needs? Uh, and helping them to uh understand what our priorities are? Uh, as well, because we do have things we got to get done on a time schedule, uh, but there's, but working together to come up with those things. It's just an ongoing and there's not one answer. There's not a silver bullet for any of this. It's a varied approach. We all have to work together on it and try creative, different things.

Speaker 1: 16:10

I characterize the leader and I use this example everywhere of the conductor of an orchestra. That's the only technician musician. He has his back to the customer, only technician musician. He has his back to the customer. His audience is the musicians and he's only as good as their performance. And how he motivates, encourages, cajoles whatever the terminology to make them better all the time, that is his success. Success. And if you think about it, that's a perfect illustration. We've got lead hands. Remember this thing. We created a job function called lead hands because we needed to find a way we could pay some of their better technicians more. But we left them on the floor and we said okay, if anybody needs help, stick your hand up and the lead hand will go help you. And we took the lead hand off his work and went over to another technician to help him. And then he comes back. We made that lead hand the least efficient person on the floor. It's ridiculous and we all did it.

Speaker 2: 17:16

Yes, and I want to take your conductor one more point further. That conductor knows which person is out of tune. That conductor knows which person is not having a good day, for whatever reason it is. So they or she is so in tune to the attitude and the morale and individuals. But when we keep piling on paperwork and more things on the leads, they become less available to conduct and lead and identify those that need help and provide direction.

Speaker 1: 17:52

Yeah, it's really that thing about the conductor and who's out of tune. I came across the country from New York to LA one trip years ago sitting beside the agent for Frank Sinatra and of course I had all kinds of questions and all kinds of things. And I like Sinatra, I like his music, but there's thousands of people that can sing better than he can. What made him so good? How did he rise to the top? And the agent said he could. Frank would sit in the wings at practice, he'd have a 60 to 80 piece orchestra in front of him and he could listen and he could pick out which instrument, which person was out of tune. There's the talent, there's the gift. Not everybody has that type of thing oh yeah you know.

Speaker 1: 18:42

And the other one about your comment of building relationships. I think everything in the world today is relationships. We never really thought of it that way. And look at the divorce rate today versus our generation. Maybe we're stupid, but maybe we're smarter People that have been married for a long time. I tease and say we're a dying generation because we're all getting old, you know. But it's so. Salesmen, what the hell are we using that term for? They're managing a relationship. That's all they're doing.

Speaker 2: 19:12

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:16

This transition is difficult, Ron. I don't know how the hell we're going to get and training people to do this. Trusting other people's performance for your success that's almost an alien concept, even in parenting. Yeah, so this is going to be a tough road. How do you think we should approach it?

Speaker 2: 19:41

Well, I think it's a combination effort. I think it starts with our training departments. If we look at our dealership and if we do not provide people skills training and personalized training, we need to look at that. We need to bring the experts in, we need or whatever, but it has to be more than just training on how to fix a tractor. So there has to be a balance of that.

Speaker 2: 20:05

And I think, with career growth, the way the individuals, they not only want the technical training and the people skills training, but at some point in their career and that's going to hit probably around the age of 45 or 50, they're going to be thinking about, well, what's my next? And if all that they know how to do is turn wrenches, they may want to be a leader of something. Now, I'm not talking about a supervisor, because we can have leaders that are in a lot of different areas and not supervised people, because we're not all, that's not our skill set for all of us. But how do we continue developing those individuals and working with community colleges for certificate programs that can provide them to develop their skill set or whatever it is, because now artificial intelligence would be an example of one is how do we use that skill set that's coming up within their new role? So I think it's understanding and keep looking ahead.

Speaker 2: 21:03

And I see so often that dealers, when they go to conferences, they stay and they'll sit, they'll have dinner with, or they go to the bar and they sit with the same people they work with every day, instead of going across a room and talking to a competitor or another vendor or something else. And developing that relationship, that we learn something else besides just what the dealer network does and knowing what's going on in the automotive industry or the power generation industry outside of just tractors, what's made them successful over time and are we about to face that same issue? They're just a few years ahead of us in that specific topic.

Speaker 1: 21:46

And a lot of this is thinking too and truth-seeking. With social media and the communications we've got over the Internet, a lot of people are taking what they read as truth without verification, and there's a lot of misinformation out there. You know electric vehicles and batteries it's a classic illustration, but that you know. I have a routine that I followed for years that about every six months I would get together with whoever I was working with and I did this in the consulting world as well and said okay, I've got three questions and I want you to write a list of three to five things for each of these particular questions. The first question is if you could change anything in your job, what would you change that would make your life better? Give me three to five things.

Speaker 1: 22:38

The next question is what would you change that would make it better for the company? Three to five things, and what are some things that you do that are a real pain in the butt? Three to five things, and then we would put them up on a white board or blackboard or on a screen or whatever, make the language the same and come up with three to five things and, ron, at the end of this little exercise, maybe 30 minutes in, 20 minutes in, I would say, okay, fine, if these are going to make your life better and they're going to make the company more successful, more customer satisfaction, blah, blah, blah. Why aren't we doing it? And the answer that typically came back is well, the boss isn't interested in that, we just want to continue to do what we've always done. So that whole change, mentality process improvement back to 1980 and Dem and Duran et cetera, that's no longer in place in many businesses. It's dying, mike GREEN.

Speaker 2: 23:38

Yeah Well, what you just talked about to me is a perfect class.

Speaker 1: 23:42

Yeah, oh, I agree with you.

Speaker 2: 23:44

Perfect series to where not only you have the class, they go back to their areas and they work on something. They come back and report back. So it's not a one and done and then a four hour class or six hours. They need to go in and try something. And well, that didn't work so good, they didn't accept that method. Okay, we'll come back Now, let's walk through that, let's try another approach. But you also need to coach and prepare those leaders, because now your employees are going to come back to this class, from this class, and they're going to be asking and wanting to do something. Are we open to trying that?

Speaker 2: 24:17

So one of my years ago was a managed a warehouse and we had these. They were ASU football students. They would come in and in the summertime the dealer or principal would have them come in and they would get work ethic and earn a few extra dollars in cash. And so this kid came in on a skateboard and then they got the push carts or pulling parts and he says you know, if we could put the skateboard on this cart, man can pull parts a lot faster. Yeah, I don't know, that does that sounds like a and that's about to happen. But he kept, he kept pushing me, let us try it. So we get on the weld shop and the weld shop built this skateboard, paddle the skateboard onto this parts cart and, uh, we never had an incident with that at all.

Speaker 2: 24:58

Now, the first wasn't designed to get to make some tweaks and balances, but those employees, man, they could pull. They were such much more efficient. Now, I would have never recognized that, didn't use a skateboard, didn't know what it was all about, except it looked dangerous. Yeah, but those are still in place today. Now you can buy them on Amazon. So it's a parts cart with a skateboard on it. So getting them involved into the decision and the process of what's going on can really make a difference.

Speaker 1: 25:25

Yeah, it's funny. That illustration is classic. My very first consulting work was with Canadian National Railways designing their warehouses, and the trick with picking parts is travel time. So that kid with the skateboard recognized that if you're smart on how you store things, you'll have the fast moving parts at the front and the back of the aisle and there's a big gap in between down the aisle where there's a bunch of slow moving parts. So what he recognizes if I can go from the front to the back fast, I mean just push myself off and go down 50 feet because I got nothing to pick there, I mean that's brilliant and it's a guy who's doing the job. And you and I have never think of that because we're not doing the job anymore, we remember how we used to do it.

Speaker 2: 26:11

That's right.

Speaker 1: 26:12

Remember the resistance of here come Vidmar cabinets. Oh, don't do that, my God. That's expensive Boy. Is that ever an efficient way of doing things right?

Speaker 2: 26:19

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 26:21

We've got to illustrate. I don't know how. That's what Kurt and I were talking about. How do you and motivate's not the right word but how do you encourage people to come forward with suggestions of how to make their work and their life better and have the boss in tune with that? Because both audiences, both groups, need to be trained and melded in a way that's productive.

Speaker 2: 26:45

Yeah, yeah. It's not just a one and done, it's an overall process. You've got to include the supervisors. That's why the right people skills training instructors are so valuable. Their pre-planning is discussing what the student's going to go through during the class, what is the expectation, and then being open with that, with that instructor, getting feedback from the students. Yeah, that didn't work so well with the supervisor. Okay, well, let's go try something else. And and so we think that the instruction is only about giving the lecture and taking the quiz and going home. It's not. It's about the application of it and then modifying it to identify what works, because not everything works the same for every student in every area. So it's a follow up before, because the pre and the post and the follow up and the application is so critical in our training today.

Speaker 1: 27:39

In the post and the follow-up and the application is so critical in our training today. Yeah, my daughter's involved in a thing called AVID, which is a it's been around since the eighties but it's starting to get serious application which stands for advancement via individual determination. And, to your point, that might not work with this leader, but it would work with that leader. There's more than one answer to the same problem and there's more than one style of leadership. So what Caroline's got with her classes and this is middle school, so they're between, I guess, 10 years old and 13. Every week, every student, on every subject, has to stand up in front of their classmates and give a 15-minute presentation on that subject, on how it impacts their life.

Speaker 2: 28:26

Wow.

Speaker 1: 28:27

And you know I listen to Caroline and how this is coming along and then saying, wow, where the hell was that when I was coming up? You know, imagine what those children, those students, are going to be like in 10 years' time. That's going to be a generation that will be hard to hold on to. Yeah, how to keep up with.

Speaker 2: 28:45

Yeah, and they'll pick what's important so they get rid of the garbage. And we're faced with so many articles and things and this thought and that thought. This will also help narrow scope it down to what is really important and get rid of the noise.

Speaker 1: 28:59

Yeah, yeah, but Lou holds a you know Notre Dame coach and speaker and a whole bunch of other things at it. He said everything is about winning. So win is important, he said. But winning isn't about the game, it's what's important now, Because it changes Seasonal changes with different type of application. You're in forestry or mining or material handling, and from one order to the other, from one phone call to the other. And the other thing that I recognize and see if this resonates with you we've downsized staff to the point that we're getting way too much done by way too few people and customer service is paying the price for that. I see that everywhere. Are you sensing and feeling and seeing that too?

Speaker 2: 29:50

Yeah, and I think it really peaked during COVID. I think during COVID we really lost their phones weren't being answered, no follow-up. I think I'm seeing some changes in that lately, but I think COVID just really exploded in the poor customer service and responsiveness. So, yeah, hopefully we can get back on track of the follow-up and the customer service and the relationship side that we talked about earlier is so important. And if you look at how mining has changed and the ag market has changed, how technology has changed so much, but yet we're still doing some of the things the same way we always have is and we don't use the data. We have to make better decisions. Uh, so yeah, there's, we got to find better ways to link those pieces together and what's critical and how do you measure success and how do you modify it to keep us moving forward?

Speaker 2: 30:55

You mentioned mining. Are you seeing much in the way of those? And the electric trucks is really electric equipment is really really beginning to take hold as well? So the autonomous truck there's a lot there on. There's a people side of the autonomous truck. What happens to the operators and how do you fix the autonomous truck and how do you function within a mine site of an autonomous truck, and so there's a lot to be worked in, but I think the autonomous truck is its equipment. I think it's definitely here to stay for sure.

Speaker 1: 31:35

I'm also sensing that dealers haven't figured out how to work with that yet. We've got sensors in all kinds of componentry, we've got telematics that will take it all into the dealership. We can remotely monitor everything that's going on with the machine. But I don't see a lot of dealers that are setting up I'm calling it mission control or whatever to say, hey, wait a second, that machine's been idling for two hours, or the air air filter's clogged or the engine's overheating, just to use illustrations. I don't see many people doing that.

Speaker 2: 32:05

Yeah, I guess there's an example that we had a control room that the machines that were under a contract they would monitor the health of those machines and it was one of those that a machine was, I believe, was an excavator, that about two or three o'clock every day it overheated. Now in Arizona you think, well, ok, that's about the time, the heat of the day, but kept watching it and what we found out there was also a shift change. So when we drilled in a little closer and got rid of the emotions between the client and think that we're trying to over-monitor him or watch him and that no, no, we're trying to help take care of this issue and realize it was basically a fairly new operator that needed some help and guidance on how to run this system he was not familiar with. So how to use the data we have into a process can help us build relationships with our customers as well as help develop the employees too.

Speaker 1: 33:04

Yeah, that's the second piece of that relationship. First is the boss to the employee, then is the employee to the company, then it's the employee to the customer, then it's the customer to the company. And you know, I don't know that we've done a good job with those things, and I think it's a matter of trust with the customer. Maybe you can comment on this how much does the mine site trust us? I think you alluded to the fact that we're up to something here. That's a big barrier for us too.

Speaker 2: 33:34

Yeah, it is, and I think I've seen a significant change in the mining industry, where there used to be the distrust of the mining company, the mine site and the dealer. I mean, but through some good alliances and learning how to develop trust, and there were classes on how to do that.

Speaker 1: 33:53

How do you?

Speaker 2: 33:53

trust each other and some things you tried and didn't work so well, and some things you tried and didn't work so well and yeah, I've seen a lot of improvement to where, with the sand and gravel, as well as the large mines, open pits, that there's more trust now, I think, than what there used to be. But that trust can be easily damaged.

Speaker 1: 34:12

Oh yeah, yeah, just one person can blow it.

Speaker 2: 34:15

Yeah, and it can be one person. The relationship at the corporate level is different than the relationship at the pit side. We saw one there was an agreement between the dealer and a mine site where the corporate level gets some kind of pricing discount, so they buy this volume. Well, when you get to the mine site, their deal was yeah, but I don't get that. That discount isn't passed on my operation, so that really means nothing to me. So, okay, well, we need to figure that out, because that has an impact locally, not just corporately.

Speaker 1: 34:51

And I'll give you another illustration. In dealers that I worked with them, we would give annual rebates based on volume and growth and all the rest of that stuff, but we would give it to the mine manager. We wouldn't give it to the operating managers and the mine manager would say to the operation the mine guys buy from these people. And they would say what the hell are you talking about? I don't want to, but they're terrible, not knowing. And in many cases the mine manager, the big boss, wasn't going to share that information with the operators because they wanted to get productivity out of them.

Speaker 1: 35:28

Gdp is a measure of output per man hour. A lot of the world is driven by stock markets, investment and guidance, and it's based on GDP. Well, if you want to drive the GDP up, take the number of workers down, and that's what we've seen. And similarly, in the last I'm going to say 10 to 15 years, we've had a delay of a generation shift in leadership and ownership. Instead of being gone between 50 and 65, now they're being gone between 60 and 75. And that transition delay means there's a bunch of younger managers, like you said, 45 to 55 that are stuck. They can't get the progression that they believe. But the older generation, the ones that are still here, I'm saying they are risk averse, they protect the status quo because they've never made as much money in their lives and they don't want to jeopardize it. And we're blocking the whole transition, aren't we?

Speaker 2: 36:33

Yes, we are. My neighbor was just leaving, was going to work this morning and I was out front doing yard work and we were visiting. And he's talking about he's getting close retirement within about five years and no, we're in our industry, he's in the. He's more in the government side of it. But so he said, yeah, they're asking me to kind of step back and he had some of my responsibilities to somebody else so they can begin developing the skill set to replace me is what he was explaining. And he said I'm going to hold on to one of those. One of those are not going to get. That's the one, it's they're going to have to be. When I walk out the door I get that's my, that's my ticket. So but it's interesting how we all pick, pick something that we will share everything. It's interesting how we all pick something that we don't share everything. So we'll pick something to make sure that we are still important and still needed in that particular area. And I thought that was kind of interesting.

Speaker 1: 37:28

Yeah, I used to. That's another exercise I used to do, and I put it in training classes too, ron, as a leader, I'd sit with the team that I'm working with and I'd say okay, what do I do that you like that I do, and you want me to continue doing it. And that's an interesting discussion. It's kind of complimentary and easy. So it starts on the easy side and the next question is what do I do that you don't like that I do, and you want me to stop.

Speaker 1: 37:54

And once you've set the stage properly, that becomes a meaningful discussion. So you've got to personally take a look at it and say, well, is it my style, or is it the thing, or is it skills? What do I need to do to overcome that? Because it's still something I have to do. And then the third piece of the discussion was well, what do I do that doesn't make any difference to you? And that last piece I always used to take and say, well, damn, I don't need to do that, I'm going to give that to somebody else to do. And that's how the team started growing. All of these things are interesting In order to be successful you have to make yourself completely useless.

Speaker 2: 38:40

no-transcript that's hard to accept.

Speaker 2: 38:44

It is. You don't need to be the expert in all of it. I was not. The roles I was placed into was not fixed tractors. That was not. That was not my role, and so I didn't act like I knew what I was doing. That was not. I didn't try to Buffalo, I couldn't. My role was to help guide us through the challenge at hand and develop a skill set going forward. And and develop a skill set going forward, and for me, I enjoyed that. That was so much more fun than me trying to outguess a technician on how to fix a tractor because that was not going to go well.

Speaker 1: 39:15

No, but I think your company was one of the very few that had a job function doing what you're doing. Where I started, it was the same thing. Wherever there was a problem and I was blessed. Wherever there was a problem and I was blessed. Wherever there's a problem, they stuck me said go see if you can fix that.

Speaker 1: 39:30

I mean, talk about fun work right yeah now that scares a lot of people, so you got to be able to understand the person. So we we need kind of personality discussions. And that takes me to performance reviews. I don't think we're a very well done element of leadership. Yeah, did you ever get training on how to do a performance review?

Speaker 2: 39:56

Oh yeah, I don't know that. I can't remember any very many that were really that good. I mean we had on you get the form and you got to fill this out and fill that out, and probably more of that is you get the form and got to fill this out and fill that out, and probably more of that is not filling the form out, but it's a follow-up between now and the next evaluation. It's. You know, the form is one of the last jobs I was in. I went back and checked and this one employee had filled out the exact comments on the last five evaluations and he was shocked when I pushed it back and says I'm not accepting this. And he was in shock. What do you mean? I'm not accepting it? No, this is the same comment you've done for the last five years.

Speaker 2: 40:37

Something's got to be different. You've had different managers. We have a different relationship than the last manager. You need to start fresh by just by just more of a pencil with the process and and uh. But utilize that assessment time frame. We used to. I used to do quarterly so we would review it and how things going. What are the two key things and what and we may need to change that. Maybe the goal we set at the beginning of the year yeah, something's happened and and we need to reevaluate that and change that goal we set at the beginning of the year yeah, something's happened and we need to reevaluate that and change that goal. And so it's something that is a value and just not something we're not going to do or paper whip it at the end of the year.

Speaker 1: 41:15

And too many people check off the box on the once a year performance review, and once a year is a waste of time.

Speaker 2: 41:21

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 41:21

Almost any interaction you have with an employee should be a performance review. It's a. You know how can I help you? You'd laugh at this, you know. That's partly why I think your dealership and you stick out.

Speaker 1: 41:38

You did things differently, you looked at things differently. You were after performance, you were after success. But you didn't do it by yourself. Like you said about the technician you're not going to get into a discussion about how to do it. So my best man and I, that engine expert he was a general service manager when I was a general parts manager and we weren't happy with the relationship. So we asked for, got permission and we swapped jobs. So I became the service guy and he became the parts guy with the relationship. So we asked for, got permission and we swapped jobs. So I became the service guy and he became the parts guy and I put on coveralls, got down on the floor and pulled wrenches and after a week or so of that the guy said well, why don't you take the coveralls off? Go back in the office because you're wasting too much of our time?

Speaker 1: 42:22

But we had scanning for labor collection in 1971. We had order stations on the shop floor in 1972. We didn't have the technology to support it. So we used a phone and we had, I think, eight, something like that, eight order stations on the floor in the midst of eight to 12 mechanics and they'd go in and there was a remember the reader, microfiche readers, yep, and all of this. So there was a reader in there. There wasn't really a computer, there was a gun that we could scan cards and they'd pick up the phone and it would ring right into the parts department. We had ladies with headsets on and I know that sounds sexist, but they had many better, many way better typing skills than the men did and it cleaned up the language on the guys.

Speaker 2: 43:13

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:14

And it kept them in the bay. So we saved time. It was beneficial all the way around. Delivered parts to them with a wire-guided like train through the shop floor. That's almost. Well, it is 50 years ago. If we got in a plane now, ron, and ran around to a hundred different dealerships, how many do you think are doing that in their shops?

Speaker 2: 43:35

Yeah, that's a shame it is yes.

Speaker 1: 43:39

Yep, and I agree with you. That's why this tool belt generation, I think, by it broadening the job functions, it's going to bring more progress, more improvement, than with us being stuck on a tool belt on the shop floor. Yep, different job functions are going to force us to look at things differently, and that's a blessing.

Speaker 2: 44:09

Yes, it is, if we can get recruitment and the team around recruitment to look for employees different places. I kind of always wanted to do a contest for technicians, entry-level technicians. Let's do a troubleshooting contest, where you do something on the internet and you send it out there and well, now you can begin scoring the top applicants, people that are troubleshooting and they're getting to the very end, and there's maybe a level one, two and three prizes and and uh, well, there's your one, two and three choices for for recruitment. So that's, that'd be unique in how we're identifying potential applicants and skill sets and and get some support to the recruitment team, because they cannot do it by themselves.

Speaker 1: 44:53

And in the education world they're calling that gamification.

Speaker 2: 44:57

Yeah, yes.

Speaker 1: 44:58

We're trying to have contests across schools, across disciplines. Volvo has a contest that names the best technician in the world and they do it regionally and it's quite a thing. And you know, people want to be recognized. Everybody wants to do a good job, everybody. You know the other part of that thing which really bothers me everybody can do more than what they think they can do, but people are very leery, they're anxious, they're nervous, because they're afraid to make mistakes. And I say to people what am I going to do? Shoot you. If you're not making mistakes, you're not learning. If you're not making mistakes, you're not testing your boundaries and our potential is way more than our actual realization. So you know the customer service thing that we talked about along the way expectations and perceptions that's how you measure customer service. But unless you're talking to the employees that are involved or the customers that are involved, you don't know what the expectation is and you don't know what the perception is. You know, every day we should be saying to you with the technician how'd you do today? Do you have any trouble today?

Speaker 1: 46:11

Then, with the pandemic, like you said, we got hurt in a whole bunch of ways. Then, last fall 2023, the Federal Reserve started getting serious about interest rates. We're going to raise it because inflation is going up and blah, blah blah. The front page of the Wall Street Journal, big business is going back to performance reviews so they can identify the people are going to let go. That's not what a damn performance review is supposed to be for. So we got some big work ahead of us to get these things changed around.

Speaker 1: 46:46

I think you hit on a really important subject and I'd like you to listen to the podcast that Kurt put out. It's up there now, and putting these two things together makes a big difference Identifying the tool belt, what the job functions are. It's recruiting, it's training, it's performance reviews, it's identification of how we can help you. It's all positive stuff. And how do we get companies to get going, get off the snide and get it started? We need more people that are 30, 40 years younger than you and I, than we are when you were when you were 30, we needed a whole bunch of guys like that and gals. Any final words of wisdom you want to share as we wind this thing down?

Speaker 2: 47:37

No, the only thing is that I look back now. I turned 71 a couple weeks ago and I thought you know what Congratulations.

Speaker 2: 47:45

Yeah, thanks. I think, boy, this is a very interesting time to be in this industry A lot of the knuckle busting type work and development and hard things they're done. We still got the hard jobs, but taking some of this, doing things with employees and new ideas and new suggestions and how to apply the technology differently than we've ever had before this is a fun time in this industry. So I just really hope that people can take and enjoy the time and look for things that will work well and contribute back to the individuals, as well as to the team and to their customers.

Speaker 1: 48:25

I couldn't agree with you more. I'm having more fun doing things now because of technology, but we're so far behind. Yesterday we were talking with some family 100 years ago, medicine To today, to 100 years from now, medicine. And then all of our classes we're using avatars now. So I've got male, female, different ages, different nationalities, european, asian, african, blah, blah, and it's hard like hell to recognize who's a real person and who's an avatar.

Speaker 1: 49:00

So a guy was talking to me a couple or three weeks ago and he said I can put four of you up on the screen. One of them will be you and the other three will be avatars of you. And then this is the thing that I'm fussing with now. He said I can have an interactive discussion with you for 15, 20 minutes the four of you and I'll bet you a hundred bucks. You can't tell me which one is you and I couldn't. So what I'm trying to do in our education is have artificial intelligence and machine learning be able to have enough data that anybody can ask a question and the computer can answer it. Now we're kind of talking in a different way, aren't we? Learning becomes whatever you want to learn about.

Speaker 2: 49:48

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 49:49

Ron, this has been wonderful. Thank you very much for your time and the blog and it goes up next week. This will go up next week and keep enjoying in your 70s, as you all the previous generations and decades, and thank the audience for listening and we hope you enjoyed this candid conversation and look forward to seeing you at the next one. Thank you, mahalo.