Learning Without Scars
As a third-generation educator, it is easy to say that teaching and training are in the blood for Ron Slee. From his beginnings as a coach, through his time at McGill University, Ron developed a foundation for the work he does today. From working within dealerships, to operating a consulting company, creating a training business and running twenty groups, Ron has been directly involved in this Industry since 1969. Ron has been known as the industry expert for years, and has brought this expertise to bear through his training programs. Today, Ron provides specialized, job function based internet based subject specific classes, job function skills assessments, as well virtual seminars and webinars. These courses are designed for manufacturers and their dealers, as well as independent businesses in the construction equipment, light industrial, on-highway, engine, and agricultural industries through Learning Without Scars (www.LearningWithoutScars.com). This platform is a continuation of the work begun by Quest, Learning Centers which was established in 1996. This training is aimed at improving dealer parts and service operations through qualified people that are knowledgeable in using operational metrics and current market and operational best practice methods.
Learning Without Scars
Sara Hanks on Embracing Change in the Hiring Space
Ever wondered how curiosity could play a central role in your hiring strategy? Or why credentials aren't always the gatekeepers to success? Well, for all the curious minds out there, we're thrilled to welcome Sara Hanks to our podcast. Sara, a seasoned blogger and a digital transformation expert, shares her wisdom and insights on hiring, performance reviews, and the role of digital transformation in our increasingly connected world.
Sara brings a fresh perspective to hiring practices, highlighting the importance of curiosity, attitude, and future potential over traditional credentials. She makes a compelling case for continuous performance reviews, emphasizing the legal implications and the need to incorporate data skills assessment in these reviews. Sara's insights into the hiring practices of North America and Europe are particularly intriguing, as she stresses the value of a one-year probation period to better understand an employee's capabilities.
But it's not all work and no play. We also touch on the importance of creating a joyful work environment and a culture of continuous improvement. Sara pushes you to explore generalism, embrace continuous learning, and prioritize happiness in the workplace, all while encouraging regular feedback and avoiding the pitfalls of solely relying on annual performance reviews. By the end, you'll be motivated to take online courses, develop a broad set of skills, and seek continuous feedback for personal and professional growth.
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.
Hello and welcome to another candid conversation. Today we're joined by my favorite blogger whatever the right word is Sarah Hanks, who's coming to us from the Northeast. She is busy as a toot doing all kinds of things with her family vacations in Iceland and work and all kinds of stuff. How the hell does somebody do all of that and still look like you do?
Speaker 2:A little bit of makeup and a whole lot of smiles, until you make it.
Speaker 1:What? And getting ready for this. One of the things that I mentioned is that your recent blog was essentially I'm going to paraphrase it and put it into my context You're hiring for credentials or experience, and I find that today to be a very appropriate subject with everything that's going on in the workforce. So what brought you to write that? What triggered that thinking in your head?
Speaker 2:Well, it started with a panel. Actually, the company I work for just became a corporate member of the Women in Manufacturing Organization Through a mutual friend. Servicenow, the software company, asked me to participate with them in a panel discussion on how to keep workers in the workforce through digital transformation. Now, my background is that A lot of my claim to fame is actually taking a GE business through a complete digital transformation, and so I said yes, and I didn't realize that the actual topic was going to be geared towards HR processes until an hour beforehand. We decided not to pre-determine the questions. We got together. We wanted to keep it a casual conversation, and I learned moments before that we were actually going to be talking about hiring people, understanding what skills are required to do jobs and then how to. I'm going to have a panel and development. There were three of us, so it was the CTO of ServiceNow and a head of HR in one of the automotive industries and myself.
Speaker 1:All of you had worked together before, knew each other. Nope, ok, so it's a real. And the moderator.
Speaker 2:The CTO was the moderator.
Speaker 1:OK, so just the three of you. Yep. No advanced warning, no prep, no nothing. This is what we're going to talk about.
Speaker 2:That's right, and that's exciting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember. I mean I've built job descriptions before. I've created teams from scratch, so I'm not without experience in this space. But in my head I'm thinking I'm preparing for digital transformation conversation and it's really a different topic altogether. Because if you're talking about jobs and what's required to do the job, and how do you find people with the right skills for that job, how do you look at your organization and identify where there may be transferable skills? How can you tap people on the shoulder to maybe do something different? And she had built a technology that kind of facilitates that whole.
Speaker 1:That was probably the drive behind the panel right, that she had a technology that was usable in this kind of an environment. Yep, ok, so let me interfere a little bit with the flow. One of the things that I find really lacking today is skills of leaders to do performance reviews. Any thoughts?
Speaker 2:Well, actually I've been a manager for a long time and in that whole career I've only received training on performance reviews once, and it was actually this year and it was conducted. A lot of the HR where I work come from a legal background and so the whole context on the performance review training was given thinking about what are you going to get in trouble or not in trouble from an employee standpoint if they decide that things go unfairly and they want to do something about it? And so I would say that I hadn't gotten. I mean, and that was very clear in the training that that was the point. So I think the development of performance review skills that I've received over the years is either because of what I've been given or what I've given and learned and improved on the process there.
Speaker 1:So One of the things that really bothered me about two months ago now might be longer, when it probably is longer. When the Fed started bumping interest rates, there was a front page Wall Street Journal article about companies going back to serious formal performance reviews to find out who they were going to get rid of, and that's completely contrary to everything that I believe a performance review is about. How can I help you get better? What would you want to do is more. What my objective is in a performance review, and it's tied to our job function skill assessment, where we're testing your knowledge and skills tied to your job, so that we can identify and talk together about the things that we think might help you get better in certain aspects.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your development needs what's in your aspirations and how do you make a plan to take you from where you are today to where you want to go?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:That's.
Speaker 1:that's how I personally approach performance reviews, because, well, this panel, though, seemed to be more concerned about making sure we stayed out of trouble legally.
Speaker 2:Well, the training I received the panel, I think, is more in line with the skills and understanding you know. How can you leverage technology to help you, especially if you don't have any place that you've started from.
Speaker 1:So trying to build a bridge, on this era, between digitization and performance reviews. Is there a connection?
Speaker 2:That's a good question. I think, in terms of I don't know that I find one directly. I think that having skills in digitization could be part of an assessment that could be part of a performance review, especially now I think that there aren't very many roles in the industry that would be exempt from having some level of skills in digitization and data, and so I think it could be included. From that standpoint, I think there's usually some element of measurable identification of success, so maybe there's some connection there. But if you're not meeting your metrics or things aren't looking good from the technical side of a performance review, I don't think that those conversations should wait till an annual performance review event I think you've been making some corrective action before then.
Speaker 1:I don't necessarily believe in annual. It's a pretty regular event, it's a communication device as far as I'm concerned, and it's constant. But let me narrow the frame a little bit and think in terms of process improvement, performance reviews, digitization. Those three things that I think are important to three together are a trio. Yeah, they stand together, not as much standing apart. We dealt with these things as unique events. They need to be done as a continuance, don't they?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, I agree, and then maybe even expanding performance reviews really to be broader into leadership Right.
Speaker 1:Well, and then I start getting into again. My weird approach to these things is I'd rather I don't like one-to-one necessarily I might want to have the team and we have a performance review as a team and we're all team members and can see our roles within it. And, yes, we deal with those one at a time, but if we can start having the team be the driver, life changes dramatically. Yeah. Yeah, my daughter's taken on a different teaching aspect and you might have seen she wrote something about it in our newsletter called AVID, which is the kind in my view it's a replacement for GATE gifted and talented education, which is kind of in a hallmark of America for 40 years, which is to me counterproductive. But AVID stands for advancement via individual determination Okay, and she's teaching it in middle school grades. What's that? Six, seven and eight, yeah, and every student, every subject, every week, has to stand up and give a 10-minute presentation to her class or his classmates about something in that subject that has influenced their life.
Speaker 2:Well, that's an interesting take on education, because now you're taking the subject that can feel so disconnected from what you think reality is, and forcing you to think about how they relate together.
Speaker 1:Yes, and every you know we communicate with schools because of what we do with learning, with those scholars, and almost every school administrator, dean president and whatever have been talking about the last 25 years erosion in critical thinking skills, analytical skills, communication skills and, more recently, leadership skills. Yeah, this addresses all of them. It's kind of remarkable, and one of my daughter I put a blog that will be out soon. My daughter has a book that they're using in the school for the teachers, called Ruthless Equity, which is a weird subject. It's intended to be colorless, religious, sexist, everything neutral. I don't even know who you are and the illustration is and this is stupid, but let me give it to you anyways is a family father, teenage son and a tween standing at a fence watching a baseball game.
Speaker 2:Oh, I know that.
Speaker 1:I know exactly what you're talking about the father can see over the fence, the other two can't, so they get boxes right.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:In the world of equity. Each of them gets a box. So the father's way up here in the little instill can't see over. That's not the truth. With equity is two, one and zero, yeah, okay, so freeze frame on that. And here comes my granddaughter. She's finishing off a master's and she's got a semester on communications. Okay, it's based on a book from Randy Olson called the Narrative Gym. Both of these books are wonderful for you to read. They're phenomenal. The Narrative Gym narrative in gymnasium deals with three words and, but, and therefore and if you take pronouns out of the English language, but is the most commonly used word and it's the only word that we have. That contradicts what we just said.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, Well yeah.
Speaker 1:So now that bring it back into credentials or experience with that foundation. I want experience, not credentials. Where do you?
Speaker 2:fall? Oh man, I. So, given my experience, I would say I'm a bit of a unicorn. You know, I've got a lot of depth and quality. I've got depth in digital transformation. I've got depth in data analytics. But the challenge with that is I don't fit into a mold in operations and that confuses the hell out of people.
Speaker 2:And that confuses people. I don't fit into IT because I've worked in the business right, because IT leadership looks for people that have grown up in IT and I think I'm qualified for both and I've certainly seen and I've been parallel to both for my career. But there's walls that are put up because of the experience Now, in terms of skills, I've got project management skills, I've got leadership skills, I've got communication skills, I've got technical skills and so I think that companies that are stuck in the mindset of hiring for experience are limiting themselves, because if you only pull up from within and you don't mix experience from outside, you're not going to innovate, you're not going to change, you're going to be stuck just continuing to execute in the same way.
Speaker 1:So let me go down that road a ways and say I neither want credentials nor experience, I want attitude and a curious mind, and that's it. I'll teach you everything else, right? Yes, it's a really interesting subject, which is why I wanted to do this. With artificial intelligence, with data analytics, with chat, gbt, we can now create a custom character that looks like you, sounds like you, as long as you're not walking around. They haven't figured that part out If you're sitting in a desk and you can use your hands and your head, et cetera, but they can completely duplicate who you are in 20 different languages From a Word document or a PowerPoint slide. So I don't need to have any creative skills at all. I just need to have writing skills, and we're moving to that to replace all of our film clips. From a cost perspective, it's a whole lot cheaper.
Speaker 2:Heck, yeah, you had time to market and all of that. Everything Smarter, not harder, yeah.
Speaker 1:But it took me back to when I started in the dealership world. I had been teaching athletics, I had run a country club, I took mathematics and physics and they wanted somebody to solve a computer problem. The vice president of finance was the father of two kids that I taught, so he knew me that way. And so they called and said didn't he take mathematics and physics? I had to interview a couple of four guys, three or four hours. I was given a job for a year to find and fix a problem and the senior partner of the consulting company that sold the software and the hardware to the dealership spent one day a week with me for six months. You couldn't script that there as far as a learning experience, but we found the problem so we had a year. At the end of that it's over. It's our choice, your choice.
Speaker 1:So you have, after about six months, seven months, that they hired me and that's 50 something years later. It's ridiculous, but I didn't have the credentials in IT. I didn't have the credentials operationally of the business, part servers, selling, etc. Yet they hired me and somebody taught me everything I needed to know to be able to find and fix the problem. I subscribed to that approach to life. I'll look for people that have diverse backgrounds like you have, that have a curious mind, that maybe don't have credentials in my mind you do, but that's a separate discussion and many people will hire somebody who they think can do the job based on the credentials and they fall flat on their nose and it happens fast. It takes 12 months max.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:That's expensive.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is. Yes, it is because you've got to start over again and the person you bring in to replace has to fix whatever damage was done because of the person who fell flat. Now I have a question for you Uh-oh, what advice do you have in the interview process to identify somebody with genuine curiosity? I feel like I've had at least one, maybe two bad hires and I feel like that would have been a trade I was looking for, but I definitely didn't find out that that was untrue.
Speaker 1:So you knew, I worked in a prison right and with the Lincoln boys, so it was up to the age of 18. Some of them were murders, armed robbery, serious stuff. The soldiers maturity issues and they trained me how to identify those things. So as a result of that, when I hire somebody or when I interview somebody or when I talk to somebody, I ask different questions. One of my favorite questions is what do you best at, what do you think you're best at? And it kind of throws people because they don't expect that question and they have to think a little bit about what they want to share with me. But as soon as they start talking they go because it becomes comfortable. You know they're talking about themselves, something they're good at. Give me an example. What do I find out when they tell me what they're good at?
Speaker 2:You find out what they're passionate about.
Speaker 1:More importantly, what do I find out?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:If you take your biggest strength, your strongest attribute asset and you take it to extreme, it's your biggest weakness.
Speaker 2:I 100% agree with that.
Speaker 1:If I ask you what your biggest weakness is, oh, you're going to dance all over the room because you're not going to tell me that. But if I ask you for your biggest strength, here you go. Yeah, and in the interview they've just gone through that. I said that's wonderful. Do you have trouble with this? Which is the opposite?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And all of a sudden I can see their faces change.
Speaker 1:Sure they get uncomfortable All of these. Well, who is this idiot? You know what's he. I just went through that about a month ago with two people and there were three people interviewing at the same time as I was the one person. My personality is a little bit more forceful than the others, so I was doing a lot of talking and a lot of listening, but provoking and I want to find out who you are. And anybody can hide from me for a long time, which is why I like to have a one year probation period, not less than one year. You can hide a month, three months, six months, but it's really hard to fool me for a year. That's why a lot of marriages fail in the first 12 months. Right, but it's so. That's so. Curiosity, when they start rambling about what they're good at it also indicates how curious they are. Sure, because you can tell from the scope of the discussion the range of the discussion.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, and the broader the range, the more curious they are. Yeah, Another one that I asked is what's the last book you read? And that's not necessarily nice anymore, because not very many people read books.
Speaker 2:Not very many people.
Speaker 1:It's discouraging, but so the credentials. I was in Quebec, which is kind of French Canada.
Speaker 2:Yep, I'm done there.
Speaker 1:And European thinkers are much more who you know rather than what you know. So it's a community. It's a socialization thing more than anything else, and it always bothered me because I'm not. I'm social, but I hide people. You're only gonna see what I want you to see. Right, there's a Greek expression called her post odontum, behind the bridge of my teeth. So I'm hiding over here and my wife says everybody knows everything about you. I said you wanna bet, but it's. How else would I want to look at curiosity other than the range of their discussion topics and how they look at things? I think that I think that exposes curiosity.
Speaker 2:Sure yeah, because if you're not curious and you're comfortable being status quo or comfortable knowing one thing, you're gonna go into depth on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, it's quite easy to see. In fact it's not fair. Once people see that that's and training them on hiring and interviewing once they see how I approach it, they don't wanna be interviewed anymore Because they got somebody. They're exposed. The worst case was I went to Finning in British Columbia and I had two days of interviews 10 or 12 guys.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And the guy who was the vice president of human resources. His name was Charlie Lois, one of the best HR guys I've ever met, and that's what he was all about, because I don't care what you know, I wanna know who you are. And it's kind of like who are you gonna go to war with? Yeah, the old, the people in the boat who do I trust? Well, let's go.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's kind of interesting.
Speaker 2:And I think about the people that are in leadership positions that I don't necessarily have deep respect for. I would say it's because they fit in the know it all, camp and I call that the command and control camp. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's so. I see it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:It's terrible. I mean there's the command and control, and I think it's worse when it's not command and control. When you talk about a culture that's inclusive and you talk about, you know that you wanna drive change and have different perspectives brought into the mix, but then you don't have the receptiveness to listen to others and seek to understand the different perspectives. Now you're lying Like that's a deceit.
Speaker 1:Well, the trouble with that is the audience, the team, and they go on and they see that and then you know, the person who's exposing themselves doesn't understand that they have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, because they don't at all, they can't, it's not-.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not part of who they are, it's not part of who they are. Yeah, there is a CANDMeet company in Canada. I think it was called SPAM, but I can't recall for sure, and it was. Two CANDs of process need talking to each other.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:One can say to the other say, move like, say, move like. Why can't you say move? It just isn't in it. And it's the same thing with with people. I don't mean to sound so cynical, but I am.
Speaker 1:I I love seeing people get excited about anything. I don't care what it is. If you can get excited about something, you can get excited about anything. It's just a question of how we look at things so that that whole interview, credential experience, your skillset, not fitting into a box for somebody else, that somebody else box, has to change. And I think we're at the cost of that now as a society, as a workforce there's we're going to have teams, not positions, and the leadership role will move around the team as the process changes and our culture, america and Japan. I keep Kaizen I love. We don't do that. I'm going to teach you. I'm going to show you what I want you to do, what your job is, and I'm going to tell you what I just showed you, that I'm going to show you again. Then you're going to try and I'm going to watch and I'll correct you.
Speaker 1:And then I'm going to leave you and say, okay, Sarah, keep at that, get faster, make less mistakes. You're going to get really good, but it's my ruck. I'm putting you in. That's true, and I hate that. Don't tell me what to do. Let me figure it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's why people don't tell me that what you want accomplished, and let me figure out the way.
Speaker 1:Exactly. What do you want to have? What's the goal? Yeah, so I have a thing that I call a trigger for process improvement. I call it five things. You might have mentioned this before, and I do it all the time, and it's a remarkable exercise, and if you can get people in a team thinking that way, it's really beneficial. So then let me go to the next one. Have you ever been involved in a group interview where you've had four or five people on a panel with 20 people in a room being interviewed?
Speaker 2:No, I don't know. I've been a sole interviewee with a panel interview and I've been on a panel interviewing a sole interview.
Speaker 1:What do you think about 20 or 30 people being interviewed at the same time?
Speaker 2:I think that, that I'm trying to think through what the dynamic would be like because you're going to have some people that are going to be. I mean, you'd have to specifically call out people, because some of the folks are going to be introverted and not likely to answer.
Speaker 1:It was an eight hour interview, wow, and there were 30 of us. Okay, and it was for the prison. Okay, and they were looking for a control figure.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 1:So what do you think they wanted the interviewees to do?
Speaker 2:They wanted to see who was going to step up. I guess who did. You did.
Speaker 1:It's like you looked around you say, okay, if I'm going to get this job, I have to eat everybody else here, Sure.
Speaker 2:Well, you're going to be here.
Speaker 1:Southwest Airlines does the same thing. When they're hiring for cabin crew and flight crew, customer service people, they have a panel of employees that do the same job, hr and others that are in maybe six to seven people, and they've got 20 or 30 people being interviewed. One of the questions they asked is what's the most embarrassing moment you've had in your life and how did you handle it?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah.
Speaker 1:If you get into a group interview, you've got to be very focused on what they're going to do, Because you're trying to find out right.
Speaker 2:Sure, well, I mean, I would think, just that specific question. You're going to see who's confident. You're going to see who could overcome embarrassment and beer, I would think, being vocal in an environment like that. Going back to your earlier example of being commanding, you want your flight attendants to be commanding, probably more so than surface oriented, because, in the event of something going wrong, you're going to need a team of people to be able to work together and respond.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So one of the answers this was a Harvard Business Review case study films that I used in training programs. One of the ladies who was interviewing for the job said well, this will probably be the most embarrassing moment that I've experienced, because I'm not normally that positive and you're going to write there. You win, right. Yeah, you love the kid because she's being open and honest with you.
Speaker 1:I'm not very comfortable about this, but here I am, yeah, yeah, it really touched the nerve with me the credentials and experience. I don't know that there's an answer, but I think we're, as a society and a workforce, we're moving in that direction.
Speaker 2:I hope so. I mean, I think there's a desperate need to shift the thinking. I do like the idea of hiring for attitude and curiosity because, man, if you have a can-do attitude and you're curious, and you have a leader that just has a mission that you believe in, forget it, that person's going to be an amazing hire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd like to say that if you've got the right leader, the people, if you hire properly, you'll go through a wall for them. Sure, they will not go home until that problem is solved, period. They'll sleep on the floor until it's solved, period. It's silly. They'll welcome it, they want to do it.
Speaker 2:But it's because they're believing it, because you-.
Speaker 1:Because I sleep.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, I mean I think back to my favorite moments in my career, and it's being in teams like that. I remember very early on we were implementing our first IC system. We needed to go live by January 1st and I decided to do something. To try it, I manually moved code from our development server to production, not knowing what I was doing, and broke it on Christmas Eve Eve. Oh no, but we stayed, we all stayed, and we hashed it out and got it fixed.
Speaker 2:And did we want to work late on Christmas Eve Eve? No, we wanted to get home and start our vacation. But the team I mean we were on a mission we were going to take-, we were going to get it done, no matter what, and it was fun and we laughed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you've all probably. If you ever got together as a group again, that's the first thing you're going to talk about, and you're going to talk about moments that were special.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and laugh about the ones that were terrifying.
Speaker 1:And what have I told you? I ran a software company when I came down to the States and it was for the equivalent world, and it always used to drive me crazy when they sent out new releases. Because you get out to the dealership and you put it in, you're going to do it, and something goes wrong. So they come to me and they say, ok, we've got a new release, we want to send it out this weekend. I said, have you tested it? And everything works. Yeah, ok, ok. So let's delay it a week. You guys come in tomorrow morning, saturday, load it up and let's talk about it on Monday.
Speaker 1:They did and they couldn't get the computer working for half the day. So Monday comes in and I said, ok, fine, if that ever happens again, I'm recognizing all of it. So when you release something fresh, if it blows up, you're done. Now I'm not going to tell you how to do it, figure it out. Yeah, everybody understand what we're up to. Yes, ok, so when can you issue that release? We'll let you know. And they never had another problem because they didn't previously understand the consequence. Sure, and that's the other part of hiring. Yes, yep, one of the things and give me your thinking on this, one of the things that bothers me a lot is anytime I hire somebody, I'm not hiring them for that job, I'm hiring for the next job. Every time I promote somebody, I'm not promoting them to that job, I'm promoting to the next job. What do you think of that thinking?
Speaker 2:I think that makes. I think that probably could have kept me out of trouble. A couple times I hired somebody, oh, and I didn't trust my intuition. On one One I still I implored that it didn't work out. I think that was more of a culture fit than anything, than the capabilities of the person. But the most recent hire that didn't work out for me, I would say it didn't trust my gut.
Speaker 1:It's a very common problem and in tests they always tell you whatever your first instinct is, do it. Don't second guess yourself and change your answer. Whatever you think is the right one at the beginning, do it More often than not, it is.
Speaker 2:And I just in hindsight, it's like I was hiring for the role, not for the next role. I was looking for a transactional.
Speaker 1:It makes a difference, doesn't it? If you're thinking for the next one?
Speaker 2:Sure, Because I mean I wouldn't have been looking for somebody that could do transactions and end up with somebody that doesn't have curiosity and doesn't have motivation and requires micromanagement, and I never want to go through that again because that's not me. I don't have, I'm not wired to the point where I want to see the work that you're doing on a regular basis. I just want to trust that it's getting done.
Speaker 1:That I think you've heard me say. The reason that I left working for a company is that it was politics and babysitting. I don't like and I'm not good at either. And what I did like, and what I still like, is how can we make that better? Everything we do? I love Kaisan as an operating principle in life. How can I make this better? And we don't ask that of workers enough, my opinion. That's why that five things would. What would you like to change that would make your life work easier, better, happier? What's the pain in the butt? What process or what improvement would make the company more successful? Those three things, just as a you know every month. Let's find one every month and do it.
Speaker 2:I bet it would just keep getting better.
Speaker 1:And then guess what? You start seeing attributes in people that you never thought.
Speaker 2:That's right, because you've done something to prove that you've listened to them.
Speaker 1:Well, they also know that they're on the stage now. They got to do. And the other thing that gets nasty is I used in the consulting world. When I started out, I said you don't really want me to do that job for you, do you? I can, you know, and then it's the same thing with you. You've got to find a way to take all those disparate skills that intimidate people because it doesn't allow them to pigeonhole you somewhere, which then causes them to overlook some of the benefit that they would have of having those disparate skills working with them. And as we go forward, there's some people that are sitting out there now that in the workforce, 20, 40 years from now, there's only going to be 5% of the people that are actually going to be change artists. Everybody else will be robotic process transactions. That's almost 100.
Speaker 1:I don't want to be in that world unless I'm in the 5%.
Speaker 2:No way.
Speaker 1:But how do you broaden, how do you make it more than 5%?
Speaker 2:Well, if everybody's thinking with that Kaizen mentality and you're training a culture of always making things better, now you're taking the robot out of the equation because they don't have that reality to be trained on, to be.
Speaker 1:So go back to GE where you were, back to Deming and Jiren and continuous improvement in 1980. It's 43, 45 years later. Six segment or Welsh the teaching that Welsh did on a weekly basis with employees and management. What percentage do you think there is of the GE workforce that are the creators versus the followers and doers?
Speaker 2:I would say it's a pretty small percent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so too, that ruthless equity book that I mentioned. Carol and my daughter is going through explaining how it worked in the teaching world. And I said, ok, fine, you've worked in three different schools and districts. I said, about 100 teachers. How many of those teachers do you think would get this, this process? And she said, well, maybe 30%, maybe 30%. I said, ok, there's 10 million features in America. That means that there's 7 million teachers that are no good for the kids. How do you overcome that?
Speaker 2:I'm like that's statistic.
Speaker 1:Can you imagine that You've got kids going to school?
Speaker 2:That's exactly my fear. You can tell. You can tell because it's you know. I mean, my daughter is she's going to get an A in every class. That's just her nature. My son gets A's in the classes that he likes.
Speaker 1:That's the same as my granddaughter and grandson. My granddaughter got a 5.4 or something GPA in high school and the principal that's impossible Like the maximum's four. How do you do that? My grandson just like your son.
Speaker 2:What he?
Speaker 1:interested in he aces. So he's in the new program at the University of South Carolina right now with the Navy and there's 31 people in the class.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And I never realized how competitive he is. But two weeks ago he was number 10. Now he's number five. I couldn't forgive him. I said well, what's to my daughter? I said what the hell's the deal? I didn't know that. He said well, caroline said to me he wants, he's found the job he wants. I said okay, what is that? He said, well, everybody wants this job. Okay, it's on the computer, it's in Nipol's, italy, and you're never on a ship and there's a line. I mean there's one job. So that's what his current mission is right now. You know again, have a meaningful goal with you're able to do it or not? Yeah, but still, if that's going to motivate you to put in the effort.
Speaker 2:And it's you've got a North Star and you're going to take the mission. Like you're probably going to enjoy the journey, so tell me about Iceland. Oh, I loved Iceland.
Speaker 1:Next year or the year after.
Speaker 2:Oh well, I don't think so, not anytime soon. Ideally, I'd like to take my son when he graduates high school and camp. You got it, and actually, if I ever. You know, and when I came back I had this dream and like wouldn't it be cool to take a two months sabbatical, out of all the things right and all of my ambitions and go work on a farm for two months?
Speaker 1:Monday, monday or Tuesday. I was talking to a guy who's a retired CEO of a multi-billion dollar company and distribution. He's got two sons. One son's living in Indonesia. He's got a health business through Bali and that particular area. He's having a ball. His other son his first degree was anthropology got bored with that, then he took finance.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:He became an MBA, then worked for one of the financial houses, got bored with that, became a mechanic, has worked in oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico and West Texas for the last little while. He's back home again Now. He wants to teach and I'm jealous.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Said this kid's got it going. If he's not happy, he moves.
Speaker 2:He just does something different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he wants to be happy at what he does.
Speaker 2:Can you?
Speaker 1:imagine how many people in the workforce today would kill to be happy about what their work is. Isn't that true?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think it's. I think the younger generation coming into the workforce, they definitely prioritize happiness over work, and sometimes it can be problematic, right, and I think there's a balance.
Speaker 1:I think there's unfairness, so let me not let that go. How can that be problematic?
Speaker 2:Well, I think, if there's, if you're not getting done the work that you're hired to, do, but as long as I'm getting the work done, oh then it shouldn't matter.
Speaker 1:Don't have an issue with me.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, no, I don't care about, but that's that's where I think there needs to be coaching or training or something along those lines, because you know, when you're when you grow up, grew up in an environment where you're working eight to five you're in the office, you're, you know there's some regimented expectations there and now you're hiring people that expect flexibility. You know you got to change your thinking and that was the performance reviews.
Speaker 1:Should we, should we adjust our thinking and let them do it the way they want to do it? Period.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I don't care if my employees work in the middle of the night or decide to work eight to five in the office. I mean it's, I think, here's your projects, here's what we expect to happen. I would you have a schedule. If you need help, you ask for help. You know we'll check in on a weekly basis and see how things are going and pivot if needed.
Speaker 1:I mean it's On a manufacturing floor or on a repair floor.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:I have standard times for jobs and I say to the employee I'll give you a choice. I'm going to give you eight hours of labor every day. If you finish after six hours you can leave, or I'll give you two hours more work and I'll pay you for 10 hours today. What do you think happens there? Does my boss is my boss upset with me by doing that.
Speaker 2:Oh, it depends on the financial.
Speaker 1:I don't know they were upset when I would let them go home.
Speaker 2:Oh, why they got the job done.
Speaker 1:That was my argument. You know these guys are 20 or 30 years older than I am and I'm in my twenties and early thirties. You're nuts, Ron. So when I watch, you know what happens there. The guys that were good on Thursday or Friday. They would finish after five or six hours. They go home, they go to the bar, they go with their wife to dinner or whatever the heck it is and the younger guys are looking at it and saying I want to be like him when I grow up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how do I get to be that? And they start you know, here we go Right, yeah. And my boss was. He did not want me to do it. He said you'll do it, but it'll blow up. I'll let you do it, it's okay, but it's going to blow up. Didn't blow up.
Speaker 2:No, probably made it even more productive.
Speaker 1:I've been talking about a long time. I can't say it's okay.
Speaker 2:I mean, and you think about it, you're going to, it's a win-win, right, like you're going to get everything done faster, so your value stream shrinks.
Speaker 1:And if I'm hiring credentials not experienced, that's not going to happen.
Speaker 2:No, Because you didn't. You don't have anybody thinking different to go into that.
Speaker 1:Hiring credentials. They'll want to pay more. They won't let the guy go home early. Right, it's a really interesting switch question, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Well, especially wow I mean that's, you know the UAW union going to a four-day work week. I have this argument with people all the time because they're like, well, if they give up to a four-hour work or a four-day work week, that you know makes that's going to resonate everywhere and we're all going to get a 32-hour work week because they set the stage with the 40-hour work week. And you know, in my experience on the shop floor there's, you know, I clock in at seven and then I take 25 minutes to get to my station and then I take a 30-minute, 10-minute break and then I take a. And all I'm thinking is, if that practice holds true and you take out a day like, oh my gosh, output's going to go ridiculous, but if you change the incentive to output-based yeah, then I don't care.
Speaker 2:Then you don't care. Yeah, then it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:There's an old story, oh 40, 50 years ago, about a plant that had been the leading manufacturing plant in the industry for decades and they had international competition that came in from Europe and from Asia that outstripped their productive capability and capacity dramatically and the company had a meeting and told the employees that they were going to have to shut down in three months' time.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Because they needed to be able to get 50% more production per shift in order for the plant to stay in business. So the employees knew what they needed to do to protect their jobs. It took them a little bit of time, but they got it up to that productive level and they kept it there for a couple of four weeks. So now the management leadership went back down to the floor and said okay, boys, congratulations, we can stay open. Do you think you're going to be able to continue to do that? And they were honest and said no, the plant shut. Had the plant operated at that capacity let's say 80%, instead of double Competition, never would have arrived. The barrier to entry in anything is really an interesting position. Today we have people selling equipment, cars, washing machines, whatever. We used to have salesmen at a store that had to tell a customer what the specifications or what the benefits were, and all the rest.
Speaker 2:Today with Google and other sources.
Speaker 1:I don't need to go anywhere. I know more than the guy who's selling to me. Sure, yeah, I was going to change my whole game. I don't want to be differentiating yourself anymore in the customer service world. Is it credentials or?
Speaker 2:is it?
Speaker 1:experience.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:But the other part of the experience you have to get started. Sure, in order to get experience and I really, my granddaughter, I don't know what I'm going to do, it doesn't matter Get something, start, Get a flavor, see what you like and don't like in the workplace. You found it out in school. Now do it in a job. Yeah, I don't know if we've answered the question, but I think we beat it up a lot. I thought the blog was right on the money, you know, the experience or credentials. I think that's a very important question for everybody to be addressing.
Speaker 2:And I mean obviously there are certain roles in life that experience is favorable right.
Speaker 2:And I think in the blog I mentioned brain surgeon. I want the guy that's done it a million times, but I think many, many professions there you can widen the thinking. And I mean there was one thing in the blog that I mentioned that we haven't necessarily talked about here is if you want to hire, if you want diversity, then you need to stop hiring to backfill the person that is leaving. We'll call him Joe. Stop hiring to replace Joe, because you're going to find Joe is lookalike both in experience and probably him as a person. Right, age, race, you know religion, all of that. You're going to go find Joe, whether you know it or not, it's happens as an unconscious bias, right, that's the blueprints equity.
Speaker 2:That's okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's exactly right, you're hiring Joe.
Speaker 2:You can't.
Speaker 1:That does this to me.
Speaker 2:That's right, and if you write your job descriptions based on what Joe does and how Joe does it, and your qualifications are Joe's background, you are not going to be successful at.
Speaker 1:That's another subject for another blog and podcast. Job descriptions I do not write. I write function descriptions. I like that and the function has specific purposes and goals. That's right and then okay. So there's the framework. There's the picture at the 18 by 12. Here's your canvas. It's blank. Here's the colors. Go for it and you make it and show me along the way. I think that's probably.
Speaker 2:I think that's why, like continuous improvement in project management, always just sat well with me, Because you're not given how and the instructions on exactly what to do it's. You're given an outcome. You have to transform from A to B and the path to get there. There's a lot of runway.
Speaker 1:Well, it requires curious problem solvers and curiosity is not going to be looking for a pattern, and problem solvers don't care what's in the way. No, you know. So it's a nice combination, but it's very rare. So, at least in my experience, it's a very rare combination to find people that have your attributes as an example and skills and experiences that can be brought to bear. Because you're a generalist, which is, to me, the best statement I could make to anybody I'd like to think of myself as a jack of all trades master, and I'm an 80 90 percenter. I'm never going to be 100 percenter in my life, ever. No, because it's boring.
Speaker 2:Exactly. You know, I've taken a number of courses online.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I don't think I've finished any of them. You have to take one of ours. I don't think you've even taken one of ours. No, no, I would like I've got to get Caroline to set you up with one.
Speaker 1:It's five to six hours. I should warn you Okay.
Speaker 2:So do an hour a week I'm going to take one of ours.
Speaker 1:I'm going to take one of ours. I'm going to take one of ours. I'm going to take one of ours. I'm going to take one of ours. I'm going to do an hour a week, take a month and then we'll talk about it. Yeah, and I'd like you to critique the hell out of it.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm always happy to give feedback, and honesty is my policy on feedback, so Thank you very much, sarah, and thank everybody who's been listening to this podcast.
Speaker 1:I hope you've gotten something out of it I sure have and Sandra Sarah Mahalo from Hawaii. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2:I know,
