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
Challenging Traditional Career Norms: A Dive Into Technical Skills, Workplace Efficiency, and Work-Life Balance
When was the last time you considered a career path beyond the traditional route? Isaac Rollor, our guest for today, chose to leap straight into work after high school, bypassing college. He shares his insights on non-traditional career paths, specifically focusing on the importance of technical skills in a dealership. Isaac's experiences shine a light on the unique advantages of stepping directly into the workforce, challenging the norm of chasing university education.
We also navigate the labyrinth of contrasts between US and Japanese workplace efficiency, underscored by the crucial role of teaching and mentoring. Isaac draws parallels between the disparities in technician wages and other jobs, advocating for a fresh perspective on learning. He emphasizes the power of knowledge sharing - a lesson he has drawn from Japanese work culture. We tackle the transformative role of technology in the workplace, discussing its impact on our understanding of work and exploring the implications of dwindling technical schools in the US.
Finally, we delve into the importance of right messaging, especially when engaging the younger generation. The potency of hands-on experience in shaping perception becomes evident as we break down the importance of words and their impact. Isaac brings to light the significance of striking a balance between work and life, underscoring the need for relaxation and rejuvenation. This conversation with Isaac Rollor is not just an enlightening chat, but a call to action to rethink our approach to career paths, workplace efficiency, and work-life balance. Tune in for a conversation that challenges norms and pushes boundaries.
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.
Aloha and welcome to another candid conversation we're with today one of our more insightful blogists, isaac Roller, who recently wrote a blog relative to Three Reasons why you Should Become a Technician, which is part of a series that we've been experiencing over the last month or so about the value of, and the importance of, technical skills within the dealership. So, with that as the introduction, mr Roller, good to see you, sir.
Speaker 2:Great to be on with you, Ron. Great to be on. Glad we could make this happen.
Speaker 1:Yes, me too. So tell me what taught you to write that blog?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, it's kind of been a long time coming. I think, probably with a lot of writers that you bump into or industry people you work with, I think a lot of the things that they write or communicate are a culmination of their experiences over a long time, and so this is probably something I could have written years ago and focused more on years ago, but I don't know that I necessarily had the right perspective necessary to do that at the time. You know, if we were to rewind, even just a few years ago, I've just had some interactions over the past year really, with younger people. So I'm, you know, I'm 35, when I say younger, you know working people. I'm talking about high school graduates, right, going to these graduation parties and talking with them, or, you know, soon to be college graduates, right, they've not experienced the workforce yet. You know, they know what their university has told them, right, they know kind of what their high school maybe talked them about, or some recruiter at a job fair, but they're not really, they're not really experienced it.
Speaker 2:And so in some of these conversations that I've had, I think that I think that there's definitely a messaging issue directly from OEMs, even from dealers, and I would call this, you know, the sort of like the heavy equipment business, the heavy equipment industry, right that there's no clear track or message that would that can be clearly stated, easily articulated, that offers an alternate path to the university system, right? So in my conversations with these you know, soon to be workers, when I, when I, when I talk with them about becoming a technician, or I talk with them about working for one of the big names, with an OEM or even a dealer, I think they, they, I think they've, they've missed out on an opportunity to learn about career tracks specifically. You know, being a technician. That's kind of where my background is, so I kind of kind of navigate those waters and talk to them about that. But what I, what I have learned, is that there, there now is a like a divergence happening from the typical university track Students now coming out of high school.
Speaker 1:I've talked to many of them.
Speaker 2:They will say, even if they are still going to college or to university, they will acknowledge the fact that there is another option. Right, there's another option to move into a career without going to university. There are some that go even further than that, who have not made a choice to attend college yet and who's maybe even whose parents or some significant sort of person guide in their life is moving them towards this alternative, which is not university. Let's not spend, you know, $100,000 going to college. Let's not spend $50,000 going to college. In fact, let's learn skill, you know. Let's have you learn a skill where you have zero debt. Right, you and I were just talking about this earlier. It's like debt is going to become a huge issue in a very short window here. Right, we're going to see that. We're going to see that happen again. Debt's going to be a big factor that affects families, it affects individuals, it affects huge segments of business, and so. So that's why I wrote this article, this, you know, I titled this the top three reasons to skip the university system and pursue this heavy equipment career. I think one of the best opportunities inside of that is to be a technician, and with these people, you know these younger people that I talk with. I tell them my story about. I came out of high school I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do, but I had enough influence in my life that you know my parents and from some other kind of like tidy figures in my life who could see early on this, this paying a huge sum of money for college and, on top of that, going into debt to pay for that's not healthy, right, you need to find some other alternative to that. It was very early on in that in that, you know, in this kind of conversation, I think this, this conversation that we're having openly now, which is is there an alternative to college, to the university system, is more common than it was, you know, in 2007, when I was skipping college. You know the typical college track to pursue a skill. Now it's a little bit more prominent, but you, regardless, I think that that that young person today, they have to make a decision are they going to go to go to college? They're going to follow this track. That you know the systems that be public school. You know guidance counselors. A lot of times even some parents or some significant figure in their life says you need to go to college and you need to invest this money and you need to take a loan out to do this. Or are they going to diverge from that and are they going to follow the micro method, right, the dirty jobs method, the, the alternate decision?
Speaker 2:So my story was I, I came out of high school, I started working basically immediately. So I started working as a mechanic immediately. I didn't have any real specialty, but I was changing oil and equipment. You know, I was doing kind of the rough work that you know, a what is that? You know, an 18 year old with really no skills but with some pretty decent motivation can do. And then through that, I became aware, just by working with some other people in the industry, that my state, georgia, had something called the Hope at the time. I think it was called the Hope Grant and they said listen, you can go, you know, pursue this basically what was like an 18 month program and become, you know, they'll give you a piece of paper that says you're now a diesel technician, right, so. So that's what I did. I went, I pursued that. I learned a lot. It was a, you know, on road truck based program and that's really what. What through that program and I emerged from that with no debt whatsoever. I mean, I had, I had been promoted into a much better paying job before I was in halfway through that program, because the you know the, the OEMs, the dealers, are like scouring those programs, like vultures, right, you know, to look for skilled people. But fast forward from that, fast forward from that.
Speaker 2:You know now my career with with, let's say, kamatsu that we're talking. This is the 2015 timeframe, when I started working with them. I had zero college debt. I had always made great money, right, I had made better money than most people who had gone to a four year college and I was making that money, you know, three years before they would ever get there. And so I learned a lot of things while I was younger in my career, so that when I was competing with college graduates, I I already had a skill set, I already had this ability to communicate that that I don't think they they picked up because they didn't do that on the job in a stressful situation. And so that my experience, when I share that with, with, with an 18 year old who's fresh out of high school thinking about college, that's one of the things I focus in on is, you know, when you, when you, when you choose to opt out of of the college system doesn't mean you'll never go to college. It just means that right now you're choosing to opt out and and you're choosing, you're choosing several key advantages, and in my blog, you know these would be stability, this would be career development and it would be job satisfaction. All three of these things I experienced. I liked what I did, I was promoted pretty rapidly and and I I had great stability.
Speaker 2:You know, in the midst when I started in the great recession, there was there was college graduates graduating with no hopes of getting a job. They weren't going to be able to do they. You know, they had a marketing degree and they were not going to get a job. It was going to be two to three years before they ever got a job in their field, and most of them you know that I keep up with today they're not even working in the field that they got their college degree in, because they had to do what needed to be done at the time, right. So they started working for I don't know, you know Panera Bread. Now they've. You know they were motivated enough to make their way up the ranks. Now they have nothing to do with marketing whatsoever, but, but they've had to sort of make their own way.
Speaker 2:So, you know, I share that story with 18, 19 year olds and I tell them listen, my, the stability that I have had in my life is really marked by that key decision right? So, as of today, I, I, I, you know, I operate my life with much, much less debt and a much, much better financial position than, I would say, most of the people. You know, my cohort that I would have graduated college with, and that was a key defining moment. So that's what drove me to write this and, and I feel like now I have this, looking back, I have this, this unique perspective that allows me to give guidance to someone who's, who's making this decision Do I, do I go forward with a four year degree or do I skip that? And when I do, what's my next step? And there's some great steps in in this industry, you know, in heavy equipment.
Speaker 1:So let me there's a lot there to unpack and and let me give a little bit of perspective from another angle Universities model themselves off Britain until the 1930s. So it was reading, writing, arithmetic, the hard sciences, the hard literatures, etc. In the 1930s the president of Harvard decided that he could make more money if he broadened the number of offerings that they had. So they took the syllabus from, say, 60 classes to 600 classes and we've been operating with that kind of model for the last 90 years. Right, 30 years before you started to pursue 2005,. I did Maybe it's plus or minus three or so, but essentially the same thing. And when I was, I went to university.
Speaker 1:When I came out of high school, I went to university and everybody was making suggestions as to what I should do. In those days it was easy you went the science track or you went the arts track, right, he still had home economics in high school, we still had a shop in high school, we had music, a whole bunch of different things. So I come out of that and start looking for work. And it was a bad economic time. I wanted to work for IBM, I wanted to be a programmer. There was no job, so I went a different route. For a period of time worked in a prison, a whole bunch of different things that prepared me for the industry. But then I got a part-time job solving a systems problem in 1969. I had a dealership and I've been in the industry ever since.
Speaker 1:So, to your point today and this started in the 80s, maybe a little earlier those, the elites of our society, decided that university was the only way to go. You were going to earn more money if you had a degree than otherwise. Bringing that forward to current times, over 70% of the degrees that are offered today are not have no meaningful employment on the other end of them Right. So it's throwing money down a toilet that isn't going to be recovered. So that's part of your stability statement.
Speaker 1:My granddaughter and grandson, both at university, were confronted with the same type of thing. When I went to school, my annual tuition was around $500. This semester Books were about 40% of that, so I bought used books and sold them back at the end of the class. Right Today, depending on what your degree is, mine was math physics, with statistics and computer science. So that's somewhere between $250,000 and $300,000 of debt, even if you've got heavy duty scholarships. My grandson joined the Navy to have the US government, the Navy, pay for the schooling. My granddaughter because COVID was in the middle of her undergraduate did a degree in three years. She's taking her master's now. We'll have it this year, unless she decides she wants to broaden the scope of her education. They're both hardworking, they're both smart.
Speaker 1:I'm not worried about them or those types of people. The ones I'm worried about are the normal everyday walk around Americans where they've got mothers and fathers working in order to keep a roof over their head, because basically 60 to 80% of the working population is working paycheck to paycheck. If anything on toward comes up, they're in trouble Right. So next year that's going to be rather challenged. My daughter, who's a teacher, is following the AVID program advancement by individual determination which is a competitor to a degree to the gate program, the gifted and talented education program that has been around for about 40 years, and what that gets to is children. Children need love, whether it's at home or at school, or both. Hopefully, most families parents are so busy that it's hard for them to have time to give love, so they get the love at school. That's a very difficult thing. So the kids that are 14, 15, 16, haven't got a clue about anything. I want us to start recruiting there. I want us to start hiring there, have them work Saturday mornings, have them work one night a week, whatever it is. Let's see them expose us to them and vice versa. And if it works fine, if they like it fine, we can start taking a program and growing them according to their abilities.
Speaker 1:I've got many friends who are guidance counselors at school. When I was there, that job function, when I was in school, that job function didn't exist. Those that were good guidance counselors seriously intervened with parents in the last two years of high school, trying to get them to think about what was coming next, like you did with the people that influenced you and your life in your 16, 17, 18 year time frame. Those guidance counselors today need to see people from dealerships. They have days at school where people can come in and talk about their jobs. We need to be at all of those.
Speaker 1:I used to teach at technical schools so that I had the pick of the class. We used to provide the componentry and the material so that we could have the pick of the class. I will use any device that I have to get an advantage, because the talented people are the people that's going to take us places. We have two blogs going up tonight, basically on this subject as well. I'm getting rather anal about it, trying to get it across, and it's like talking to a wall. I'm buying the skills when I hire somebody. I love the distinction between Japan and here, with the cultural approach to Kaizen make things better every single day and here, which is okay. Now pay attention, isaac, because I'm going to show you what this job is. Then I'll work it and do it right in front of your face. Then I'm going to tell you what you just looked at. Then I'm going to show it again. This is a traditional teaching approach.
Speaker 1:Then you're going to try it While I'm here. You do it. Once you get to the point that you're comfortable doing it and I'm comfortable with you doing it kind of like learning how to fly with assistance to assistance, solo then I'm going to say to you look, just keep doing that, make fewer mistakes. That's your job. It's not your job, it's my job. I told you what the job was. I didn't give you any opportunity to make a difference. I didn't give you any opportunity to put your stamp on it. Younger people today are telling me go jump. I'm not going to do that. Are you crazy? They're much smarter than my generation. They're saying wait a second, why did you do it that way? Of course, I've been doing that my whole damn life. My father, what do you mean? Shoveling snow in the driveway? Why did you do it that way? That's silly. Why did you do it this way? Right?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:It's going to be serious. Ed Gordon, who's written about 21 books, got a couple of doctors taught at Northwestern and it's been published. He says by 2030, 50 percent of the American workforce that's 80 million people, will not have the skills that will allow them to hold a job. That's pretty powerful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's scary.
Speaker 1:Well, we've spent hundreds of millions of dollars on technology, zero on sociology. How does society handle that when half of the working people they're being paid for by the government? Right so technicians? We had a podcast last week with Alex Kraft.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I listened to that. I heard you say that. Talk about that.
Speaker 1:50 percent of the workforce staff, exactly, and the other part of that is why don't we pay technicians, who are some of the smartest people that we employ today? The equipment is totally invested in technology, telematics, sensors, everywhere. So these men and women that are repairing equipment, like what you did years ago, are the same as software engineers. Why don't we pay them $200,000, $300,000, like a software engineer? Why do we pay any $90,000? Wait a second. No wonder there's a shortage of technicians. What do you mean shortage? It's because we don't pay them.
Speaker 2:Right, right.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting. So teachers and teaching and learning paths we've got to redefine all those things. Mentoring is right from back. Apprentice programs have to come back. Working side by side with a man or woman who's been doing this for 20, 30 years, seeing how they do it, asking questions, learning from them and that's another attribute that my generation is in particular, we don't want to share. I'm not going to tell you everything I know, because then you'll be smarter than me. What am I going to do that for? Right?
Speaker 2:That's right. Yeah, that's right. And I think that you talked about Japanese culture versus American culture and work. And so I was fortunate to work for Kamatsu, where Kaizen was very prevalent. We had Kaizen projects that happened every three or so years that we would participate on individually within teams, and one of the things that I picked up from that that, I think, is a much different experience than even working for in a similar role with Fiat Chrysler. Right, there was no talk of Kaizen or even those concepts, maybe at a higher level. Right. I mean, maybe there was discussion, but the employees, the trainers, technical trainers, the technical people on the ground, even the technicians, they weren't really broad into that conversation, whereas at Kamatsu that was a very open and common conversation to have because it was baked into the culture. Now, maybe it wasn't as potent as it would be if we were working in Japan, but it definitely made an impact on me.
Speaker 2:So there were some things I learned about that working in Kamatsu and really mastering your craft, really mastering your career area. There is a world probably I'm going to pronounce this, but it's called a Shu-Hari, so it sounds like you're familiar with this but basically the first step really in learning our mastery it would be to gain the traditional wisdom, the mastery of that area. It doesn't mean that you do that forever, right? Once you gain that mastery now, the next step would be you sort of break with the tradition. So once you've worked in an area for I don't know what the length of time is two years right, you've been a technical trainer, you've been a technician for two years and you've mastered this area, now you can kind of poke holes in why things are done that way. So the next step would be transcending from that. So now you have mastery in that area, you can do the work, just as the people who taught you to do that can do. But now, as things, technology changes, the economic situation changes, the customer changes, the in our case maybe the machine itself changes, the technology changes. Just because you have mastery in a particular area doesn't mean you have to do things the same way forever, right. So you can break with tradition, you can sort of transcend above the norms that govern that work, that career area, even that industry.
Speaker 2:And I think, like I think you know, at your last podcast, alex Craft, a great example of this, right with Heath. It's like he did the work, obviously an industry expert specifically with OEMs and dealers, and mastered his craft and now sees that there are some gaps here that everyone just needs to be going along with. There's huge opportunity, but beyond the opportunity, it's not okay to just keep doing things the way we're doing them. It's not going to work long term right. The model that we followed historically it's just not going to work in this industry forever, and I think he lays that out pretty clearly.
Speaker 2:I haven't spoke with him in person, but I think what I've read about Heath and what I understand about their business model is that it's a much smoother interaction for all parties involved and can potentially be right. So I think that thinking in that sort of line of thinking is where you have to start. Now you don't have to start, but it would be wise to start, wise to guide a young person there now, because there's a lot of changes that are going to happen and if you're stuck in the old model, you're going to be swept up with a tide that's changing. So definitely something to take a step back and spend more time communicating with you, and I think that age group that you're talking about too is that's the perfect time, right? What a better time to get them actually involved in an industry where they can work with them for a long time and if they don't stay within the industry, they have built at least the most basic skills that will make them successful in anything they do.
Speaker 1:Your point about again the Japanese. You look for mastery and then you can bring your personality and skills and thoughts to bear. One of the things that's really interesting to me is Patrick Lencioni quote three signs of a miserable job. One of them is immeasurability. So most people leave work at the end of a day and they don't know whether it was a good day, a bad day or any other way, because they have no way of measuring it. Missions can see that every day very directly. They know they did well or they didn't, and that is a hell of a statement on job satisfaction.
Speaker 1:The other side of it is we have more than two, but at least two kinds of people those that are uncomfortable with change. They seek stability, they want tradition, they want predictability, they want to do the same job, the same way every day. Don't tell me anything different. I'm comfortable with this. And there's another group of people, and it's becoming more prominent, is it? Yeah, go away. That's why we do that, and we have to be smart enough on how we apply the jobs. We certainly have enough variation in the theme that we can do this easily, but we don't do it today. We don't think that way today. The leaders today are intimidated by this. That guy, they're a pain in the butt. There's Gen X or Alphas, or whatever we're calling them anymore.
Speaker 2:They want to come in and go to the corner office right away, get $150,000.
Speaker 1:That's not true, but that's their perception, because they don't know how to deal with them. They don't know how to communicate with them. It's a really interesting time and that's not good. That's the Chinese curse. You know, maybe you live in interesting times.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But what appeals to me every time I go into a classroom and I still do that with 20-year-olds it's energizing, it's exciting. Go into a college town. One of my favorites is Eugene, oregon. That's because they have good wine there, but the energy in that town is phenomenal. One of the places that I taught in Poland has five universities, 120,000 students. That's the birthplace of solidarity. The energy in that town you can almost feel it when you drive in and get out of your vehicle. It's palpable. And the trouble with that world is they're going to ask questions. Typically, we feel insecure if we can't answer the question. Maybe that's because of the way that I teach. It's called Socratic Teaching. I never answer questions, I ask the questions. I don't get the answers. You're responsible to develop your thinking pattern such that you can come to the answers. I tell people in service classes when somebody comes to their door asking a question no, no, no, no. Tell me what the answer is and why You're not allowed.
Speaker 1:I don't let you park your brains at the door when you come to work. Come on Right. It's the. I'm really worried about this chasm that is starting between the older generation and the younger generation, Because our future as older people, our future depends on you. Right, I don't know why people don't get that.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I agree, and I think that you talked about your teaching method and I know you've been a trainer and that's one of the things that I enjoyed about, always enjoyed about training is that a lot of times I was in that room with an up and coming group of workers who were excited to learn. They were excited to be there and what I noticed was that the trainers that really enjoyed the job, that had fun. They could harness that excitement. Right, it wasn't stifled due to listen. We're going to stick exactly to this lesson plan. We're not going to divert from this whatsoever. Do not use your imagination. I'll be your imagination for you. That's the trainer who doesn't have any fun, who doesn't enjoy that work. That can be difficult to do on a technical side, because a lot of times you work for an OEM. As a trainer, there's some key things you have to do in that course, but I think the messaging is so important in the beginning, I agree.
Speaker 1:So stay there for a second and let me pick on something, just to show you how weird I am. Yeah, teaching is the word, not training.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Training is showing you what to do. Teaching is empowering you to learn yourself. My job as a teacher is to teach you how to, so you don't need me anymore, you can teach yourself. Your job as a trainer is to replicate your skills and the process that your employer is providing. I know that's picky, but that word says something that bothers the hell out of me. This is how you do it. What so? My example always is the steam engine to the electric motor.
Speaker 1:Magnificent change caused by technology took a generation before the tool was used effectively. Kaizen, continuous improvement morphed several times 6 sigma, 5s, 7s, all of this other stuff, different names, different pricing for consultants. But if you go around to dealers and OEMs today and the construction equipment have the equipment world they don't do continuous improvement hardly at all anymore. Try, and that's embarrassing. You know who's the number one car manufacturer in the world today? Who was it 50 years ago? General Motors? Who is it today? Volkswagen? Who's number two? Toyota? Where's General Motors? I don't know. Somewhere down the pile. How did that happen?
Speaker 1:Ok, so let's go to the next step. Here comes the technicians, the automotive industry. All three of them seem to have come up with a contract. The wage is going to be $40 an hour for somebody in the production floor Repeating the same job over and over again. How much should a technician get relative to that? Ups is hiring Christmas people this year $21 to $23 an hour. Where do we start a technician at? Where do we start somebody in the Parks Department at? Yeah, we are not looking at the work properly and I don't know how the heck I can get that across. Am I wrong? Isaac can be saying things like this.
Speaker 2:No, I think you hit the nail on the head. I think that there's definitely a. This is something that I this is something I actually talked with a guy who's in charge of a digital technology program just this week about this, and we talked about, like there's obviously a pay gap. Yeah, you could actually become, I think, a CEO. And Alex, I think, talked about before about coding Right. Why do parents want to send their kids to coding school, right? Like well, there's obviously a potential there, right? So, yeah, I don't disagree. There's definitely an issue with compensation. One thing I will say, though and I think this comes from kind of my roots in Kamatsu is that when I look at this, I see, yes, there is a. Yeah, I think most technicians are worth way more than they're paid. Absolutely. When I was a technician, I worked way harder for the money that I made than I probably should have, right, but I enjoyed the work and one of the benefits of working let's just talk about just a diesel technician for OEM or working for a dealer when I clocked out.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, it might have been a long day but when I clocked out at the end of the day, I physically couldn't take my work with me. I was done. There was going to be no more work until I clocked in the next day. So I had margin in my life. I had more margin in my life than I've had since, because now I can send an email, all right, I work from home. Well, that means I can work all the time. Right Now you don't have to do that.
Speaker 2:But the nature of a motivated person is to just constantly work. And what I have discovered is that, yeah, there's a pay gap with technicians. Sure, maybe it's not the best-paying job per the work and calories burn on the job. Got it, get it, understand that. But what I really like about this is that, still to this day, you have margin in your life. When you go on vacation, there's no way you can fix that dozer while you're at the beach. It's not going to work, you can't. You're not working while you're supposed to be on vacation. You're not working where you're supposed to focus on some other task.
Speaker 2:And what I learned really come out to was the Japanese. Get this. That Japanese work culture has this stigma about working yourself to death. There's even a Japanese word for that, for someone who just works themselves to absolute death to their end. But when you really embrace that culture, especially like Kaizen, what you find is it's not about the amount of work you do, it's the amount of focused work that you do. So you know the time that, and I noticed that's a commodity, right. So when I could spend an hour focused on work where I had zero interruptions, I was focused on work that I was interested by. I was focused on work that made a difference. There was a larger picture to the work. When I was doing work that actually had like a physical interaction, for that hour of time, at two hours, at three hours, I could accomplish way more and feel more accomplished by the end of that time than I could working that same amount of time with multiple distractions, on work that I wasn't ever really going to master, right.
Speaker 2:And so what I've discovered it's taken me time to figure this out right, very blatant and obvious but when I look at diesel technicians today, you know, heavy equipment technician, you felt, whatever that title needs to be, there is a value in that work that I think it goes beyond. You know, comparing that pay grade to some other worker in an adjacent industry or unrelated industry, and that is you have time to focus for the most part my experience and you also have margin right. So maybe you work long hours but there's margin in your life because you can't physically be there to do that work while you're not supposed to be working, and for me that's been a very apparent thing. I've had to set some real boundaries professionally because, like I have, you know, I have four kids. I have four girls. So when I'm done with work I need to stop focusing on that work, start focusing on my family and my kids, because if I try to focus on both, I'm probably going to be productive at both right.
Speaker 2:So what I take from Kamatsu in that culture is a lot of times there are life-long benefits that you gain by lowering the importance on what you're going to be compensated and raising the importance on how fulfilled am I going to be in this work, what kind of mastery am I going to achieve in this work and what is the product of this work going to be? Because I can tell you work that has a product like fixing a loader at the bottom of a quarry before the rain comes in, right before the first snow falls and to see that thing get fired up and get back to work, that's reward. For me it was. I think for a lot of people it would be. And then, when you're done with that, going home and having no more work to do because you physically can't do it, so you can take that attention and focus on something else, that's very valuable.
Speaker 2:You can't put a dollar value on that ability. There's people who should go back. You know I talk with a lot of people who we kind of reminisce about being a technician or working. You know, living that life and that's one of the things we a lot of times conclude is, you know, what I really miss about that was when I was done working. There was no more work that could be done because I physically wasn't there, right, and I had time to focus on something else. You might be tired, right, you know you're not going to be busted, right, but you have margin in your life and there are very few career paths right now that still offer that, and so that's something that I reflect on a lot.
Speaker 1:Other than the physical repair and maintenance of things, there's no job that has a margin. I used to go to bed with a pad and pencil beside my on my nightstand and when I woke up I'd write something down. I stopped doing that, isaac, when I couldn't read my writing in the morning. Right, I ran a computer shop. So we're seven days a week, 24 hours a day, and the phone would ring. That's that guy. Come to the door to answer, ask a question. So I put the phone on my wife's side of the bed and they stopped calling because they'd wake her up and they knew I would not be a happy person the next day when I saw them. Right, the compensation is not a motivator at all. Never has been. I don't believe it ever will be. It's a demotivator, though, if you don't feel that you're being treated properly. So I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:I was working for that cat dealer in 1969. I was hired by the VP, finance and the Data Processing Guide to work in the parts department, and the general manager Parks, never really spoke with me. The first time we had a conversation is when I had my salary review at the end of June. So I'd been there three months and he said to me this is an older gentleman, a really good guy, he'd been there forever. He said we're really pleased with you. We'd like to you know to. We know you're on a contract but we hope that you can become a full-time employee. We want to give you $2 July 1st and $3 January 1st as a rate and I'm making, I think, $435 a month. So work the arithmetic $5 on $400. It's not very much. My response kind of shocked him. He said I stood up and I said well, I appreciate that, but how about you keep it? Because obviously you need it more than I do. I know that's what I would expect from myself, but I cry. Six months later I'm his boss. We had a very interesting performance review that referenced that discussion. He was a product of his time, isaac.
Speaker 1:I'm not being critical of him, I'm being critical of the activity. I'm never critical of an individual. I'm always critical of the thing that they do, not the person that they are. The other attribute that you go back with the technicians and vacations in Europe.
Speaker 1:You're not allowed to have email after hours. I don't know anybody that doesn't get emailed like. I answer them at two in the morning because I'm all over the world. I've got a friend of mine who says you ever sleep Because every time I send you a text you respond in 15 to 30 minutes, it doesn't matter what time of the day or night. He said. I don't know where you are anymore. We're all nuts. It's because we and it's not everybody, but it's clearly you and I think it's me we want it. We want it accomplished. Everybody wants to do a good job. Everybody can do more than what they think they're capable of and everybody is fundamentally lazy. You're going to find an easy way. I don't know that the younger generation realize that that's how we are thinking, because we don't communicate that to them. Here's your job. Come on in. Here's your wage. Thank you very much. You might be bored. I don't give a damn. Finish the job. You might have a better way to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, don't do that.
Speaker 1:We've been doing it this way for 50 years. What makes you think you're smarter than the collective knowledge the elite decided about 50 years ago? University was the avenue. 50% of the technical schools in this country have closed over the last 25, 30 years For lack of attention. We don't have any more tool and die makers anymore. Of course, technology does that all now, but we were the tool and die capital of the world. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:So the three reasons stability A person who has technical skills, who can fix things, will always have a job. The ability to segment your life into work home. There is a book written in the 80s by a MIT professor, peter Singies, his name, called the Fifth Discipline. It said that people that work for themselves should plan their vacation time a year in advance, otherwise they won't get any. And if you think about it, that's what I used to do. So after I read that book, I don't remember when it was late 70s, maybe early 80s we always sat down in the fall and planned the whole year and we followed it.
Speaker 1:So I get married. My wife worked for vacations, so I'd taken a week vacation in 10 years, but six months after we were married we went to the Virgin Islands for a month no cell phones. I had two projects. One was a facility going up about 300,000 square feet, 30 foot tall, an automated warehouse and a computer system going in I was going. Next, this wonderful woman that I'm still married to, 50 years later, allowed us to go back after three weeks because I was going, that's, I go back to work on the Monday. Everything's fine.
Speaker 1:They didn't miss me at all. Everybody commented on how relaxed I was. I went home that night and I said if I do that to you again, I want you to bend me over and kick me in the ass, because that's stupid man and I can't imagine how many people on the planet do that every year. Disappoint their family. There's a video on YouTube called Look Up. If you get a chance, watch it. The image on the screen has three women. So that's the one to do, and it's about our cell phones. My wife and my granddaughter were sitting five feet apart on the couch in Hawaii a couple of weeks ago on their phones, not talking to each other. I walked in from the other end of the apartment look at you. And they looked up and said what do you mean? Look at you, what?
Speaker 2:are you?
Speaker 1:doing, oh, and they both put their phones down. It's not size, yeah, and it's every aspect of our lives and we haven't given the young people, the high school kids, any help in trying to navigate their way through that. That's the message I got from your blogs and Alex Kraft's blog and Sarah Hanks, who talked about do we hire experience or education?
Speaker 2:That's right. That's right, yeah, and I think it's a critical time to master the messaging. Oh yeah, it's a critical time to make sure that the work kind of age group here that we're targeting, that they get to have the experience, like the experience that I had. And I talk with my buddy recently. He works at a technical college to this day and we both happen to be in school together in an engines class and he said, you know, like Isaac, what was it that about? Just the time and training that really got you excited? Were, you decided like this is what I really want to be good at, right, this is what I want to do. This is the feeling that I want to have over and over again and it's funny, we both talked about our trainer, who was a teacher, right, yeah, the title of trainer, but was a teacher had walked us through the steps of rebuilding this engine.
Speaker 2:You know, we did this basically in frame overhaul. We got it started, right, it's cranked for the first time, it came alive, right, we had not heard it run before and we assembled this thing and it fires up. Wow, it was huge for us, right. So we had done that before, right, we had made something start before, right. But we'd never done that with a team, with a group of people that we liked, that we bonded with and had this experience with, to gain this result, and so that's like the thing that we've been chasing after, right. So maybe it's not us now, but I can tell you that as a trainer, as a teacher, I have led many groups to be able to experience that same feeling right, that same sort of excitement, right.
Speaker 2:And maybe it's not for everybody, maybe everybody doesn't get excited about it, I don't know, but I can tell you the groups that I've interacted with who had that experience, they're still working in the industry today.
Speaker 2:They've stayed relatively close to that for the most part, and I think it's just like a young person who constantly has their head buried in their own. They're being programmed right. They're experiencing something that they're trying to recreate over and over and over again. And if this industry, if we don't do that, if we don't give them some experience that they want, that they attach themselves and want to create over and over again, then we're going to lose out to multi-billion dollar companies, even down to individual creators of content that are working to steal attention away from the people that we need right so that we need so badly who would be a great fit right, people who would otherwise find great enjoyment in being a technician. If they never have any experience, don't experience the emotion and gain some sentimentality very early on, it might be too late. They may move into some other area where it's so hard for them to make that move that they just don't do it.
Speaker 1:And so I can say yeah, early on.
Speaker 2:We've got to make sure they can get that experience.
Speaker 1:We've got to get our messaging right. I think your statement about messaging is the critical one. Everybody should have the opportunity to do something that they want to do, that they're excited about doing. We've got all of the expressions find a job that you love and it'll never work a day in your life. What the hell does that mean?
Speaker 1:So, that feeling of self-satisfaction, of self-esteem, of self-worth is something that I think we owe to people to talk about as teachers. Again, not using the word trainer, here's another word that drives me crazy commission or incentive Words make a damn difference. So this messaging Mary, I'd like you to be a mechanic. I hired the first mechanic at the Cedric Boulevard in Montreal. I was at all kinds of hassle, because what do you do about bathrooms? Don't think about those things. Right, we got to think about those things.
Speaker 1:So you're in high school, you're 14, 15, 6, or middle school, whatever it is down here 14, 15, 12, 13. I want you to start being selfish and thinking about yourself. What do you like? Who do you like? Why do you like? I used to. We had a cafeteria. I'd go in and I'd like to see who was having lunch with each. That tells you something about the whole group. Never ask somebody what they're bad at. Ask them what they're good at. You'd have to stop them from talking about it. But if you take what you're best at to its full extent, it's your biggest weakness. I'm really anecdotal. You don't get anything done. You know. It's very plain. In so many ways I think this is. I hope this has been beneficial for those of you listening. I've enjoyed hearing your perspective, Isaac, and I think you're absolutely on the money. But I think it's up to us to craft the message that can get across to kids children, I don't care the agent calling them children as opposed to adults. That resonates with them.
Speaker 1:When I was teaching everybody at university, everybody wants here's the book. What are you going to do next life here? No, I don't know. Well, we got to prepare. I said no, you don't you prepare when you're here. You master it after the here is over Used to drive them crazy. Why did I do that? Because they organized themselves that somebody would attend the lecture and take the notes and they'd all share it. They didn't need to be here. Well, if I didn't tell them where it was going to be, they had to be there. Guess what? Right, I'm pretty old fashioned with them teachings. My daughter teaches. She loves it, Absolutely loves it. Like you, when you see the lights go on in people's eyes, that they get it, it's phenomenal. There's no feeling better than that in the world. We got to make sure that the people that are let me broaden the range 12 to 18. Start thinking about what's going to make them happy for the rest of their lives. It's not money, it's not sex, it's not necessarily the job function what is it?
Speaker 2:And start thinking about it and pursue it, and you might not be right you might have to change your foretimes Big deal.
Speaker 1:Thank you, isaac, I've enjoyed this. Yeah, great discussion. Yeah, I hope it's been helpful to everybody. So you want to give us any closing comments, any words of wisdom?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I think that I'll just say this. I think that you know, if you're listening to this, from the industry, from an OEM, from a dealer, from a Jason industry I think right now, the message that you send to this group we're talking about 12, 18 years old is extremely important. So choose your words wisely and don't just stop the messaging either. If there is an opportunity, give them the experience. Let them feel that feeling, let them want to create, recreate that experience that they had interacting with the industry, specifically in this technician role. So I would say, choose your words wisely, master the messaging and if there's a chance to give them an experience, don't hesitate to do it.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much, Isaac, and thank every one of you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this and I look forward to having you with another candid conversation in the near future. Mahalo.
