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
Exploring the 'Say Do' Principle, Business Efficiency, and Leadership in the Modern Workplace
Ever wonder why the "Say Do" principle resonates so profoundly in today's workplace culture? Ponder no more! Our enlightening conversation with Ohio-based podcaster, Sara Hanks, peels back layers on this notion, spotlighting its vital role amidst changing dynamics between different generations at work. We shine the beacon on the importance of mutual respect and a promise-driven work ethic in fostering a harmonious work environment, while also examining evolving leadership styles.
Strap in for an engaging journey through the labyrinth of process improvement, and waste reduction in businesses. Sara and I dissect the pushback I faced while attempting to eradicate unscheduled locomotive repairs, underlining the invaluable role of data and intelligence in preventing equipment failures. Furthermore, we delve into the importance of clear communication lines and documented procedures in bolstering business efficiency.
The era of thriving on critical thinking and leadership skills is here! We discuss the need for nurturing these skills in our rapidly changing world and the role that education plays in fostering them. We also delve into the significance of measuring performance and fostering a culture of continuous improvement and growth in the workplace. Finally, we wrap up on a high note, discussing personal growth and societal responsibility in helping individuals attain their full potential. Buckle up for a thought-provoking ride that's sure to leave you enriched and inspired.
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 Hop and welcome to another candid conversation. We're joined with my favorite podcaster, Sarah Hanks, who's in Ohio. Her husband's been out in the woods and she's getting ready to cook some venison, which really upsets me because I love this stuff, not because it's not good. So, Sarah, good afternoon to you. How are you?
Speaker 2:Good afternoon Gary, Good morning Great. How are you?
Speaker 1:I'm not that good, but you know I'm a little older so I guess I can have an excuse. You put a blog up that I think it goes up tonight. You sent it across to me last week. That really got my attention and the headline on it, the way that I looked at it, is Say Do. And I'm going to take a little bit of a shortcut on it, and then I'd like you to expand on that. A lot of people say they're going to do something, but not as many do what they say they're going to do, and the reason it gets my attention is that drives me crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, that drives me crazy too, and that's not the culture that I grew up with.
Speaker 1:Did I misunderstand that.
Speaker 2:No, well, I think I grew up with the Jack Welch GE and Say Do was one of the. It was an expectation If you said you were going to do something, you took the ball, you ran with it and you came back with results. And I mean in today's day and age I would say I recently had an experience where my expectation was that if somebody said they were going to do something, they would do it. And it turned out that this specific employee was on the opposite side of that and required a lot of follow-up and it was exhausting and it was different. And then, kind of on the other side of the coin too, is when you grow up with a Say Do mindset and the expectation is if you say you're going to do something, you do it. What happens in the event that what you said you would do can't be done?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not so sure that it isn't built into how we operate anymore. The there's not a lot of change in the world that I experience. A lot of people are sticking their hand up now, saying they want to embrace change, but they don't know how to go forward. And when I say that I think it's gone away is people are focusing on jobs, doing a job, and doing the job the way the job was originally given to them, presented to them, trained to them, and if an employee has the courage to stand up and say, well, why the heck do you do it that way? They almost get smacked down. Today.
Speaker 1:I'd be dead because that was. You know why the hell do you do it that way was a common thing of mine. And you know, are you seeing that in the market that more and more people are just doing the job they were employed to do, without the opportunity to change it or improve it?
Speaker 2:Or say something if something doesn't go right, or give people a courtesy heads up if they know something negative is going to come at their peer from around the corner. I mean, it's very much this tunnel of I'm going to do what I need to do to get through my day and that going above and beyond it doesn't it's not a thing anymore. In fact, if you do, it's weird.
Speaker 1:It is weird. Do you think the culture of GE is still the same as it was when you were there, or has it gone into the same dark hole?
Speaker 2:I would say well, I haven't been with GE since 2019. So it's hard to say for sure. I mean, I don't know if Larry's done anything to change it back to a culture of execution and continuous improvement. I know he's got a big lean background.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, very much, but I think, generally speaking, I would say that seems to be the case from what I've seen is people get stuck and this is how they do things. The idea of challenging the status quo just doesn't even. There's no teamwork. I mean, I see a lack of teamwork.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's yes when you say tunnel vision and Welsh Welsh was an anomaly and I think the business community in America not internationally is accepted and understands that. And Jeff Emel was a much smarter man and he presided over a company that was on top of the hill and he had a heck of a time trying to stay there In fact he didn't. And then we got Bob Eiger at a similar situation at Disney and he left, and then the company changed and their stock value is about half what it used to be. Electric, basically, was sold at almost at an auction price level. It seems like we've got different leadership styles now too. Like you say, no teamwork. We don't have leaders that seem to trust their employees. They'd rather tell the employee what to do rather than ask. Is that too harsh, do you think?
Speaker 2:No, I don't think that's too harsh. I think I don't know if I see that specifically that there is a lack of flexibility or lack of collaboration. Necessarily, I think that there's a. I think leaders are perceived differently too. I think there's probably some change there. I think that the newer there are, the younger generations coming into the workplace don't have the same level of respect. I don't want to say respect, but maybe admiration or that thought of hey, I really look up to this person and I want to be that. So I think it's probably a little bit bi-directional.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I talked to a lot of different schools and a lot of different people in schools and one of the things that there a lot of schools are transitioning from one generation to the other, and you and I've talked about this in the past. I think my generation has stuck around too long and there's a lot of people that talk like. That's why the say do thing was so appealing to me. I think there's a lot of people that want, especially the younger generation, but they don't get the support. And I think the older generation again, this is opinions and that's not necessarily backed up, so I'll be interested in commentary we get from this. The older generation are risk averse, so they don't want to change things for fear that it'll cause a problem and they don't have enough time to recover, versus the younger generation aren't worried about making mistakes. The trick with mistakes is they're gonna happen. You just got to identify them quickly and adapt and adjust and fix and don't wait around.
Speaker 2:Damage control. Damage control when you catch it early is easy right.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's like firefighting. If you catch it early enough, it's easy.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If it isn't, it's boy, oh boy, it's a problem. But yeah, so, and again, that goes back to data analytics, and I think that also highlights the difference between generations. With artificial intelligence and with data analytics, we can process data like it's going out of style. Sure, so I can run a year's worth of data and come up with changing buyer patterns and give people a list of customers that the buying habits they have it's changed and you better intervene. You better call them yeah.
Speaker 2:Call them to, yeah, prevent the loss and possibly call the ones that have potential that you're not leaning into Exactly.
Speaker 1:And the people that I talked to are in two camps. One is I don't know how to get that, and two is oh damn, would that be helpful? And that's almost age-changing, age-separated. It's really remarkable it I'm older than most, but I don't think I'm older in my head and how I look at things. I don't understand how people whether they're 60 or 50 or 20, get stuck. How can you be happy with what we got forever? It's just not the way it is, you know, yeah. So how do you overcome that? People say they're gonna get it done, but they don't? As a project manager, as a leader, how do you make sure that doesn't happen?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the first thing you've gotta do is set expectations really clearly in the beginning on what you need and when. And then I think it's important to connect and check in, see how things are going. Don't take lip service for evidence of progress. I think show me, let's pull it up, let's see what you've got. I think validating that way.
Speaker 2:I think it's important in conversations like that that you don't come across like a micromanager. I mean you wanna go at it with an intention of being able to help and kind of figure out where things are at. I think those are really important and I think the team can help drive accountability too. I've done where in project reviews we invite people to talk about their updates, live in front of everybody else, and that peer pressure can help drive some accountability. But unfortunately I've taken somebody's words for face value and discovered late in projects that things weren't happening to the level of progress that they should have been and you end up having to change the plan or disappoint your end customers because the team wasn't supporting the way they should have.
Speaker 1:I had the pleasure and the opportunity at a very young age to work with a project manager for IBM who directed the Lunar Landing Project. Oh, and he was an amazing guy. But one of the things that I will never forget is he made this bold pronouncement If it ain't in writing, it don't exist. And if you're looking at large projects like what he was involved with, I mean, if you don't document things, you're cooked.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, I mean. I can't imagine much more of a risky project, right yeah?
Speaker 1:Well, another friend of mine, a partner of mine actually, malcolm Ferry. He's since passed, but he was the project manager for Boeing on the same thing. He's awfully smart people and I think we've got smarter people today, better breadth and depth of knowledge and understanding, but I don't see the risk taking today. Like there was Like chat GBT, everybody's pronouncing that as being one of the greatest things in Sly Spread. Well, that damn thing's been 40 years in the incubator.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:You know data management, data analytics. You know the database management structure. You know that's been around since the 60s yeah, for a long time, absolutely. And it kind of takes me back to and I wrote about this a number of years ago, when the electric engine came in and replaced the steam engine. That was done reasonably quickly, but to take advantage of the opportunity that the electric engine provided, it took a generational leaders to get it to the point that it was used properly. Probably the same things true with cars, same things true with planes. I don't know, I haven't looked that deeply at it. But what are we doing now? That's earth shattering. I don't see electric vehicles as an earth shattering event. No, yeah, telepathics or telematics has been good, but hell, that's been around forever. Sure, where are we? That might be why we're in this A. We don't know what to do anymore If we're in a project, and specifically to find that's pretty easy right?
Speaker 2:Well, you have a scope and you've got guardrails and you've got a destination, sure.
Speaker 1:But I don't know how many employees at least the ones that I interact with I don't see that many employees that either are interested in developing or improving or know where to go to look or how to identify.
Speaker 2:Sure, you know the basics of uncovering the waste in your process, but I think I mean honestly, if I can just be completely candid the you know I'm a big idea kind of person. When I get space to think big and try to go after a giant outcome, it's I love it. Several years ago, I had this thought that if you had, what would you need if you wanted to eliminate the need for a locomotive to go into a shop for unscheduled repairs Because they go like four or five times a year I'm not kidding, I'm talking about space for maintenance. Four or five times a year, people talk about getting rid of a maintenance, but nobody talks about the bigger impact. And I had a plan. I had a plan. I said you know, if you had these things true, if you had this data you could build the intelligence to eliminate it. I agree with that and I had the specific data.
Speaker 2:I knew what projects to go work and what order, and it was Matt with so much resistance.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of typical of what I'm talking about. It's the same thing's true with equipment Any piece of capital good, whether it's a washer at your house or a locomotive pulling a train. We've got life cycle data, yes, we've got markers. We've got tools that can analyze metallic wear, fluid pollution. You know all kinds of things that accelerate wear. So we have the data and you know the supporting data is if you can repair something before it fails. You can set, reduce the bill by 50%. It's plus or minus five or 10 points, but it's still material as hell.
Speaker 2:It's big deal. Not to mention when it's planned. You can plan it right. So do you need to have the spares? Can you have that intelligent fast enough, in accordance to lead time for the parts that you need to replace? That you don't even need to stock them. That's right. You order them when you need them. Now you're saving cash and you're preventing the downtime that was funny.
Speaker 1:I was talking to a fellow today about an inventory application on their business system and they didn't have the system set up very well.
Speaker 1:So we were adjusting things and correcting things and we're talking about performance criteria and measurement and all the rest of this stuff. And I said, if you put this in, you're going to have a higher level of availability for your customers. And he says, well, I don't know that I can do that because I haven't got enough warehouse space. So now I've got the whole damn business held up because nobody designed the facility properly and we didn't design the facility properly. That was a common problem back in the 70s and 80s with John Deere dealers. They didn't have any space in a warehouse. It wasn't important. You need the shop to prepare machines to sell. But that's really it and that's an advanced company. It's a leading business. That's been around 150 years or close to it. But that big deal. Another guy yesterday or the day before we're talking about, who was a manager at a major brand equipment house and he took over a job and there were outstanding issues in payments and credits and collections, okay, and there was an invoice that was worth around 10 grand that the customer had not paid and there wasn't supporting documentation. So what this new boss did is he wrote him a letter, attached the bill and tell him whatever he thinks fair or paid, and the customer wrote a letter back with the check for the full amount saying that they would be a customer of that particular dealership forever because of that approach. Wow, at the end of the day, we're people, sir, you know, and we forget about that.
Speaker 1:I've been a manic, not about understanding. Everybody has to understand what we're trying to do, acceptance. Everybody has to have the opportunity to fight with me about why I think that's the right thing. If they don't, and if we don't have that fight, we never get agreement that we're going to be committed to time. We get a lot of people giving us lip service, saying things, but fewer people will do it because I did. Part of that dilemma, I think, is they don't really understand what we're trying to do or they don't agree that what we're trying to do is the right thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really weird. As an example, the national anthem of the United States of America is very rarely played the way it's written Russia. Russia requires that the national anthem, whenever it's used in an international forum, is exactly the way that the Russian national anthem is supposed to be. They're the only country in the world that I'm aware that does that at the Olympics, the gold medal ceremonies, et cetera, which is why you hear the whole damn thing, and it's a long one, but we don't tend to do that. I don't know that we've got documented procedures like we used to. No, we don't know that we have annual, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:No. The idea of having a quality system and having procedures outlined and you can have a change effectively when you have a procedure, because if it needs to be improved, you write it differently.
Speaker 1:Well, exactly One of my standard complaints and you might have heard me talk about this mechanics ordering parts at a dealership. The mechanic in the shop leaves his bay, walks to the parts department and stands and talks to another person who gets the order for the mechanic. Many kinds of mechanic looks at books before they leave their bay. They have a piece of paper that has it all written on. They still walk to that back counter. Now I got two people involved and everybody looks at me like I've grown horns when I say why the hell don't you just have them pick up a phone?
Speaker 2:Yeah, or have a tablet with the.
Speaker 1:Well, that's even. I don't want it to go too far, I'll shop. Yeah, pick up the phone and order. Oh, I mean, I could do it on a tablet or a laptop. Hell, yes, it's, you know, and I call, or? I don't know if I'm the one that started this or not, but we call it paper to glass. When we brought something into the computer world, all we did was we took the paper form and we put it on a screen. So instead of writing it by hand, you typed it. I can't type to save my life, which is why I don't don't subscribe to that so much. We went into I became a data processing manager and I looked at every single damn form. We had 150 different forms. How many forms have not been used in the last 12 months? Came up with 30 and throw them away. Don't do that anymore. Yeah, stop. I don't know what caused that regression.
Speaker 2:Distraction.
Speaker 1:Is it that simple? We're understaffed so we don't have enough time to do everything the way we should, so we kind of it's a lick and a promise, like my hair, is that kind of becoming the deal?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely part of it. I think you know I'm working with one client now and they're so busy dealing with rework and all the stress and the there's frustration and even the ability to get along is being threatened, right, because it's they're just so behind and all their work because of all this unexpected rework. And I have time to see the obvious like paying for software that they're not using, a lot of money for software that they're not using. Like doing something simple, like visual management in the warehouse and setting up a queue so that you know you have all the material you need for the job that you need to do the next day, and it's they just can't get unburied because of all of the fires that they're having to put out in the short term. So I think that that's part of it.
Speaker 1:It was. It was really interesting. You know Dale Hannah, who you're aware is a colleague of ours and a partner of mine and other enterprises. He's got a what he calls fleet management and he's been using texts for a long time and telematics and GPS locating and all those things for a long time and we did a podcast a week or two ago and about a new product he's got is created a nap. Okay, that's voice activated, so anybody who wants anything to know about equipment talks to the phone. Awesome. And the thing that he told me that really got my attention, or one of the conclusions he came to the users of his tools. All of these tools are there already, but the entry point was a laptop or a tablet or a phone which isn't always convenient.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And he said people are telling me that training is their biggest hurdle, that people don't have time to learn how to do things anymore. And that brought me to. You know, I still don't know how to use pivot tables that well. You know I don't keep up with software the way that I should. And he came to the conclusion that it's time that's causing that. And we've had unbelievably low unemployment for a long time. But we've got 10 million. It's now less than that, but we've had 10 million people looking for work for probably five years now. We don't have enough people doing the work and a lot of businesses seem to drive their profitability on the backs of people. I either don't have enough or I don't pay enough.
Speaker 1:The reason labor issue with the automotive companies. Sure, ford said you know our bill is going to go up by 8.8 billion. I said congratulations. And another five years half the workforce won't be replaced with robots. So I hope you enjoy the raise. You got guys, but at the same time the manufacturers were not paying the guys properly. They didn't. They didn't keep up with what was intended. And that's almost the same trigger that caused unionization in the 1800s Abuse by the employer, which is the old fuel system, isn't it? And that comes back to exactly what you and I are talking about now, because the Lord told the surf what to do. The surf was not expected to be creative at all. Now the surf is the worker B, and the worker B is told what to do and they go out and do it. And they know damn well because when they get home at night they'll tell their wife or their husband or their children or whatever boy is this thing today?
Speaker 1:I remember sitting at a dinner table when Medicare was introduced in Canada with one of the leading surgeons in the world. He was a second man to do a heart transplant. He said I had a really good day today. I don't remember the exact numbers. He says I made 1500 bucks. I did remove two appendix and I did one thyroid operation Fix price. Here we are, and he was kind of laughing at it. It was too late for him. At a certain age You're not worried about money, but when you're younger and you're starting up, you want to have the opportunity to challenge yourself and be the best you can be, I think. But we're stifling that now. My opinion yeah. How do we change that? How do we get more people doing and less people saying.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it probably Starts with talking about it Awareness.
Speaker 1:So this discussion, your blog, but you know, like you say, you're setting expectations. I don't know that we've created expectations that are strong enough. And then you talked about guardrails and checking. Yeah this is, this is common sense stuff, isn't it? Yes, and then adapting and adjusting as necessary is also common sense stuff. And then you're going to achieve the goal. You're going to, that's right, you know. Satisfy the need, the purpose, yeah, we seem to have lost that.
Speaker 2:I think too, maybe diving into why, sure, is it lack of preparation? Is it lack of skills? Is it Fear?
Speaker 1:Probably a bit of all of that. Maybe it's a reflection as well. Sir, we've got so many choices. Today. When I was hitting university, you either took a science track or you took an arts track. Today, god knows how many damn tracks there are, and yet the end result of it is we've got a whole bunch of people that are hell of a smarter than I ever was at that age, or probably even you, but they don't have critical thinking skills anymore and I don't know how well we. There are ways that we get that back, but it's education driven and it'll take a while. But you know this COVID thing where we shut people down and didn't go to school. We're going to pay for that for the next 10, 20, 30 years.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, I see it in. You know, I have friends with really young kids and I can't think of one that isn't dealing with anxiety.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as a young child, yeah, and then the learning gap, right.
Speaker 2:So you know my one friend I just had a conversation with him today as wife's a teacher and there's a huge gap in the middle school ages of where people are with regards to learning and to what capacity they should be at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my daughter's a teacher in middle school and high school and she's got the same thing, with the exception that they're. I don't know if you and I have spoken about it, but she's following a program called Abbott, which is advancement by individual determination, which is a completely different thing than gate. This applies to everybody, not just gifted and talented people, and what her characterization of a to me was that every student in every class every week has to stand up and make a 10 minute presentation to their peers, the people in the class, about what they learned in that subject and what impact that had on their lives. That's cool. That's really cool. That's kind of scary cool that people that are 10 and 11 to 14 are being taught to think that way.
Speaker 2:I think about all of the lessons built in that right. You have to remember what you learned, you have to reflect on what you learned and then you have to apply what you learned and you have to have the confidence to articulate it. I mean, that's brilliant.
Speaker 1:It is, and that's been around since 1980. And it's only in the last 18 months that my daughter's been involved in teaching it in the school districts that she's in. It hasn't been there before but it's coming, and so I think slowly but surely we're identifying those gaps. I was talking to the president of Troy University in Alabama, I think it is. He was the first one, his school was the first one to go international because of the military, where they had internet based classes back in the 80s. That's way the hell had gone ahead of everybody else. But what he said to me critical thinking and analytical and communications, those things everybody knows that they've been eroding. But he said and this is about a year ago now he says I'm really worried because I'm not seeing leadership skills anymore, and is that a reflection that we're spending so much time walking down the street with our phone?
Speaker 1:Yeah, not looking where we're going, but looking at the map on the screen. That's right. There's a wonderful short YouTube called Look Up, which is exactly about this subject, where a guy is walking down the street with his phone and you should watch it. It's wonderful. Everybody should watch it. It's a heck of a statement. The audience that you and I deal with employees in businesses. Businesses are constantly trying to make more money. It's just a DNA type of genetic type of thing with a company, but they seem to have been doing it on the backs of people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, work, hard Work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, get more units. Gdp is a funny measure because it's units of work per unit of worker. Well, if I shrink the number of workers, I can make my GDP look great. Yeah, it doesn't mean anything. So a whole bunch of people are saying, well, democracy is not that good anymore. We need a combination of communism so that we can get these hedge funds at trillions of dollars. That's too much money and it's hard to argue that, sarah. But I need more people to do. I need more people to want to do, and I'm going to tell you that that means that I got to get more people trained. I got to expose more people to more things. Yes, and then when they come back, I want them to tell their peers, their coworkers, what the hell they learned from that class.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it goes back to give a presentation on what did you learn and how does that apply to your life?
Speaker 1:Exactly and that causes people to think yeah. So when I ask that of people, they kind of look at me funny. Nobody's asked them that question. I, you know one of the things, and I think you've heard me talk about this my five things routine. Make a list of five things that, if you could change, would make your life better. Make a list of five things that are a pain in the butt to do. Make a list of five things that would help your company be more profitable. And the number of things that are on each of those three lists that are the same. It's astounding. And if it's true, why is it still a problem? Why is it still?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. I was recently in a meeting you know, with leaders I was presenting on productivity and I had gone and done an assessment of data and the level of maturity that the data was, as well as the process that makes the data and put together a landscape and base in some evidence that said, hey, if you could take your bad data and bad process and make it better, you can save money or you can drive sales. And in that discussion we talked a lot about well, there's data that costs a lot of money to make and maintain. And is the cost? What would it be without that cost? To get the data is good, are we taking 90% accurate to 95% and spending a lot of money to get it there?
Speaker 1:And I had agreement from people.
Speaker 2:Oh yes we spend a lot of money there. So we had a problem statement. We had evidence that you could do things differently and save money. Would people agree that we're wasting money? And outcome of the meeting was keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, and a lot of that is again because we I think we spent too much time on a very simple statistical model where exponential curves flatten and that cost to move at 1% exponentially Against really really high yeah right and as a result of that, we say stop, you know it's okay, we'll leave it the way it is, but that 1% change, you know it's huge. I don't know if I've sent you those five things. You should use that as a device.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I really like that actually Is it true?
Speaker 1:I'll send it to you. It's nothing fancy, you know. Make it yours the anything and everything that we can do to help people feel better about what they do and are able to measure. This is one of the things that I really get cranky about. When people go home at night, they do not know how to measure their performance for that day. If I'm pulling a wrench on a shop floor, I can, I do.
Speaker 2:Sure, but every other job functions.
Speaker 1:it's not there, and I think that's something that we should pay attention to. Let's find some measures that you can use yourself when you go home to say you know, I could have done that better. Or wow, that was a good day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we don't have that today. I think even to there might be some measurement of the wrong things. Oh, no question about it Because you know, like email, for example, people get if they feel a lot of pride for, oh, I cleaned out my inbox or I went through 100 emails today, but you might not actually be accomplishing things. So I think it's figuring out what the right measurement is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't laugh at this. Before I get out of bed in the morning, I've gone through. I have three different email accounts and four different social media accounts. I go through all of them before I get out of the bed and if I don't, somehow I don't feel that I'm ready for the day because I don't know what I'm going to get hit with. Okay, so I'm using that time those seven activities to avoid problems, not to improve things. It's more defensive than offensive, sure, and it's the fact that I bring it up to you drives me crazy. I've been doing this a long time.
Speaker 2:It's so easy. It's so easy to just pick up the phone and I mean, and you're curious, I'm sure, oh, yeah, Well, I'm getting them from all around the world to some degree.
Speaker 1:It's exciting. You know, I hear from somebody in Belgium or in Tokyo, or you know Sao Paulo. You know we got a hell of a problem at Sao Paulo. The airport says and nobody knows how to do anything there anymore. It's well, who's who's who's asking you to look, and off we go. You know. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a. That's the same thing as this discussion about inventory. Well, I can't. I can't put my availability in the right place because I don't have enough storage. So, wait a second, you can rent warehousing. Don't give me that. That's easy fix, you know, but it's, it's. I think it's part of our landscape now that we're stuck. Continue to do what we've always done, even if you find evidence that requires you to make a change. That'll make it better.
Speaker 1:Yes your, as your case was, and we've got a lot of employees who've been smacked down when they bring forward suggestions, to the point that they stop ring for the suggestions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they, you. That's the scariest thing, right when your employees go quiet.
Speaker 1:Yep, and now we got the younger generation that the older generation is not very respectful of, because they're not going to hang around like we used to. That's right. If they're not learning, they're gone. Yeah, and guys my age, they look at me, they ask me. He says what run, what happened to people? I always did what my boss told me to do. Well, I learned that from my father and as soon as I got away from him, I stopped doing that. Yeah, it's. I think it's almost built in, sarah, and that really is troubling to me. So, where you are on the forefront of this with analytics and and the quality of data, which is an issue also, yes, and the ability to analyze it, to create a case, to, to look for continuous improvement, to make things better. There's not a big audience that does that anymore.
Speaker 2:No, it's a shame. It is a lot of money that way.
Speaker 1:Well, you should be able to. Every department should have somebody that does nothing about, but think about how they can do things better.
Speaker 2:Yes, and maybe that could be a rotating job. It should be a rotating job because it's a skill that can be taught and learn and you can apply it forever.
Speaker 1:Yep, yeah, we used to. You know, I, I used to have meetings, monthly meetings, with the team, and it was an hour and a half, and it was half an hour on product, half an hour on process and half an hour or whatever the hell was important now. And the half an hour on process was always taught by one of the employees. Good, and that's devious. Because they wanted to know that damn thing, because they didn't want their coworkers to jump all over them because it didn't know something. So everybody does better in the process right.
Speaker 1:We we have. We don't do those as much as we used to, no, so it's a series. Now there's a there's grist for your writing in the blogs. Here's a series of things that we need to do to get ourselves back on track. And what do you do is a bit of a trigger. Okay, what do it? And that's that should be opportunities for you and the work you do. So it's a crazy subject, but I'm glad we touched it. I don't know that many people that are listening are going to pay attention to it, other than maybe it'll provoke a little bit of thinking, which I hope it does. Every single business that I touch, every single school that I touch, has a thirst for wanting to do things better, but they don't know where to start. They need somebody to come in on a white horse that'll show them away. That's you.
Speaker 2:I'm too old. Well, I'm happy to to come in.
Speaker 1:Oh, I know. Well, look at how old is Jack Welsh now he's still working, he's still teaching, he's still writing. Amazing, isn't it? Yeah, Sarah, it's wonderful. What? How do you want to wrap this up? Moving from saying to doing? You've got all of the tools setting the expectations, the guardrails, checkpoints, making adjustments, adapting. How do we get that to bring it to life inside all these different businesses? How do we get the locomotive project so that you know, instead of four times, we only need to do it twice or three times?
Speaker 2:Three times. That would be a huge savings, that's right.
Speaker 1:It'd be huge. Well, we got rid of cabooses. How long did that take?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah.
Speaker 1:How do you wrap this up now? Well, I know there's a problem.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, for you know, for people who are finding themselves in the I'm I'm stuck, I don't know where to start. I think, asking for help, finding somebody that can help be a guide for you To navigate, getting unstuck, learning how to create a voice if you're wanting to project yourself in an environment that you're constantly being told to stay quiet, I think having a coach or a mentor would be really beneficial For people who find themselves surrounded by those that are not doing and need to do. I think it goes back to, I would say, get some discipline on setting expectations, creating operating rhythms, even you know if you have to go so far as to embarrass people for not coming prepared. And then there's an element of showcasing wins.
Speaker 1:Celebrating successes. Yes, yeah, we don't do it. We don't do enough of that, and we don't do it in public either. It's you know. We got participation trophies anymore rather than exceptional performance. Everybody's okay, we're all the same. Don't want you to feel bad. Wait a second. When you get out and you're earning a buck, all of a sudden it's not participation. You're not going to be looked at all. You're just as good as Mary or George. You're expected to be better.
Speaker 2:There should be some recognition for exceptional performance.
Speaker 1:So we run up against the wall because we can't really give specific advice. That could be a solution, but I'd like to have more people thinking about this talking about this inside their companies, inside their families, inside their schools, about how do we make things better for the people that come behind us. How do we make things better for ourselves while we're here?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I don't know that. There's enough of that.
Speaker 2:No, I don't think there is. In my house it's like that right now. My kids make fun of me because I'm always telling them, like, okay, great you did. You did good on this. What could you do to make it better?
Speaker 1:I've got the same thing around our house. You know, my granddaughter is in Hawaii now taking her master's and she's just finished the semester. Her last quote, quote presentation exam was yesterday and I said are you going to relax for the next two or three weeks? She said, oh, I got papers to grade and I got labs to run. You know she's working. My grandson goes to school eight to four or five days a week and has two hours of tutoring, one on one, every night. I'm not posting my daughters having to rebuild curriculum all over the place and we're nuts in this place. It's nuts.
Speaker 1:I don't think we're unusual, but we're blessed with the opportunity that not everybody has. You know that's the other thing that people need to recognize. So you know it's. I don't want to beat this thing to death, but I think we've got terrific need. I think we've got a bunch of smart people that have not been challenged to the degree like show me how good you are, and I think it's something that we have to come to grips with and this discussion hopefully causes people. This conversation hopefully causes people to to think about a little bit and maybe start acting on it. So thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you to people that are listening and look forward to seeing you with another candid conversation in the very near future. Thank you so much. Thank you.
