In preparing my column for the Construction Equipment Digest I was struck with a question. Do you deserve the loyalty of your customers? Think about it please. What do you do to earn and retain the loyalty of your customers. It is an important point. The time is now.
Internet Learning and You.
The last time we talked about education we discussed the evolving nature of learning; first classrooms, then webinars, then audio video webinars with a difference. Now I want to explore the internet learning options.
The first step is to take the slide shows of a webinar and add voice to it. This allows the student to order a product, a learning session, download it and watch it at their convenience. The order will expire within a time limit – days or the number of uses. This is some cases is supplemented with an exam that is taken and the results emailed by to the participant. Not a bad approach. Quick and inexpensive and there is a skills testing exam.
The next step is the internet classroom. It is a virtual course with audio and video, sometimes streaming video, with exams interspersed that must have a specific level of accomplishment before you can move on to the next chapter or section. This is the approach we are taking. We will have a series of self-study programs each of which will have four chapters and within each chapter will be four sections. At the end of each section will be a short test with a more complete test at the end of each chapter. I have high hopes for this new approach. We will be bringing out our prototypes of this training approach later this year.
When we have finalized the approach we will offer four self-study programs for Parts Managers and four for Service Managers. This will be in conjunction with the three classroom sessions for each of parts and service, the eight webinars for each of parts and service. The time is now.
I got an email this morning from Patrick Sweeney of Caliper. Caliper does terrific work in the areas of Human Resources, Organizational Development and Recruitment to name just a few of their areas of interest. Patrick asked that we read his blog – Creators, Collaborators and Critics. It is terrific and well worth your time to read it.
I want to extract two of those words. Critics and Creators.
I think it is worth reminding ourselves of these words in the context of our ability to develop improvements in our businesses. The world around us is changing constantly. But change in our Industry is not nearly as dynamic. We are rather ponderous in how we approach change. Perhaps that can be explained to some degree by the two words. Critics and Creators. Don’t forget it is always much easier to be a critic. You don’t have to do anything other than object. With all things in life not everyone has the attributes to be a creator. But it is not for sure that any of us are or are not creators to begin with in our lives. As a youngster all of us were curious. All of us asked why things were as they were. We seemed to be destined to live in a world full of interesting and challenging things. Then we started to be molded. To become obedient. That is when we started to stop asking those questions. That is when we recognized that to get along one had to go along. Well I for one object to that approach to life.
I want us all to be creators. Don’t think I want to ignore the critics. I don’t. But I want the critic in each of us to be constructive and help in the evolution of the systems or processes that we are working with and on. Dont forget that you need to ask yourself the question every day. Do I work in the business or on the business? The answer is very important. Please read the blog you will enjoy it. Thank you Patrick. The time is now.
Yesterday I talked about the changing approach being taken regarding University education. In the commercial world there has been a serious reduction in training at all job levels in companies. It has been determined that employee training is a discretionary expense. It can be deferred or discontinued.
Back in the 1990’s we started many of the equipment manufacturers stopped providing management training. It was costing too much money. We made the determination then that we could fill the void they left. We started our training business Quest, Learning Centers, Inc then. We felt that it was much more costly to have untrained employees than it was to spend money training them.
We were going along building the business and having some successes when the infamous 9/11 hit the economy. That put a serious hit on everything that involved travel. First it gave the traveler a cause to think about what they were doing. Then there was the added inconvenience of the travel and the cost. This hit the training business hard. People just stopped coming to our classes. Well we adjusted and adapted and slowly the business came back to life. We were rolling along quite nicely with 25 to 30 participants in each of our classes when the 2008 economic calamity hit.
We have gone through another move in the economic cycle, this one a very serious one. We were living on credit everywhere at a much too large degree. This was true for private citizens, companies and all levels of government. This was encouraged by easy money provided to consumers at interest rates kept artificially low by the Federal Reserve. It was exacerbated by legislators in changes to collateralization rules and banks who created exotic financial instruments, all of which became a house of cards and ultimately collapsed. We are still in a very serious situation, whether it be the age demographics in Japan, which will lead to a large reduction in the internal savings that has always funded Japan, to excessive government spending in Europe where in France more than 50% of the Gross Domestic Product of the country is taken by the federal government spending, to the US where uncertainty seems to be the calling card of the current economic and political landscape.
This caused the training business to explore even less expensive means for employees to have to learn because business was cutting back on employee training spending yet again. The classroom learning experience was deemed to be too expensive. Take out the travel and you can have a training experience that delivers results just as well as in the classroom if you use technology. This built a training experience called a Webinar. An instructor talks to a computer or a telephone with the computer screen of the instructor visible to students around the world on the phone watching the same screen and listening to the instructor talk and transfer knowledge. To a teacher, which I was at one point in my career, this was a false altar that was being worshipped. The learning component was overlooked as long as management could check a box that they provided training. Management never considered that the learning experience was degraded. You couldn’t see the students you didn’t know if they were paying attention, you didn’t know if they understood the messages. It was a false altar. Then technology has moved the bar. Now you can have an audio video learning experience so that now the students on the call can be seen and it can be interactive. This is progress but it is still quite early and as such I don’t want to conclude that this is the answer.
Next is the internet. This is the vehicle for which I have high hopes. We are currently developing a series of internet based self-study programs which we will start rolling out this year. I will explore that delivery vehicle in the next discussion we have on education. The time is now.
Have you noticed the accelerated interest in online education at the University level? It seems that the world of teachers is starting to get the message that the cost of school at the University level has gotten out of hand ever since the federal government started to offer lower interest loans than the banks. The schools took advantage of this and raised the cost of tuition and everything else. Not a very enlightened response from supposedly caring people. They look exceptionally greedy to many of us.
Well MIT and Harvard and a few others are offering joint classes on the internet. A group out of Stanford has joined to fray. An individual professor from Stanford is breaking new ground with on line classes that count toward credits at many institutions. It is about time. Perhaps now we will see some of the ego stroking construction programs and professor seat stipends come back to earth. It is ridiculous to see some of the pay packages in place.
Teaching is an avocation not just a profession. I don’t think we need many million dollar professors in this world. Do you? Perhaps we have all gone overboard with pay packages. It is long since time for pushback in schools not just at the CEO level in Companies. Read Gary Hamel and see what you think. The time is now.
Some of you will know I have been in Hawaii the past few weeks and Marlene and I are having a terrific time. Although we are three hours earlier than at home I am still getting up reasonable early and have had some time for reflection on the business and the Industry.
I have not been in a cocoon here I have been in contact with several people so I have not lost my complete sanity when I wrote the headline for this blog. I truly don’t believe that any dealer any where at any time will thrive without an ambitious and intelligent grooup of talented technicians. I know that I have felt this way for a long time and many of you have heard me make this point before. But it bears repeating now for a few fresh critical reasons.
The new fossil fuel interest. The shale oil developments, fracing techniques, deep well recoveries, natural gas abundance and other exciting things are happening in the oil and gas world. You might wonder what that is going to do to the technicians in our Industry. Well all you have to do is look to our Northern Neighbour, Canada, and you might get an idea. Ft McMurray in Alberta has been a boom town since the 1960’s as a result of the “OilSands” resource. They have wages in that area that will take your breath away. We are seeing similar results in North Dakota. Now the area from San Antonio to Corpus Christi is gaining serious interest. Check out Oklahoma for action. It is starting to be everywhere. Even the EPA can’t seem to stop this strong drive. Between Canada, the US and Mexico the US could satisfy All their oil and natural gas needs for well more than the next hundred years. Of course that is not politically correct these days. Our federal government wants wind and sun power and no more fossil fuels. It appears they are so serious they will kill job opportunities in the process. (Keystone – where for those of you not paying attention that additional oil from Canada is now being shipped by rail and truck which is much more risky than a pipeline) One other comment. The Exxon Valdez oil spill was caused due to us having to ship the Alaskan oil via tankers instead of the pipeline that the envirnmentalists killed at the time.
My point in all of this is that technicians are going to be in shorter supply than they are today in the very near future. The oil and gas industries will take a large number of these talented people and they will do it with higher wages. So I think the message is pretty clear.
Develop your own technicians with good training programs, apprenticeship programs and mentoring programs. Provide a career path that is meaningful and followed for each individual technician. Pay higher wages either with a straight wage or with a strong meaningful incentive program. Manage and supervise the techncians with adequate supervisory density and “good” direct supervision. Operate a “best practices” business unit in service with current and workable tooling and good technological support with tablets and PDA’s and laptops. You have to attract and retain these talented people or you will continue to struggle.
The headline is clear. You need technicians, you need very good technicians if you are going to thrive. The time is now.
I have mentionned the latest book from Gary Hamel – What Matters Now before here and I would like to quote something he wrote about his in-laws. Mr Hamel’s wifes parents bought the Hamels a starter house and it was a great lesson for the newly married couple. The ability to help their daughter came from a life of good old fashioned hard work and strong character traits learned by them in their home, their church and their schools.
The Farmers Creed.
“I believe a man’s greatest possession is his dignity and that no calling bestows this more abundantly than farming. I believe hard work and honest sweat are the building blocks of a person’s character. I believe that farming, despite its hardships and disappointments, is the most honest and honorable way a man can spend his days on earth.”
That makes perfect sense to me but I also believe that is not a commonly held belief. The interesting fact is that the average age of an american farmer is in the high fifties with no clear prospect for that the go lower. It appears that the family farm has long since gone to the corporate farm and that these virtues of farming are going the way of the dodo bird. The time is now..
In operating your business the goals are always to provide a product or service that your customer can trust and rely on. That your offerings are supported by qualified talented trained employees who care about your customers. So in this difficult business climate do your best, do what is right but make sure you know what you are doing. Do no harm. The time is now.
With our web site at www.rjslee.com and the changes we have recently made to it, I think we have a information center with easy access and lots of salient information. We are still finding our feet with the blog. Still looking for content that attracts people to come visit and comment. Twitter is a different matter as we use this only to communicate directly to the twitter audience. The next stage for us is Facebook. I have been hesitant to join the Facebook community from a security perspective. I am about to change my mind and join the crowd. Let us know of any ideas yoou might have to help us be of more use to you either in content or in regular communications. Thank you. The time is now.
Hello everyone. Well it is there. We have had our website updated to now incorporate the activity here on the blog. The home page has changed. Have a look I think you will like it. There are still some tweaks and updates yet to do but it looks great and a BIG thank you to Ryan Miller for his work to make us look good. Thank you Ryan.
You might also like to review our Reading List. We have recently updated it and as you will have ntoed we have started a “book of the week” blog to initiate thought on specific books.
I would like to thank all of you who so loyally check into the blog and read it and hope we are providing thought provoking material. The time is now.