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Christmas List and Check List in Business... One in the Same?  by Nick Kemper

12/15/2014

1 Comment

 
Picture
My 9-year-old son wrote his letter to Santa this week, and, for the most part, it read like an inventory sheet – various games for the Wii, X-Box 360, and PS3.  One of his birthday gifts last summer was a golden retriever puppy, so it warmed my heart to see that he asked Santa for something for his dog.  After that, he asked Santa to please remember his family. 

 

I don’t mind ranking after the dog – she needs to be lobbied for, having no way to write Santa herself.  To be honest, I was touched by his thoughtfulness, to include others in his wish list.  He also mentioned that he has been pretty good this year, and that he will try harder next year.  I found that moving as well.




My 9-year-old son wrote his letter to Santa this week, and, for the most part, it read like an inventory sheet – various games for the Wii, X-Box 360, and PS3.  One of his birthday gifts last summer was a golden retriever puppy, so it warmed my heart to see that he asked Santa for something for his dog.  After that, he asked Santa to please remember his family. 

I don’t mind ranking after the dog – she needs to be lobbied for, having no way to write Santa herself.  To be honest, I was touched by his thoughtfulness, to include others in his wish list.  He also mentioned that he has been pretty good this year, and that he will try harder next year.  I found that moving as well.

I found out later that he might have been coached on some of the content of the letter.  Now, for some, that might dilute the effect of the effort.  Not for me.  Even if suggestions were made, he would not have included anything he didn’t agree with or want to include.  Also, I think it’s important to reward and celebrate the behaviors you want to see from your children, even if you (or your better half) has guided that behavior.

I think that there is absolutely nothing wrong with a little coaching.  I find the same is true in managing employees.  Some managers like to treat everything like a pop quiz.  You tell an employee once what you expect, and if they don’t remember it consistently and forever, you nail them on it.  I just don’t see the value in that technique.  It sounds like your agenda is to penalize employees, rather than to operate a business profitably.

If you want to condition a behavior to occur or not occur, you nurture that conditioning.  The simplest training method I’ve encountered is to demonstrate the proper technique and then have the employee drill – with assistance – until they can demonstrate proficiency.  They might have to drill once, or a hundred times.  Once the behavior is demonstrated satisfactorily, you then remove every obstacle that you can from the path of the employee reproducing that behavior every time he or she has to reproduce it.

Here is an example:  paperwork.  You write up a customer invoice for an employee, show it to him or her, and then the next time you run a call together, you have the trainee write up the invoice.  If there are errors, you correct them.  Then you send them out on their own, and the first day out, all of their paperwork is messed up, so you yell at them for not paying attention.  The next day, you reprimand them.  The third day, you penalize them. 

How about, instead, you let them show you they really know how to do it, before they have to do it for real?  Put them in a conference room, give them some examples of customer invoices done correctly, print out some call details from actual calls from your software program, and have them write up dummy invoices.  Have them do this so many times that they can do at least 21 without error, without assistance (refer to my special Catch-21 Training Program).  Keep copies of correctly completed invoices posted in an area where employees can refer to them in the course of their workday.  If they make errors on actual invoices after completing training, give them gentle, written reminders, showing them what result you were looking for.

Here’s another example, this time for management:  managers’ meetings.  You hold meetings once a week, or once a month, or once a quarter, or when the mood strikes you.  You show up at the last minute, glare at your harried management team, throw out a problem that’s been hurting your operation for some time, and demand ideas from them.  When they don’t come up with something new or brilliant within 5 minutes, you berate them.

How about, instead, you work up a Meeting Agenda one week ahead of time, distribute it to each attendee, and indicate what items on the agenda for which you are looking for feedback, input, ideas, or data?  The day before the meeting, you send out a Meeting Reminder.  Then you bring copies of the Agenda to the meeting for everyone, in case they forgot theirs.  After the meeting, you write up meeting minutes, highlighting contributions from your team members.

The idea here is not to babysit your employees, but to get the desired result you are looking for.  This isn’t sophomore math class.  It’s business, and coaching and training is an everyday activity.  Are you setting your employees up to fail, or to succeed, and which pleases you more?

Me, I’m just happy that my kid has got my back with the Santa communication, and that Mom’s got his back.  A well-oiled machine.

Have a safe and profitable week.

Sincerely,  Nick Kemper

www.TowPartsNow.com

http://www.hub911.com

 

1 Comment

Reality TV vs. Reality   by Nick Kemper

12/1/2014

0 Comments

 
Hub911.com
I have resisted watching any of the Reality TV shows about towing. First of all, believe it or not, until 2012, we did not have satellite OR cable at our house. We had one of those hokey digital converter boxes with rabbit ears, so about the only TV I watched was PBS and Sunday Football. We broke down and got satellite TV, because it was bundled with something else and resulted in an overall savings for a year or so. One thing that has NOT been saved, however, is hours wasted watching reruns of Friends, Cheers, Family Ties, Frasier, and Sanford and Son, as well as Rocky III twice a month and The Fugitive every three weeks.

I don't even know the names of the Reality TV shows about towing. My thought has been, it wasn't that entertaining when I was doing it, so why would I want to watch someone else do it?

Reality TV is obviously here to stay, however, so I might have to see what the stink is all about. Last night I watched about 15 minutes of one of the repo shows, and I have to call BS on it. I am sure the action is probably scripted, if not rehearsed. I've heard the argument that these shows give the industry a bad name, but really, it's not the Towing Industry or the Repo Industry they are representing. It's the Reality TV Industry, which is just a forum for people who want attention without having to learn how to act. The 15 minutes I watched were relatively compelling, which is why I knew it wasn't real. Yes, if you went through 200 hours of my work shifts, when I was running impounds, you might find 30 minutes of compelling Reality TV, but it wouldn't have been outrageous. There wouldn't have been anyone with bleach-blonde hair (that came later, when I was in management), there wouldn't have been fisticuffs, the cars and tow trucks wouldn't have been sparkly clean and waxed, no one would have looked and sounded so interested in their work, and there wouldn't have been near as much talking. And that would have been the part worth watching. The other 199 hours and 30 minutes would have been sheer tedium. And I was a busy guy many nights.

I have thought, however, that my experiences would make compelling entertainment, but not as Reality TV. I think an hour-long drama, filmed and presented like the CSI series, with mostly on-location filming, would make an excellent forum. You take real experiences, you embellish, and you create a story with an arc out of it, and you depict what happened accurately but with focused intent. Towing is not usually life-or-death, so I don't mean that it would be as heavy as CSI, but the format and look would be like that: restrained, respectful, serious, and compelling. Incidentally, if you are worried about what the general public will think about our industry if they watch any of these Reality TV shows about towing, imagine how cops, lawyers, professional athletes, doctors, actors/actresses, and trophy wives feel. Do you honestly feel worse about calling the police for help after you watch some cop show where a character does something un scrupulous? I think we can separate what we see on TV from the real Reality, even Reality TV.

I worked with a lot of guys who saw their work as glamorous or deserving of the spotlight, and it made me chuckle. I don't know if it's the lightbar on top of the truck that does it, but there are many wannabe-cops in our industry. Problem is, it's usually the ones who either washed out in that line of work, or who never got in because they want to be in law enforcement a little too much. The best example from my memory is a Dispatcher whose parents were both police officers. He wanted to be a driver for us, but his driving record was not good. He carried a triangle kit and road flares in the trunk of his car, and had a rotating deck light inside his car. If he came across somebody repairing a tire on their bicycle, he would hop out and put down a flare pattern. He was okay as a Dispatcher. However, one night while he was on-duty, one of our drivers witnessed a motorist bang into a car right outside of our office, and the car kept going. Our driver radioed in to Mr. Flare and started following the car. The motorist drove very slowly. He obviously knew our driver had seen what happened, and he was probably assessing his options. He drove around the neighborhood for about five minutes and then returned to the scene. He got out, and our driver got out of his truck, and they were talking politely about what had happened when our Dispatcher came flying out of the office onto the sidewalk with a pistol drawn, yelling, "Hands on the hood of the car!"

I am NOT making this up.

I am happy to report that no one was shot. I don't know if the gun was loaded. I do know that I did not know he had a gun with him at work, and I do know that he was in deep you-know-what for bringing one to work, not to mention drawing it on a member of the public. When I talked to him about it the next day, I tried to explain to him in a respectful way that he had a tendency to get overinvolved in what was going on around him. He was legitimately shocked to hear that someone might draw that conclusion. He was just trying to be a good citizen. It never occurred to him, apparently, that it was odd to carry traffic diversion devices in his personal car, and to use them frequently. I think I kind of burst his bubble that day, but, if he was going to continue to work for us, it needed bursting.

When two-way radios were the norm, you would hear it every day--guys with a little too much excitement about their work. Just to be on the radio, where 8 other people had to listen to your bantering--that was enough to set their egos soaring. I would just switch them off, which is what I do with reality shows about repo companies. That's not what this business is about. Even if you're doing repos primarily, this business is about solving other people's problems, and to do that, you need to be focused on them and their problem, not on yourself. It's the Tow Business, not Show Business.

Have a safe and profitable week.

Sincerely,
Nick Kemper
www.TowPartsNow.com

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