Owners Prioritizing Profit Over Human Capital - A Conversation With Jim Cokonis

Swell AI Transcript: Jim Cokonis.mp3
SPEAKER00 Sometimes people think they are better than they are, or they know more than they think they do. And somewhere, somehow, the reality of that will hit them. And sometimes a teacher has to deliver the punch. And, you know, I never want to embarrass someone in a class, but I mean, as instructors, we've all had those those people in the class that try to, you know, take over a class and show that they, you know, that they know everything about everything.

SPEAKER01 Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome back to another exciting thought-provoking episode of the Jaded Mechanic podcast. My name's Jeff and I'd like to thank you for joining me on this journey of reflection and insight into the toils and triumphs of a career in automotive repair. After more than 20 years of skin, knuckles and tool debt, I want to share my perspectives and hear other people's thoughts about our industry. So pour yourself a strong coffee or grab a cold Canadian beer and get ready for some great conversation.

SPEAKER00 Yeah, I'm doing the. I'm doing the class that's titled developing a learning. Environment in the shop.

SPEAKER01 Nice, I'm gonna. I'm gonna try and pop in on that for a few minutes for sure. I'm I'm super excited. I mean, it's it's been a. It's been a whirlwind around here for the last two weeks. I started a new job and you said it's going well. Jim, I can't so I mean I've been. I've been doing this a long time now, right? Like over 20 years. And I can't remember having a better first week at any job than I had. So, I mean, it's just, I honestly didn't think there was a shop in my area that had that kind of culture that we talk about and that we're trying to bring forward and stuff like that. So just to put it in perspective, Wednesday was my third night. So third day and Wednesday night, they send me to my first ever CTI car quest training after hours. Now, I'm paid for my time to go. The class was fantastic. The local car quest store doesn't bring it to, like I live in Kingston, Ontario. So we had to drive 45 minutes to get to the class. I would have driven 45 minutes and sat through the class without getting paid. You know what I mean? Because I've done that my whole career. So I'm to do that on my third day. send me to a class, pay me, like, it's just, that to me speaks so many volumes because some people may be like, well, you know, when your probation's up, we'll send you on training, right? Because it's costing us X amount of dollars or whatever, you know, and lots of people we still talk about, don't pay their tax for training. So, I just was, I was just gobsmacked, like, this job is a five minute drive from my house. a substantial pay bump. It's a four day work week. Like I didn't think there was a shop in my area that operated like this. All the kind of stuff that we, you know, we talk about in the groups and chats and all that kind of stuff. I didn't think there was one around. And I'm just, I'm over the moon, ecstatic. They're, they're very satisfied, very happy with how I'm working in so far. They're on the tech metric system and they do they're big on the DVI and stuff. So I mean, I haven't done DVIs in my career, ever. Okay. That's the learning the tech metric system is it, it's a very easy system to learn. It's just getting the process down of navigating back and forth and that kind of stuff. I'm not, I'm not super tech savvy, obviously, right, as we've talked. So, but I love it. I mean, I, I made the comment how I think so many of us in this industry, and the humans in general, I think, when you're in a place and you feel like it's okay, you just end up in a rut, you know what I mean? And I wasn't overly unhappy with where I was, but I wasn't really, I was not aware of other options that I had out there, other opportunities, because I was just kind of complacent. And, you know, I can tell Tex right now that I mean I'm earning $12 more an hour than I was four years ago and I didn't have to I didn't renew an AC cert you know I didn't uh I don't think I became any better a technician than I was four years ago it's just that the technician shortage has certainly driven up the rates of what you know, people are charging now and what it's paying. And I mean, to me, I love it. I think it's a great thing.

SPEAKER00 And I apologize. I'm not a downer. I'm a realist. Right. I just wonder how sustainable the current condition is because You also know that a lot of these shops, if they get the opportunity to go back to keeping the share they used to, a lot of them will do it because they may not see, excuse me, they may not see the benefits that got built in to the team with the changes. So it'll be an issue. The next couple of years are going to be interesting, I think.

SPEAKER01 Now, can you elaborate on what you mean by that? Like keeping the share? Can you kind of Because I think I know what you mean.

SPEAKER00 Well, shops are having to target their goals to be able to offer a package to attract technicians because they can't find them. And so that's creating these opportunities like you found. I don't think enough of them. And I think that is spoken to by the fact that shops like the one you just found are not falling out of the trees for you. And you were kind of shocked to find one, but there it is. And so my feeling is that if you watch the behavior of a lot of owners, I'm going to start to sound like you, I think. If you watch the behavior of a lot of owners, they will, and hopefully this is not, this is you and I talking, this is not what I was going for with this with this podcast, but they will, if they have an opportunity to save on oil or any other commodity to boost their profit percentage, they will do it. And too many of them will readily apply that same concept to human capital. Yeah. Did that explain where I'm coming from?

SPEAKER01 Exactly. I know exactly what you mean for sure.

SPEAKER00 And so if they have the opportunity and the upward pressure is not on pay scale and benefits and the things that they're having to do. I was just talking with my wife about CarMax and what they've had to do to attract technicians and paint people and everything now compared to where they were 10 years ago. They've had to, you know, really step up. and put some cheddar on the table, if you will. And so, if they had an opportunity to revert back to where they were and the cost of used cars comes down, they'll have an opportunity and they will seek to try and regain some of that revenue stream. It's just a natural state.

SPEAKER01 I wonder, so, because it's kind of an interesting parallel, right, when this week with the development of the UAW strike, and I'm not trying to go into a whole political thing or, you know, pull people's opinions out of it one side or the other, but it's a very interesting timing when we see the technician shortage and then we see this strike because, like, I think a lot of the non-dealer techs are going to be okay, but I have lots of friends that still work in dealers. The idea that the parts shortages are going to become even worse, depending on how the strike goes, has a lot of them very scared. Some of them are just starting to get back up on stride from the COVID thing. And then now with this happening, I think we see the cultures in a lot of dealerships change pretty quickly in terms of how they do business and how they're going to have to look after their people. Because You know, when COVID happened, a lot of techs left dealerships and shops, and some of them trickled back in and others went to different places. I mean, the podcast that just kind of came out last week there, we talked about that, that guy, he left the industry. But I think this time around with the park shortage, you're going to see, I think it's going to flood the market with some pretty talented men and women from the dealerships that are going to, because they just have had enough. Because a lot of us techs in the Bay, we don't care if we're bolting on an OE part, we're bolting on a good quality aftermarket part, right? We just want to get the car done and get paid. And the dealership, unfortunately, is not allowed to necessarily operate like that, right? In terms of being able to put on any part just to get the car back out the door, their hands are tied with what they're supposed to use. I don't know. I'm, I'm excited to see how this goes. I don't want to see anybody on strike, obviously. I think it's a, it's a, I think they've got very grandiose, unrealistic expectations of what they're looking for.

SPEAKER00 And, uh, you know, my dad was an air traffic controller and he was actually nearing the end of his career and retirement during the Reagan years. Okay. And that's when the guys went on strike and yeah. My dad told him, he said, you know, you guys have points and everything else. He said, uh, at the time, my brother was, uh, single digits. You know, I was, I was approaching my twenties and I had a baby brother that was 13 years younger. And my dad says, I can't go out on strike and throw all this stuff away. And he told him, he said, Reagan's going to fire you. And so, you know, my dad in the eighties with government benefits and everything else, and with overtime. was pulling down in easy six figure plus income. So they still went out on strike on that and they got greedy and they got smacked for it. And I don't know, you know, the, the stuff that they're going for the 38 hour work weeks, 36 hour work weeks and, and things like that. It is hard to hit, from what I understand from my work on the management side, it is hard to hit efficient utilization of fixed operations expenses when you are not utilizing them enough percentage of the day. When you come in and you turn the lights on, you've got to get a certain amount of throughput.

SPEAKER01 Yeah.

SPEAKER00 or else the fixed operations and those costs just eat up everything. Then you want a 40% pay raise on top of it. I'm not seeing the math. I have a feeling that I don't know what they're going to do. They stepped in the last time and they forced some deals and picked winners and losers. I don't know what's going to happen this time, Jeff. I just, I don't know. Anyway.

SPEAKER01 Yeah. So kind of give us, kind of give us your, like, what's your current role and title and, um, and then let's kind of talk about how you wound up getting there.

SPEAKER00 That's a great question. So, so for the last number of years, about 2000, I found myself, uh, out on my own. Um, I was separated from a job as a sales manager for a 10 store independent parts chain. And so I had, I had responsibility for a group of salespeople and I was the, the technical expert on the parts. And I was, I was in a role where I was getting the opportunity to tour facilities. I have been up into Canada and toured gasket making facilities. And I've toured, I toured roll and I've toured a couple of places up there. And then of course in the U S because I could understand what I was looking at when I was seeing parts being made. And so I was in that role. And when I was cut loose, it's like I knew all these shops, you know, I was seeing, Through my other sale guys or myself, I was seeing upwards of 600 shops. Wow. And when something would come up, Hey, we're having problem with this ignition coil. Right. If you know, I was, I was the sales guy who could go out. and hook up an amp clamp on my intero. There's a name for you from the past. Uh, and I could tell if that coil was properly loaded or not. And so actually I won't name the supplier, but I will tell you that I discovered that they were, they were receiving coils that didn't have enough loading in the, in the windings to meet specs. And so we had shops that were seeing misfires. And because I was able to provide them the data and the research to show them that, my entire inventory for 10 stores was changed over to newly sourced product within two weeks. So those are the kinds of things I brought to the table. When I left that job, I went mobile in 2000. And the shops weren't doing programming or anything at that time, but Jim had an IDS and a tech too, and good Volkswagen software. And those were the main brands of the body shop I was located next to. And I started doing mobile work. So I'm kind of giving you the long path. No, it's good. So back in that timeframe, 23 years ago, My clients would text me and I would go to their house or place of work, pick up their vehicle, take it in, service it, text message them pictures and so forth. Does any of this sound like predecessors to stuff that's common now? And they would give me approval over the phone, and I would test drive the car on the way back to them. And then I would go to the next shop that needed a module installed, or what have you. And I was almost entirely mobile. And while I was doing that, a gentleman came into town, and he worked for CarQuest. And he was a sales guy for CarQuest. And all the shops told him who I was and what I was doing. And he came over and said, I want to invite you to the Card Quest Technical Institute classes. And I did. I went. And he goes, you could probably teach a lot of this stuff, couldn't you? I said, well, I'd like to see how they put their information together. But that was the start of it. I ended up being picked up as a CTI instructor in 2007, 2008. And I worked both of those businesses for a while. And then the success as an instructor kind of took over and I went full-time as an instructor. I passed off my client list to another local shop that I was kind of partnered with, not officially, but just we worked together all the time. And I went on the road full-time and I did that until 2016. And I was picked up by the corporate side. as a curriculum developer working at the Research and Development Center. And I did that up until April of this year. Nice. So I was less traveling and more putting together curriculum for other instructors to teach and working on special projects. When COVID hit and we went to virtual classroom, I was involved with myself and one of the IT guys putting together the way we handled uh, live online classes and I had, I had a real passion for that and it was probably part of my transition out, but we'll get into teaching philosophy. I was a firm believer that remote training can be done well if we focus on not lecturing to the class. have conversations with the class to engage the class and exercises and thoughts. And to me, when you're teaching, truly teaching at a higher level, the instructor shuts up more and lets the students talk.

SPEAKER01 Yeah.

SPEAKER00 And so I was very passionate with that. I started working with Anthony Williams on the edges of the roles he was working on with the company. the Automotive Institute of Science and Technology and his vision for that type of training. The first time we met six years ago, we had a conversation about everything that was wrong with the way we teach. It's, you know, it's just too much sage on the stage. There are a lot of people. Anthony used to say this to me. He says there's a ton of guys I respect, but he says there's a lot of them that think they're way better than they are.

SPEAKER01 Right.

SPEAKER00 And he used to say, sometimes they just need a punch burp. You know what a punch burp is?

SPEAKER01 Punch burp? I'm not familiar with that. I want to think that it's probably like when my dad would used to say to me, like, you know, you're not getting it all and you'll have to slap you in the back of the head. Is that kind of what?

SPEAKER00 We never condone violence. That's what Anthony would say. We never condone actual violence. But he would say that sometimes people think they are better than they are. or they know more than they think they do. And somewhere, somehow the reality of that will hit them. And sometimes a teacher has to deliver the punch. And, and, and, you know, I never, I never want to embarrass someone in a class, but I mean, we, as instructors, we've all had those, those people in the class that try to, you know, take over a class and show that they, you know, that they know everything about everything. I heard, you know, heard of a situation, but of, of a guy questioning an air conditioning curriculum and he used some term that wasn't even related to air conditioning. It was related to skin and he was using, using words that didn't even apply. And sometimes you just have to, you know, hit that reality and go, that doesn't mean what you think it means. Here's what that actually means. And here's what's really going on. And that can be a difficult, a difficult lesson to be delivered because we all have egos and there's nothing wrong with an ego and ego is part of what gives us confidence. Okay. But if you ever, if you ever have to give a correction to someone, you don't just give them that stop gap. You go, it's okay. I'm going to help you. And that's the burp. You just make sure that you're giving them the complete message. And so we've all seen, you know, instructors that are like, hold all your questions till the end. We don't have time for that in class. I got all this material to get through. And quite frankly, that is, and I'll be really opinionated here, but we've got all the science and data to back it up. That is not doing our students or our learners the service they deserve. And so the sage on the stage, you are lecturing to them, but are you really facilitating a learning environment? Right. One of the last projects that I was involved with at my former job was I received a certification as what's known as a curator for building adaptive learning. Adaptive learning is a concept that I come up with a way of presenting information to a learner that is more like a tutor. Okay. So instead of lecturing you for three hours and giving you a quiz, if, if I was going to teach you something and it was just you and I one-on-one, I'd start asking you questions. Right. And based on how you respond and what your confidence level is, I can judge where you are in your knowledge journey and then I can start feeding you the information you need to fill in your mosaic on the topic. And that becomes exceptionally efficient because we don't have to start with in 1939, the Packard was the first transmission. Who cares? Yeah, I'm glad you're smiling because that's the kind of learning that always drove me nuts. What you know, I sat in a meeting and I won't even say who it was, but we need we need the technicians to know what the number of the white paper is for personal protective equipment when working on a hybrid. No, I don't. I don't need to know what the white paper number is. I need to know which gloves I use, how they're supposed to be tested, how they're supposed to be cared for, and don't lick the orange wires. Yes. Okay. I don't need to know the stuff that an engineer or somebody writing papers on the topic needs to know. That's a different skillset. But we spend time making all these requirements for memorization and so forth, and we don't ever teach the logic and the critical thinking. Yeah. So now I'm kind of setting you up for where I've ended up.

SPEAKER01 If we can go back, when you mentioned how You know, you've got a person and they're sitting in the classroom and they have a question and somebody says, we have to wait to the end before I can answer that question because we have to get to the material. I can tell you that the way my brain works is that I immediately then become fixated even more so on the question. You know what I mean? Like, it's like it becomes this ginormous roadblock that I can't get around. Because even when you continue to teach the material to me, I'm still trying to think I'm always then my brain is in a fork. Am I going left? Or am I going right? Depending on if my question, right? What is the answer to that question? You're nodding like you know exactly what I'm talking about. That's just how my brain particular works, right? Because you're not, I can't hurt Yeah, I didn't think I was.

SPEAKER00 Well, you're unique in some ways, Jeff, but but that that's how the brain works. And so what's happening is, you are processing some of what you're seeing in real time. And it has raised a question, because you are building a mental model. Yeah, and you are going to use that as the touchstone to compare to the other information. And if you have a question, that question deserves to be addressed because it might be giving you a handle on the topic that you need right now. And a good teacher will recognize that and provide it. Or even better yet, there might be something in your question that tells me, oh, I didn't explain this part well enough and that's why you have that question. It's an opportunity for me to course correct and learn from that because if you've got the question, I guarantee you somebody else in the room does.

SPEAKER01 Exactly. Okay. So let's, yeah, so let's go back to then to, because I think I understand when you're talking about when it's almost like a tutoring situation, right? And you start to ask me more questions. Kind of give me more on that, please.

SPEAKER00 So I think a lot of what happens with mentors or people in the shop who are trying to, you know, help the apprentice techs or help the other people in the shop, things like that. there is a pressure that people think they have to have all the answers. Right. And that nothing could be farther from the truth because if you're just doling out answers, you're really not giving them an opportunity to truly learn. So I will tell you, Anthony, Anthony had, and you hear me talk a lot about Anthony, but he, you know, he had an impact. On me forming up and solidifying the direction I wanted to go. And so I credit him for that. And he was a, he had a, I believe it was a master's in educational design. Okay. And there was a, there was a Karmcast and we joked about the letters after Anthony's name. He's kind of sensitive, he's sensitive to it, but he studied to earn that. Right. And on the teaching methodologies and the brain science, I was constantly going to him for suggested readings and things like that, or discussing a topic. And then he was coming to me for advice on he's working on something, or he's putting a lesson plan together for students, or he has a student asking a question, how would I teach this? He was coming to me on the technical side. So Anthony and I mentored each other, if that makes any sense, because we had different skill sets.

SPEAKER01 Yeah, that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER00 And he said at one point he was telling people he wasn't saying who it was and that's fine. But he said, I have this mentor who never answers any of my questions. He says he asks me questions along the topics of what I know until I figure out that I knew the answer. Yeah. And so it's to give him the confidence to take what he knows. And when you think about, oh my goodness, you're going to have to stop by the class. But when you think about, do yourself a favor and look up Bloom's Taxonomy. And it is a hierarchy of learning and applying knowledge. So at the real simple level, what's the boiling point of water and Fahrenheit at sea level? Right? We could learn something like that. That's a recall. That's basic knowledge. As you start to move up the levels of understanding, then we start getting into things like explain. That's a different level. And then it becomes at the highest end, it's you're extrapolating, you're synthesizing, I know this concept, and I know this concept, and I know this concept, I made an airplane. All right, that's when you're moving up, and taking different pieces of knowledge, and combining them in new ways. Because you have the mental model to start really working with that information. I don't have to tell you the answer. You can suss out the answer because of the knowledge that you have. I think this is actually what goes on at conferences. Because the first time you go to a big event, And I get a lot of pushback for saying things like this. When you first go to a big event, you're walking into the shark tank, man. There are people there. And let's admit, you know, these people are at the top of their game and there's a wow factor and they're showing you stuff like, mama never told me about that. And that's cool. Right. And that's true because they're pushing you into that middle level. Right. But by the same token, after a while, I've talked to guys and they're like, You know, I've been going for several years and it's just not the same. I don't think it's as sharp as what it used to be. I don't think the instructors are as good. And Jeff, I firmly believe I don't think that's what's happening. Yeah, I think what's happened is that learner has reached a level where the style of teaching and interaction that happens in a conference because of time constraints isn't as mentally stimulating to them as it used to be. And so what happens then? Well, the ones that keep going, what do they talk about? Oh, man, you should have seen this session we had in the lobby. And we had all these guys together and oh, we, you know, we went out in the parking lot and we did whatever. And we had a jam session in the bar on whatever after a certain period of time. Well, there's two things going on there. They're pushing up higher in Bloom's taxonomy. Then there's another concept that goes on in learning retention. If you just sit and listen to a lecture, you're going to get this much. But if you get into an environment where you start doing demonstrations and exercises, you retain this much. If you hit a point, where you are teaching something to someone else, the retention of that experience quickly gets into the 90 to 95 percent range. So that's that old adage. If you really want to learn something, teach it.

SPEAKER01 Right.

SPEAKER00 Because if you care about what you're doing, you've got to take it apart and come at it from every angle. And you now have to understand it better because you're trying to be ready to answer whatever question A student has.

SPEAKER01 And I think it's just a byproduct of the different way, like we were talking, different way people think about things, right? I'm using the analogy of that question that's unanswered in my brain is becoming a roadblock, right? Do I go left or I go right? I think when we start to teach things to people, because I know it's the same thing when I've had apprentices and I actually stop and say, okay, this is how, you know, I won't drop this circuit or this is how, and they ask the why do I do it that way? immediately I have to think why, why do I do it that way, right? And then there's an explanation. But immediately what I'm getting from that, and we have to remember, you can't look at that question of why is, oh, what a distraction, what a, you know, just shut up and listen for a minute. that when we start to think how they think, it gives us an insight through that question of how they think. And then that's how we really start to be able to teach more people effectively, is because when we run into more of those people that think left, or think right, or think in the middle, I'm just using you know what I mean, it's an analogy, it's not really left brain, right brain. When we start to immerse ourselves with all these different people that think different ways, and you know, you see that enthusiasm come in, it makes us all so much better at A, being able to explain what we're trying to do, and then B, all, you know how we always say people, you think that you know it all, like you said, and then you meet somebody that asks you a really good question. And you realize, I don't know at all, right? Or they might know more than they even realize they know, because they've already got to that point that they're asking a really good question. You know, those are the really, the few times that I've taught somebody something, those are killer, man, when that happens, because it's just like, you know, when we say, Oh, I never thought about it like that. But really, when we think, when somebody says, I never really thought about it like that, what that means is that, like, I could be going in a different, better direction, because of some just random question, you know, I think that's really cool. I know, it's, I see it at the Destinations events, you know, and you see people always after a class or sitting around talking or whatever, and I think it's like the smaller events like Super Saturday and stuff like that, because I don't, I think it's more, that's what I'm thinking of, it's less contrived as to what we're actually going to talk about. When I, the last couple classes I've been on, the best one that we were on was case studies. because it didn't come with a particular topic. But you could see all the light bulbs going off in her head because he's just talking about case studies. And then people are very engaged in the topic. Because they're like, Oh, yeah, well, I had that. And I went down this wormhole, or I approached her from this angle. And then you see everybody kind of like, meshing, right? Where, you know, That's been the most effective for me. And I think it's that way, like you said, when the, when the guys meet after the class and discuss things or go out into the parking lot and pop the hood on something real quick.

SPEAKER00 Can I add on to what you've just said? I think the determining factor in that is how the case study is presented. Right. And so I have seen times when a case study was, here's this crazy car and here's this cool thing I did, and there's the problem. Isn't that great? Right. And yeah, it's great. But for me, if you're up here teaching, you ought to be pretty good. So we're just going to put that to the side. What I want to know was what gave you the thought or what did you use to base your decision to create this test or to do to do X or Y on this car? Was it a swag? Or did you actually understand something about the theory or see something else in data or whatever that sent you down that path? Explain to me your thought process that got you there. Because one of the pieces of feedback as as a curriculum designer that I got from a lot of shops Actually was teach us how it works and we'll figure out how to fix it Right. It's like okay, but case studies can be done in a way where it's presented as a Mental floss a challenge. Here's how it works. Here's what it's doing What could cause it to do that and let's have that conversation? And that can be fantastic, fantastic work. So here's basically what's happened with me. I left my last position April. Somebody put my name in a hat with today's class technician. And so they reached out. We had a couple of conversations. And I'm now part of the curriculum team with them as a contractor. And so it's another adaptive learning program. And there are some really excellent stuff going on in the background that I know about. You go in and you take your questions for the day or whatever they are. But that system, it's not just a quiz, right? So the way the system is built is you're asked a question. And the question tries to be predictive of how well you understand. And then once you've made your choice, a lot of times, whether you're right or wrong, you're given explanations for each one of the answers. And that's where the learning really happens. So a tech that's using it has to understand that after you've said right or wrong, the magic happens in reading through why. Right? So the whys are explained and the why nots. And then there's a little flag in the corner. And if you feel that a question was in error, or it could have been clearer, or you know that there's a, you know, that doesn't apply to all systems, whatever it is, you have the opportunity to hit that button. Have you ever, have you ever used a platform? Today's class technician?

SPEAKER01 I think I saw it once and it might have been several years ago. Okay.

SPEAKER00 So when you hit that flag, you can type in and go X, Y, and Z. And this is what, here's what I can tell you. Those just don't go in a bucket. There are people actually looking at them. And one of the roles that, that, that I'm playing in that group is here's some feedback we got from a learner. I'd like your take on this. And so then the, you know, the technical hat goes on and you dive into it. And if it is an issue with the question or how it was worded, or it was too platform specific, we're going to address it.

SPEAKER01 Yeah.

SPEAKER00 And so it's a, it's this continual improvement process that's going on with it. And I'm very, very excited about what's happening with that team. So that's one thing that I'm doing.

SPEAKER01 And then not to cut you off, but in a lot of ways, that little flag then represents the same kind of scenario as the person putting their hand up with the question, right? That's immediately what's happening, right? Because so instead of you guys have got it, it's forever now, right? You immediately have immediate feedback on what that class is right then for that particular student. That's awesome.

SPEAKER00 And there's effort to revise and rebuild and expand. It's definitely going to keep the team busy for quite some time. But I think it's a worthwhile project. And I'm going to talk about it at ASTE. Imagine you have that system in a shop. There was just a podcast where they were talking about the platform and what happens when the technicians are on it. They start talking at break or at the coffee machine or whatever about, hey, did you get that question today? What did you think? Now you have more conversation and more discussion and the shop is marching its way up Blooms because they're engaging in activities that are much more beneficial to not only the learning, but the retention. And so if you talk about it and you debate it and you explain it, then your retention level has just gone up. And it's a fascinating reality of how the brain works. And that's what we need to lock down the learning. So I'm excited about that. And then the other thing that I have gotten involved with is, as everybody is talking about, what are we going to do to try and create a sustainable pipeline of technicians coming in. And so I'm involved with a startup project called the Auto Talent Co-op. And we are searching out and building action pods of people with expertise in areas that we think have to work together to create a long-term solution for attracting and growing talent in the industry. And so it's not just about, and this is nothing I say here is a swipe at anyone, but a program that provides scholarships is fantastic, but it's not the only piece of the puzzle. A program that provides training is fantastic, but it's not the only piece of the puzzle. There may be really good training out there, but it's not necessarily the appropriate fit for everyone. So what is it about the training that is successful? And what is it about the training that may preclude certain people from participating? And how do we make sure that the training is effective? So recruiting, where is the best place to put out the search? And if we recruit people, how do we make sure that we put them in an appropriate shop? I will tell you, I used to listen to conversations about, oh, we've got this plan to produce technicians, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And here's the kind of thing that would get me in trouble, Jeff, is I would say, OK, I go through all this training, right?

SPEAKER01 Yeah.

SPEAKER00 And I achieve all these. not only certificates but certifications because I did proof of concept. I showed I could do it. So I said, okay, you're the shop. What gives you the right to put my certificate on your wall? What's your skin in the game? And that's a tough question to ask, but it's a part of the equation. So we're looking for finding good technicians, putting together provable career paths, that give them a vision of what they can accomplish and where they can go. What does success look like? We're looking for training that's viable, improvable. We're looking for recruiting processes that can find these people and get them in. And we're looking for ways to retain them. And we're also looking at knocking over silos. There's a lot of great things happening in silos. And we've got to knock those silos over and get them into pipelines. Okay. So we've got to get this, get the students in. We've got to get them into the right type of training. We've got to get them into the champion shop that is doing everything right to provide the environment. If we're going to have a mentor in a shop, how do we qualify that that mentor is appropriate? And they're not just sitting there with a riding crop to beat the new kid. Yeah, you understand where I'm going with that.

SPEAKER01 So because again, from my dealer background, right, I've seen some successful situations where it's been, you know, a foreman role has been very well I think about our friend Brian Pollack in this, because he is a good example of a very multi-talented, strong in a lot of aspects of the job. And if you could get him to clone himself into all the young people that he works with, you all of a sudden have a superstar team. You have a team of people that can immediately jump into you know somebody gets injured as an example in a sports analogy and they're on the bench that person can or the military can pick up the rifle and continue on down the down the road where but then I've also seen you know very poor examples where the quote-unquote foreman or the exemplary person that is supposed to be you know setting the standards within the shop is just an abuse of power, has just allowed, you know, that person, I get 40% of their labor, you know, towards my tickets, that's how they reward me. That doesn't create any kind of technician that most people don't want to then hire, right? Because, A, you're not, you're not really mentoring that. And B, that person is going to become pretty jaded pretty quick. Uh, I have a friend that we were just speaking actually. So the podcast that dropped last week, my friend, Dan, he speaks about, there's a, there's a dealership in town and have an old established, um, technician there. And he is a quote unquote, the foreman. He has literally run off more really good, young, talented people out of his shop because he brings them in and it's just like, you're gonna do a job, his number's on the ticket, he's gonna supposedly walk you through it, but he's over doing another job, that's how he's making the hours that he needs to make is because he's running two. And if, but what he's known for is if you talk back to him, they had a really strong, prominent young lady as a tech, she merely asked him a question, and by the end of lunchtime, she was terminated. And her question wasn't disrespectful, it wasn't like, he literally uses them to like, okay, you ramp that vehicle. And then he left my vehicle because I don't feel like bending over to put my the hoist under right. And then I might be he'll be doing a wiring repair on what he's working on, because that's what he's supposedly strong at. And the kids are knocking out brake jobs or tie rod or a front end piece and all that money is going into. I don't want to see that continue in this industry. And if people, if people in the industry right now, if you're in that position and you're listening to this, I got no love for you. I think it's, you know, I think it's a cheap way to get to where you got, if I can be so, that's the politest way I know how to say it at the moment. I just think that that is, is a bigger obstacle. I don't believe that's mentorship. I don't believe that's training. I don't believe it's anything other than just like you said, somebody with a riding crop. It's exactly what it is.

SPEAKER00 It's toll gathering. Yeah. And, and so I've been having conversations with a lot of respected people and I'm starting to gain some traction on people to be on the team. on the advisory side of this thing. This is a non-profit to start. Where it goes is going to be up to the team that's assembled. But when you talk about core values, the first core value that we have on our organizational chart is egos in check. Team players willing to add an and instead of a but. Right. So I like that idea and I would add this to it. We're looking for additive thinking, not reductive, if you will. And so trying to get the right people involved early on, a lot of the early feedback is for this thing to be successful. We have to have the right mentors because if you want to destroy the potential, put them with the wrong mentor. And so I'll say something that, you know, you know, that old adage, those that can do and those that can't teach. Well, I'm going to say this, this way, just because you can, doesn't mean you can teach because teaching is a different skillset. And so the, the, the difficulty is, creating a learning environment in the shop. A small shop with an owner trying to do that could be a real challenge because the owner has a lot of responsibilities. Trying to have your A-tech do it may also not be the best choice of person. And that doesn't mean that the A-tech is not A-tech, that this lead technician is not super talented. but they have, they have demands on their time and concerns of their own scale and scope. But boy, the right person with the right, with the right communication skills and the right people skills can take and create an environment where all these conversations happen. where people are willing to share, hey, I found this in service information while I was doing this job. So to me, a couple of things are happening there. Hey, we're looking up service information. Yes. And then the other thing that's happening is people are sharing that knowledge. And OK, it may seem unusual to that person, and maybe it's old hat to you and I, but it's still an opportunity to encourage that person because they just learned something and they shared it. And that's a good environment to have. And so a lot of this is going to be talking about what are the kinds of things that we can do in a shop environment. This is what I'm going to be talking about at ASTE. What can we do in a shop environment that sets us up to continually improve? And then the other thing is, I've come to believe through study and practice that if we just set up a program and turn it loose, that it will fail. Because there was a manager, a high-end like executive VP level guy at CarMax. And he used to talk about, we're really good at spinning plates. He says, we can get a pole and we can stand it up and we climb up the ladder and we get a plate up on it. We can get it spinning. It's beautiful. And then we'll go to the next one and we'll get it up and spinning and it's beautiful. And he says, we do that for a while. And then we look back in the first plate, slowed down, wobbled, fell and hit the floor because we didn't find or take the time to go back and give it another spin. It's kind of like that basketball, right? I got to keep spinning or else it's going to fall. And so to expand on that analogy, we're 90 day, we're a 90 day environment. If we're not revisiting and resetting every 90 days, things are probably starting to disassemble themselves. So one of the things to work into any program is. the idea that, okay, here's our goals for the quarter. Here's what we're going to work on. Here's what you're working on. Here's what I'm working on. Here's what this person's working on. Let's do these things. We're going to talk about them on a regular cadence throughout the three months. And then at the end of this, we're going to have seen what we did, what we did well. And then for the next 90 days, we're going to set a new set of goals. We may we may leave this goal on here, but we're going to reset and reevaluate to keep our brains fresh. And so just do these 90 day sprints for what we're trying to accomplish. And that keeps focus and keeps everybody aware of what's going on. It's none of this stuff is original. I probably shouldn't say that, but it's all out there. It's it's management principles. It's it's continual improvement process that's been around since the 40s. It's. It's brain science from what we've learned in education for decades, and it's taking and applying it to a shop environment.

SPEAKER01 You mentioned in the shop environment, then you, I don't know if the last time we spoke, you, you mentioned this or, but a well-known shop owner that we know of that I know of in this pretty active, uh, he. Every week his group gets together and they cover a subject matter. And then the next week, somebody else in the group covers a completely different subject matter. So it can be anything from the quick loop kid.

SPEAKER00 Is this guy related to a Nordic God? Yes.

SPEAKER01 Okay. Mr. Hammer himself. Yes.

SPEAKER00 Right. So, so yeah. And I'll tell you what, when I heard him make that comment, I was like, right on. Because the other thing that he mentioned was he's having one of his younger techs present to the group. And so based on the conversation we just had, the highest level of learning happens when you teach.

SPEAKER01 Yeah.

SPEAKER00 So he's having those young techs teach something that they learned. All right. Yeah. Maybe it's something that you or I learned 20 years ago. Right. But we also may have forgotten it because we got lazy and just kind of went past it. But yeah, it'll be a good reminder. And if not, it'll be like, yeah, they did a good job explaining that they get it. So now when I'm working with them out in the shop, I have an understanding of comfort level with that learner and that topic.

SPEAKER01 And we have a reference to go back to, right? We have a reference to go back to. We can say, remember when John taught this theory, you know, that Monday morning before we all kicked off or Friday afternoon or whenever you want to do it. I think it's great. And I think it's, there's so many more that need to do it. Like, because I've done it, my way of always doing it was when I had something really interesting on a car, I would bring two over and say, hey, look at this. right? And they go, Oh, okay, cool. And you'd see some of them and have that, that moments like where what they'd learned in the classroom, suddenly, they saw it in real life. Right? There's the real theory that he's talking about. There's, there's volt drop in a nutshell, there's 12 volts, but it won't light a light bulb, right? That kind of thing. So but it was always like, okay, you know, we it was always in a in an environment where we didn't have time. to go into a big long of asking a whole lot of questions, right? It's like, this is a key fundamental thing I want you to see so you can understand it and this is how it is in real life. But we're always, the time constraint was never to be able to then sit down open it up, ask them questions, they ask me questions, we start going into a completely like a real teaching moment, you know what I mean? Where we get into the nuts and bolts of what we just learned. It was always like, okay, this is, this is a key thing. And then they go back to work and they go, you know, that always frustrated me, right? Because it's the pace of the shop sometimes doesn't allow when you have that incident, to really make it into what it could be. Do you understand what I mean?

SPEAKER00 I do. And so this probably isn't the popular answer, Jeff, but why do we allow that?

SPEAKER01 Well, because we got, we got a car count, Jim.

SPEAKER00 I understand we have a car count, but we're also working toward something bigger because the car count is going to fix itself as we add Talent and skill sets and efficiencies. Yeah, and so if I can take the time for that technician Boy, this happened years ago There was a guy that was testing an ignition system and he was following a flowchart okay, I Will tell you I'm not as hateful on flowcharts as I used to be because especially you know, I think Ford flowcharts are if you actually understand what they're asking you to do, they are really sharpening your saw. But if you're just going to go through and go, yes, no, five, 11, skip to step 17, you're never going to see it. But if you walk up to a tech and they're doing a test and they get a result, and then I would just do things like this, what does that test result tell you? Forget about the flowchart right now. What does that test result tell you? Now I know where they are electrically, right? If they don't understand what that test result actually means, they're struggling with the core concepts of what they're testing. And so they need more of that before they try and go any deeper. That's why those companies have you fill everything in on the computer now, right? Type in your answers. And then experience tech gets frustrated because they understood what this meant and they jump. To where they need to be and find the answer, but you're not going to get paid for your time unless you write all that stuff out for me. Yeah, so anyway.

SPEAKER01 Yeah, and that's because I can remember lots of like is, you know, you'd get a code that was unfamiliar, and you'd read through and it was like, it always seemed to come back to it's just like, you know, the flowchart is say it's a code for a three wire sensor, right? At the end of the flowchart is still telling you to check the same three wires the same three way, you know, the same way you always did. So it was like the flowchart was like, Oh, man, like, you know, you knew in your head how you probably should have approached it. right? But you're reading the flowchart to see if there's some nugget there of maybe they do it different. That was always the stickler for me is I would read it through and it's like, no, it's they're not doing anything different. It's just, you know, I'm supposed to still be checking it the same. They're being methodical. Yeah.

SPEAKER00 And there's nothing wrong with that.

SPEAKER01 No. So You make an interesting thing when we say the car count will fix itself, but I think the biggest obstacle right now in the industry, and I'll say this, I don't think it's as bad as it used to be, but I think that we still have to get more people to recognize that You know, we have to train. There's no getting away from it, right? So, we might as well put it into the operating costs. We might as well put it into the schedule and schedule it in somehow and just accept that we're going to do it because otherwise it's, we're not going to have anything, right?

SPEAKER00 We also have to clean, right? Or else the shop ends up looking like a pigsty. Now, if you've got the cash flow and you want to pay a pourer to come in, I guess that's one way of addressing that. But then my question or my challenge would be, does that lead to inefficiencies in work? Because I don't try to be concise and neat in my day-to-day work because somebody else will get that. So I'll throw it on the floor or stick the sticker on the tire changer and let some kid scrape it off. Do we do things? I taught a course all over the country. teaching how to 5S a shot. Sort, straighten, shine, standardize, and sustain. And you would get people to look at the work environment. If you have a tire mounting machine and you don't have a trash can right there within arm's reach to put the stickers in there, you have made it harder to do it right than wrong. And they'll throw it for the trash can over on the other side. of the room, but it is not going to stay as neat as if it is right here at arm's reach. And it's things like that that we set an environment which creates the expectations. And so if we're not making it easier to do right than wrong, oh, where do you look up service information? Oh, I got to go down to that third bay. Yeah, that's wrong. Well, my guys don't look up service information. There's why. Yeah, right? Yeah, so it's.

SPEAKER01 Yeah, or there's only one computer and there's six people in line to use it, right?

SPEAKER00 Yeah, it's not efficient. It's it's I. I have worked with a laptop on my toolbox since a long time ago. You just get used to working that way and. You know, And I would it would You're bringing back so many memories, you know guys when they were learning tire pressure monitoring systems and reset procedures and all these things They didn't look things up. And so it took them a long time to look things up so they didn't look things up and so you'd walk up to the computer and they'd be like I can't find a set procedure I can't find how this and You'd walk up and then like four clicks. You're there Yeah, how'd you do that practice? They're all laid out the same. And once you understand it, you're there. So yeah. I hope it'll be an interesting conversation. The one thing that I don't know if you noticed, but you can't give someone a system. OK? No. The idea of a learning environment is it has to be an environment for your shop, for your team, for your goals, for what you work on, for what you're trying to improve. Too many people are like, just tell me what to do. It's not how it works. Now there's a lot of other companies that try and work off of that model. And so I think that's why we see, I gotta be really careful here. That's why we see certain trends and processes and things like that that just become practiced from rote. But I know a shop 20 years ago that didn't bill or pay flat rate. and they were wildly successful and it's still in business and being run by a second generation owner. The tech turnover rate was a waiting list for people wanting to come to work there. And so I think I'll just leave with this one comment. When we are trying to solve very large problems, there's a book called Influencer and they talk about looking for positive deviance. And if you've never heard that term, it's like, you know, oh, It's hard to recruit techs. I can't recruit techs. I can't retain people. And then over here is a shop that's like, yeah, I'm not buying it because they've got it. They've got it going on. That is a positive deviation from what the norm is. And so Go in and watch. Don't say nothing. Don't do nothing. Just watch and see what is different about this environment. And where that concept came from was in Africa, there's this thing called guinea worm. It's a parasite that's in the water, that people drink the water, and it gets into their skin, and it's super painful and itchy, and they would just want to go sit in the water and scratch, which then the larvae hatch and it spreads, right? Well, they spent all kinds of money on this and that, and chemicals, and treatments, and all these things, and they just haven't been able to eradicate it. And yet, here's this village that has almost no instance of guinea worm in the population. And they go there and they look. And the women, when they gather the water, still that culture, still that thing happening, they filter the water through the cloth of their skirts. And that takes the larva out, which means the people don't get infested. And so they don't go back and get in the water and re-infest the water. And they've all but wiped out guinea worm instances in their village. And they didn't have to spend millions of dollars to do it. It turns out all we really need is a filtration system of this, this weave and we get rid of it. And so sometimes these seemingly impossible challenges could have really simple, straightforward answers and we should look for them.

SPEAKER01 And I think the beauty of that example is probably like that remedy probably came about very accidentally. You know what I mean? Like, and then it becomes a very organic thing. I think I'm making reaching assumptions here that it was just taught. You know, it's, we all do it that way. We all don't even necessarily know why we do it that way. But my grandmother did it that way. My mother did. to do it that way? They don't know, but maybe back in somebody just figured the water's dirty, you know, I filter it through my, my shirt as I'm standing here in the creek, filling the jug up. They don't know what they're doing in terms of the greater effect. It's just always done it that way. Right? So always done it that way is a beautiful thing. It's also an obstacle, right? It just depends on the, on what you're trying to achieve, right? We don't want, we've got a lot of shop owners that just say, we've always done it that way.

SPEAKER00 That one drives me nuts. Don't, don't get me upset now.

SPEAKER01 Oh, listen, I'm not trying to get him, but I just thought an interesting parallel because you know, we, we, we get things that we just do very well because of traditions that we pass down. Right. But sometimes they become that tradition. becomes a real obstacle. You know, I think about it from this way, Jim, like, you know, we used to always say, well, why do I have to, why do I have to do it that way? Why does it always suck? Well, I had to go through it. You have to go through it too. It's just always been that way, you know? Right? You have to start out on the lube rack because I started out on the lube rack, right? You have to start out doing a bunch of tires because I started out doing a bunch of tires.

SPEAKER00 The beatings will continue until morale improves. Oh, I love that meme.

SPEAKER01 You know what I mean, right? Like it's, it's just, uh, I think that's, that's archaic thinking.

SPEAKER00 I worked at an equipment dealership briefly and I was pre-assembling tractors and working on everything from, you know, balers to tractors to whatever. And most techs had to walk up to the parts counter and wait for their parts. The service manager knew I had a background in a fuel injection shop. Now I'm going to show my age. I had a background in a fuel injection shop and I could use microfiche to look up parts and record them on a ticket and just take them and go. And so I was given permission to go into the parts area and get my own parts. And I could be gone before the three people in line in front of me were finished waiting their turn. And so my efficiency numbers were through the roof. And there was a little guy that worked in there named Lester, and he would be sitting there having an in-depth conversation with the other people in line about how he just didn't understand why in the world there was a technician or a mechanic back in the parts room. We've always done it this way. And, and, and, and that's how I stand there. And. This is where my reputation, I've had to work on being a kinder, gentler version of myself, but I was 20, 23 years old. And I said, Lester, I know you've always done it this way, but 23 years ago, something started to change. What's that? I was born. Lester didn't like me very much.

SPEAKER01 Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and like comment on and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise. And I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASOG group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter and we'll see you all again next time.