Alex Kraft and his blog on Lazy Management

You know, rather than picking Belichick or Brady, look at Purdy in San Francisco. Look at the first round draft pick for the New York Jets, who's after two seasons, they're going to throw him away. Look at Johnny Mansell, however you pronounce his name. Same thing. Yeah. And it's all about development. I lived in Denver for a long time, and in the Rocky Mountain region, the Denver Broncos are about the only act in town. This is before the Rockies came in for hockey, now the Avalanche. And really, the Denver Nuggets were kind of a so-so team. But we had Dan Reeves as a coach, and Dan Reeves made everybody fit into his program. And so after you saw the first quarter, you figured out what the game plan was. You knew exactly what was going to happen the last three quarters. And John Elway, arguably one of the better quarterbacks in history, nobody could, I mean, he couldn't win because everybody knew what he was going to do.

And they went and broke our hearts. They went to God knows how many Super Bowls and lost them all. And they were able to win when Shanahan arrived. Belichick is a defensive coach, historically. But what he did was recognize, in my view, and you can maybe talk to this, recognize the players he had. and design a system to take advantage of the talents that they experienced, expressed. Vince Lombardi did that. The coach of the San Francisco 49ers. The old man in Dallas before Jerry Jones owned it. Don Shula. I mean, there's examples all over the place. So the players, one aspect, the employees, another aspect. So here comes a bunch of guys and we hire them as salesmen. We send them to sales training schools. They come back. We put them in the field. I used to tease that the dealer I was in in Quebec was the first one to have product support salesmen. And I was running them and we had, I think we started with six guys.

And the qualifications were they had to be clean printers, writers. because they were selling parts. And typically Caterpillar wanted us to sell things like batteries and hose and cutting edges and things that they didn't make rather than labor, which is where we made some money. But my joke to the guys was, here's your customer list. Here's the keys to your truck. There's the door. What are you waiting for? And that was the extent of it. You go into the parts department on a telephone. Who takes people on selling? You go to the service department. You know, your aspect of Heave where you're doing Uber for technicians. Each of those independent technicians has got selling skills that a technician at a dealership doesn't know exists. Getting along with people is a classic example. How is it that we are so far backwards on the interpersonal relationship between a manager and an employee? Have you got any idea?

Tough question.

When we deal with tough questions, tough problems, Alex, I agree with you. It's not going to make you popular. But, you know, have you got a popularity scale already?

You bring up a really great point, though, Alex. It's not easy. It's tough work to recognize what is necessary in an employee that will make them better. It's harder work to get the employee to acknowledge that that's truth. And then even more difficult worth to have the employee have the discipline to attack it and try and make it better. So your points, I don't know if lazy is the right word, although it's a good application. It's just too damn difficult. Yeah.

Yeah, go back to athletics. Give me an example of somebody who was a superstar athlete who ended up being a good coach or manager. I only know of one, and that's Bill Russell. I know a whole example, Scotty Bowman, one of the most successful coaches in hockey. Never made it in the NHL because he had an injury. Wayne Gretzky, one of the better players in history of hockey, tried coaching. Couldn't do it. The superstars have some royal jelly that you can't, the discipline, the training, the commitment, the emotional power and strength, stubbornness maybe. That's almost impossible to transfer from a star to a... somebody who wants to become a star.

Guys, you know, stay with athletics as the example. Djokovic, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Johnny McEnroe, Bjorn Borg, you know, all of these guys, they're weird. The coach of Djokovic is, he was a good player, but he wasn't a Grand Slam guy. Roger Nadal, his coach was his uncle. So he knew him intimately without getting too far. Soccer, Pele, all of these guys. So if you look at your superstar salesman, my problem with the superstar salesman, talk about discipline and patience. Once he gets to his level of income that he's happy with, he stops. And some people that I know of, that happens in the month of August or September. I'll take over their territories the last three or four months and I won't give them back. It gets really interesting, doesn't it, on how to manage different people.

The telephone sales crowd, there's two or three times during the day where their hair straight back, the phone's ringing, people are at the counter and all the rest of the nonsense. But then there's also hours where they're idle and they kind of just sit back and take a breath. And anybody that walks by seeing them, you've got too many people. It's a real crazy world. Yeah,

Yeah.

There's statistics, Alex, relative to technicians. And you know my feeling on we have no shortage of technicians. We just don't know how to deal with them anymore. Between one and three and two and three technicians who are hired today will not be at that dealership in six months time. Wow. So we're losing between a third and two thirds in six months.

Perhaps, but they'll go work for a customer. They'll go work for another dealer. They just go work because I got nothing here. And that's a stunning number. And it's almost every single dealer that I touch in my communications in the last six months are saying back to me. And it's not just our industry. It's all around new people. And you can see on almost all the social media, onboarding techniques that work. HR, you know, you're a life coach, blah, blah, blah, blah. All kinds of fancy acronyms to get past the problem. We just don't have people that care about people.

We've sacrificed customer service at the foot of profitability. And there's, you know, Harvard did a study back in the 80s,90s, several hundred thousand businesses in distribution and found that customer satisfaction was directly dependent on employee satisfaction. We've been driving everything in this industry, not just this industry in America, on headcount. I wish the heck we'd never created sales per employee metrics because everybody drives their business that way rather than what's the consequence of too high a sales per employee number? It's not, damn, that's good. We're making a lot of money. Damn, you're at risk to upsetting your customers and losing them. It's the same thing with employees, like you're saying, Alex. If I don't like this Charles Handy guy that started this London School of Economics, he's one of the books we use in our homework and classes. He wants to have a structure of a company be like a shamrock.

You got a core of employees who are necessary to operate your business. You got a core of suppliers and subcontractors that. are necessary to bolster the skills that you don't have. Then you got consultants and specialists who help you make your business better all the time. In America, Peter Drucker is the counterpart. In America, what he used to say is, you got three things that make a company work, your market, your product, your distribution channel. Then he would say, your distribution channel is the one you pay the least attention to, and that's the one that makes you all the money. And it's true. So when we look at through that prism at the management of a company, we kind of get what we deserve. We're asking the managers to make money at almost any expense. So that case where it's a 70 or 80 job, it's a specialist job, it's a common error. We don't schedule according to skills that that guy's got a backlog that's the next four months.

And, oh, we better train somebody else up so that we bring that backlog down. No, we don't do that. We put a rookie on. because he's got lost time because I don't have a job for him. Right. There's some fundamental flaws. It's a bigger issue than lazy management, although that's part of it. We don't teach managers how to operate with people. They don't have good interpersonal skills. How often do you, you know, we see screw-ups. I mean, it's almost part of our makeup. We really have to look for things that are good that people are doing. That's not how we're trained. I'll jump your bones. Damn it. What's the matter with you? Why'd you do that? Rather than George, that was just fantastic. Let's share that with everybody. Or who's the employee of the month. We do that in fast foods. We don't do that in dealers. What's the best mechanic? Lowest redo rate, highest on time rate, you know, simple things. It's not how much money they make.

It's, it's, it's really wild. In our training, we'd have these assessments that. measures skills and knowledge for a particular job. And a guy that I've worked with for 40 years, he's been training in the material handling world forever. And we're creating a bit of a strategic partnership back and forth because he serves as different industries than we do. And he said, well, let me try one of these assessments. And I think I mentioned this to you. He took the product support sales one and he got 80%. He was upset. And I said, well, wait a second. That's pretty damn good. He said, well, some of those questions are a little iffy. You know, they have different answers, you know, trying to fuzz away. I said, OK, give me an example. And he said, well, the one about features of a piece of equipment. Who are the features of a piece of equipment important to? The manufacturer, the dealer, the customer, or none of the above?

And he said, of course, that's the customer. I said, no, it isn't. The customer couldn't care less about the feature. It's the benefit he wants. The salesman's the only one that's interested in the feature. He said, oh, that's right. I said, you want to talk about any of the other questions? He said, no, I don't think so. But it's true, isn't it? We end up with perceptions. And we don't know what the expectations should be. How do you measure a manager? Is turnover rate a good one? If that's the case, every service manager in America should have been fired. You know, at the turnover rate they're having, it's disgusting. And you know the answer that comes back?

Working conditions. The building or lack of building. They're working out in the yard. You have no idea how many dealer principals have told me, I don't need more facilities. The guys can work in the yard.

There's a story from the first cat dealer I worked with, the owners. We're three brothers named Hewitt, and Bob Hewitt was the guy in town, and he was a sales and marketing guy. About 6 '3", very elegant, three-piece suit, smart man, good man. And two little stories. One, he was upset with me. I was running parts inventory, and I'm out in a warehouse in jeans and a sweatshirt and sweaty and doing things. He comes out, and he puts his arm around my shoulder. He says, I'm really disappointed in you. I'm a jerk. So I looked up at him. I'm smaller than he is. And I said, yeah, me too. What's your disappointment? And you could see his face start to break down. He was upset because I hadn't predicted when the snow was going to close the roads into a mine site in Northern Quebec. I said, Bob, if I could do that, I wouldn't be working here.

But the one that's more telling is Rod Gwalo, who was the ended up being the president of the company and fired me four or five times. None for cause, by the way, just in a moment. But he wanted more shop space. We were having people work outside in 40 below weather and rain and mud and all the rest of this crap. And Bob wouldn't give it to him. So one day it's raining and Bob's got his three-piece suit on. Rod never had his tie up. It was always open and loose and kind of rumpled. We had 30 by 30 doors on the back of the shop and off he goes into the rain. He goes out 10,20 feet and he's talking and Bob isn't responding. He turns and Bob's still in the shop. He said, what are you doing in there? Get out here. I want to show you something. And he was taking them to men that were working on machines. By the time Bob got back in, he'd given Rod the approval to double the number of days. Why do we have to have that kind of nonsense?

And how many Rod Wallows are there? That's the trick, isn't it? There aren't that many men that are going to have the courage, the chutzpah, to say, yeah, we're going to do that. So it's lazy. It's lack of training. But it's clearly a leadership issue, isn't it? Yes. Who was your best boss? Who was the person that influenced your life most?

That's that's a characteristic of all of them. They care. And it's, it sounds silly. You would think that everybody cares, but that's not true. No,

It's really interesting. I was taught very early on by a bunch of different people. I think athletics helps us a lot in many of the perceptions and perspectives that you and I have, that the person who's doing the job is always the first person to know that they're not doing the job as it can be done. And the second piece of that puzzle is that the longer it takes the boss to address that, the more respect the boss loses from that and with that employee. And if it lasts for a long time, they lose respect for the company, at which point that employee is no longer of any value to me.

it's funny. A guy that I worked with in Montreal that I took out to Edmonton and brought down to Denver with me. We're sitting at dinner one night, he and his wife and my wife and I, and we're just talking about management styles and workers that we had in common. I made a passing remark. I said, you know, Ray, I must have been pretty easy to work with. And he started laughing, almost to the point of wetting his pants. He said, you were a real pain in the ass. You never accepted anything. So that guy that you dealt with, that was tolerant of you saying, no, I don't understand, or did not intimidate you to the point that you wouldn't say you didn't understand, even if you didn't, that's the kind of people we need. I don't know the answer to that question, but let me dig around and I'll get back to you. I'm not a walking encyclopedia that knows everything, and I've been around a long time.

I think one of the other primary responsibilities is you're there to make sure that the employee has all the tools and knowledge that is necessary for them to succeed at the job. And today, I don't think that's true. More than in the past, you know, I was at the Caterpillar dealer hired on a contract to fix a problem with a computer. And I started in March and I was at a parts product training school in June as a part-time employee. to learn the features and benefits and how certain parts families worked. And, you know, one of the things that was, and you might, you might understand that a little bit about me. I really respect and seek out people that can pose a question to me that I haven't heard and for which I do not know the answer. I love those folks because that keeps me on my toes. It forces me to learn or stay current. And the other part of it is, you know, this do you understand?

I mean, you've heard me talk about the three steps in management from my world is everybody has to understand what it is we're trying to do. And we do that with job descriptions. We do that with performance reviews. And very few people have good job descriptions and hardly anybody knows how to conduct a performance review. But then the real critical element that we miss more often is everybody has to accept. that what we're trying to do is the right thing to do. And we got a body of people, many of whom will not agree. And you got to allow them to get into a fight with you. It's I'm going to call it a debate because that's a good thing. It's an argument is a mathematical term. It's not a fight. And you got to have people that can stand up and they feel comfortable saying that's baloney, that's BS, blah, blah, blah. And don't fear any repercussions.

And only then can everybody be committed to having a good time, doing a good job, and doing good work for customers. I don't see that core anymore. Anywhere. Did you read John Anderson driving down from Ontario to Florida and the customer service a couple of weeks ago?

Gas stations, fast food, Macy's, whatever. I don't mean to. identify Macy's because they're a good store. It's amazing. It's everywhere. Endemic. Schools are contributing to it. Jack Hawkins, who's president of Troy University in Alabama, very sharp guy in 70 countries around the world, first internet classes available in America in 1960. I'm talking to him about kids at university coming in from high school. What are they missing? And he said analytical skills, problem solving skills, communication skills. But the thing he was most concerned with was leadership skills. And we got into a little bit of a, you know, esoteric type of discussion. Is that because of participation awards? Is it because everybody's got to be the same and that there isn't a winner? And when there's a winner, there's going to be a loser. And the conclusion we came to is that that's a very large part of it.

The penalty of participation awards losing that kind of excellence target is that nobody thinks it's important anymore.

What's also interesting is somebody gets promoted and rather than adapting and adjusting to the new job. They continue to do what they did that got them successful at the old job. That's exactly what you're saying in a different frame. Rather than trying to identify what this new job is. And similarly, in the military jargon, there's these guys that are really good going up in the ranks and terrible going down in the ranks. Which team is the leader on? The team that he leads or the team on which he's a member? And that's another piece of the puzzle that's missing. The team that he leads is where he thinks he's spending his time. The team that he's a member of is how he improves the lot for his team by getting more resources, more time, more systems, more training, more whatever it is that they need. It's a very... It's a very interesting and timely subject, and that's going up tomorrow night, so you're going to be a real hero.

You can leave the country. You've got 24 hours. Where should I go? Yeah, make sure your passport's current.

Oh, many, many, many people. Don't worry about it. You know, we talked about Brady in the 20s,30s, and 40s, and I look at the audience in this industry. up to 35, up to 55, and up to 75. That's kind of Brady in those three blocks. The 35 to 55 guys are the ones that should be leading today. It should be coached by the 55 to 75 rather than the 75,55 to 75 is leading the place today. Yeah. It's a very dangerous situation we're in.

One of the schools that is becoming a center of excellence for us is out west. And the assistant dean, I think he's in his 30s, maybe he's in his lower 40s, but he's young and he thinks. And what he's doing, he's at a technical school in the academic credit side of the world. at a college, and he's starting to get people in high school taking classes with him. Not middle school, high school. So what is that, grade 10,11,12? Think about that. That's where we need to start engaging kids. I think we need to hire employees in high school and start them at night and weekends. Maybe it's only four or eight hours a day. Find out what they like, what they don't like. Give them the opportunity to see what we do, whether they like it or don't like it, so that we have a better chance at making sure we give them the skills and knowledge that they need to be able to do good work. It's a crazy world.

Very important subject, Alex, and thank you for bringing it in.

You know, I only talk about the positive. There's two things. There's two expressions that I've been trying hard to live by. One is, in whatever the circumstance, how can I help? Just boom. How can I help? What do you need? And the second one is, and somebody gave me this last year on a different podcast. She said, you know. We're trying to train people just to say yes. So whatever I get asked about, yep, I can do that. What do you need? I can do that. And I think those things work. But that also relates to people. And I like people. I'm one of those idiots that gets along with people. I care about people. I want you to succeed. So you know that our purpose at Learning Without Scars is to help people identify what their potential is. And then to give them the tools so that they can have the opportunity. It's up to them to achieve that potential. I had somebody tell me when I was 16, boy, you got a lot of potential, kid.

And that really makes you feel good, right? And my follow-up to that is the same guy. He'd long be gone. But if he looked at me at 66 and told me I had a lot of potential, I'd have to wonder what I've been doing the last 50 years. Thank you. Thank you very much. Do you want to put a bow on this? Any final conclusions or comments? No, I think

It doesn't have traction with me. You know, I used to teach at university. get a lot of energy from young people. I think the younger people today are so much more talented and capable than I was, maybe even than you are. As we, you know, the further away from school we are, the less

we are in adjusting. So I think the young folks are wonderful. That's our future. They're the ones that are going to pay my pension if I ever retire. So it's, I think this is a wonderful subject and I thank you for bringing it up. I thank everybody who's been following this discussion, this conversation, because I think this is an important one for all of us to pay attention to. I look forward to having you with another candid conversation with us in the near future. Mahalo. Thank you for listening to our podcast. We appreciate your support. Should you have any thoughts or comments, please don't hesitate to contact us at www. learningwithoutscars. com. The time is now. Mahalo.