Bruce Baker and Ron talk about Human Relations, Data Sets and Data Analytics and Business Challenges

I'm terrific. Bruce, you and I have been together probably for 10 or 15 years in various roles. But for the rest of the people listening to us, how about you give us a little bit of a thumbnail on who you are and where you came from and how you got to where you are?

Terrific. I love you kind of took a different path. I started in Canada, came to the States. But without the disruption, I left from Alberta, as you know, and went to Denver. But you've seen from South Africa and Canada. as I have, very, very dramatic changes in our business, in our industry. The HR platform from which you came and moving into operations, I believe that today, one of the biggest challenges that organizations are going to have everywhere in the world is finding, attracting, developing, and retaining talented people. I don't believe we have enough today. I don't think our education system is delivering the work-ready products we need in industry. Case in point is about 50% of the trade schools in the United States have shut down in the last 15 years for lack of interest. And here comes artificial intelligence, telematics, computerization of componentry in our equipment. And the technician of old with the strongest back today has to be the man or woman who has the strongest mind.

And I believe if you have the right people as an industry or a business, you will prevail. If you don't, you won't.

In workplaces where you're coming from and helping business to be better, what challenges are you seeing with what you're doing?

Interesting. The data officer

become, you know, chief data officer is going to become a very prominent position. There's some companies already embracing this, but very few. And on the small side of the business spectrum, it's kind of intimidating to a lot of guys. Yeah. In analytics, you know, I'm a statistician by education and a mathematician and I love that stuff. Yeah. I live by that stuff. So that as an example, your potential parts and service business, I can forecast plus or minus 5% if I have machine population.

And because the machine is the thing that we sell parts and service to. Getting traction inside companies, Bruce, for what you do relative to data analytics must be difficult.

Is there any way that you can soften the blow or make it easier for business leaders to understand the criticality of data and data analytics? Or are they embracing it or afraid of it? Or how are they dealing with that?

Yeah. And one of the things I'm seeing or feeling or thinking, we have been dealing for decades, if not centuries, with financial data, financial statements. That's how we measure the health of everything. And we have not really looked at management data, information and data sets to help us manage the business. So as a result of that, market analytics have suffered. People, productivity, systems, process productivity have suffered. Because your gross profit's okay. Your expense ratio's okay. Your asset turnover's okay. But that's a scorecard that's of history that's not predictive in any way, shape, or form. Data analytics and data strings and sets, to me, are about what do you need to do and what's going to be the impact of that. And I think that's very hard for... Like my generation, if we block this out, the men and women that are running most industry and most across the world are 45 or older. I don't know what the demographic splits are. Thinking about it, it's a number I should get, but I'll bet you most of them are over 60. And that makes them, that puts them in the same, my standard illustration is the transition from a steam engine to an electric engine. That was earth shattering. But it took one or two generations before the processes that the electric engine enabled were implemented. It's a generation transition, isn't it? The 20 to 40-year-olds, for instance, don't have landline phones. My generation, probably half of us still do. Well, wait a second. Is that part of what you're seeing too? Yeah. A generational dilemma?

Yeah, I agree with you. It's remarkable that that label, bean counter. Yeah. That's a really real serious carryover. And that typifies or is a good example of the steam engine electric engine classification. He doesn't want to let a machine run his business yet. He doesn't have horses in front of his carriage anymore. Car.

And, you know, the transition inside almost everything that we have. My grandmother was born in 1890. And she got a master's degree in the early 1900s. She was rather remarkable. Her father treated her as her son. So that's why she got all of the education. And she was an educator. She taught at a one-room schoolhouse. Four generations later, my daughter's teaching English in high school virtually on a rectangle on her computer. But where that comes is I asked her when she was in her early 80s. I said, you know, Granny, we should be videotaping you so that we can remember all the things you've seen and changes. She looked at me and said, Ronnie, you've seen more change in your life than I've seen in mine. And it's true. And the exponential curve we're on is getting steeper and steeper and steeper. Getting people to trust something they don't understand is really difficult.

You know, it's the other thing about what you're talking about, and I say this a lot, the only musician, performance musician, that turns us back to the audience is the conductor.

The manager, the leader, is the only one who doesn't play an instrument. And delegation, like you say, is... going from being the performer to being the conductor is a really, really tough change. Yeah. And not everybody succeeds at it.

And that's the same thing with scaling, isn't it? It

Yeah, I agree. My fundamentals of management are understanding, acceptance, and commitment. Everybody has to understand what we're trying to do. And then the piece that people typically miss is everybody has to accept that that thing we're trying to do is the right thing. What I like to do is have a fight about that. Allow vigorous, open, honest debate. Let's go. In mathematics, an argument is a formula. It's not a fight. But let's have that disagreement so that everybody feels, and it should be rightly feels, that their position, their voice was heard. It might not be the prevailing answer. It might not be the winning argument. But that they were part of a group of people that were given their head and were allowed to. participate in and say whatever the heck they wanted without fear or pain of consequence.

And I think that's missing. If you let that happen, commitment is easy. But then to your point, in the consulting world, I always called myself an 80 percenter. I could never get 100 percent. I didn't want to try. Sometimes I only got 30 percent.

But start. Do something. So momentum then becomes your friend because you learn how to succeed. You overcome your fear. You know, somebody once said to me a long time ago, what would you do if you weren't afraid? That's a pretty powerful statement. You know, I've been teaching for a long time, but standing in a classroom when you're 18 years old and the students are all 40 or higher, hmm. And, you know, the first time you walk up to the lectern in that circumstance is a little intimidating. Right. You know, it's, it's so business leaders, employees, change is tough. And we are asking everybody to change every day. You know, the case in point with the different generations today, everything is in 30 second,40 character bursts.

And you get your, your, your text notification, your email notification, that little ding. And you get a shot of dopamine just like it's drugs or booze. And, you know, I tell everybody, turn off the damn notice bings. Shut it down. Because you're interrupting what you're doing. And any interruption is a block of productivity. And that's my world, you know?

It's a very interesting time. The old Chinese curse, right? May you live in interesting times.

How much, if I can split it a little bit, of startups that you see in Alberta, and Alberta has always been a pioneering type of environment. How many startups, how many new businesses do you see that are being started by people in their 40s or older versus the other way?

Yeah. Our Google Analytics, like everybody else, we have the split somewhere between 40 and 50. In some aspects, it's over 45, under 45. And depending on the subject matter, we'll have 55% to 65% participation under 45% on new things.

45% and up, it flips it. It goes maybe to 55%,60% on traditional things. And I found that rather intriguing, that it was that stark. You know, guys my age, And I'm 75 this year. Everybody says we should have retired.

Well, if you took everybody who's working 65 and up out of the workforce, we're dead meat. The participation rate in the labor force down here is somewhere around 60,61%. So of the working age population,60%, just to use rough numbers. are in the workforce. 40% are not. Now, some of that will be parenting issues. Some of that will be health issues. But that number is unbelievably low. And if we look at the leisure industry as being an entry point for lower skilled people, what other lower skilled job functions will there be over the next 10,20,30 years? It's going to be really difficult. There's almost everything that we do in manufacturing today that can be done with a robot.

I went into a distribution center in Stuttgart, Germany. I think it was about 1973,4,5. It was the main distribution center for Kodak for Europe. All of the camera, film, piece parts, everything. And when I walked into the huge building, tall. huge footprint. When I walked into the building and opened the door, the lights went on. There was nobody working in there. It was all robotics. And if that wasn't an indicator of things to come, I don't know what is. You know, today, with augmented reality and glasses, virtual reality glasses, I can be looking at an engine compartment or a component, and I can have instruction sets that tell the technician what to do.

And management then no longer is a technical function. It's a people function. And management is always, in my view, been about leadership. Management's about process. And there's an awful lot of people that still haven't made that transition. There's a lot of people that figure they're managing people.

And you don't do your job. I'm going to pound you. I thought that stuff went away. with the serfs, but I guess not.

Maybe that's why I do what I do and you do what you do.

Yeah, and society is resisting it. That's what I lovingly call the gig. Yeah. And society is resisting it in the form of governments because they lose control of the taxation base.

It's also this loving WFH, working from home, has taken away some of the control. People my age look at people working from home and say, are they really working? Yeah. And then, you know, I've always... I've always struggled with the decentralization and centralization. But let me park that for a second and relate back to what you're talking about relative to careers. I started into the workforce in 1968, and it was a tough economy. And I wanted to get into data processing, IT today. Couldn't get a job. And everybody said to me, everybody that was an influencer in my life, family and friends and church and school, et cetera. I said, don't worry, take your time. It's more important that you take your time and find the right place because you're going to be there for the rest of your life. And that always bothered me. But then I go back out to the decentralization thing and look at it perhaps a different way. Thinning, when I was there, had 53 stores. And every store manager was given autonomy, freedom. to do what he would. And the only way, quote, that decentralization works is if you have metrics that are rock solid so that everybody knows where the walls in the room are. If you want to go through that wall, I'm going to hurt you. You can do anything you want within the walls, but don't stray outside, baby, because you're not allowed to go there. And as a result of that, we're decentralized. You can do whatever the heck you want. Oh, not so fast.

And being results-oriented, it was one of those non-written things. You did not want to have two quarters of a loss in any department in any store because your career was at risk then. So, you know, here we have this long-term, short-term thinking, the 100-mile marathon. China's been on since 1949 and how America thinks, which is quarter to quarter stock markets. That's another dichotomy. You're only as good as your last job, right, Bruce? Absolutely. That's the same thing for me. Absolutely. And somebody comes and says, well, geez, I deserve more money. Well, I've already paid you for what you did. Now I'm talking about paying you for what you're going to do. So what are you going to do that warrants me giving you more money?

And that scares the devil out of employees. I don't know what the answer to that question is because we don't have performance reviews.

One of the biggest failures I think that we have in leadership, we don't sit enough with people and help them determine what they need to do to get better at things and to earn more opportunities and money.

Yeah, I agree with that. You know, one of the... One of the roles I played in my life was leading a startup that competed with traditional brand manufacturers. And it was very rough and tumble fast. There was no game plan. There was no book to fall back on as to how you went about doing this. And then I had a chair that if I... turned the chair to the door, you completely, I disappeared completely. It was higher than my head. It was wider than my shoulders. So I could be invisible. And one of the things that happens at the, you know, the traditional old door thinking philosophy is that people come to the door and come in and people ask you questions and you give them answers. And I tell, All of the managers, all of the team leaders don't answer the question. Don't answer the question. Well, I got to answer the question. No, you're enabling bad behavior. Force people to come to you with a couple of thoughts, solutions, suggestions. If they come in and ask the question, they're never going to try and think about making it better. And if you've got six or eight or 10 or 20 people working with you, you cannot be as productive as 20 or 10. or six people thinking about the same issue. So that starts begetting arrogance. Makes you feel good because you answer the question. And people, I'm an expert. People come to the door, they ask a question, I give them the answer, they go away. I'm good. Fantastic.

Just completely counterproductive, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. And you point at a standard statement. I wish I had time to do that, but I don't. So I got to answer the question. It's much faster for me to do that. Well, guess what? You're going to be doing that for the rest of your life because you're not doing anything to give you more time. Well, wait a second. Let's go to 16 hour days, not eight. That'll give you more time.

So what I suggest to people and you imagine you can imagine the cacophony of laughter. I want you to spend an hour to two hours every day just thinking.

What do you want me to think about? Well, what what would you you know, one of the things I'm fanatical about this. I try and help people identify their potential. Your daughter at 15. I've got a granddaughter who's. turning 20 at the end of the month. And so she's in university. She finished her first year on campus and she hasn't been back. Everything's virtual. So she being the weirdo that she is took two years university in the intervening period. So she's going back in September and finishing her fourth year. That's a person that said, to herself. And she's a bit of a, when I say weirdo, she's an extremely smart girl, a very driven girl, a wonderful, I'm a grandfather. Hell, she's a wonderful person. Right. But how many people would say, Hmm, I can't go back to school. I might as well take advantage of this and take more classes. So she started classes at eight o 'clock in the morning and finished at six at night. She in essence did two years in one year. And she held an A or higher grade point. Now, that's an unusual child. I've got another example where virtual learning is terrific for people with learning disabilities. They don't have distractions. It's that rectangle on the screen that you and I are looking at. And they can focus. And this is good. So we're learning some good things about the human condition. But helping people identify what their potential is and putting them on a path that they can choose from now to try and attain it, strive to get there. It's a tough thing. And I always fall back to my own experience because I swam. I wasn't in team sports. It was individual sports. And in swimming, you're never competing with the others that are on the box with you, ever. You're always trying to better your own time. If you finish dead last and beat your time, you won. If you won and you didn't achieve your best time, you lost. It's a completely different perspective than almost any team sport.

And it's one, I think it's one that gave me a different perspective than most people, which is helpful. My granddaughter has a different perspective than most people. I don't know how she's going to translate that. I don't know how your daughter is going to translate her things, but everybody, no matter who you are, can become better at something. Yeah. And that's the Japanese Kaizen business improvement, owners, et cetera. How are you going to get me more time? Yeah. I'm going to get you more time by slowing everything down. So don't answer the damn question. Take longer.

I don't believe you, Ron.

Yeah, it's really interesting. When I started, when I was an employee, I worked at three or four different companies, but two major ones, one for 10 years in Quebec and one for three years in British Columbia. And in Quebec, I always was trying to work myself out of a job, which looking back on that was kind of weird. But then I remember an instance where I went to my boss and I said, his name was Tom. I said, Tom, I don't have enough to do. So I'd like you to give me more things to do. Otherwise, I'm going to start leaving at noon because I'm finished my job by in about five hours. He said, OK, I'll get you more work to do. And a week went by, two weeks went by, nothing changed. So Monday, I left at noon. Tuesday, I left at noon. Wednesday morning, there's a phone call. I need to see you. So I hauled my butt over to his office. He sits down and he says, I understand you've been leaving at 12. I said, yes, I told you I was going to. Well, you can't do that. I said, well, it's worse if I bring a book in and just put my feet up on the desk. And read, isn't it? I asked you to give me more work. He says, well, stop leaving at noon. I will get you more work. So he loaded me up. By the following Monday, he'd given me a whole heck of a lot more to do. Well, guess what? About two months later, I did the same thing. And he looked me in the face and he says, shut up, go away, find something to do. And that's me being weird. Wouldn't it be something if everybody that went to work felt that way? I want to work myself out of a job. I want to be able to do, and I believe this is human nature. I think everybody wants to do a good job. They want to do well at what they do, but also everybody can do more than what they think they can do. Right. But at the base of it all, everybody is fundamentally lazy. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing. It might be, I'm trying to find the best way to do something, but the connotation is I'm lazy. I don't use time effectively. Right. But I believe those three things are there, and I don't know how. See, Bruce, I don't believe you might remember this. I don't believe I can motivate anybody, but I can demotivate everybody. Oh, yeah. If you don't come with motivation, I can't give it to you.

So these owners, they're motivated, and it isn't about making money. It's about doing what they wanted to do, right?

Yeah. Making money is a result of the things you do. It's not the reason that you do the things. Right. Bruce, we've covered a lot of ground. That's probably a good place to take a break and leave an opening for the next session. I really enjoyed this. I hope the same is true for you.

Bruce. And thank everybody for listening. I look forward to talking with you again soon.

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