How Neurobehavioral Modelling can transform automotive technicians

Anthony Perl: So Andrew, when we talk about resourcefulness as we have been, me how, what gives you a sense of knowing this? I mean, how, how have you developed this concept that resourcefulness is something that the industry hasn't really fully considered? You know, you've painted this on this access, but where does all of this come from?

Andrew Uglow: So I go back to that point of frustration, Anthony. It bugged me. I remember, there's a gentleman, he's the, , head of Moonshots. I'm trying to think of his name. He's got an unusual name. He works with Google, um, or Alphabet is the parent company. And he's known as the head of Moonshots. And for the life of me, his name escapes me.

It'll come to me in a minute. And he, he makes a statement and he says, the reason that you can't teleport to Tokyo from where you are. Is because no one has been upset enough to go and do something about developing that. And from my perspective, it was like a burr in my craw, uh, like, like sand in my, in my g string, you know, it was just incredibly painful that I couldn't figure out how it was.

Some people would get outstanding results after coming to training and other people struggled. Like there was always some that just didn't care, right? They turned up for the free lunch, uh, had a bit of a laugh and a joke, got a day off work and went back and did whatever it was that they. They did at work.

Sometimes they did work, but there was other people who genuinely came along, learned, did like apply themselves, did their very best and would go back to work and just struggled and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why that was and it bugged me. Um, and so I went on a bit of an odyssey. Um, put it to put it simply to try and figure out what was going on.

I asked everyone I knew. I asked people outside of the industry. Hey, do you know what's going on? Do you know how this works? What, how are you doing learning? Um, I spoke to a bunch of different people and

for every answer that I got, I could point to a dozen cases where what they said was the driver wasn't. So they, Oh, it's attitude. And I could find people with outstanding attitudes that struggled. Or they go, I know it's mindset and you go, right. And I'd go and have a look because like I'm training tens of thousands of technicians over years, right?

I've got a good pool of experience to draw from. And. I'd go, well, where are the people with a great mindset? And I'd go and talk to them. And they still, they had great mindsets and they still struggled. Um, oh, it's experience. It's, and, and, and it was all of these things, but it wasn't only these things. And so I discovered that I didn't really have a way of being able to test for it.

So a car comes in and it's got a no start problem. We look at all the symptoms. To identify where we need to test to identify the root cause. And if I, if I can't make sense of the symptoms and if I can't make sense of the data, then I can't do a valid test to identify the root cause. And that's, that's kind of where I was.

I had all of these symptoms, but I couldn't make sense of them. I couldn't find out, well, how do I test for what's causing. Or what's missing, whichever the case may be in these examples. And, uh, a colleague of mine, Marvin Oka, um, he runs, uh, neurobehavioral research, and he invited me to do a class on neurobehavioral modeling.

Now you, you, You might be listening to this going, well, what in the Sam hell is neurobehavioral modeling? Um, neurobehavioral modeling comes out of,, behavioral science. Dr. White Woodsmole is the person who, developed and, originated really this concept. And very simply, Neurobehavioral modeling is a way of unpacking and identifying the structure and the language, how we explain people's expertise.

And so there are people that we've come across in life who are absolute gurus at something. It might be at music, it might be at football, it might be at mechanical repair, it might be at business You know, management, business, it might be at stock trading, like there's a, we pick a, pick a criteria of human skill and you will find there are people who are absolutely elite in that area.

And when you go and ask them, well, how did you do that? They'll tell you a story, but that story is not what's really going on. It's the best that they can explain. And so neurobehavioral modeling is, and sounds a little bit gross, it's a little bit like lifting back someone's skull. And watching what happens in their brain and going, ah, I can see you've said it's this, but it's actually these things.

And it's unpacking that expertise. We call it unconscious competence. They do it and they don't even know they're doing it. Let me, let me give you a real world example of how this came about. So, um, the U S army. going back a while had a problem with, uh, pistol marksmanship. And it, it, it would, a way you could explain it was people would have been more accurate throwing the gun at the target than shooting it.

Like the, the, the, the new recruits were terrible and it was costing a lot of money because they had to go through all of this ammunition and all of this time to get them to a standard where, you Probably hit it, you know, on the balance of probabilities that they'd probably hit it. And particularly, you know, for an army and you're trying to kill people, being able to hit a target.

It's a fairly important thing, right? It's not like it's a trivial detail. And so they had Dr. Wyatt Woodsmore come in with his team and do some neurobehavioral modeling on some absolute world class marksmen. So they used some gold metal. pistol gold medalists. Um, they had a Marine sharpshooter. They had a cowboy whose living was trick shot shooting with a pistol.

And so they stood these people up on the, on the range and they all gave them a gun and the ammunition and the target was the, you know, prescribed range. And they said, off you go shoot at the target. And to a person, these experts didn't miss a hundred percent, all of them. And it was like, okay, so how did you guys do that?

they started to unpack all of these skills, micro skills, strategies, thinking, perceptions, sensations that they were tracking that these new recruits had no idea even existed. And it started with, well, why are you holding the gun like that? Well, I hold the gun like that because it gives me better stability.

Oh, okay, well, we should teach the new recruits to hold the gun like that. I noticed that when you're holding the gun in your hand, and it's the tip of the gun's moving around, how do you know when to shoot? Oh, well, I shoot when I get perfect sight alignment. Oh, there's a perfect side alignment. Well, what does that look like?

Maybe we should teach that to the recruits. You know, why are you standing with your feet this far apart? Not that far apart. Why is it that you're shooting in between heart, but heartbeats and with a particular type of breathing, why are you doing it like that? And so there was All of these things that were going on outside the conscious awareness of these marksmen, like they were doing it, they'd learned it, but you, they couldn't articulate how they were doing it.

And so using the process of neurobehavioral modeling allowed Dr. White Woodsman and his team to unpack all of these skills, all of this stuff. And they then taught that to these marksmen to these, these recruits and. The first time out they did better and they discovered they'd missed some things. And then the second time out, to a person, the new recruits were shooting in the top 90 percent in, like a 10th of the time with a 10th of the ammunition.

And so

I did more or less the same thing with automotive technicians. I went and modeled a whole bunch of automotive technicians on a scale. So there were people who were still in their apprenticeship and there were people who'd been in the industry for 25, 30 years and were absolute gurus. Um, one of them was like a, um, How would you describe as like a level three technical support person?

So the first level of technical support, if they can fix the car, um, they called the second level of technical support who were gurus. And if they couldn't fix the car, they called this guy. Uh, he was like the guru's guru. And we, we found a, we found a pattern. We found a pattern to, to how these technical gurus were operating.

Now, I, I, for me to try and explain all of, all of the pieces that we found, um, would be, I think I put everyone to sleep, myself included. But the pattern that we found is what I call resourcefulness. And it's how I described it earlier, it's the ability to get a clear perception or an accurate perception of what's really happening and then using that same insight, identify solutions and apply them efficiently and successfully. And so, the people that we modeled, we looked at newbies, we looked at gurus, and what we found was that the gurus were doing things that the other people were doing.

Even fairly senior technicians didn't even know that they should be doing. Like there was vast gaps between what the elite people were doing and what the less elite people were doing. And we then reverse engineered this into a program that we call the resourceful technician formula. And it is a, um, a distilled down fast tracked way of being able to think like And apply the strategies that the gurus use.

So rather than me teaching you technical training for decade after decade, I'm going to teach you to think and use the strategies and use the tactics and apply the methods. That the gurus use so that when you find yourself in that high stress, high complex, high information intense environment, you've got a way to navigate it.

Anthony Perl: I want to come to unpacking that formula in, in a coming episode. So stay tuned everybody for, for future episodes. But talk to me a little bit more about this idea of resourcefulness on purpose. I mean, how do we, if, if, if resourcefulness is trying to bridge that gap in the knowledge space, do you achieve it by being purpose?

Andrew Uglow: Um, step one is you've got to know that it exists. Um, and, and I, I think this has been, and I, I, this perhaps might sound like I'm being critical of the industry. I, absolutely I'm not. I'm, gutted that I invested decades of my life only doing technical training in an effort to try and help technicians to become better.

Like you, you, people go, you know, if I had my life over again, I'd do dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Well, if I had my life over again, knowing what I know now, I would go back and I would be deliberately teaching people the strategy and structure of technical resourcefulness. Because that would have a far greater impact on their ability to perform and to be successful at work then arguably all of the years of my technical training and so the industry hasn't done it because They didn't know to do it.

And so what's happened is people have stumbled on it. They have Tripped over it. They've found that it is less painful To think in these particular ways than it is to just get stuck, throw a part of the car and hope for the best, because that's kind of the other option that you have. And so, because it was less painful to be resourceful.

They started to do that, but they couldn't quantify it. They couldn't describe it. They couldn't give you the strategies because there was no, there was nothing overt about this. It's not like you can go to the shop and go, please can I have a jar of resourcefulness? You know, and they go, would you like the strawberry flavor?

Or would you like the chocolate? No, that's not a thing. Right. And, and so. Only because I've had the opportunity to, and like I say, gross, but to look into people's brains and see how they function using neurobehavioral modeling, that I actually understand it's even a thing. And so my, um, my goal is rather than have people spend 20 years stumbling through and eventually getting there, wouldn't it make good sense to go and teach people this from the get go?

Like, wouldn't that be useful? I'm gonna argue yes.

Anthony Perl: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, and I wanted to just finish up in this episode with a story that I know that you've got around, uh, training for the Dodge Viper. Tell me a little bit about that.

Andrew Uglow: Oh, this is um, so for people who don't know, and I'm hoping that everyone listening has actually heard of Dodge Viper. Uh, Dodge Viper was quite a remarkable car. They, they got a V10 engine, a six litre V10 engine, and they stuck it into a, into a two door, uh, sporty thing. It was, it was touted as being the, the American equivalent of Ferrari, which I think is perhaps a bit optimistic.

Um, they were brilliantly fast in a straight line. They, they handled it a little bit like a dog on lino. Um, and, um, weren't, weren't the happiest in corners, but they got there eventually. Um, but brutally fast, brutally fast. Um, and so I got sent to the U. S. to go and do Viper training. The class was a very specific class.

Only the best techs were ever invited. Uh, someone here in Australia at the time I was working for what was then Daimler Chrysler, um, decided that, we'd take a whole bunch of left hand drive, Dodge Vipers convert them to right hand drive here and sell them. And so we had to then support them from an after sales perspective.

And that involved, you know, special tools and then training, of course. So I got to go to the U S and do the training. And that was awesome. Uh, met some absolute geniuses of people, uh, doing that class. We then took that training. We deployed it here and at the same thing we, we invited. the best text to come along to the training.

Now, Viper, um, of all of the things that Viper was, high technology was not one of them. Um, they used some fairly rudimentary, uh, componentry and systems, and some of that was in their wiper arms. So that they had a really weird wiper arm system where one arm would move in one direction, the The arm on the other side would move in the opposite direction.

And then the first arm would come back and then the second. And so they had this systems for stopping the arms colliding in the middle of the windscreen and being stuck in there. You can't say, and you're doing some ungodly speed, uh, on a racetrack, of course, not on the road. No one would do this on the road.

Um, and so we were teaching the technicians how to do diagnosis on the wiper module because there was no computer to plug into it. It was all very, Low tech like switches and stuff. There was no diagnostic routines or anything like that. And so we've got people around this car, this car that we've got is a company demonstrator.

Um, the cars were, I think, retailing for like 150, 000 or something like that. So it's not a cheap car, even by today's standards. And. We're explaining that to test the wiper motor, you have to short wires to ground and the, that would then cause a switch to close or cause the wiper module to think a switch is closed and it should respond a particular way depending upon which wire you shorted to ground.

Now, there were some wires that you don't short to ground because that damages the module and being the trainer in, you know, And so as we're going through the process, stepping through the activity, I say, whatever you do, don't short the blue and green wires. Someone in the class only heard the end of that statement.

They heard short the blue and green wires. And before I can go, Oh, but too late. There's this cloud of smoke comes out of the control module. It doesn't work. So it's like, that's okay. I'm a resourceful individual. I know how to deal with this. So I, I, I go, don't, don't stress. It's my fault. I'm the trainer.

I'm responsible. Don't like no one's going to cut. It's not going to come back on you. Don't worry to the tech that did it. Cause he felt really bad. And so I ring spare parts cause I'm at the manufacturer. So I ring them parts guys direct and they go, right, I've got this, this module, this part number, dah, dah, dah.

Um, can you get me one? And he goes, Oh, look, give it, give me a minute. I'll give you a call back. So five minutes later, I get this phone call back, right? I've got bad news. I've got really bad news. And I'm just thinking, okay, this is going to be interesting. And he goes, uh, well, the bad news is there's none in the country and I've gone, Oh, oh, okay.

So how long will it take us to get one? And he goes, they don't make them anymore. There's none in the world. It's so. So I've got this 150, 000 car that is going to go to a customer, right? It's going to be a company demonstrator. So they know that it's not, not new. It's got, you know, a couple of thousand K's on it or something like it's being used as a sales car, but we can't sell it because the wipers don't work and we can't fix it and it's like, Oh, Well, that's, um, that's no good.

And my boss doesn't know this yet. Right. This is, this is like, Oh, and, and of course I was, I was read the riot act when they gave me this car. They said, if you scratch it, if you mark it, if you do anything to it, it's coming out of your pay, you know, like you're responsible. So I'm thinking this is really, really good.

And, and the, the, the reason I tell the story. There's, there's, there's two reasons. The first reason is what's said and what's heard aren't always the same thing. And so I will say a word like resourcefulness and what someone hears and their understanding of that word can be entirely different. Just like I said, whatever you do, don't short this wire.

They heard short this wire. So what's said and what's heard aren't the same thing. The other thing is that tiny, tiny little distinctions. Can have some massive, massive impacts. So, just that one little thing of shorting the two wrong wires. There's 12 wires there. They picked the two that shouldn't be shorted and did it.

Tiny little distinction. Tiny! And now we're 150, 000 down. Effectively, because we can't sell the car. Um, because it's illegal. You can't sell a car without wipers. And so, um, the, the reason that I want to tell that story is that I don't want people to

rely on their own perspective of what I'm saying. I want them to

to the point of, well, what does Andrew actually mean when he says this, when he describes something, when he says that it's this, well, what's his version of that. Word. What's his definition of that word? And not to rely on. Oh, well, I know what resourcefulness resourcefulness is. Oh, I know what that means.

Don't rely on your own reference structure, get curious and go and, and, and try and understand mine because it'll be a tiny, tiny little distinction. That'll be the difference that makes the difference. And it is

Anthony Perl: that note, I want to tell people, you're gonna have to listen to the next episode to not only hear more about the formula and we're going to unpack that, but also to hear the end of that story, because we want to know what happened and how we, how resourceful you were in actually able to resolve the problem. That, uh, that particular issue, I just, the only thing I want to ask you is, is the crossing of the wires. It doesn't have anything to do this with, uh, leading to the Ghostbusters thing of, of the, the beams crossing. Is that how it

came about for your, your class?

Andrew Uglow: not quite, not quite. We, we, we joke that all electronic components run on smoke, right? Um, so that any time the smoke comes out of the electronic component, it stops working. So they must run on smoke. And so we, you know, we joke when someone does the wrong thing, oh, they've let the smoke out. Um, and so I had an apprentice some years ago, and I had them convinced that whenever they were doing software updates with the scan tool, they should wrap the controller in plastic and put a zip tie over the end, so that if something went wrong, the smoke didn't leave.

We could capture the smoke because the manufacturer's smoke was so much better than the non genuine smoke. You know? Um. He was a little upset when he found out that that wasn't true.