Shared Responsibility: Why Workshop Success Depends on Everyone Playing Their Part

Anthony Perl: 00:00:01

Shared responsibility.

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Why workshop success depends

on everyone playing their part.

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Join passionate automotive trainer and

coach Andrew Ulo as he examines the common

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technician complaint, the breakdown of

shared responsibility in modern workshops.

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In this episode, you'll learn why

workshop success requires both technical

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excellence and emotional intelligence.

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Discover how to create

accountability without blame.

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And understand why technicians and

management must share ownership

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of outcomes along the way, you'll

hear stories about the automotive

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industry's complexity and how it

demands a new approach to teamwork and

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why the old us versus them mentality

is killing workshop profitability.

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I'm your co-host Anthony Pearl, and this

is the Frictionless Workshop podcast.

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Let's get cranking.

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Andrew Uglow: Andrew.

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Here's my

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favorite

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Anthony Perl: quote.

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That you hear it in all jobs, and maybe

it's because we're getting a little bit

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older, but there's no good people anymore.

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But that specifically in an area that

is quite technical and with the scale of

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development that happens with cars and

managing everything to do with them these

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days, there's no good people anymore.

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That's something that comes

up all the time, isn't it?

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Andrew Uglow: It's funny

you should say that.

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And at risk of, of getting on a soapbox,

and perhaps this is why I do a podcast

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to, to get on a soapbox, but when you've

been doing something, anything for a long

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time, you start to notice patterns, right?

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You start to notice things recur.

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There's cycles to how things operate.

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I just looking back, when I first started

in the industry forever ago, it was really

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hard to find good people and then it

became, it's really hard to find people.

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And that then, and that's what

we were hearing from management.

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That's what we're hearing

from workshop owners.

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That's what we're hearing

from industry bodies.

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Oh, there's, it's really hard

to find good people, or it's

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really hard to find people.

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Now I'm hearing this

from other technicians.

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I, I like the people that I work with

are peanuts really not very good.

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Oh, I can't use the exact words

because language warnings on podcast.

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But they have a lot of

opportunity to improve.

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I, I question whether they

should be in the industry at all,

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let alone are they employable?

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It feels like a Monty Python scheme.

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Anthony Perl: It's not

what it was in my day.

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Andrew Uglow: Exactly.

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Um, but this is the thing, like if it

was one person, I'd just go, okay, well,

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you're just really unlucky to have got

a bad dude or do debt in your workplace.

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But when I start to hear again and

again and again from foreman, from

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technicians, we've got insert person.

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They're useless.

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They're absolutely useless.

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I end up fixing all of their problems.

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I end up spending all this extra

time, and I go back to the other

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things that we spoke about.

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I'm not getting paid any

more to fix their problems.

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I'm not getting any recognition

because of all the things that I do.

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So you can sort of see that these are

recurring loops and cycles within cycles.

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So there's this lament, you know,

where are all the good people going?

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Whoa.

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And the, the flip side is these

young people these days, you

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know, that's what they said

about me when I joined the trade.

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Young people these days,

look, they have no discipline.

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And you go, can track, like,

honestly, go back and track

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the things that tick you off.

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As a service manager, what are they?

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Okay, so we've got mistakes.

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Technically we've got lack of attention,

but we also got, they didn't turn

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up, they didn't ring me like, like

all of these basic human skills.

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They just disappeared at lunchtime

because they were stressed, because mental

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health, because in the war, in Ukraine,

because global warming, because who

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knows, we have rules in how we operate.

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We have, and these people don't

seem to fit within these rules.

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They don't seem to hold the same values.

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They don't seem to care

about their reputation.

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They don't seem to perceive the world

the way that we perceive the world.

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And so this whole idea that plays

out for that at a management level.

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But when we look at this

through technician lenses.

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This guy's getting away with everything.

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He does this, he doesn't do that.

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He should have done this, da da da da.

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I'm doing all the right things

and we're getting paid the same.

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Hang on a minute, hang on a bit.

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And, and so you can appreciate, you

know, what's, what's that saying?

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Bad company corrupts good habits.

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You know that if I have some optimal or

underperformers in my business that there

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is a a time period at which we, we, we

want to upskill them or get rid of them.

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Be because they will do more harm.

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Than not having a warm body there.

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And sometimes, and I know businesses that

do this, I go, I just need a warm body.

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Yep.

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They create all of this hell.

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But without that, I just simply

can't cope with the amount of work.

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'cause I don't have enough people.

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And the hope is that we can

find or upskill them enough,

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we can progress them enough.

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We can take them from being profoundly

suboptimal to being semi suboptimal.

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And that's kind of the the thing.

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And yet possibly.

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When I start hearing this from

technicians, I don't know about you,

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but that raises some red flags for me.

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The people that are working with these

people, and even if they've been in trunk,

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like I've had a third year apprentice come

to me and go, all of the other apprentices

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in my workshop are just horrendous.

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I, I dunno why they put them on.

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Okay.

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That I don't know about you, but

it's, that throws up a whole variety

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of questions and red flags for me.

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And so going back to the testing, the idea

is there in fact no good people anymore.

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You know, the frustration of

working with not good people,

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you know, where have all the good

people got young people these days?

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All of those versions of that claim.

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Is it true?

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And I'm gonna go, yeah,

it's true without question.

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Don't just have a skill shortage in

terms of the number of people available.

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The people that we have

also don't have the skills.

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So we have, if you like, we have

a people shortage and we have a

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skills that people don't have.

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Shortage or issue.

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And so it's a two part thing.

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And so is there a drop in quality

of talent in the workshops?

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I'm gonna go, yeah.

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Yeah, there is.

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And you, you take that idea and then

you layer over the non incremental,

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the massive exponential change in

technology that's come through cars.

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And even if you go back 10 years,

you know what's changed for plumbers?

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What's changed for carpenters?

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What's changed for.

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Air conditioning techs, what's changed?

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Like sure there's changes, but nothing

like the automotive industry has seen.

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Like nothing.

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Nothing at all.

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And so not only do we now have

people that perhaps don't have

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the people skills, don't have the

values, don't have the comprehension.

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If they've come from another part of

the world, perhaps they don't share the

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same ideals and the same concepts of

what's acceptable and what's not for us.

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And we see that a lot too,

that it's not just a people

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clash, it's a cultural clash.

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That's a whole nother

kettle of fish, right?

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There's, there's a whole

nother level of skill.

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If I'm a manager slash leader,

how do I lead through that?

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We have that, but we also

have the change in technology.

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And I'm again, automotive tragic.

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Well, automotive life, I had the benefit

of seeing this incremental change.

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We went from cars being largely mechanical

systems to, with a few electrical

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circuits, you know, lights and charging

systems, and spark ignition and stuff.

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To cars being an entirely networked

vehicle, highly networked vehicle

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with a few mechanical components.

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Yeah, we still got brakes.

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Yeah,

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Anthony Perl: we have an

electric motor now that does the,

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hopefully we still got brakes.

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Andrew Uglow: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

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That's a trivial detail.

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We have mechanical doors

that still open and close.

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You know, they aren't curtains

or force fields or something

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that keep us in the car.

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We haven't gone that far yet, but like

there's, there's a few mechanical things

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in the car, but it's now an electronic

device with a few mechanical bits.

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And so I've seen that

change gradually over time.

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But for people who step into the industry

today, like that's like, like drinking

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from a fire hose, you know, wrapping

your lips around the end of that nozzle

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and turning that, turning that hose

on high, it's a lot of information

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to get down at a really short space

of time, and so that just compounds

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what the individual is experiencing.

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Trying to find their feet in an industry

and underperforming while they do it.

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Anthony Perl: The Frictionless

Workshop Podcast is brought

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to you by Solutions Culture.

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For details on how to get in touch

with Andrew, consult the show notes

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below, and don't forget to subscribe

so you don't miss an episode.

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Now back to the podcast.

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They're being trained on a

completely new way of doing

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things and a new type of engine.

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So their experience is

always going to be different.

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So they're not gonna make

'em like they used to because

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they can't and they shouldn't.

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Andrew Uglow: Right.

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And so if we dive into this and we start

to look at things a little bit deeper

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than the surface level, and usually

this is expressed in frustration.

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I've gotta fix up all this person's screw

ups, I've gotta, I'm constantly holding

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their hand and wiping up after them.

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Um, there's two big

chunks that are at play.

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The first chunk is the environment

that they're working in.

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People respond to the

environment they're working in.

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And if I've got a suboptimal environment,

if I'm not, if I'm applying financial

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management methodologies to humans,

I'm never gonna get a good result.

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I just can, it's not possible.

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So I need to have leadership.

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I need to have a, an environment that

that is suitable for humans, suitable for

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people that considers those people things.

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Sure I have to make a profit.

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Don't get me wrong, they're

parallel, but I just, I find that

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the environment that often these people

find themselves in is not useful.

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It doesn't serve, it doesn't help

the business, doesn't customers, and

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certainly doesn't help the individual.

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The second element is the reality is

that people today aren't the same.

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They just aren't.

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Different culture, different world.

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Like we, we talk about people being tech

dependent, as in technology dependent.

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Like I remember a long time ago

on a galaxy far away, when there

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was no internet, we never had it.

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We, you were left to your own devices

to be resourceful to figure it out.

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Now, I just asked Chad, Hey

Chad, how do I fix this car?

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Oh, well Andrew, you need

to da da da da da da.

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And it may or may not be correct.

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Like's been known to hallucinate

once or twice before.

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And if I give it bad information,

I get a bad response back.

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And so now it's chat's fault, not mine.

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But the reality is that people don't

have the same foundations, that

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the, the behaviors that we see are

symptoms of things that aren't there.

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And so the reality is, if I

want this person to perform, I'm

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gonna have to do the install.

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It's like complaining that my car

didn't come with leather seats.

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Well, okay, so it doesn't

come with leather seats.

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If you want leather seats, you're

gonna have to put them in yourself.

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You want the people to hold these values,

you're gonna have to install them.

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That's the reality.

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It sucks to be you.

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Sure, but that's the reality.

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If you want this, you're

gonna have to do the work.

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And so this becomes a problem because one,

we don't have in the industry, we don't

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have good systems and processes for doing

the install, or we put them through an

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apprenticeship and that does some work.

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That's good, that's useful,

but it's incomplete.

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It's insufficient.

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We certainly don't have any mechanism.

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For doing the install for these values

and skills and behaviors and stuff.

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We have compliance, but that's like

using a hammer to fix everything.

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You know?

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That's not gonna work well.

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We don't have any training for people

in the business for how to do this.

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We don't have any industry wide things

that develop this, that look at people and

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go, look, this is how we need to operate.

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If you wanna work in this

environment, you need these skills.

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So let's go and develop those

skills and the people skills,

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not the technical skills.

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Sure, we do technical skills

really well, but we just don't

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do the other side really well.

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So,

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you know, back to this complaint,

we can either keep banging our head

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against the wall and having a Sooky

lala moment over it and complaining, oh,

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you, I'm gonna, or we can suck it up.

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We can go, okay, so they don't have this,

how am I gonna get the, get that to them?

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And we get the pushback.

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Oh, well they don't want to,

they don't this, they don't.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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That's all very external.

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What are you gonna do about it?

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You know, who's got two thumbs

and holds of responsibility here?

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Well, that's leadership,

that's management.

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So if you are the service

manager, you are the foreman.

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This is on you.

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And if we go back historically

and look at how Foreman did, sure.

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They were the technical gurus.

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They were the knowledge holders.

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They were the problem solvers.

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They were the ones that did stuff,

but they also led the culture.

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And we don't train them

how to do that anymore.

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That's gone.

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Foreman is Andrew, how much longer Andrew?

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Customers waiting.

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Andrew, why isn't that job done?

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We have this whole financial framework

over managing people, and it just sucks.

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Just it's awful.

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It's inappropriate.

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It's like using a hammer to fix

everything and sure, there's

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things that need a hammer.

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There's things that need a hammer and a.

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There's also a need finesse.

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Things that don't need a hammer.

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Anthony Perl: How you sell

it in is everything, right?

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And the funny thing is, they know how

to do that when it comes to the car.

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It's how they do it with the individual.

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Because, you know, we were talking

before, um, you know, come in and you

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go, okay, say to me you need new breaks.

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Now if they say you need new breaks,

but you need it in the next six months.

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He's very different to the urgency

of saying, look, your breaks

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are down to the final bits.

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You need to get your breaks

done in the next week.

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Otherwise you risk having

a serious accident.

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Andrew Uglow: Yeah.

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Anthony Perl: And selling it to me that

way goes, okay, let's do the breaks now.

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Let's get onto it.

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I can't put this off.

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And it's the same way that you have to

deal with technicians in wanting them to

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develop and do more things along the way.

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It's how you sell it into them.

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When you get that complaint saying

that you're just banging your head

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against a brick wall, that they're

not really that interested how you

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sell it might be the key to, uh,

what the response is from them.

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Andrew Uglow: Sure.

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Uh, I'm gonna offer, what we have

is, if you imagine two axes, right?

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The first axe is technical.

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Technical skill.

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Technical ability.

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I like the word ability better.

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'cause ability is skill

times knowledge, right?

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It's what I can actually produce.

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So we have this machine that over

time produces technical ability.

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Okay?

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So if we look at the scale of things

and where we expect our people to be, we

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expect them to be high technical ability.

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And so that's efficiency, that's

professionalism, that's fixed visits,

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all those metrics that we track.

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Conversely, for leadership, we don't

have really, we have management

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as the other horizontal, and

it's kind of one or the other.

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We have high management skill

or high technical ability.

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And if we zoom in and go back to the idea

of, well, who's responsible for this?

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Sure.

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It's the management.

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Without question, management of

the business, management of the

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workshop, without question, the

buck stops with them and well, what

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have they put in place to do this?

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Because the service manager's got a

thousand different things to manage.

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And putting out fires and doing all the

stuff that they do well, what system have

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we got in place to, to look after this?

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And there's some stuff and there's

some leadership that, that we see

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coming through when I go, you know,

80, 20, 20% of businesses do this.

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Well, 80%.

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Not yet.

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I go back into the piece

that's missing in all this.

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The piece that's been overlooked in

all this is the foreman who has the

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face time with the technicians, the

foreman who has the influence with the

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technicians, the foreman who has the

ability to do the install of the values

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and the behaviors and the methods, and

the way we roll the cultural things.

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Well, that's the foreman's job.

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Sure, they have the technical

responsibility as well, but we've never

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trained them to do the people part.

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We've never given them.

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People ability.

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We've given them technical ability.

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We've never given them people ability.

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And so this is one of the things like I,

I feel like I'm on my soapbox all over

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again, but this is one of the things

that confounds me is why haven't we

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trained our foreman on how to do this?

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Okay, we expect high technical

ability yet great, but that's

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not their role, and that's.

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That alone is not their role.

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And using them for that

is to underutilize them.

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The reality is we should be teaching

them to how to influence people,

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how to deal with the human side of

things, how to install values, how

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to install culture, how to install

professionalism, how to do micro learning.

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So that, and again, I get back to the

idea that I get feedback from Foreman,

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I've told him again and again and again.

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Okay, so you keep telling

him, telling isn't working.

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What else should you do?

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And they look at me blankly.

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'cause they don't have anything else.

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No one's explained to them.

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This is how you install information

into someone who doesn't have it.

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That they don't have a framework

for that they don't have, they

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don't have a tactic for that.

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They don't even have

good practice for that.

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We just what?

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Just get outta hammer and start banging.

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: 00:16:57

We're surprising, we're not going,

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: 00:16:58

Anthony Perl: we, and how often is it is

that people could just keep explaining

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: 00:17:01

the same thing in the same way, and

that's not going to make it any clearer

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for someone who doesn't know you.

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You have to change your approach to

how you're delivering that information

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and the, and the explanation and

the information you make available

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to them to be able to learn.

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: 00:17:18

Otherwise, you're just repeating.

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Andrew Uglow: And, and I go

back to what's your goal here?

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Like really as a business,

what's your outcome?

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Are you just there to make money?

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Well, we've been doing that for decades

and look at the state of their people.

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And I, I think that we need to

perhaps have a good hard look.

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And this plays right up and down.

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The idea of leadership

is have a good hard look.

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: 00:17:44

'cause if we don't take care of

people, no one else is going to.

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: 00:17:47

We can't expect people to come

into our business with all the

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pieces that we want them to have.

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That doesn't exist anymore.

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And so we can so about it and go, oh,

this and all that, and we can cycle

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through people and we can invest a million

dollars plus a year on staff turn if

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we want to, or maybe we could invest

less than that and start to work about

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developing the people side of things

and make that part of people's KPI.

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: 00:18:17

Hey look Anthony, we want you

to learn how to manage people.

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: 00:18:20

We want you to learn how to.

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: 00:18:22

In install culture, we want you

to learn how to do micro learning.

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: 00:18:26

Anthony, we want you to be able to manage

customers as part of your role as a, a

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: 00:18:30

senior tech or a foreman or a controller.

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: 00:18:32

Andrew, we want you to be

able to lead millennials.

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: 00:18:36

Well, let's, let me show you how

you do that because until we do,

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I, I don't know about you, but I

just see a self repeating cycle.

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I see the same complaint that we've

been banging on about for 30 years.

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: 00:18:50

Plus happening again

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: 00:18:52

Anthony Perl: and again and again.

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: 00:18:54

I mean, I think if you were to jump

in a time machine and go back 30 or

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40 years and you were to have this

conversation with them, they'd probably

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: 00:19:04

be saying exactly the same thing.

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: 00:19:06

Oh, we just can't get good people anymore.

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: 00:19:09

It's a story that we've been telling.

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: 00:19:12

For so long that it almost becomes

compulsory to tell the story

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: 00:19:16

rather than to address the problem.

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: 00:19:18

Andrew Uglow: Right?

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: 00:19:18

It's, yeah, it's easier to have a

complaint than it is to, what is it?

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: 00:19:21

I must do Something always achieves

more than something must be done, and

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: 00:19:26

so I've taken this very personally.

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: 00:19:27

Anthony, just as we wrap up this idea.

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: 00:19:29

This is not a small trivial thing for me.

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: 00:19:31

This has been burning my butt for years.

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: 00:19:34

Like how do we solve this problem?

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: 00:19:36

How do we get around this?

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: 00:19:37

How do we facilitate outstanding

financial performance for businesses

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: 00:19:42

when all of the things are tightening?

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: 00:19:44

'cause they are like, pick one.

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: 00:19:45

This is what I'm saying about automotive.

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: 00:19:47

If you can be successful in automotive

with everything stacked against you and

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: 00:19:50

still be successful, what can't you do?

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: 00:19:52

So given that environment, how do we.

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: 00:19:55

Run better.

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: 00:19:56

How do we operate better?

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: 00:19:57

How do we, given that it's all the things

that it is, how do we do that well?

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: 00:20:00

And ultimately it comes

down to the technicians.

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: 00:20:04

In any workshop, the quality of my

technicians are directly proportional

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: 00:20:08

to the profitability of my business.

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: 00:20:11

Sure, I need good, efficient management.

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: 00:20:13

Sure, I need great systems.

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: 00:20:14

Sure I need great customer service people.

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: 00:20:16

That all helps amplify

what the technicians do.

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: 00:20:19

But if I don't have

good techs, I'm nowhere.

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: 00:20:23

I go back to, well, whose job is

it not to train the technicians?

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: 00:20:28

Whose job is it to

develop the technicians?

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: 00:20:30

And that goes back to the service

manager and more specifically,

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: 00:20:34

it goes back to the foreman.

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: 00:20:35

Sure, we want foreman that are high

technical without question, but we

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: 00:20:39

need them to be high people as well.

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: 00:20:41

And we get that by training

them and there's nothing.

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: 00:20:45

There is absolutely zero.

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: 00:20:47

I can send them to TAFE and they can

do a cert four and workplace leadership

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: 00:20:51

or workplace business management or

workplace, you know, whatever it is.

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: 00:20:55

And okay, nice piece of paper.

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: 00:20:58

And they'll learn some stuff,

but it doesn't cut the mustard.

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: 00:21:01

It's not what they need.

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: 00:21:03

And so I've gone and doubled down on this.

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: 00:21:06

I have far out, I have invested enormous

amounts of time, research, energy.

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: 00:21:10

The reason I know all these complaints

is I've been testing this over years

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: 00:21:15

with people, and so I've developed

essentially what is a foreman school?

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: 00:21:20

How do you get your foreman up

in the scale of people ability or

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: 00:21:25

you send them to foreman school?

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: 00:21:27

Well, you would send them to trade

school to learn the technical.

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: 00:21:29

Well send them to foreman school to

learn the other side, the people side.

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: 00:21:32

And so we've developed a, a program

called the Professional Foreman Method,

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: 00:21:36

literally right about to launch.

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: 00:21:37

So this is, if you're watching this

or listening to this, this is October.

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: 00:21:40

Early October, we plan to be

launching by the end of the

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: 00:21:43

month and taking enrollments for,

how do you train your foreman?

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: 00:21:47

Well, this is how you train your foreman.

451

: 00:21:49

This is, I'm gonna argue the first

time that I know of that there is a

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: 00:21:52

foreman school that we teach foreman

and controllers how to manage people,

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: 00:21:55

not how to manage business, not

how to manage technical ability.

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: 00:21:59

We'll help with that for sure, but

this is how to manage people how

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: 00:22:02

to, or better how to lead people.

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: 00:22:04

How to install the culture, how to have

the challenging conversations, how to get

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: 00:22:08

these millennials to do what you want them

to do, or what if they wanted to do it?

458

: 00:22:13

Wouldn't that be easier?

459

: 00:22:15

Wouldn't that be a better solution?

460

: 00:22:16

Instead of me pushing these people,

wouldn't it be better if I led them,

461

: 00:22:19

if I facilitated them doing their job?

462

: 00:22:22

Wouldn't that be a far more

sensible way to approach this?

463

: 00:22:24

Instead of push, push, push,

push, bang, bang, bang with a

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: 00:22:27

hammer because it's not working.

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: 00:22:29

What we're doing now positively is not.

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: 00:22:31

I sure we get some results,

but gee whiz, for what effort?

467

: 00:22:35

What time, what cost.

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: 00:22:37

Anthony Perl: Thank you for listening

to the Frictionless Workshop podcast.

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: 00:22:40

For details on how to get Andrew

working with you and your technicians.

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: 00:22:44

Take a look at the show notes.

471

: 00:22:46

There's also a link to some

special content you can access.

472

: 00:22:50

I'm Anthony Pearl reminding you to

subscribe so you don't miss an episode.