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| Subject: Education & Training Are Critical | |
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Author: Dennis S. Vogel |
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Date Posted: 10:29:00 03/28/19 Thu In reply to: Dennis S. Vogel 's message, "Retail Processes Are Important" on 10:21:09 03/28/19 Thu GRand Master added some good points & clarification. Education & Training Are Critical Peter Drucker's insights: "Knowledge has to be improved, challenged & increased constantly, or it vanishes." "Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level." "No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings." Training & education should help people make the right decisions, but beware: Part of training is letting people experiment to find what they do well & learn from their successes & mistakes. As long as the risks are low, you'll end up enduring the results or lack of results. You may hire or already have somebody who has experience, but the experience may be doing things differently than you &/or customers expect. The results may be the same, the time required to do the tasks could be much different. Different methods can be just as effective in producing a consistent result, but some of those methods may be more efficient than others. It's up to you to determine if you'll require everybody who performs a task to do it the same way. Some employers prefer hiring people who don't have job-related experience because retraining (training to do things differently) can be more expensive than training. It's related to the Curse Of Knowledge. It's hard for people to act & think like they don't know what they've learned & remember. The Best People Using The Best Procedures When you make hiring, firing, retention & promotion decisions, you should remember how critical it is to have the best (intelligence, wisdom & talent) people you can afford. Now here's a conflicting concept: A major goal in designing & developing processes is to make intelligence, wisdom & talent ALMOST (not entirely) irrelevant. Don't develop a lot of boring, mindless tasks. Since people tend to be distracted while they work & may need to multitask, it can be good for tasks not to require total concentration. Wise, talented & intelligent people should have optimal ways (KNOW HOW) of doing things so they KNOW WHAT to do & not do. They should be informed enough to KNOW WHY a customer desires a certain result. After employees master a method, they can focus more on results instead of each action. With the right input & methods, they can use their judgment to determine when innovation may improve results. (Note: If customers are asked why they want a result, they may feel the question violates their privacy. But when somebody knows why, s/he may know how to adapt/adjust resources to produce a better result.) It's similar to learning how to drive. Somebody, who doesn't have to consciously focus on each action, can consciously focus on traffic & road conditions. Another driver, who focuses on staying in a lane, has less mental resources available to watch for & avoid hazards. Recipes For Success While listening to Christensen's books (especially "Seeing What's Next"), you may notice what happens when industries & organizations develop rules, routines & standards. (Note: The authors didn't express the concepts exactly how I did below. I embellished & extrapolated.) It's somewhat like chefs writing recipes for people who have less cooking skill, knowledge &/or experience. When novices use the recommended amounts of the right ingredients & bake/cook those as instructed, they could produce the same results. People, who have less training & education, can effectively use instructions (processes) to do specialized tasks. Efficiency increases because people become qualified sooner & they can create consistent value. They can create consistent value in less time & with less waste than technology pioneers could. Pioneers used trial & error while they searched for & developed the right resources & experimented to determine the right ways to use those resources. The pioneers' efforts, mistakes & successes were used as technological foundations for training the next practitioners. What subsequent practitioners discovered & perfected was codified into rules, routines & standards. Those became bases for education. Effectiveness increases because highly educated, trained specialists can focus on complex problems that others aren't qualified to solve. Too many people spout this derogatory comment: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." They imply teachers' & professors' contributions aren't valuable enough. Talented, dedicated instructors produce a lot of value. They educate students, while other people - who have specialized knowledge & skill - focus on improving technologies. Talented practitioners might not have the talent &/or patience to teach others. Knowing how to do something is different than knowing to teach others to do it. It'd be less efficient if practitioners would spend time teaching others instead of improving technologies. Who would improve technologies while practitioners would be teaching? Instructors can effectively teach students how to be entry-level practitioners. There are opportunity costs in everything people do & don't do. So, it's important be as efficient as possible. Efficiency can reduce the resources - including time & money - used to produce a result. It means there'd be resources left to produce another result. High Quality Education & High Quality Knowledge Aren't The Same What should matter to you is the content & quality of a worker's education & training, plus how much knowledge & skill s/he retains. The content & quality is more important than who taught/trained them & where the training & education took place. Example- The facts you learned from listening to recorded books are just as valuable as they would be if you were a Harvard student & learned the same facts directly from Clayton M. Christensen or a graduate assistant in a classroom. Of course, Harvard students can learn a deeper variety of content than you've learned from a few hours of listening to CDs. You wouldn't necessarily learn those same facts any better in a classroom, than you have from the tapes or CDs. Unfortunately, tapes or CDs can't interactively respond to your questions. But, in a big class (lecture hall), sometimes it's hard to get answers. Thank you for using my blog. Please let me know if I should clarify anything. Copyright 2009 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved. When you compete against big businesses with big budgets you need powerful marketing strategies & tactics. You'll find them here- https://thriving-small-businesses.blogspot.com/ http://www.voy.com/31049/ Subject: Clarification About Education & Training Are Critical Author: GRand Master Date: 05/20/09 In reply to: Dennis S. Vogel's message, "Education & Training Are Critical" on 05/18/09 Here I am again clarifying our host's explanations. Dennis can correct me if I'm wrong: Based on what he wrote, he apparently included non-classroom learning as still being "book learnin'" It's still valuable as long as the content is valuable. Education IS critical & should be pursued in any ethical way people can get it. There are many public & school libraries. If there's a printed or recorded book you need, but if you can't find it in a local library, you should ask for an interlibrary loan. Interlibrary loans allow you to check out books from distant libraries. Some college & university libraries are available for non-students. There may be a small fee involved. If you can afford the money & space, you can buy a book and have it available for future reference. Though authors benefit from book sales, many authors are consultants and educators who use their books to reach more prospects. Books bring publicity to consultants, professors, universities and colleges. Don't feel bad if you can't afford the money or space for more books. You can honor and acknowledge authors by using their work and then telling people about the benefits you got from their insights - testimonials. Subject: Your Role Is To Figure Out How & Why. Workers' Roles Are To Do & Try. Author: Dennis S. Vogel Date: 07/14/09 In reply to: Hillary's message, "I'm confused about Nascent Processes" on 03/12/09 Here's an example (analogy) I'll use to start explaining what comes next. (I'll tie it in effectively.) I know many will disagree with this, but it's my opinion. It's inefficient to have doctors teaching undergraduate classes. Doctors are overqualified for the job. Somebody, who has a bachelor's degree, can adequately teach general education courses & anything below a graduate level. A college-educated professor can answer basic questions as easily as a professor with doctorate. Generally, in academics, answers to advanced questions wouldn't help anybody until they're tested on the advanced knowledge. That would happen in graduate school. This should be a safe assumption: Somebody, who knows a subject well enough to graduate from college with a bachelor's degree, knows enough to provide an identical education for other students. This education would be good enough to confer bachelor's degrees. (Think of this logically. When graduate students study to get doctorates, do the professors have degrees a few levels above what the students want? NO! Doctorates are the highest. The education produced is good enough for the students to graduate.) Doctors/professors can do research (those with less education aren't qualified to do) & can supervise researchers. Maybe those researchers would be students or interns. There's a snob factor in being educated by professors with the highest credentials, but it doesn't mean a student is better educated or prepared for a career. Some employers are more interested in having employees who have college degrees than they (employers) are interested in the education or field of study. There's a big difference between having a degree & getting, then retaining an education. Some employers are picky about which schools potential employees attended. (This is another inefficiency - It doesn't make sense.) Here's how this analogy may apply to your situation: In the short-term, it may seem more efficient & effective for you to do a task, instead of training somebody to do it. You probably have more knowledge & skill than the result justifies. You're also probably overqualified for the job of a trainer. When somebody in an entry-level job (with entry-level wages) can produce essentially the same results as you can, you should only do those tasks occasionally. By using optimal marketing, you can increase your business revenue enough to cover somebody else's wages. If customers get just as much benefit from an employee's work as they can get from yours, you should do higher-level tasks. It's vital for you to still have contact with customers, so you don't lose your perspective. You may be overqualified in serving some customers. (You shouldn't tell them if you are, since that could offend them.) If they want/need basic service & their questions require entry-level knowledge, you can have somebody else serve them while you focus on creating more value for your whole customer base. Depending how big your staff is/will be, you should decide if you'll have somebody specifically in charge of training. The trainer can do other tasks when there aren't any trainees. Having designated trainers makes it easier to have consistent, standardized training. Having any experienced worker train new workers can be ineffective & inefficient because knowing how to do something is different than knowing to teach others to do it. Side Note: Some self-important people will insist on being served by the top person (owner/manager). I'm against arbitrary price increases, but if somebody will only accept your work, the fact you did it may be worth a higher price to that person. A higher price may encourage people to save money & accept employees' work. Customers may object to paying more for the owner's work & may say, "It's not worth that much. I can get the same thing for less money when an employee does the work." *Exactly!* Sometimes, I think people expect to served by - or at least meet - the business founder because his/her name is in the business name. Somebody, who decides to buy from Hank Smith Fashions, may figure Hank would be involved in the transaction. Why would Hank put his name on his business, if he doesn't intend to serve people? However, if a business name is Valu Books, people will expect good value, but they won't expect to meet "Valu". People might feel like bait-&-switch victims if they feel lured into a business transaction by the expectation of being served by senior people but the work is really done by entry-level people. Factors In The Decision About Trainers Do you have an employee who did a job enough to master it? Do you think s/he will still work for you long enough to justify your extra investment in being taught how to train people? If you don't & won't have a designated trainer, do you have an employee who will consistently & patiently mentor a trainee? If a trainee doesn't have the same schedule as a mentor, the training could be haphazardly left to whomever is available. Whoever is available may not know what a trainee was already thought or how thoroughly. Example: If you're a trainee & I'm your mentor for a day, I'd end up asking what you learned from the previous mentor. You may think & claim you learned something, but as a trainee, you probably wouldn't realize how much you don't know. Because of this problem, trainees can have a job for a year & still not have fully learned to do any tasks. Some people want to fake it until they make it. But without an experienced (designated trainer's) perspective, how would they know if they've made it? They may be faking without realizing it. A simple example: Trainees may think they know how to put price stickers on products. After all, how hard could it be? But many price stickers are made to shred if somebody tries to remove them. When a removed sticker is shredded, a dishonest ‘customer' isn't apt to successfully switch prices to get expensive products for lower prices. But the proper way - to place a price sticker - is to be sure it can't be removed intact. Trainees may not realize that & haphazardly slap stickers on. Your store could lose a lot of money because price discrepancies may not be drastic enough to be noticed by a stressed, distracted cashier. When you keep ordering more products to replace those that sold for the wrong prices, you could lose thousands of dollars on hundreds of sales. You could lose all of that money about $5 at a time, so in the short-term it may go unnoticed. That $5 per product could've been your whole net profit per product. As inflation increases, it'd decrease the value of the rest of your gross margin. Hopefully, I've persuaded you to institute consistently complete training whether you have designated trainers or not. Subject: Should A Boss Occasionally Do Nonexecutive Labor? Author: Dennis S. Vogel Date: 09/20/09 In reply to: Hillary's message, "I'm confused about Nascent Processes" on 03/12/09 Doing entry-level & intermediate tasks occasionally may be a good idea to maintain your skill level & show employees you don't feel high & mighty. While you do entry-level & intermediate tasks, you may discover a better alternative. It's especially true, if you haven't done it every day. You can explore the task from a different perspective. Workers may have good ideas about how to make processes better. Since they don't have your perspective, you may disregard what they suggest. No matter how tempting it may be to ignore them or feign interest in their insights, don't act like you're including them just to mollify them or get them to buy into your plan. They could suggest something (big or small) that'll improve your process. I advise you not to automatically disregard what seems like a little change. If a change saves you $1, you could save $1 every time the changed process is used. Saving $1 implies not losing $1 each time. The savings or losses could (eventually) total in the hundreds or thousands. Should A Boss Do Employee Level Processes Or Just Design Processes? There's an opportunity cost when a business owner isn't doing administrative & strategic planning work. In general, business owners may produce more profit by developing methods, then letting others test them. Time spent doing a process isn't available for designing a process. Realistically, time spent doing a process is a way to achieve goals & evaluate a process. Doing a process helps a boss understand it. Note: You should realize there's a big difference between doing a task for your business & working for somebody else (like employees working for you). If you've been employed by somebody else, you probably didn't feel the control & satisfaction you get now being self-employed. Some people advise bosses to occasionally do what they expect employees to do. Some rationales are: 1) setting a good example; 2) knowing how to do the tasks means a boss knows what the experience is like; 3) showing workers a boss is willing to do what s/he expects them to do. The second rationale is partially false. Doing a task, even if a person has years of experience doing it, doesn't mean a person knows everything about it. There can be a different variable or set of variables each time for each person. Example- When I was in the US Navy, some petty officers figured they knew exactly what it was like to do various jobs. Most of them were no taller than 5' 10". At the time, I was 6' 4". (By the time I got out of the Navy, I was 6'3" with a curved spine.) Having to bend for hours to do a job (because the overheads/ceilings were too low for me) & walking in passage ways (halls) is a factor they didn't experience, nor cared about. Having been shorter when I was younger, I had some experiences of being a shorter person, but I knew my experiences were different than theirs. (Being a 5'10" 14-year-old is different than being a 5'10" 40-year-old.) Commissioned & petty officers didn't all want to acknowledge how much difference 6 or more inches (compared to them) could make for me. Could they have gotten better results from me if they would've acknowledged banging my head &/or bending lower was hurting me? Yes. If they didn't know, it was because they didn't want to know. I reminded them very often. Could they have gotten better results from me if they engaged a couple more of their brain cells? Yes. Did some of them get better results from me eventually? Yes. They were surprised when 1 of my work evaluations was much better than the previous evaluations. When they wanted to know why, I told them, "Because the guy (supervising petty officer) who wrote that treated me like a human." He was shorter than me, but he still didn't confine me to a low area. But I still had other low areas to contend with. For a touch of empathy, imagine living in a metal pipe that has a diameter 3 inches less than your height. You can't stand or walk any straighter because you can't put your head through the metal, so your back stays unnaturally bent too much of each day. How long do you think it'd take for your back muscles to chronically spasm & bone spurs to grow on your vertebrae? Employees' experiences while working for you can literally--positively or negatively--change their lives. How well could you do their jobs if you had their limitations & were still subject to your same expectations? I'm not advising you to feel sorry for anybody. But when somebody works for you, you'll probably get better results when you use some intelligent empathy. You'll always experience--what seem to be--the same situations differently than others. We've Been There, Done That But It Was Different For Each I've worked in ship's stores (Navy), plus big & small civilian stores. I understand various situations from my perspective. I won't try to deceive others or myself by implying I know exactly what retailers experience. Do Or Dichotomy Business owners need to balance many dichotomies, among them are: 1) design a process & have others test it while s/he (the owner) works on another process; or 2) design a process & test it before training somebody else to do it. A creative person can design hundreds of processes in the time required to perfect each process. But what good are hundreds of imperfect processes without anybody who has time to use them? If somebody only designs or maps processes, but doesn't do or use any of them, how could s/he understand what many of the possible problems are & how to avoid or solve them? If you have a big enough staff, a person or team can test a process while the others use your current processes. Productivity & customer satisfaction may drop if everybody would stop doing what's been working & does what might work. Reality Check: You can design & map (diagram) a "process", but until somebody tests & uses it successfully, your "process" is just a theory of what may achieve a goal. Even if a process worked for somebody else in a different situation, your 1st attempt--in your situation--will be a test. Though you may be able to design many "processes", they won't be productive until they're used. So, you'll probably need to be involved in physically testing & perfecting some processes. Thank you for using my blog. Please let me know if I should clarify anything. Copyright 2009 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved. When you compete against big businesses with big budgets you need powerful marketing strategies & tactics. You'll find them here- https://thriving-small-businesses.blogspot.com/ http://www.voy.com/31049/ Subject: Re: Should A Boss Occasionally Do Nonexecutive Labor? Author: Cris Date: 09/20/09 In reply to: Dennis S. Vogel 's message, "Should A Boss Occasionally Do Nonexecutive Labor?" on 09/20/09 Hey Dennis, I know this a bit off subject, but it's related if that makes any sense. When talking to consumers who "Been There, Done That" Remember "It Was Different For Each" of them too. What they used in their lives & how they used, it could be different than how anybody else would use it or find it useful. You could hear from a few customers who may rave about the results they got -- This is why some advertisers add this statement -- "Results not typical" or "your experience may vary" IF an advertiser rushes into using/promoting what some customers got from a service or product, others may try it too. But the others may be disappointed or get hurt. How long did those results last? How much time did it take to take effect? How much of the product did they use? If a 200 lb person & 100 lb use the same amount of something, it could be too much & hurt the 100 lb & not help the 200 lb because it's not enough. Maybe the raving customer only thinks it helped like a placebo. Maybe the raving customer is a raving lunatic who sometimes seems sane. Somebody could say bad things just to get attention. People pay attention to bad things more than good. It's how those tabloids Wal-Mart Walmart or whatever sells. Bad things & stupid, nosy people keep them in business! Even if a hurt customer doesn't sue, the bad word & customer loss could be as big a money drain as a law suit. Without court case win on your side, you won't get back your good reputation. Subject: You're Right. Accuracy Is Always Vital. Author: Dennis S. Vogel Date: 09/21/09 In reply to: Cris 's message, "Re: Should A Boss Occasionally Do Nonexecutive Labor?" on 09/20/09 Hi Cris, Thank you for sharing your insights. Since your insights are accurate & relevant, I want to expand on them. I'm not a fan of the Ready, Fire, Aim Philosophy. Acting according to it could get somebody hurt as Cris described. I realize waiting to make everything perfect before offering a product or service can mean losing sales opportunities. But law suits can take more money than lost sales would. Quality in the best products & services tends to vary. When a product or service result is already mediocre, sometimes quality will dip down to poor. Then a business's reputation will plunge to poor. Ready, Fire, Aim is also bad for the content of marketing messages. If you rely on inaccurate information, you could get into a lot of trouble. Check the facts no matter if you believe you remember accurately or as much as you trust those who tell you something. When somebody is emotionally involved in something, emotions affect memories & judgment. People tend to misremember, exaggerate &/or lie. Since bad "news" travels quickly you could hear the same exaggeration or lie from a few people. It would seem true since you'd hear it from more than one person, but they may've heard from the same liar. Even if the story is an exaggeration instead of a lie, it's apt to seem worse every time it's repeated. Basing business decisions on exaggerations or lies is like building part or all of your business on quick sand. What's not on a firm foundation can ruin the rest & leave you with a total loss. Thank you for using my blog. Please let me know if I should clarify anything. Copyright 2009 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved. When you compete against big businesses with big budgets you need powerful marketing strategies & tactics. You'll find them here- https://thriving-small-businesses.blogspot.com/ http://www.voy.com/31049/ [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
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