Quite a few years ago, one of my clients was a fast food establishment. They were having a continual turn-over of managers and couldn't seem to keep one for more than a few weeks. We did an analysis and found that the job called for simultaneously watching the cooks, the clean-up people, the take-out window, the lines where employees were taking the eat-in orders, and the cash registers. When we asked a couple of ex-managers what the problem was, they said while they were watching one employee, one of the others was certain to make a major mistake. They felt it was impossible to keep track of everything they were expected to.
I've been in many body shops where something similar was going on. The owner was attempting to be certain estimators were writing accurate estimates -- and getting the keys and the job every time. At the same time he or she was making certain parts were being ordered correctly and for the right price . Plus he or she was answering phone calls and handling questions from workers in the shop, and dealing with appraisers from various insurance companies . And while all of this was going on, he or she was also trying to attend to a wiring problem, a city inspector, an error in the latest bank statement, and a new advertisement that was being considered. It's not surprising that more than a few things slip through the cracks. Worse yet, potential profits get left on the table.
Very early on, psychologists studied human attention to test its limits. It was determined at that time, that the most a person could keep track of at one time was eight things. Many people could only focus on much less. The fast food managers had obviously reached their limit.
With so many dimensions of life and business to keep track of, a shop owner needs a highly efficient staff and system to monitor and control it all. Estimating, scheduling, parts ordering, work assignments, cycle time management, insurance and customer notification, supplements and more must be systematized sufficiently to free the attention of the owner or manager. Otherwise he or she will never get around to creating an effective marketing and growth program. Anything that isn't growing will begin to die, so a lack of attention to these important issues may someday kill the entire business.
Balancing demands
With our fast food restaurant client, when we found out what was causing the managers to leave, we put together a simple training program to provide new managers with a better system of tracking the multitude of elements necessary to control the store. First we determined which elements were most important and created a checklist of elements to attend to. Since controlling money was most important, we had the manager check that most frequently. The clean-up man was least important, so he went to the bottom of the list. Every ten minutes the manager rotated through the checklist. Initially we had him just focus back and forth on two items, then three, then four, and finally he was able to rotate through the entire list effortlessly. The turn-over problem vanished.
Generally, shop owners who have successfully expanded beyond one shop into multiple locations already have personnel and systems in place to cover most of the items that require constant attention. But even there, automating everything will eventually have its drawbacks. Answering machines capture messages, but fail to provide human contact. Bulk mail may reach thousands of vehicle owners but how many will respond to an impersonal communication? With e-mail, pagers, cell phones and more, it would seem to be impossible to fail to give attention to whoever needs it, but opportunities and prospective customers still fall through the cracks. And we have seen with Enron, WorldCom, and other corporate giants, how easily delegated management responsibilities can become corrupted, distorted and fail.
I talked with the owner of a shop that does nearly $12,000,000 a year in business. He said his biggest problem was preventing theft and fraud. When the job of managing assets, equipment, parts, and financial transactions must be delegated, the ultimate responsibility to attend to them still falls on the owner or general manager. If the limits of his or her attention are exceeded, the leaks in the company structure that may occur could sink the entire ship.
Creating a culture of attentiveness
The body shops that I see operating most successfully pay special attention to employee needs. The length of time many workers have stayed with the shop attest to a culture where they receive the attention they need. And I've found these same shops give their customers the same degree of attention. I am often surprised to hear the shop owner discussing a customer's health and family issues with that customer as though the owner was a close friend instead of just an autobody repair service provider. The difficulty arises when these same shop owners try to find and hire other personnel who will provide that same level of service.
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