Galvanizing Culture Using Weekly Shop Meetings

Which scenario sounds more like your shop?

1.) Your shop hosts weekly shop meetings to update staff on metrics, goals, and projects.
2.) Your shop only hosts meetings when a problem needs to be rectified or an issue has arisen.

Episode Transcript

*This transcript was generated using Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you notice an error, please contact [email protected].

[Tom] – Good morning, and good afternoon. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Digital Shoptalk Radio. It’s episode 52, that means a full year. Whoo, whoo, whoo!

– Congratulations.

[Tom] – Yeah, thank you, buddy. And I couldn’t think of two better guys to have on my annual anniversary show than Frank Scandura, from Frank’s European in Las Vegas, Nevada. And David Earp from Village Transmission in Edmonds, Washington. And we’re gonna be talking about culture building. Why? Well couple reasons. First, we just came off of an awesome Digital Shop Conference where we had the master of culture right here, with a breakout, Frank Scandura gave a fantastic breakout. And you know we really wanna talk about and it’s a recurring theme on this show, right, is that you need to develop the foundations and this is exactly how you do it. So we’re gonna be talking about, Frank’s gonna give you a sneak peek for those of you who didn’t make it out to Digital Shop Conference, we’re gonna be talking about galvanizing your culture using shop meetings. And I don’t wanna steal Frank’s thunder on his own awesome tagline, so I’ll let him bring it to you yourself. Welcome Frank Scandura, welcome Dave Earp.

– Thank you.

– Thanks Tom.

[Tom] – So let’s talk a little bit about it. I mean it sounds like you guys kind of came together in the knowledge fountain that was the Digital Shop Conference out there. And Dave you had some good takeaways from Frank’s breakout, I take it?

– Absolutely, you know, anytime you go to a meeting like this whether it’s an ATI meeting, you know, management success, what have you. Any one of those meetings, sometimes the best takeaways are in the elevator.

– There’s so many different things that you gather information in these meetings, but Frank’s course struck me as something high on my list that I need to implement immediately when I get back. And I’m looking forward to regular shop meetings. Not shop beatings like Frank says. Which is currently what I’m doing. I’m calling meetings, well previously, calling meetings when they were desperately needed. And I think that Frank and I would agree that we need to be more proactive as far as that’s concerned because it can alleviate a lot of stresses around the shop that otherwise may not get mentioned.

[Tom] – Yeah, so that’s what you were doing. You were just kind of, what were you just having meetings whenever you had something to flame ’em about? Or they weren’t scheduled at all?

– Yeah, or policy changes. You know, workflow changes, hey we need to do thing this way. But the problem with that, and I’m sure you all would agree is it can’t be a one and done. You can’t have that meeting and implement something new and expect it to happen on the first time. It will never happen. You need to stay on top of it consistently to make sure that the implementation follows through.

[Tom] – Yean and that’s critical. You gotta set that muscle memory in. I know a guy that tells me about muscle memory on a daily basis, right here, might have an opinion about that. Sit down here, buddy. We got Uwe Kleinschmidt.

– Good morning.

– Our founder, gracing us on Digital Shoptalk Radio. Say to our guests Frank and

– Hey Frank and Dave.

[Tom] – So we were just talking about Frank’s breakout and Dave’s experience there when he came out for Digital Shop Conference. And you know now he’s gonna take it and implement it into his shop on a regular basis. And he was just telling us he was having meetings only when necessary in the past. So hopefully we’re gonna have a great case study and follow up here to see the implementation and the results of that. You have, you’re a fan of regular meetings. Why don’t you give us your opinion on how that fits into creating a strong culture?

– So for us, it’s really important also for our business to stay on top of things. I can tell you there are software development theories where we successfully implemented where the team meets everyday in the morning. They call it a standup. Don’t make it longer than 15 minutes, go around the group of people quickly, what’s on for the day, what are the results to be expected for the day. And then adjourn and come back the next morning. So that creates a cadence everybody gets used to. And it’s well appreciated by most of them after a while. Because you probably experienced the same. Why do we need to meet? I have enough stuff to do. Right, that’s the normal argument not to show up.

– Yes, every time. You know in the breakout, and I talked about this was and the person who’s the quietest in the group meeting is usually the one with the most to say.

– Right

– You gotta find a way to give them the safety and the quiet to come forward. To know it’s okay to say something. ‘Cause it never ceases to amaze me, when I get somebody to start to open up and start to talk, some of the first things they’ll say is well, I don’t want to get anybody in trouble. Or, I don’t want anybody mad at me. And that’s my favorite statement. Well I don’t want so-and-so mad at me. I say, okay, they can be mad or I can be mad, pick.

– So yeah, very, very important to have. And what Dave, I hope you get a chance to talk about is starting to do this just to bring that consistency. And for you shop owners who have tried to have regular meetings and it’s awkward and it’s uncomfortable and nobody had anything to say, tough, gotta do it. You have to show consistency. And you have to break out of your own comfort zone and make this happen. So maybe Dave could say something about that. What was that like for you when you made the decision to start?

– Well the first thing I want to say is why does a football team huddle up?

[Tom] – Exactly

– Exactly

– ‘Cause they need to know the play.

– Good

[Tom] – Run more profit on one! Ready, break!

– But yeah, consistency is key. That’s one of the things I have contemplated. Weekly shop meeting, bi-weekly shop meeting, morning huddles. You know, I think it’s all good. I don’t think that too much could be a bad thing. You know, I think the more, the better especially for me, I feel like trying to implement, and I’m sure a lot of shop owners would feel the same way but anytime you implement something new you’ve got to stay on top of it. It will not happen overnight. I forget what the statistics was, correct me if I’m wrong, I think it’s five times before they finally get that muscle memory. So I can see the benefit of morning huddles especially for the day. And at minimum weekly shop meetings, I think would be key.

[Tom] – Yeah you know when you’re implementing something that’s complex or it’s a big process change, then maybe the standups, you know, a daily little five minute, like you said, to huddle up real quick, ready, break. And then when you need to, maybe a more formal hour long session or whatever with the group on a weekly basis until that memory gets established. Then you can always throttle it back to what fits the operation and the need.

– Yeah, I don’t think you have to include necessarily the whole shop all at once either. You can take part of your staff, your service advisors and have a quick huddle with them, and then maybe breakout, grab the techs and have a quick huddle with them. It doesn’t necessarily have to be all inclusive.

– Yeah run some offensive drills, run some defensive drills.

– Exactly. You could use the football analogy all day long.

[Tom] – All day long, all day long! You gotta do the win, not get injured. So Frankie, so for folks that are looking to implement that, I mean, because again, like I was saying in the opening it really is about fundamentals. We want to get to some of these bigger concepts that we’re talking about. You know, advancing education of the motorist, motorist research time. You know really developing inspection programs and digital assets that convert, that add to that ROI. But you gotta have the foundation established first. So for somebody who’s looking to start a shop meeting, maybe they’re just doing it like what Dave’s saying just you know, meet whenever we have something to yell about, right. How do they transition and how do they get into a groove of having a regular re-occurring meeting? And, I’m sorry, one more thing, how do they structure that? What are the top components they should be talking about every week?

– And that’s really the key, right. It’s not a matter of just showing up and saying what do you want to talk about? Right, because that’s not the way it’s gonna work. So I had a seven step form, seven items you can do at every single meeting and understanding that this kind of stuff in my world, is written in pencil. So it’s not carved in stone, this is the only thing we can do. We have to, don’t fit in this little box. Thinking outside the box is one of my favorite things to do. So here they are real quick. Success story, share the good news. Do that first. Shop business, what’s going on. Is there vacation time? Dave was just saying, equipment needs and things like that. Previous week performance, going over the goals. What are the goals of the shop? It never ceases to amaze me when the shop owner sets goals then gets mad that nobody met the goals but nobody knew the goals. And nobody knew how we were gonna get there. Nobody knew what we’re gonna do. Any obstacles in reaching those goals. So right now, we’re down a tech. I can’t make my goals of production without all the production people. So that needs to be taken into consideration. Continuous improvement, taking suggestions from the crowd. So so important. And number seven, review continuous improvement ideas. Don’t talk about in one meeting and forget to follow up in the next. Without that followup, there’s a disconnect. Human nature, and I told this story when we first started doing digital inspections. I handed everybody a tablet and I said do digital inspections, and I walked away. They looked at it like, well what am I supposed to do with this? So having that follow up and doing that review saying, okay, this is what we’re gonna do. This is what we’re gonna do it with. This is how we’re gonna do it. And then, here’s how we’re gonna measure it. Right, because you can’t fix what you can’t measure. And that’s what got me on board initially. I don’t know if you remember, we had those talks where to look at those numbers and know in real time what we’re doing is not the same as I told everybody to inspect every car, they agreed to inspect every car, but then the numbers show 40%. Whoa, whoa, whoa. You told me you were gonna do this. Or, we agreed to send all the inspections and the numbers show, you know, 37%. Whoa, whoa, whoa, what happened here? Of course, those of you who are starting to have these metrics initially have to get over the hurdle of well, it was the technology. Couldn’t have been working correctly because you know boss, I would always send everything out. So being consistent and having those this is what we’re gonna do, reviewing, how’s it working? Perfect example, technician one time told us these tablets don’t work, they don’t work, they don’t work. Okay, let me pull you aside. And I said to him, there’s thousands of technicians all over the country doing digital inspections on these tablets. Why doesn’t it work for you? I can’t type with my thumbs. Problem solved for 20 bucks to get a Bluetooth keyboard for him to use on his tablet. So it’s diving in and having those discussions and figuring out what’s your obstacle. And Uwe’s famous for and it’s always perfect, the question behind the question, right? Because us shop owners will get on Facebook and blurt out a 17 paragraph why doesn’t it do this? And when you ask why do you need it to do that, okay it already does it if you did this. Okay thanks for letting me know. How many times has that happened? So that’s all part of that kind of communication in meetings.

– Can I ask a question?

– Yeah of course.

– How long did it take you Frank, until one of your technicians openly talked about a suggestion or a problem in the meeting?

– Well I’ve been doing meetings for so long I don’t know that I can honestly answer that, but it’s because it’s our open forum we allow

– How long did it take for the new guy to start talking up?

– Well they usually are very vocal in the beginning.

– Good.

– It’s how you hold your meetings. If somebody says, hey why don’t we, XYZ? And you go, well that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.

[Tom] – Who else has an idea? Nobody’s gonna talk, right?

– Dave, is that how your meetings are going, buddy?

– Yeah I try not be that rough on ’em. Don’t need anybody walking out on me. Techs are too hard to come by.

[Tom] – Yeah man.

– I try to honestly take into consideration anything that anybody says. Whether or not I’m gonna implement it that’s a totally different thing. But I want as much feedback as possible to help me make the shop a better place.

– Yeah and it’s pretty simple. You have to respect the feedback so you don’t mock it and say you know, throw it out of hand. And then, you know, they have to see something. It might not be everything that they were on their wishlist. But there was some change, there was some implementation of those ideas. Then after that, you know, here you come, you better put your boots on ’cause you’re gonna be shoveling.

– Yeah and if you don’t listen to them and you don’t take what they say into consideration then they’re not gonna talk in the meetings. What do they have to talk about? They’re just gonna sit there and listen to what you have to say. And that’s not a meeting. That’s a beating.

– Yeah exactly, that’s a beating. And then that’s the opposite of what you’re trying to establish from a cultural perspective ’cause you just have a bunch of people waiting around with no responsibility waiting to be told what to do so they can do what you told them to do. Right, it’s always on you. And so if you can get that input, well now all of a sudden it’s we. It becomes us. And we’re all accountable

– We’re a team.

– We’re all rowing the same way.

– Let me even dive deeper into that because this happens to me. And if happens to me it’s probably happening to somebody else. When you do hear a suggestion and I’m up to here with responsibilities and things I’m trying to accomplish and things I have going on. Sometimes, I can’t receive that suggestion. And I have to be very, very specific. I say, okay, yeah, let me give that some thought. Because my initial reaction is, there is no way. But like Dave said, once you dig into it a little bit, you give yourself a chance to breathe and you really think about it. Maybe the whole thing’s not right, but you can give value to a part of it. And I can actually say, okay, I heard what you said, what are some ways that we can do something close to that? And then it really gives value to your people around you.

– Yeah, that’s a great point. And so Dave, what are you looking at from an implementation perspective? Are you planning on having them bi-weekly? Every Friday? What’s the plan there for your rollout?

– So the rollout is gonna be a new year meeting. So it’s gonna be a big meeting. It’s gonna have the goals, how we’re gonna get there. Everything that Frank mentioned, pretty much, those top seven items. It’s gonna be probably an hour long meeting. Cover a lot of stuff. And then bi-weekly is my plan after that to follow up on all of those things initially talked about in the big meeting in the beginning of the year.

– Good for you. That’s awesome.

– Yeah, so kick it off with a blast. So for everybody who’s looking to do the same thing, I mean, that’s a great way to open the door. You got a reason to meet, it’s a new year, here’s our goals for the year, here’s our plan. Structure it like Frank said, you know, because then you’re covering all the important stuff. What’s important to you, but also what’s important to your crew. And that’s how you build culture because you gotta care about what’s important on both sides, right?

– Yeah, definitely don’t forget to include what’s in it for them, right?

– Exactly, exactly. That’s has to be focus and fundamental. And it’s first. And then we can kind of talk about you know here’s the stuff where it’s gonna affect the both of us. And there’s some give and take. And then if you need to you can talk about stuff that you guys gotta do. And roll it downhill that way. But as you go, you’re establishing goals. You set goals, get the input, confirm that they can, that A, they agree that the goal achievable, although difficult. And that they’re gonna commit to doing it. And then after that, your meetings become a scoreboard. And hopefully we’re talking about victories.

– And then measuring it. Measure the commitment.

– You’re gonna be the control panel. Documented in the business control panel and show that in relation to where in performance to their goal. Positive trends or positive content and communication inside of that meeting and you should come out with very motivated staff to continue to have success.

– A suggestion I might have is if you really make a change in your culture then the first meeting is important. And as with the digital inspections, if you can provide a quick win, everybody is super excited. So if you have, for example, a technician came up to you outside of the meeting and asked for, I don’t know, new equipment or whatever else which improve the shop. And you use that as an example in the first meeting, I want to do more of this. Then everybody might be excited to follow that one technician’s example.

– So true, yep.

– Quick wins are really important.

– Just be careful what you ask for. Usually when you ask for it, you get a lot of it. Buying a lot of equipment. We do the same thing. In our meetings, sometimes they can become very how should I say it, full of a lot of wishing and dreaming. And then, you know, it’s good to have somebody who works on the structure to rein us all back into reality.

– Hope is not a good strategy.

– That’s right. We’ve learned that a few times around here.

– It’s like a customer saying well I hope it’s not expensive to fix my car. That’s not a good plan. Find out what’s going on.

– Well maybe if I just drive it longer it’ll fix itself.

– Exactly, yeah. Another element of this, the weekly shop meetings are really great for the entire team. Service advisors have got to have morning huddles with their techs. Five, ten minutes, lay out the day. I have a meeting with each service advisor, shop foreman, and my quality control technician. We go over all the open ROs. What’s going on, what’s going on, what’s going on? Where’s the parts? Have we test driven this car? Have we verified the complaint? And these little meetings help bring the bigger meeting together. And I’ve actually started I’d like to have a technician spend a couple hours at the front counter in the morning. I just want you to stand there and watch what happens. And I wanna have a technician spend a few minutes in our morning huddles to understand the pressure that goes on dealing with cars that are here for three, four, five days. And we don’t have an answer on because, you know, I gotta feed my family, I gotta do this training service and brake job, I can’t do the check engine light, I’m gonna die if you make me do that this morning. So these are all the things that all come together to make it all happen.

– So Frank, if you look back, you’ve been doing meetings for years now, right?

– Yes sir.

– Is there anything you would’ve done differently if you could roll back time?

– I think it’s, no. And I’ll tell you why. Because I needed to learn and it helped me, all right, let’s back up even further. So I’ve trained to do speaking and presenting. Because that’s what I want to do. And it’s helped me in my meetings to conduct a meeting from an almost same way I present you know like I did for the break at AutoVitals. I want to bring a little humor, little side jokes, a little real life experience, things that I’ve experienced in my life. This is why I say the things I say, this is why we do the things we do. We had a customer come in during our meeting. Good, nice, great guy, long-time customer. I said, come on in, why don’t you sit and hear it. And we’re talking about integrity and our mission statement and things like that.

– That’s awesome.

– And I turn to him and I said, Jerry, do we deliver? He literally got real emotional. He said, Frank my life’s a train wreck except when it comes to my car.

– And that was really important for the team to hear. Because it’s not just me bloviating all the time. Blah, stop, do, make, you know. This is real, we have an effect on people and it’s real and that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. And you know, I’m a little disappointed Ford stole my tagline. Frank’s doesn’t raise the bar, Frank’s sets the bar. And when we talk to people about doing different marketing things, they go, who’s your competition? You know, like here’s my standard ten questions and I don’t know what else to do so I’m gonna ask you that. I am my competition. If I’m not aware of what I’m doing and how I’m doing it I’m gonna lose the game.

– Nice, Frank plays golf. So Dave, so what’s the purpose? What do you put in these? Of course, everybody wants better culture. Working on culture is always a it’s a never ending task and journey we take. But I mean from a goals perspective what are you looking to improve by implementing these meetings?

– Well ultimately for me, I hate to say that it boils down to money but we have sales goals that we would like to achieve. In order to achieve those goals we need to become more efficient. And that’s the roadmap that I’m gonna the groundwork that I’m gonna lay down for my technicians is, or my crew, I should say. This is the goal that we wanna hit this year or this month or this week. And this is how we’re gonna get there. And you know, I’m gonna do the math for them and tell them that, look if you guys could just produce one more hour a day, this is what it looks like over the course of the year. And it blows their mind when you start doing the math on little things like that.

– Awesome

– So that’s kind of what I’m gonna do is lay the groundwork for the year. And then, have weekly meetings or bi-weekly meetings with them and show them how we performed and whether good job, we’ve hit those goals, or what do we need to do differently here to get there?

– Yeah that’s awesome. Because it’s kind of hard to measure culture. How do you measure culture? Well you measure it in those incremental improvements. Team work makes the dream work. Now we work, we communicate better together, we become efficient, we become more productive. And then ultimately you see it in the revenue numbers because hey there’s less waste there’s less cost, there’s less mistakes. There’s more, like you said, producing one more hour a day and how that starts to add up. And so if you’re producing one more hour a day and you’re kind of reducing your cost by one, two percent a day, wow, then it has a huge impact and that’s where you kind of get that hockey stick sometimes in your revenue figures. And it just all comes together. That’s what we like to say, we’re jellin’!

– “Atomic Habits” is a great book that’s good for that. Where I can’t get from, right we did 2.7 last year. I can’t get to five million this year. But I can get to 2.8, I can get to 2.9, I can get to 3, I can get to 3.1 and work my way because a $5 million a year company is my goal. And so, the same thing with our techs and our team. If we say look, I want to do three million next year and I wait ’til the beginning of next year to say well you guys all suck ’cause we didn’t make it.

– Dave, you’re 100% right. You’ve got to break it down to here’s what it look like for the year, the month, the week, and the day. And then break it down even further. How many cars does each service advisor need to bring in each day, based on our averages, to make it happen?

– Make it real.

– Exactly.

– And you know not every day’s a success but then you could just, you know if you break it down to those small chunks then I just gotta do half an hour more tomorrow to get back on track, right? Not, oh, I gotta make up two months of revenue in the last 30 days of a year, or something like that.

– All of a sudden it’s attainable. It’s like I learned that also the hard way. Running a marathon, you think, that’s crazy. 26 miles. And then if you break it down, oh here’s the next H station, here’s the next landmark, all of a sudden, let’s try.

– And it becomes reality. So not to take anything away from technicians, you guys are incredible. I started my life as a technician. But y’all can’t see past your next paycheck.

– The answer is your position in your business.

– Yeah, and that’s why it’s so important for them to understand, breaking it down instead of this big giant monster they can’t get their head around. They have to see. You know it’s not uncommon for a guy to flag 50, 55, 60, 65 hours week after week after week and that week he hits 30 hours his family’s gonna starve. So it’s really important to help with the efficiencies, the productivity, spreading it out, making sure we’re keeping things even Steven.

– Yeah just keeping them in the game. If they’re considered and if they’re part of the conversation well then you know it’s not just pointing at you it’s not all your fault. It’s our fault and it’s our or it’s our opportunity really, because that’s exactly how you need to think about challenges in your business, is they’re opportunities. It’s opportunity for us to work together more closely, to share ideas, to collaborate, to put in the effort. And you know because rarely is it oh I just need better AdWords, or marketing. That’s not what’s missing in your business. What’s missing in your business is exactly what we’re talking about today and that’s the culture and teamwork and being able to see past that pay check.

– Yep

– That’s fantastic. So when’s the big kickoff, Dave?

– Thursday.

– Nice.

– Thursday at noon is the beginning. I’m still, I’ve been preparing for this since I got back. When we flew in we had a huge snow storm and it kind of disrupted everything for a week or so but we’re past that now and I’ve been just building on this meeting, building, building, building. Creating a vision of where we want to go for 2020 and convey that vision to my staff and stick with it consistently throughout the year and we’ll see where we end up at the end of the year. I’ve got big goals this year that I wanna meet and I’m excited to achieve ’em.

– That’s awesome, buddy.

– Good for you.

– We’re really excited for ya. Can’t wait to hear the outcomes, man, and have you back on talking about how those meetings are progressing. And really talk about the results where we can start to see the needle move and the measurable. Anybody else out there that’s wanting to get started, you know bring it onto Facebook. Start a conversation up there. We’d love to hear how you, you know, your thoughts and ideas on how you’re implementing your annual meeting and then your follow up weeklies or bi-weeklies however you’re gonna run it and what the results are for ya. Matter of fact, we might even get you to come on air and talk to Dave and Frank and Uwe and share your story with us.

– And if they go to Facebook, that seven items for your shop meetings agenda, I call it, is available on the Facebook page for anybody who wants it.

– Thanks Frankie, that’s awesome. Yeah, so right there, just go into the Facebook thread at Digital Shoptalk and then you can copy those down and implement ’em because it’s a great structure, you know. And then just fine tune it and measure it and each week think about how you can improve it. And then pretty soon you get to book clubs and like Russ and some of the other shops are implementing. I mean you saw that amazing charity work they’re doing coming together on Saturdays to do community service and things like that. You know, not only does that it’s priceless for your culture internally, but look at what a great community reputation-wise and stuff like that that you’re doing. It’s just fantastic.

– Great PR.

– Think of others first and they’ll think of you. It’ll all come back to you. So that’s fantastic. So Dustin what are we doing next week? And when are we gonna have these guys on for a follow up?

– [Dustin] So followup, we’ll probably do that in what, about three months, we’re gonna look towards March for that, probably, March or April to get that just so we can get some really tangible good stories. Get six, seven, eight meetings underneath your belt or more Dave and kind of get that back in there. But yeah, we’ll get both these guys back on, talk about what’s going on and maybe Frank can tell us what’s going on with his coaching stuff too and his foray into that. Next week we’re gonna have Christoph Schoeffer back on

– Nice

– [Dustin] From Auburn Euro Motors. So he’s the interesting guy right, who kind of had it for a while then just kind of made a concerted effort one day, hey I’m gonna make this thing work, and he did. So he’s gonna kind of talk about post implementation. You know how to kind of take the next step after he’s done implementation now. He kind of feels he’s doing good with that. Where do you go from there, you know? So he’s gonna kind of guide us through that.

– Yeah looking forward to that. Christoph’s a young, savvy operator. He’s the guy, if you remember, he was running his shop off a generator while the hills were on fire behind him and he was still, I think he was the only guy open. He’s up in Auburn, California. So he was serving the community and doing it off a generator and making it happen. So really bright guy. Really looking forward to having Christoph back on. That’s fantastic. Thank you Dustin, looking forward to that. Until then, you know, it’s gonna be 10 a.m. Wednesdays Pacific time, 1:00 p.m. Eastern. We’re streaming live on our Facebook forum so if you set yourself a bookmark. And another thing we found out is if you subscribe to that podcast you get an alert and then you don’t miss it. So that’s important too. Make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don’t miss an episode because they come at you fast and furious because we’re here to help you make more money in 2020. And give a big round of applause and thank you to Frank Scandura and Dave Earp for coming on and sharing some of their wisdom and expertise. And Uwe Kleinschmidt for doing a drive by with us today. Coming by and sharing some of his insights. Really appreciate it guys. Until next Wednesday, get out and make some money. Thank you very much. We’ll talk to you then.