Episode 63 Podcast Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Part of your job as a business owner is your ability to effectively deal with roadblocks. Hi everyone Rob Kropp and Dan Stones here from Pravar Group and welcome back to another episode of The Trade Den, good to have you back, Dan. How are you?

Speaker 2 (00:19):

Good to be back, Rob. Thank you. Yeah, very well, very well. Looking forward to today’s episode. This is one that’s near and dear as a practical episode. I would say something that practised for a long time and had some great results with, so looking forward to sharing it today.

Speaker 1 (00:33):

Today’s a lot about developing the management skills and I was obviously, as you get off the tools and get into the office and start building a ground crew around you, developing the skills to show up as not just a better tradesman but a better manager is so important. And so that’s what today’s all about is really helping you problem solve. It’s a bit of a playbook for you because it’s one of those things you’re more often than not get copped a million on one phone calls a day, and it’s your ability to proactively work through it and handle what’s coming your way.

Speaker 2 (01:05):

Yeah, I think when you get into a business and it grows, the more people you have, the more information that’s flowing, the more connections that need to be made. The more decisions that are happening, the more issues if you like that you’ve got to deal with. It’s inevitable. So having a way to process this stuff is really, really important. And today we’re going to introduce you to three, what we call streams of information or three words if you like, that we want you to start to work with as a way of breaking this up and starting to process what’s hitting you in the face, be it in phone calls, meetings, whatever it is, just talking to people. And those three words are wins, flags and roadblocks. Now think of wins, flags and roadblocks as a shorthand system for processing information fast. What it does, if you can get into these channels of information is it forces clarity by sorting in the incoming information to three actionable categories, a win a flag or a roadblock instead of drowning in a sea of noise.

(01:57):

Then this framework will turn any situation into a clear information stream where you can access decisions quicker and make your actions more precise in terms of how you’re responding to the information that you getting. So what it does is it keeps momentum high, it reduces overwhelm, and it ensures that you’re focused on responding the right way at the right time. There’s nothing worse than when you’re in the middle of something, something happens, you’re responding correctly, and then you’ve got that whole thing of chasing it up, trying to talk around, well, sorry I didn’t respond the right way. You’re just wasting more time, adding more noise to what could already be noise going on. So really important that we get this right with these three words today.

Speaker 1 (02:32):

Yeah, I think it’s essential because what it enables you to do is keep your ground crew productive and it enables you to get on with what matters most in terms of doing business development, working on your business, keeping the business moving in terms of quoting and invoicing and all those types of things. And if you don’t get this stream of information, you just drown in it, like you said, and it feels like the bigger your business gets, the more overwhelmed you become.

Speaker 2 (03:00):

Yeah, absolutely. And you end up shying away from talking to people just in the hope that you get less information smacking you in the face. So yeah, really important. So let’s break it down. Let’s go into each term that we said wins, flags, roadblocks. I’m going to repeat that a lot throughout this episode, but let’s start with defining each and just having a bit of a chat about that. The first one being wins. Now let’s define a win as progress. No matter how small it is, a win is progress no matter how small. So in the terms of our wins, flags, roadblocks. Let’s break it down, Rob. Let’s talk a little about wins and why it’s so important to do this.

Speaker 1 (03:36):

Yeah, wins are really important that when you get that phone call from someone in your ground crew ringing up going, Hey Rob, guess what? Such and such just happened today, or something like that. It’s your ability to encourage that, not discourage that. It’s that situation where I’m sure you’ve been in it where it’s like, oh, getting a phone call from Bob again. He want kind of thing. And it’s important to remember that when your team do ring you to share a win, share a progression, share something great that’s happened on site, that you don’t just dismiss it because you are busy. You actually encourage those phone calls to be able to celebrate all the good things that are happening on from a day-to-day basis.

Speaker 2 (04:18):

Yeah, we recently did the episode on confidence and I think celebrating win still applies in this context too. If you’re looking to do things like celebrate, use a win to celebrate or build confidence with your team, this is a great opportunity. If you, you’re looking for a way to show that we are making progress, you’re looking to put a positive charge into the team, whatever it is, celebrating wins is a great way to do that. Same with creating just overall a winning team culture, which is so important. The way we do things around here is we do them right, we have lots of wins, this is just life is normal, this is what we do. So I think people miss an opportunity, especially when they’re managing and dealing with lots of information that they tend to gloss over the winds and just look for the next spot fire if you like, that they’ve got to deal with.

Speaker 1 (05:01):

Yeah, absolutely. When you’re in a management position, sometimes you can fall in that trap of focusing on what’s wrong rather than what’s right.

(05:09):

And an example of a win is when your leading hand rings up and says, Hey Rob, just letting you know that we’ve finished off this section of this job today. And your first reaction might be, well, yeah, of course that’s what was scheduled for you and the guys. But instead, users an opportunity to acknowledge progress, acknowledge effort, and go, Hey mate, awesome work, great work to you and the boys for really getting in there and getting that difficult section, the job done, great effort. So you’re celebrating and acknowledging the effort that they have put in and using as an opportunity to celebrate that progress with the guys and thank them for the update.

Speaker 2 (05:48):

Yeah, so much good can come out of that conversation. So really paying attention to when you hear a win and go, oh, that’s a win. What do I want to do with it? I can use that for something else to build upon. So really important that we get that one done. Next one that we talk about is flags. And a flag is anything, it’s like an early warning sign, okay? When we talk about flags in this context, an early warning sign that things could, if they’re not addressed appropriately, they could go off track and we’ll talk about roadblocks in a minute, but when we talk about flags, if we don’t pay them the attention they deserve, then the chance is they’ll turn into a roadblock later on. So let’s break down flags as the early warning signs that things might go off track if we don’t pay attention.

Speaker 1 (06:33):

These again are things that should be encouraged, not discouraged. We’ve got a bit of a mantra in Pravar saying, we do what we say we’re going to do or we flag early or so that’s an example of where you do flag, or another example around this with your ground crew is that they’re flagging things before they happen. So they’re highlighting to you going, Hey, just letting you know or heads up, this is what might be happening. And so it’s actually something that you want to encourage because you want to encourage a theme, your team to be looking ahead and proactively recognising things that might happen in the future before they happen so that you can actually put things in place to prevent them from actually happening.

Speaker 2 (07:16):

A lot of people will dismiss them because I suppose they’re not in your face enough, they’re not urgent, it hasn’t happened yet. What are you worried about this stuff for? Why are you bothering me with that? If it hasn’t happened, then what are you worried about? Let’s just crack on. We’ve got other things to worry about, and I think this is the problem when people ignore flags because as we said, they tend to show up as roadblocks later on if they’re not handled. So for me, one of the biggest things with flags is it allows you to take the appropriate action and minimise damage before it happens. Why wouldn’t you want to do that? That sort of idea of an ounce of prevention, that’s really what we’re talking about when we’re saying pay attention to flags.

Speaker 1 (07:55):

Why do you think some team members, so someone in the ground crew might be scared of raising a flag?

Speaker 2 (08:05):

I think because most business owners portray or set out an idea of, Hey, I’m very, very busy, and if they talk about how busy they are all the time, everyone knows that you don’t want to interrupt someone that’s busy. So I think there’s the idea one that people don’t want to, they don’t want to incur the wrath of the person that they’re being managed by. I think that’s first and foremost, let’s just not rock the boat right now. Let’s see what happens. We’ll get away with it or don’t bring it up because one, it’s going to cause troubles or two, there’s no point because nothing’s going to happen or people are almost jaded at that point in terms of what they’re doing. So I think that idea of let’s just crack on that whole, just push through it, do what we need to, we’ll see what happens. It’s a symptom of a culture that just says that we are reactive, I think is more than anything else.

Speaker 1 (08:59):

And I think that’s the nature of a lot of trades businesses is that they’re reactive. Reactive businesses. There’s a problem, they’re fixing it, especially maintenance and service businesses. But I think if you can start changing the culture of the business to be looking forward and identifying things and have the courage to be able to speak up and go, Hey, this is coming. What do we think here? What do we do here? What do we do there? It just enables the job guys on site to be happier, but a job allows the job to run more smoother and be a hell of a lot more enjoyable for everyone.

Speaker 2 (09:36):

Yeah. Let’s walk through an example. Have you got one in mind, Rob, an example of how this plays out so we can sort of put some context around it?

Speaker 1 (09:43):

Yeah, A great example might be is where you’re at a site meeting with your ground crew and you’ve got a couple of tradesmen, apprentices and a leading hand, and you’re talking through the sets of plans and what needs to get done with the schedule over the next couple of days. And the leading hand, who is your eyes and ears on the ground, pipes up and says, Hey, I was just thinking, have we booked that cherry picker for next week kind of thing? And you as the owner, that’s a flag, yes. But the owner then goes, I dunno, I don’t know. We’ll sort that out next week, but next week comes around and then comes Wednesday and it’s like that’s when you cop the phone call going, Hey, what’s happened here? We’re at this here. The cherry picker hasn’t turned up. What do we now do? I’ve got the guys standing around. That roadblock that you’re now experiencing is a result of a flag that wasn’t rectified from the week before. So there’s a great example where someone’s proactively thought about it, raise it as a flag, because they’re thinking in advance what might be happening

Speaker 2 (10:42):

And you’ve got to be really is pricked up to those. And it could be that you just overhear a flag and if you need to interject at that point, you hear two people talking on site, not even to you, but you hear it, call it out, say, Hey, that’s a flag. Can you make sure that we’ve got an appropriate action for it? Make sure you’re paying attention to it and giving it. You give it enough attention, enough action, and you work on it before it becomes the roadblock because guaranteed it’ll end up on your plate if you don’t. That cherry picker example is a great one.

Speaker 1 (11:11):

And I think this is a great reminder that if you are constantly firefighting all day long where you’re in that constant reactive mode, it’s probably because your team aren’t raising flags soon enough or don’t have the courage to feel like they can raise a flag to you, and therefore it’s getting to the point where it becomes a crunch point and then it becomes a bit of a roadblock in their world. And so if you are constantly fighting fires, that’s a symptom in your business where flags aren’t being raised enough.

Speaker 2 (11:50):

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Let’s move on to the third one, roadblocks. Now, roadblocks as a definition are easy, but then they start to get complicated. So we’re going to hang out here for a little bit, but roadblocks is anything that’s going on that’s preventing or stopped any further progress on a job, a project, whatever it is, people cannot move forward because they’re roadblock. The difference between the flag and the roadblock in that sense is the roadblocks happen. Things have stopped. A flag is the potential for things to stop in the future if they’re not handled. So it sometimes helps to just go back now that you know what a roadblock is and go right now I get the context of a flag. So let’s talk roadblocks. Anything that prevents any further progress from happening.

Speaker 1 (12:34):

Part of your job as a business owner is your ability to effectively deal with roadblocks. So when you’re on site on the tools constantly, you will naturally find yourself dealing with roadblocks all day long in there, you onsite dealing with them as you’re progressing with your team. But what you find is as your team grows and you start to wind yourself off the tools, that’s when you’re naturally going to find yourself copying way more phone calls, text messages or whatever it is going, Hey, I’m stuck. What do I do? But that then becomes part of your job. And your job then is with your ground crew, is to help them identify what the roadblock is and how to deal with that roadblock. You’ve got to remember, in the end of the day, you’ve got to be able to keep your ground crew as productive as possible because a productive ground crew means a profitable ground crew. But our job is our ability to help them progress with these roadblocks, but work through it in a way where these same roadblocks don’t keep repeating themselves over and over again. That’s the key to this.

Speaker 2 (13:45):

You’re right, Rob. I think being able to methodically have a way of processing through roadblocks, roadblocks allows you to take advantage of both sides of it. One, it allows you to deal with the roadblocks that are yours that you will always own as a business owner. There’s just going to be roadblocks that are always going to be yours to remove that you can’t avoid, but with a methodical way of processing through roadblocks, what you also then get is the ability to eliminate those roadblocks that keep occurring that you haven’t dealt with effectively in the past. And I think that’s the difference between spot fires and firefighting versus actually effectively dealing with roadblocks. When we talk about roadblocks, it’s important to see that there’s three types. So as you start to process this right, and you move out of firefighter mode with just shit going on everywhere, what you want to do is start getting to a process of saying, well, what’s the roadblock I’m dealing with?

(14:36):

And there are three types of them. We’ll break these down and then we’ll go into detail on each. But the first one is a decision roadblock. So you can have a roadblock based on a decision that needs to be made. The second one is a solution roadblock, which is a problem that’s occurred that no one in your ground crew knows how to solve. And then the third one is a resource roadblock, which is simply a lack of, for instance, time, money, machinery of people. So those are the three types of roadblocks that you go into here. Think about it, when someone comes to you with a problem, we can’t move on. There’s an issue. The cherry picker example you used that would be a resource roadblock. If you think about a decision roadblock, hey, the people we’re working on site want us to do this, they want us to get offite for a while so that they can finish their stuff and we can get on with it, what do we do?

(15:26):

That’s a decision that needs to be made and we’ll explore that in a minute. So that’s a decision roadblock. A solution roadblock is there’s something that’s happened on site, we don’t know how to fix this, we’re going to need some help. And that’s literally we just dunno how to solve the problem that’s occurred at the time it’s happened, we can’t move forward. So those are our three types of roadblocks. So Rob, let’s break down each of those now and look at why they occur and then maybe we’ll look at what we can do overall to learn from them and move forward. So let’s talk decision roadblocks. Why do decision roadblocks occur?

Speaker 1 (16:02):

Let’s bring this and really hone in on your ground crews. I think this is where..

Speaker 2 (16:07):

Yeah good idea.

Speaker 1 (16:08):

It’s super relevant, especially around your ground crews. I want to say not the inability, but it is their inability to make a decision around something that’s going on on a job site. So number one, I think they feel like they’re not authorised to make a decision. So it’s an authorization thing where it’s like, oh, I don’t know if I’m authorised to make this decision for whatever reason. And to some degree, that’s a good thing because they’re reaching out to you as their manager, as the owner to be able to go, Hey, I know a decision needs to be made, but I dunno if I’ll authorised to be able to make it. So to some degree it’s actually not a bad thing that they’re reaching out, asking for either reassurance or permission to be able to make that decision, which is somewhat a good thing.

Speaker 2 (17:00):

Yeah, absolutely. And this is a type of roadblock, a decision roadblock that could still be in your court forever. There is a limit to the authority that people will have to make decisions. They’re not the business owner who has the ultimate decision making authority. So running it up the chain if you like to get a decision made, it’s not a bad thing. Like you said, I think there’s a mile of difference though between feeling unsure about whether I’m authorised and just not being confident to make the decision.

Speaker 1 (17:29):

Confidence is a big one and that’s where it is because they’re not confident to make the decision because they don’t have the skill, the experience, they don’t feel like they’ve got the authority or they’re just scared of making a decision in case what happens if I’m wrong? And so you’re right, confidence is a big one, and that’s something that you’ve got to be able to develop over time with your team.

Speaker 2 (17:54):

And this is how you hold onto those ones that may be not your roadblocks to deal with. You could get rid of those if you took the time to build that confidence. So helping people understand the scope of their role, for instance, in terms of making decisions and what you expect them to make decisions on and telling them outright, Hey, that’s a decision that you can make. You know that. And then gradually you’ll reduce the number of decision roadblocks. You see the hardcore authority ones where there’s major risk or something with major ramifications, you’ll still get those, but you can eliminate a lot of them if you can build the confidence of your team to take the appropriate decisions that they’re employed to make.

Speaker 1 (18:30):

I like to think of swimming between the flags. Here’s the flags that we’re going to set up. Here’s the boundaries in terms of where you’re allowed to make decisions. If the decision falls within these parameters or the flags, then you are authorised to make that decision. But if it falls, if you’re then starting to swim outside of the flags, then that’s where you encourage your team to reach out and talk through before a big decision becomes made. So if your team are constantly ringing you because they don’t have the confidence or they’re scared to make a decision or they don’t feel like they’ve got the willing to make a decision, the best way that you can do is set those boundaries or the flags, like what Dan said, is set that scope so they know what decisions they can make. And then you will find your ground crew will be way more productive, way more proactive, and your phone calls will naturally reduce because they’re going to get on the front foot from their end.

Speaker 2 (19:28):

And again, it comes down to that awareness and being able to process the information. It’s a roadblock. What sort of roadblock decision, take the appropriate action. Let’s look at the second type then solution roadblocks. And again, just to remind you, solution roadblocks is where a problem comes up. And in your mind you picture the ground crew standing around all scratching their head going, beats me, I don’t know what we do here. I’ve never seen it before, I’ve got no experience with it. This is a new one. And they just have nowhere else to go. So that’s why it occurs as a roadblock. What else can you add to that in terms of solution roadblocks for us.

Speaker 1 (20:06):

This is generally where as you wind yourself off site, you’ve got to off the tools. You’ve got to remember that you are probably the most experienced tradesman that was amongst that crew. So because you’ve been in the trade for a very long time, you’ve probably seen a lot of things, experienced a lot of things, and you’ve dealt with a lot of problems before. And so as you get off site, sometimes there are skills gaps and experience gaps and there’s technical questions, problems that arise. They just dunno how to handle certain things, whether it’s with the trade or what’s going on with that specific job. And this is where then they do ring going, what do I do here? What do you think I should do there? What’s next? Where do I go? Kind of thing. So that’s why those questions and phone calls arise is because they just don’t have the skills or experience sometimes to be able to make those decisions.

Speaker 2 (21:01):

And sometimes it’s not just the ability to solve the problem, it’s the inability or the lack of being able to even define the problem. So when you have this roadblock come up and someone’s looking for a solution that they dunno the answer to, always take the time to sit with it because this is one of those things where you get a really good training moment. This is where you can upskill in the context of the job. Most of these things that come up will come up more than once the same solution. If you don’t help them build their knowledge, the gap in their knowledge or their skillset, then you’re going to have issues. And most business owners that struggle with this one, look at these roadblocks as frustration or painful or Hey, we’ve just got to move on. I haven’t got time for this sort of shit. That’s an easy problem and it might be easy for you, but the person that’s rigging you genuinely cannot do their job unless they either fill that gap or they get the answer from somewhere.

Speaker 1 (21:54):

A great example of that is when you’re on the tools and you are training your apprentices in the early stages of business, you’ll find that your apprentices, your third and fourth years probably run rings around most tradesmen out there. And why? Because they spent every day with you and you taught them on the job how to problem solve and how to make decisions and how to navigate challenges on jobs.

Speaker 2 (22:17):

That’s what happens now. The moment you step off site, guess what? Stops training and development. And so instead of you teaching on the job, you’ve now got to teach through a phone call or FaceTime or whatever it is. So like what you were saying there, Dan, it’s not about getting frustrated around, oh, they’re ringing me again. It’s like, great, this is a training opportunity and that’s part of your role as a maintenance supervisor or a project manager. When you’re fulfilling that role within your business as a business owner, it’s not only about just scheduling and getting them to get the job done. Your role is to project, manage and train your team to effectively get the job done along the way.

(22:59):

Yeah, can’t understate that enough. And again, hopefully as you’re listening to this, you see, right? If you train your team well, if you take advantage of the opportunity of the roadblock when it’s raised and you know about it, so you’ve got to have the culture of it’s okay to it’s okay to come and ask questions, then you can get the movement forward where you’ll reduce solution roadblocks that are happening along the way because you’ve taught your team empowered them and given them the skills and experience they need to do this themselves and exercise better judgement as they get further into their own journey. The third one that we’re going to talk about then of roadblocks is resourcing roadblocks. And again, I want to stress this is one of those ones that I think never really goes away. It’s your job when there’s a resourcing roadblock, you’ll see why that it’s always going to land in your lap, but let’s explore it anyway and see how it relates to the fact of what you can do to make sure it doesn’t keep happening.

Speaker 1 (23:52):

Yeah, you’re right. Resourcing roadblocks, let’s stay on. The theme of our ground crew is that sometimes with a job, some of the ground crew, they don’t have the authority to make decisions around time on the job, extending time on the job, overtime or budget to be able to spend on materials or a set of change of plans or bringing in extra people or resources to be able to get that job done. And to be honest, they’re not decisions that your ground crew should be making anyway. That’s your job as a project manager or a supervisor. So when your team rub up against these challenges on a day-to-day basis, it’s not their authority to make those decisions. So naturally they should be reaching out to you anyway, looking for resources to be able to effectively get the job done.

Speaker 2 (24:41):

Yeah, their job in this sense in terms of resourcing roadblocks is to raise them as early as possible. That’s the key. And you want to make sure that they are raising them early as possible because most resourcing roadblocks are easily dealt with. You get the machinery, you go and put them on the ticket, you do this right, you probably have to deal with it once or twice or a new project happens, you deal with it at the time. So they’re very finite in terms of being able to deal with them, but they all revolve around your staff feeling confident enough or enough to be able to say, Hey, I need resources here. There’s a problem. We need tools, machinery, whatever it is. And again, if you just look at it as my team’s whinging about something else, you’ll never overcome that roadblock and you’ll end up having everyone go into ground. You’ll never know why a job’s out of action and the longer that you’re off the tools, Rob, I think resourcing roadblocks have to come from your ground crew because things move on, equipment moves on, the tools move on, the materials that are being used on site move on and they have huge impacts on profitability, on jobs, but you’re not close enough to see it. And if your staff aren’t bringing them to you, you end up missing out on just more than time that you’ve won back from not getting the phone call.

Speaker 1 (25:51):

Yeah, correct. And I think the best way to be able to overcome roadblocks is to be able to encourage a culture of raising flags. And if you get the right design of your ground crew, the right leadership on site with a good leading hand or whatever it is, if they can raise that as a flag early, it’s not about, oh shit, we need these materials here today. It’s like, hey, just letting you know we need this bit of equipment or these materials or whatever it is in two days, because then what it helps you and your admin team to be able to do is proactively then get on the front foot and organise things to be able to keep, so you are not fighting fires in the short term, but it helps keep you ground crew productive and moving along rather than just constantly running out of things or not having enough people or not having a bit of equipment on site. It enables you to raise flags early and proactively move through issues and that’s how you eliminate the roadblocks along the way.

Speaker 2 (26:48):

Yeah, for sure. Alright, so those are the three types of roadblocks. I think we’ve broken those down those pretty well as a starting point. Let’s look at, and again, we’ve talked in isolation for each, but let’s look at a common overall approach maybe, and as we wind this out, what is some of the solutions that we’d recommend or how can you put this into practise? So common approach to clearing roadblocks. I’ve got my thoughts on this. Share your one in terms of what you think it is and let’s go from there.

Speaker 1 (27:14):

Yeah, I think on the surface, removing roadblocks is pretty easy where you just make the decision for them, you provide the solution for them, or you just give them the resource and get on with it kind of thing, and then you just get off the phone and move on to what you were trying to get back to in the first place. So I think that’s the easiest solution where you just kind of give it to them, get ’em off the phone and move on with it so you can get back to where you need to be. But to be honest, that might be the easiest, but it’s not the most effective in the long run.

Speaker 2 (27:47):

Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s just, you’re fooling yourself because then the next time it happens and happens the time after that and the next 50 calls that you get that are in and around the same mark, you never fix that root cause when you’ve got the opportunity to do so. And I think this is what it is. It’s not about eliminating every single roadblock, but it’s eliminating the roadblocks that you can avoid, the ones that you can train up your staff with the ones where you can reduce that occurring because you spent a little bit more time, you’re a little bit more aware and you actually invested in the roadblock being an opportunity rather than just a pain in the ass in your day.

Speaker 1 (28:25):

Yeah. So really what you’re saying is the best solution is to empower your team to be better decision makers in the end of the day, that’s the best solution to be able to eliminating minimising roadblocks.

Speaker 2 (28:37):

Yeah, I think you’re right. I think it’s clearer boundaries, like you said, clearer flags, not to use overuse flags as a metaphor, but clearer flags and better decisions is always going to be the way to eliminate, to greatly reduce those roadblocks. And again, let’s just stress, there’s times when you’re going to need to make decisions, you’ll never avoid them, especially when it comes to resources, but getting people to think for themselves, clear their own roadblocks because they’ve built up their own knowledge and experience along the way and not having to rely on you is just so much better. And you’re right, empowering your team is perfect.

(29:12):

If we look at ways that this, hang on, let’s round out and try and really make rubber meet the road here. Let’s think of, for me, I think one of the biggest ways we can do this is to ask questions before giving answers. That to me is probably the biggest way to say, let’s trigger this idea of what happens when I get that first roadblock and I can avoid that what you were outlining then just give them the decision, make the solution, get ’em off the phone and move on. I think being able to engage and ask a question is probably the best thing to do to build in that circuit breaker.

Speaker 1 (29:49):

Yeah, you’re right. And this takes a little bit of patience, and this is where coaching comes in. Good coaching is asking good questions and letting them think for themselves. And so a couple of good questions that you can take away from today’s episode is asking this the question, how would you approach it?

Speaker 2 (30:11):

Yeah, absolutely. How have you approached it so far? How else could you approach it? What you’re trying to do is get the person you’re talking to and your ground crew to do some reps themselves rather than just come cap in hand and saying, Hey, give me, give me, give me. You’ve actually taken the time to have a conversation and transfer some knowledge or give them the experience of, Hey, use your own judgement . Let me hear it. Let’s do it safely. Let’s do it in a way that’s going to build you up to be better next time.

Speaker 1 (30:37):

There’s a bit of school of thought out there that says, bring one problem and two solutions, but I know you and I both don’t love that. And the reason why I don’t love it is because they wouldn’t ring you if they didn’t know what the answer was.

Speaker 2 (30:50):

Correct. It makes perfect. I cringe every time I hear it for that exact reason. It’s like, what the hell are you talking about? If I could come up with solutions to the problem, I wouldn’t have the problem in the first place.

Speaker 1 (31:00):

But I think what you can do is through good questioning is drag the question out of ’em. And that’s why those questions are important to be able to go, well, how would you approach it? And then they’ll tell you and then they’ll go, then you’ll ask the follow up question to be able to go, well, how have you approached it to date and how else do you think you can tackle it? And what else do you think? And what else do you think? And if you keep asking similar questions like that, it’s the same question asked multiple different ways, but what you’re trying to do is get them to think and drag the question out of them because if they tell you what the answer is, they’re going to know it for next time.

(31:33):

But if you just spoon feed them and say, this is what you’ve got to do, they’re not going to use their brain and you’re never going to fix the root cause of the problem because they’re going to ring you up next week when the same problem arises. So asking good questions, getting them to come to you with one problem and two solutions, I don’t think is the best answer. Getting them to have the confidence to be able to ring you is the first step, but then asking them questions to drag it out of them is the best way to coach them through how to train and develop them and handle that situation. And that’s how you fix the root cause of the problem going forward.

Speaker 2 (32:07):

Yeah, agreed. Not only do I not think it’s the best way to do it, I think it’s probably one of the worst. I’ll go stronger than you on that front.

Speaker 1 (32:16):

One more thing I want to add there is when you anchor onto that situation and this comes up again, what you can then do is then say to them and go, Hey Dan, remember two weeks ago we were in this similar situation. Can you remember there now when you were back there on that other job, how did you handle it then? So what you’re doing is doing recall of previous situations, previous events, previous stories, previous scenarios, and that’s the best way to be able to ask questioning, to be able to bring it back to real life examples.

Speaker 2 (32:47):

And again, I think it’s realising that that’s your job. You’re there to help this situation move forward, so it’s better for next time. And if you can do that, then you will invest the time it takes to ask that extra question or whatever it is you need to do. Let’s talk about more around the resource one. I think there’s another rubber meeting. The road strategy we can do is making sure we give the information that people need for resources. So things like jog packs, we talk about documentation, having them know really is important.

Speaker 1 (33:13):

Yeah, it’s the what, the when and the where. What do they need to know? When does it need to be being done, what they need to know when it needs to be done by and where can they find information so they can be resourceful within themselves? Is it in your job management system? Is it in your physical job packs on site? Where can they find the information to go and hunt for themselves?

Speaker 2 (33:38):

Yeah, for sure. And I think then as you talk about where can they go to get it taking some time. Then the third thing is implementing systems and processes that help eliminate the roadblocks. Making sure there is a place to start with to find information. Have you got that? Is there a process where you can go and have some decisions already preloaded a knowledge bank that people can tap into, whatever it might be. But if you can explore your systems and processes, you’ll be able to eliminate some of those roadblocks happening. But again, most people miss a trick because they think that they’re going to save time by minimising the time they’re on the phone. Rather than investing a little bit, in this case, a review process to say, we’ve had a roadblock. Let’s sit down at the end of the month and have a look at a few of these and see what’s really going on.

Speaker 1 (34:23):

What a great episode, very practical today. Hopefully you’ve taken a lot away from it because we understand that the position that you’re in, where as you’re getting off site, you go from being busy on site now you go from trying to get important things done in the office, but instead of being a proactive business owner, you feel like you’re a professional firefighter. And so we get it. But hopefully today’s given you some practical things around understanding the three different streams of information you get, whether it’s a win, whether it’s a flag or it’s a roadblock. But what we did do today is camp out a lot on the roadblocks because that’s probably where a lot of your phone calls for coming from. So going forward, it’s your ability to be able to help you and your team identify, is it a decision roadblock, is it a solution roadblock, or is it a resource roadblock that keeps coming up?

(35:15):

And if you can work through that methodically with your team, encourage it, focus on training and development and proactively working with your team to be able to get better at this stuff, then what you’ll find over time is they become more efficient, they become more effective, they become more productive, the business is more profitable, and you’re going to get more done in the office because you get to move from reactive zone to proactive zone. So hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode. There’s a lot in it, and make sure you get rubber meeting the road now and start implementing these straightaway into your world.

Speaker 2 (35:51):

Absolutely. And if I can add one more thing before we round out, properly implement roadblocks and management and problem solving as part of your role, don’t do the thing that most people do, which is say, Hey, I’ll eliminate all of ’em. I’ll never have to deal with them again. It’s not part of my job. It is if you adopt it as part of it, you expect it and you learn to get good at it, then all of a sudden it’s amazing how things transform as a result of you adopting it as part of your world that you live in as a manager now or as a business owner and looking after a ground crew.

Speaker 1 (36:21):

Great. And it was even great that Ben featured in the background of our episode today.

Speaker 2 (36:26):

He did a little bit. He had plenty to say today, so it was good to hear him.

Speaker 1 (36:30):

So have you heard that noise in my background? That was my young fella, Ben. He was just giving his 2 cents worth around how to problem solve more effectively. So thanks Ben for the contribution today.

Speaker 2 (36:41):

He was flagging a few things, that’s for sure.

Speaker 1 (36:44):

He’s flagging, he’s hungry, then he wants a dinner. We better let you go. Thanks for tuning in today. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and you’re looking at more ways to be able to develop your management skills so you can become a better business owner, then jump across to strategysession.com.au book in for a discovery call and looking forward to chatting to you soon.

Speaker 2 (37:05):

See you soon.