Episode 80 Podcast Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):

If you can get this right, productivity will go up, phone calls will come down and your profitability will also improve because your team knows what’s expected of them on a day-to-day basis. 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 (00:26):

Good to be back, Rob. Yeah, really well, thank you. Hi everyone. Episode 80 today. How good’s that?

Speaker 1 (00:32):

Oh, it’s a bit of a milestone, isn’t it?

Speaker 2 (00:34):

I know it is for us, we count these down, we look at it. Eighties, a celebration for sure.

Speaker 1 (00:40):

Did you ever think we’d get to 80 when we first launched the podcast?

Speaker 2 (00:44):

I dunno, I never really thought it was so far away. I never really thought of it. I thought you’d hope so you would. But to actually be doing it, it’s sort of like, okay, we’ve done 80 of these, we’ve done this 80 times, which is really, really cool. And there’s been some awesome conversations. There’s probably a bigger milestone coming up soon, but that also feels a mile away. But yeah, it’s pretty awesome to think that when we sat down to do this and get to this point, it’s a lot of work and it’s been some really cool feedback on the way through.

Speaker 1 (01:11):

I love some feedback we’re getting and I was speaking to a guy the other day, he’s like, Rob, I’ve listened to just a 35 back to back episodes and I’m loving it and you guys have had more of an impact on me than you’ve realised. And I was telling you the story about it the other day, Dan, and it makes my hairs rise on my arms and he goes, Rob you, you’ve had a profound impact on my life and we’ve never even met and never even spoken. I’ve already made some epic changes and it’s purely off the back of the podcast. And I love hearing that feedback because it just shows that, yeah, we do some good stuff here on the podcast, our content’s on point and the conversations that we have with our client features and just the good strategies. And it’s a sound, isn’t it? We do some great work. I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:57):

It is. It’s what we set out. We said this I think on the very first episode about ripples and we want to sort of have that impact as coaches and outside of the coaching business of Pravar. This is why we were doing it for a big reason. So to hear that is amazing. It’s like, I wish that guy we should, are we at the stage where we can get some merch done, we can send him a coffee cup or a Trade Den hat or something like that for such great feedback. It makes us feel great. So no, I appreciate that. That was awesome.

Speaker 1 (02:21):

Yeah, it’s so good. We’re really grateful for the opportunity. Thanks for you for listening and being there tuning in each week. We’re really grateful for the opportunity to be able to add some value to your lives and whether you become a client at Pravar Group or not, we are just grateful for the opportunity to have an impact on the greater community, the greater industry and the community as Dan said. And it’s our privilege and we don’t take this lightly for the work that we do and we know that we cherish the opportunity. So thanks.

Speaker 2 (02:50):

Yeah, for sure. Alright, let’s get into today. Let’s start talking and today we’re talking about the gap between setting up work. So all the winning’s done, the work’s been planned out, all that work’s done, the setup’s done, and now it’s about having it delivered smoothly. And here’s what we’ve learned, coaching hundreds of tradies, right? The ground crew doesn’t call, you mentioned at the top in the intro about the phone ringing nonstop and it’s 20 minutes in and all this sort of stuff. They don’t call because they’re incompetent. Usually they’re usually calling because they just don’t have a complete picture. And that’s what we’re talking about today.

Speaker 1 (03:24):

Yeah, it’s a big one, isn’t it? Where you finally get off the tools and you work so hard to be able to build your ground crew and get off the tools yet so many tradies find themselves in that position where they finally get there, but then they’re copping 50, 80, a hundred more calls a day and they almost have that mindset going, gee, I may as well just be on site because the amount of questions and queries and problems that I’m having to deal with, I’m not even getting my own stuff done, so I may as well be back on the tools just fixing all the problems of my teams. It’s common, isn’t it?

Speaker 2 (03:59):

Yeah, it is. And the idea is, well, I can’t leave these guys alone for five minutes. What’s wrong with these guys? Why do they keep calling me? And I think this is part of today we want to get across is the fact that if you can work through what we’re working through today, you’ll find out there’s probably a big part of this that you are playing in it and you’ve got a role in it and there’s something you can do to actually turn this around. It’s not just about finding great guys or it’s not all about your team, it’s about you as well.

Speaker 1 (04:23):

What happens is when you get a few things, which we’re going to definitely talk around today, is making sure that you team’s got the right scope. And we’re going to talk a lot about that today. Making sure that when they understand what materials and what time is involved and when things are due and what deadlines are there in place or milestones as well, and what decision-making authority do they actually have, what we find is that the call stop, the calls reduce and your team enjoy it. They’re more productive, you enjoy it, you get on with actually growing the business and having a life because you’re not a chain to your desk all day long and everything just runs a hell of a lot smoother. So we’re going to really break down those different elements of what it actually means to set up your team for success. And as you said Dan, I think the owner plays more of a part in creating that element of dependency more than they actually realise.

Speaker 2 (05:19):

For sure. And there’ll be elements that you do talk about all this stuff, but how consciously do you do it? What can you learn from it? How can you shape and shift what you are doing in what we call the full picture framework? So those four elements Rob just mentioned, scope, materials, time and boundaries are what we’re going to break down now. So let’s start with that first one. Element number one is scope. And that’s all about what’s in, what’s out. This defines exactly what works included and what isn’t.

Speaker 1 (05:44):

This one’s a big one and especially for you if you are the owner and you are selling the job, don’t underestimate how much information you’ve got in your mind because you’ve potentially spent hours or if it’s a big job potentially days pouring over plans, pricing, going through tender documents. If it’s a tender going for contract, you’ve potentially spent hours and days pouring over this job, quoting it, dealing with customers, having conversations, what’s in what’s out, looking at the plans, having conversations around with various stakeholders, with subcontractors and everything. Don’t underestimate how involved you’ve been at getting the sale done. And it’s that typical conversation of sales versus operations. And this is where it falls over a lot because sales notoriously inside a business does a really bad job of handing that scope over to operations and they wonder why operations or the ground crew don’t deliver it as well as they could. And it’s not necessarily the ground crew problems because they haven’t been given the correct scope from the onset to be able to deliver it correctly.

Speaker 2 (07:01):

And your team arn’t mind readers in that sense, right? This is the transfer of information and how you do that transfer, you can’t go overblown with it. There’s got to be a middle ground that you find with what’s most effective. So part of that is I think what’s been promised as an outcome or a deliverable, that’s the thing that most people would get off the bat, but it’s not just what you’ve promised, it’s the assumptions that were made. It was those tricky conversations and those elements of I’ve already got the solution in the plan, but your guys aren’t going to know what that led to. So the first time they get on site, they’re going to see that instance of, hey, we’ve got this tricky part of the job, we talked about this. If you haven’t said, Hey, we talked about this and included that as part of the transfer of information, you’re just hoping your guys can jump from, I’m seeing something I didn’t expect, you’ve told me to do this. Is that part of what is that in or is it out? What are we doing?

Speaker 1 (07:53):

It’s when you send your guys to that job site and you expect them to be productive from the first minute they step on site. But if they don’t have, it’s a bigger project, if they don’t have a set of plans, if they don’t know what the inclusions are, all the exclusions are, if they don’t have the notes in your job management system or via text, if you don’t run a JMS or even some photos and some commentary, they’ve got to get to site and wrap their head around, well what is this job and what am I meant to be doing? And they’re trying to figure this out and you’re expecting them to be productive from the first moment they land on site. You’ve got to, as you said, transfer all that information to them. So you are setting them up to be successful. And if you do that correctly, the questions come right down because you’ve armed them with the right information from the onset at the start of the job.

Speaker 2 (08:50):

And I think as you’re talking, you think about how many times did you go to site to the customer being there, you know exactly what it looks like. You take all that for granted in the back of your mind, it’s all there and then you come out with whatever it is that you hand over. But if you don’t transfer it, then they’re going to have missing gaps in their understanding as well.

Speaker 1 (09:08):

Now when you think about a smaller job, maybe a service job versus a project bigger project job and that bigger project can range from 20 grand to $2 million. So there’s a whole range there, but what do you think that the time required of transfer of information is dependent on the job? What are your thoughts there?

Speaker 2 (09:29):

First of all, I’d say it’s mandatory. I think there’s got to be a handover process that’s fit for purpose for every job. There’s got to be something in there that there’s an element of covering off our big picture framework no matter what it is. I think for the larger projects where there’s multiple days, multiple people and as it goes up a project kickstart if you like, as opposed to a job at a project. So I’d say a project kickstart is a meeting that happens to say at least we’re going to spend some really good considered and condensed time to be able to go through this in detail. We’re going to take out the distractions and it’s going to be planned for. And that can range depending on the job and the amount of people involved from an hour up to half a day or a full day if you really need to. And then you might even have multiples throughout the project to check on that stuff. I think for smaller jobs you might be able to put that into your job management system. It might be part of a document or a template that you use, but the elements that you need to cover off the length will be determined by how much detail is required. But all the elements should be covered off, I would say would be the minimum.

Speaker 1 (10:32):

It’s almost the size of the job dictates the depth or the time required. The smaller the job notes and photos might be suffice. The bigger the job you might need a half a day or even a full day handover.

Speaker 2 (10:44):

Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. And then I think the next thing that comes out of this, not just the transfer of information, but let’s talk about access to information once the job starts. Because we all know that the job that was planned isn’t necessarily the job that gets done. There’s this little thing called variations, right?

Speaker 1 (11:00):

Yeah, correct. And it’s I think if variations, which is another word for doing work for free, if you don’t have a good variation management system is variations or doing work for free for customers, whether it’s unforeseen or a customer led change, if you are doing that, if your team don’t know what the inclusions are or the exclusions are, they’re not going to know if it’s a variation because they just want to do a good job in the end of the day, they want to get the job done, they want to be able to keep that the customer happy and they want to have pride in your work. We’ve got to remember that as well. And so if they don’t know the conclusions and or exclusions, they might be doing work on the job site or over and above, which should have been captured as a variation and signed off and approved before they commenced it, they might be doing that and doing work for free, which is time and money and materials that you as the business owner are wearing purely because you didn’t educate your team in terms of what’s in what’s out and what are the boundaries and outer scope type of items.

Speaker 2 (12:18):

And I think that’s a big one you’ve just hit on. It’s not just what’s in, but it’s also what’s out. If there was a, and this is where it plays out, right, exactly what we’re talking about transfer of information, let’s run through this where you’ve been on site, you’ve talked to the customer, you had a conversation whether or not, I don’t know, moving that pipe from there to theirs included or excluded. And it turns out it was an exclusion, right? You knew that but then your guy gets on site, you never said it was in or out, you just said here’s what’s in. And then they get on site, they’re talking to the customer and they said, oh yeah, I spoke to Joe about that. We had a conversation around that and it was sort of left unclear. Your guy’s going to go, oh, if you’ve talked about it and it sort of makes sense to do it, then it’s probably an inclusion, we’re giving better service. I’ll put it in. And it’s that little gap in terms of what’s explicitly in or out that would’ve solved that problem, made it not an issue where you end up doing work for free like you said.

Speaker 1 (13:10):

Yeah, a great example. I really like that one. Another great example is when we first moved into our place here, we got a really big tree in our front yard. And this arborist isn’t a client of ours, but I remember they came out, they quoted up the job and I said to the lead climber, we did our walk around. I’m like, oh mate, why are you there? Do you reckon you can check this out and you could tell that this business had a really good handover process? He said, I can rob, but just let me check the quote. And that was where I was like, nice, I like that. And he went back into his truck, he got the quote out there and he goes, Rob, it’s a little bit unclear of what’s written on the quote here, let me just ring the office. He went back and rang the office and the office confirmed it for him.

(14:04):

And yes, it resulted in a phone call, but the guy came back and said, Hey Rob, just letting you know that we can definitely do that for you. So it wasn’t a no, it was a yes, but just letting you know we didn’t include that in our job. It’s going to be this little bit of an extra charge. Are you okay to go ahead with that? And I was like, yeah, sure. Awesome. You’re on site, you’re at home, let’s get it done. And that story, I tell that story all the time when it comes to variation management, even though it’s not a client of ours, I was on the customer’s end where a, it’s good posturing from them where they kind of push back and followed the sales process well, but what they did do is they checked, they looked at what was included, what wasn’t. Had the conversation with me, confirmed that I was okay to go ahead, got the green light, got the job done, and invoice accordingly. And if that guy hadn’t have followed that process, they would’ve spent another hour with four guys getting that extra bit of work done that just would’ve completely eroded the margin of that one job. And if you think about if they do that every day, every week for every crew, that’s a lot of labour that they’re spending on missed opportunity purely because they don’t have the right process in place.

Speaker 2 (15:20):

Yeah, I love that story. Really good one. And I think that’s as much of a cultural element as it is a process element. The whole business would be wired to that. What’s in what’s out is a common thing that they obviously discuss because for it just to come up and that goes into automatic mode, it just shows how well organised they were. Let’s go to element two, which is materials. And this is another big one we see, right? And a lot of these, the first two especially all these are really sensitive towards your margins and the profit you make on jobs materials, what guys need to do a job and how do they get those materials is really what we’re talking about here.

Speaker 1 (15:58):

This one’s a big one because what you’re ultimately doing is having a list of what materials, what specification of materials is really important, was there a certain type of material that needs to get done? You might be thinking that you’re a painter for example. Well what brand did you promise in the sales process? Was it Taubmans or was it Dulux that the owner might have this understanding that they were going with a more premium paint brand, but have you communicated that to your painters? And so knowing what brands were used, what quantities were used, where to buy them, where to source them, all those types of things. If your team on the ground are armed with this information, you are not then copying phone calls all day going, Hey boss, what do I do here? Hey boss, what do I use here? Hey boss, where do I get this from? Hey boss, what do you think around this? If you can have that information readily available, then you eliminate the calls to you asking questions when your team really should know in the end of the day.

Speaker 2 (17:08):

Yeah, I like it. I had a big conversation with a client about this week actually on supplier relationships and which supplier to go to, which one not to, that sort of thing. So it was all part of the materials discussion, we need to go to this supplier because it had been part of the conversation in the project setup with the client about here’s where we get it in order to lock that price in, which in turn meant if there was a pushback in terms of why are we taking so long? It’s because the insistence was on using a certain supplier. So when there’s a disconnect between the guy doing the job and the client versus what you’ve discussed with the client, it’s something that’s been pre-talk about and it would be all in sync with the conversations that have been had rather than throwing a massive spanner in the works of the project and now we’ve got an issue we’ve got to deal with and the resultant conversations, the phone calls.

Speaker 1 (17:58):

Well how much do we see that when guys are really trying to get to the pointy end of a sale of a job where they’re going back to their suppliers going, mate, I need you to come to the party. We need to trim some costs, work with us here to get this job across the line. And you might spend hours negotiating with a supplier to get it to the pointy end to win the job at the right margin. Yet you’re never going to actualize that margin if your guys just go off and run it, buy those materials from some other supplier and not at the price you’ve agreed at. So that’s what we talk about with transfer of information. If you don’t transfer that information to be able to go, guys, we’ve got to get this materials from these suppliers at this agreed price, then you’re going to blow margin left, right, and centre because you haven’t transferred that information. That’s what we were talking about before. You’ve got to transfer that information into your ground crew so they’ve got an awareness of understanding of what is expected of them to be able to deliver the job well. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (18:59):

For sure, for sure. Alright, let’s go element three. Now we’re sort of getting into, it’s more complex than it sounds. I’m going to say the word and everyone’s going to go, yeah, that makes perfect sense. But time, hours and deadlines, and this is it’s job sequencing. It’s the critical dependencies, it’s the timing and the urgency at which things have to happen. It’s completion times, it’s coordination with trades. All of that is time. So we break that down. We’ve got an easier way to think about it than that and you can explain that, but it’s a bigger one than you think on the surface. This whole idea about time, hours and deadlines.

Speaker 1 (19:35):

I think we have to remember that in a trades business labour is one of the biggest areas that you erode margin. No one, well, you shouldn’t miss a $5,000 of materials that’s just gone missing because it’s something physical, it’s tangible. If something gets delivered to site and it goes missing, you’ll go, Hey, we’ve ordered that. Where is that? That’s gone. But labour is the invisible cost that erodes margin faster than ever before. So we have to remember that. And that’s why labour and the transfer of expectations and timeframes and deadlines is the most important part of this whole process so that your team know exactly what’s expected of them.

Speaker 2 (20:27):

For sure. So when we start breaking down labour, then there’s obviously the labour or the hours that have been included on a job and then there’s this, so that would be the budgeted hours. And then there’s a deadline which is more around an expectation of what needs to be delivered by a certain time. Do you want to break that down in terms of the two differences between an hour included and a breakdown of stages maybe?

Speaker 1 (20:51):

If it’s a smaller job, you might go, guys, we’ve got four hours of a tradesman and an apprentice to be able to get in there and knock this job over. We’ve got to get this done so that we can move onto the next job. So if it’s, it’s a smaller job, it’s hours allocated and a deadline of when it’s due, when you’re working on a larger project, it’s really important to be able to break that larger job down into almost smaller projects. And let’s keep running with the painting example. If you are painting the inside of a house, you might break it down into rooms and you might break it down into prep undercoat and then painting more prep and then final coats of paint. But if you just say, Hey guys, we’ve got three guys. We’ve got a week to knock out this job.

(21:47):

Well, where do they need to know that they’re going to be ready by Tuesday or Wednesday? Or you’ve just said three guys 40 hours over the week, we’ve got to be done by Friday. We’ve got 120 hours, but they don’t know where they need to be by when. And if they’re getting to Thursday and they’re more than three quarters of the way through from a time perspective, but only halfway through from a time completion point of view, that’s not necessarily their fault, that’s yours because you haven’t managed the job correctly and you haven’t transferred that information. And so for a bigger job, your ability to break it down into smaller jobs, into stages, the scheduling the components of the job and break it down in the minds of your ground crew, that helps them methodically work through the job from a time perspective and it sets expectations of where they need to be by when rather than just giving them a deadline into the future.

Speaker 2 (22:46):

And if you do that correctly, I think two things happen, Rob, you get to the point where you can step away a bit because if you’re being clear with all this stuff, you get your time back. You don’t have to sit there and babysit them every minute of the day going, are we on track? Are we on track? Where are we at? I can’t leave. Because if they know what’s expected, they’ve got to deliver, right? So there’s that element of it. And then I think the other thing on those bigger jobs is it allows you to course correct. If you know early enough you get to course correct because I’m off track at our first milestone where our second milestone that we hit in terms of a deadline versus shit, it’s Thursday, we’re not going to get this done now we’ve got issues, we can’t do anything about that now. We will absolutely be late. The sooner or the better you break it down, the sooner you can course correct and try and either claw back some time, make some decisions up the ante, whatever it is that you need to do. But that’s what I think you get out of breaking down deadlines on those bigger jobs especially.

Speaker 1 (23:40):

Some guys play a little bit of a game where they allow four days and they tell their team three days because they try and push it along. I don’t know what your opinion is, but I’m not big on playing those games because it almost creates this the boy who cried wolf a little bit because the team start, they get to see the game that you play and they’re like, well, is he telling me four this time? Is it three next time? And you’re just better off being upfront with your team and being realistic with timeframes allowed and being honest with them and hold them accountable to deliver within that time. I’m not sure what your thoughts are.

Speaker 2 (24:18):

Yeah I’ll give you, I agree a hundred, I’m on your train. Absolutely. My wife Carly did this with the kids growing up whenever we needed to be somewhere, she’d always say, Hey, we’ve got to be ready to go or we’ve got to be there 15 minutes earlier than what it was. And in time everyone knows that. Alright, so it’s 15 minutes after that. So it’s never that time. And I think the same thing happens on job sites when you treat your staff and your ground crew the same way they know they’re not dumb, they’re not like, oh shit, I never picked up on the fact that every time we do this, you’re never stressed when it gets close, you’ve always got this up your sleeve. So I agree a hundred percent. It’s almost like you’re treating your ground crew like kids and you never really get to set the standard and they never really get to achieve a target because the target was never a real target in the first place. So I think culturally in building a team, you’re robbing the team of their true performance if you’re always playing these stupid mind games and funny buggers in the background about, well we got there because I said it was this. It’s like, come on now.

Speaker 1 (25:25):

I totally agree. And I think when it comes down to it, it’s your ability to just be honest with your team, clearly communicate around what’s expected, inform them around where they need to be, what needs to be done by a certain deadline. If you can clearly communicate that what you’re doing is shifting that, you’re almost shifting the responsibility to them to be able to go, you’re now responsible for delivering that. And the clearer they are, they’re not coming back to you going, Hey boss, where do I need to be here? Hey boss, what do I got here? Hey boss, what am I meant to be doing today kind of thing. If it’s a smaller job, they get in, get it done, get out and get on to the next one. If it’s a bigger job, they know what they need to be doing day by day because you’ve clearly communicated what needs to get done. If you can get this right, productivity will go up, phone calls will come down and your profitability will also improve because your team knows what’s expected of them on a day-to-day basis.

Speaker 2 (26:22):

And as a manager, as the person in charge, you never actually hold people accountable when you play those sort of games because they still hit a target, they’ll think they’ve failed. You’ll say that they haven’t. No one will really care the fact that the target was missed because it was never the target. So there’s a whole lot of cost to that that’s just totally avoidable and it’s just unnecessary. Let’s look at element four. Our last one boundaries. And this is all about boundaries in terms of I think more decision making, what decisions they can make on their own and really when to escalate because part of the time when you get the phone ringing off the hook is because they escalate. You never begrudge someone making the call at the right time. It’s like that call was well made, I would take that call every day, luckily you made it. But the ones that we don’t like, the ones that we think are the time wasters is where they’re basically asking you to do their job for them where the escalation isn’t clear.

Speaker 1 (27:18):

It’s almost a bit of dependency, isn’t it? And if we haven’t created these boundaries for what decisions they can or can’t make or what boundaries that they need to be able to operate in, if they’re unclear on those boundaries, of course they’re going to ring you. Hey boss, what do I do here? Hey boss, what do I do here? Hey boss, what’s next? Hey boss, what do you think about this? And if you are constantly solving their problems for them and thinking for them and giving them the answers all the time and not being clear around the scope in terms of what they can and can’t make decisions for, of course they’re going to keep bringing you. So I think instead of going to Mr, fix it and fixing those things, just get better at setting boundaries up front and that’ll solve half the problems.

Speaker 2 (28:03):

And if you think about it as a big loop, you get to this point where the phone’s ringing off the hook, what are they ringing for? Scope, they need clarity on scope usually or they need to. One of those things that you could have set up, well if you really paid attention to the big picture framework upfront, then they would make better decisions, they would be more informed and they’d be more capable. So I think this is how it all comes. So if we look at some of the things that, I mean the big one for me is the consumables question, which is sort of half a materials question that you could hand off with materials. But again, to be absolutely clear, as an example, an approval limit on the dollars, the value that you can go and get something don’t ring me to say, Hey, can I go and buy a packet of screws? Unless you’ve absolutely said that, but this idea of a value or a dollar value, make that decision, get on with it. Don’t wait and don’t hold up the project. Don’t blow out margin because of something that’s a simple decision that you should know about, but don’t assume they know that.

Speaker 1 (28:57):

What would be the next one do you think?

Speaker 2 (29:00):

I think quality is probably the next one. Hey, I’ve got this issue, I could do it one of two ways. I can either do it this way and it’ll probably cost us a little bit or it’s probably the quick and cheap way I can get it done and we’re okay, what’s your take on it, boss? How do you want to do it? And if you could clear that upfront, I think that’s, I’d call that a quality tolerance they could have handled upfront in terms of where the boundaries were.

Speaker 1 (29:24):

Where does problem solving come into the mix do you think? There’s a lot of business, a lot of owners, they’re so worried about their team making mistakes I suppose, and costing them money. So where do you think problem solving somewhat fits it into the picture?

Speaker 2 (29:40):

This one can almost be eliminated if you set it up well in the beginning, if you’ve checked on some of this stuff where you think the problems might be and you’ve checked in how they might approach it and you’ve got some idea of it, there’s a game plan already in place for this, then a lot of the problems that come up will be solvable. So there’s less problems to solve in the first place. So you’ve almost set it up in a way that I’ve knocked out the bottom, I don’t know the pick an arbitrary number, the bottom third of problems now don’t exist because handled that in our handoff. So they’re all gone. So the problems that are coming up are the bigger ones. So I think then onsite problem solving becomes if it’s a safety issue, if it’s a resource issue or something that you need resources on, or if you’re genuinely stuck and don’t know, ring me, don’t sit there and agonise over it over hours because that’s costing us margin. Don’t agonise over a resource you need that is going to help us because again, nothing happens. And when we are stopped on the project, the costs don’t stop. We just stop doing the work and now we’re risking our reputation with the client. If it’s a smaller job, we’re not going to deliver or we’re going to blow out our margins because it’s not the way it was priced. So I think it becomes those elements of problem solving now are the ones that need to be escalated versus the ones that aren’t.

Speaker 1 (30:50):

And when you say that bottom 30%, is that because we’ve clearly articulated the scope, the inclusions, the exclusions, we’ve got access to plans and notes and photos, they know the materials, they know where to buy it, they know the time, the deadlines there already. I counted nine or 10 things that we just ran through. Is that what you’re saying that that’s the bottom 30% to at least 50% of the phone calls at least because hundred percent you’ve wiped all that out because you’ve transferred that information from the onset.

Speaker 2 (31:21):

Correct. And when you think about this, if you’re going, come on now, you think about it because when the phone rings and they say, I’ve got a problem, you’re like, well that’s not a problem. That’s this thing that happened here or that’s that bit there. You’ve always got the solution to those little problems and they’re never problems for you. And that gives you the sense that, hey, if I have given you that, I could have given you that information upfront. That’s what we want the recognition of. I could have included that in my handoff, that could have been part of the materials discussion, that could have been part of a scope discussion. I knew the answer, why didn’t you? If it’s a small thing like that, then it should be known to the person doing the job in advance, which means then it’s not a problem for them either.

Speaker 1 (31:59):

And that’s why we said at the start that you’ve spent hours, potentially days pouring over this, getting to the point of getting to a sale. And this is why sales and operations and every business is always lock heads is because sales have got it to the point to getting the deal done. But operations then have to pick it up to be able to go, alright, well how are we going to make this a reality from what sales has promised? And if there’s not that bridge gap between the two, that’s when problems occur and things blow out.

Speaker 2 (32:30):

And if you’ve got a client on site, it’s one of those jobs where a client’s involved and you’re talking to them all the time, almost guarantee you’re going to look worse than you should because you would’ve had these conversations about foreseen problems with the client already. Now when they come up, there’s nothing worse. I hate it when you’ve got a tradesman out or something like that or someone’s quoted a job for you and then you’ve had that conversation, the guy comes out and you’re like, oh, we’ve got a problem here. And you’re like, we just spent, I’ve done this. We had three meetings over this. It’s already been discussed and solved. Why are we doing this again? It’s a no brainer that now we’ve got an issue internally with the delivery. So Rob, you’ve mentioned, we’ve talked about nine different things. There’s a lot of conversation here in terms of those boundaries and it’s going to be horses for courses in terms of your business and what you do.

(33:14):

But let’s a little framework in terms of when you set boundaries, let’s talk in terms of real basic stuff. And I think the thing that I’d like to tackle is fixes, changes and problems. What are the boundaries around a minor fix for instance? And in our world that’d be probably handle it, document it, and that’s your starting point. You might need more than that, but in a minor fix there’s a pretty wide area of authority you’d give to someone to handle minor fixes. The second one is changes. So this is more the scope stuff. This is where the scope happens in your example with the arborist is perfect. There’s a process. There’s first of all, there’s a sensitivity in awareness of either it is in scope or not. If it’s a grey area, it’s not, hey, customer’s always right? And then we stand for service.

(34:00):

So therefore the more the better. There’s got to be a level of, hey, get approval, do a timeout. I call them buffers, like buffer it and say to your guy, your ground crew, just say, Hey, if you need to buffer, just make that call. I’d rather you make it or not than just do the work blindly thinking you’re doing the right thing. So I think that’s an informed sort of thing that happens. And then the last one is problems like major problems, not those little ones that you could have avoided, but those major problems is always a stop and call when you do that. And it’s a stop and call, make sure that you’ve got a system in place that they can catch you for one or if there’s a time of the day that they can ring you that that’s what’s for, or there’s a check-in coming in later in the day. So they’ve got the ability then to make the decision on, Hey, I said I was going to talk to Robert four o’clock about everything. I’ll give him an update. It can wait till then. This problem is big. We need to get this solved. I’m going to ring him now. I can’t wait until that next check-in point. So I think this is how it all wraps together, but major problems stop and call way better.

Speaker 1 (34:59):

So fixes, changes and problems and if you can get them right, really what we’re seeing there, there’s three. There’s three little categories of the framework and if you set up your team for success correctly in terms of scope, materials and time, it really should wipe out the first two.

Speaker 2 (35:19):

Yeah, absolutely. And now hopefully that’s what’s happening. You sort of see that what started off as a massive thing, it’s like, well if I get this right, it’s going to be way less to deal with. What about Rob in terms of I’ve got a question for you. What’s the line around then? Maybe sharing too much. Can you share too much information?

Speaker 1 (35:35):

I believe you can and you’ve got to be able to share enough information to empower your team to be able to get the job done, but you don’t want to be able to cross the line in terms of oversharing. Oversharing. So I think when it comes to sharing, you definitely want to be able to include the scope of the job, the plans, all the documentation, inclusions, exclusions and everything. When it comes to materials, you talk about the materials and the quantity and when it comes to time, you include around timeframes for example, time hours included, especially with your ground crew. You don’t want to get to the point of talking around, well what was the sales price? You don’t want to be necessarily talking around margin or anything like that because it’s a needs to know basis and they don’t need to know. And if you think about it, you might sell a $50,000 job and you’re working on 30% margin in labour and really you’re making 15 grand gross profit margin and your team are like, holy shit, this guy is rolling in it.

(36:47):

He’s just sold a $50,000 job plus $5,000 for GST $55 grand and they don’t appreciate that. Well there goes five grand for GST already. I’m only making $15 grand margin and out of that I’ve got to pay for factory. I’ve got to pay for vehicles, phones, operating cost, accounting fees, bank fees and everything. They don’t have an appreciation of what it costs to run a business. All they’re seeing is the sales price or how much margin you’re making, not actually all the other information. So I think you’ve got to be really wary around the level of detail. Give them enough to deliver the job but don’t give them too much where it creates a bit of an us and them and they think that you are doing way better than you really are.

(37:36):

Yeah it creates noise. You’ve got to ask yourself that, is this just noise? Does that send us off the cliff in terms of what we were trying to do, which was to give the full picture. It sort of makes the picture less full. If you start going into that, then you’ve got to describe if you’re going to do it accurately, like you said, overheads and taxes and loans and you can never give that full picture to that part of your team

(37:59):

And they don’t appreciate it, they don’t understand it, they don’t need to know. It’s just unnecessary information. They need enough to know of what it takes to deliver the job at the right level. And obviously as you’re dealing more with an operational admin, they need to know more information. If you’re dealing with a project or estimator.

Speaker 2 (38:22):

Estimator.

Speaker 1 (38:22):

Obviously they need to know what our GP targets are and what margin that they need to be hitting and what do they need to sell it at. If you’re an estimator but they’re in a management position anyway and they’re a little bit more cluey, you’ve got to arm them with that information because otherwise they don’t manage the job correctly or price the job correctly. So obviously the higher the level of responsibility that someone has, you’ve got to give them more information and access to that information to be able to be able to do their job. But your team on the ground, they don’t need to know that stuff. It’s just not necessary. And it can create angst and it can create green-eyed monsters in your business thinking that the business is doing better than it probably is.

Speaker 2 (39:09):

Yeah true, true. Shall we finish it with the challenge?

Speaker 1 (39:13):

Let’s do it.

Speaker 2 (39:14):

All right, so challenge for this week, pick a job that’s coming up. Alright, just one though. And you can stress you like the one at a time, Rob, so you can do that later. But pick at one job. All right, let’s not try and do this across the board. Let’s not make sweeping changes, but before your ground crew arrives on site, make sure that you’ve given them the full picture. Alright, now this starts, your challenge is to give them the full picture, but before that write down, have a little script or whatever it is you’ve got. Review the process you already have if you need to, but make sure and check if it includes scope, what’s included and what isn’t materials, what do they need? How do they get them time, the hours allowed or any deadlines that apply, whatever fits the purpose for you. Make sure that that’s in there. And then boundaries, what decisions can they make? When do they need to escalate and when do they need to call you and when can they call you? All of that’s part of your boundary stuff. So I think that’s the four elements of a big picture that we want you to focus on, but give yourself the gift of that this week and really plan out a job that’s coming up and see how it goes when you run it that way before you give them the information.

Speaker 1 (40:25):

Love it. What a good challenge.

Speaker 2 (40:27):

It’s pretty cool. It’s a game changer. And then I think bonus would be count how many phone calls you get on that job. If you can really focus on that, you’ll see the difference straight away. I mean it sounds simple, but it’s difficult and you’ll have to grow into doing it better and better and better. It might be an investment of time at the moment, but as you groove this, that cultural example of people knowing this, asking questions about this stuff, the noise starts to drop way off and you just become way more efficient.

Speaker 1 (40:55):

The thing that, this is a challenge that we set one of our clients, one of our awesome clients, Frank Virtue from RFV Property Services, and we’ve heard Frank on the podcast here, and he was copping a hundred plus calls a day easy. And he did this. This was a big part of coaching for him earlier in his journey because the more guys, the out on the ground, the more calls he was copying and he went through this process around scope, materials, time and boundaries. And he’s at the point now where he takes his now operations manager, takes a handful of calls a day purely because they’ve eliminated so many calls because they’ve armed their team, they’ve empowered their team with the right information and did it take a bit of time to be able to get this right and reeducate and reset up their handover process? Absolutely does. But it was a game changer for Frank and his business has taken off ever since. He’s got an awesome structure around him. He’s making more money than he’s ever done before, but this was the thing that unlocked all that for him.

Speaker 2 (42:10):

it really was. I think the lesson he got was his ground crew really did want to deliver great work. They just needed that full picture and that was the missing piece. Once he did that, everything started to shift and change and the momentum kicked in and profitability grew, all the things we’ve talked about today. It was awesome to watch.

Speaker 1 (42:27):

Well, he stopped being the bottleneck.

Speaker 2 (42:29):

He really did. Yeah, he did. He let go of all that sort of stuff and I think he wasn’t the guy to call for every decision anymore, even when he didn’t need to be called in the first instance before he got laws in for his ops manager and he was the guy that made sure he was getting really good at creating the full picture. That became almost his job in those early days. I’m the full picture guy. I’m the only one that can do that at the moment, and if I can do that, well then people will stop having to come to me every five minutes.

Speaker 1 (42:57):

And a lot of guys go, well, how is it that these guys are having two or three week holidays without taking phone calls? Frank had six weeks over in Italy with his family and didn’t even take a phone call while he was away, and that’s because he improved this and released this constraint within his ground crew. And then he didn’t just transfer the problem from him to his operations manager, he fixed the root cause of the problem by having this, setting his team up for success. But then while he was away, his operations manager managed correctly because the ground crew, they’d broken all the bad habits from the ground crew and they did great handover processes. And that’s when you look at someone like Frank who has six weeks off and without taking 1,000,001 phone calls and they can be present there with their family. It’s because they embark on this body of work to be able to get it done.

Speaker 2 (43:44):

Yeah, it’s awesome to watch and there’s dozens of clients we could say have gone through that process. It’s a must do. If you’re a bottleneck, this is the way out of it.

Speaker 1 (43:55):

If you’re ready to build a business where jobs run smoothly without constant phone calls, then jump across to strategysession.com.au and get a call booked in and let’s talk a bit about how you are currently structuring your jobs, the handover process, and how you can empower your team to be able to deliver them a hell of a lot better without being reliant so much on you as the business owner. What a great call today, Dan. I think we’ve given a lot of value in terms of this setting your team up for success. Now this is where rubber’s got to meet the road, isn’t it?

Speaker 2 (44:29):

Yeah, absolutely. Get in, do the challenge, do it once, do it twice, do it three times. Just keep doing it until it becomes the way that you do things. Really, really important. So enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (44:38):

Thanks for tuning in today and looking forward to coming back to you next week with another great episode on the trade then. Take care.

Speaker 2 (44:44):

See you soon.