Consistency
Today’s inspirational quote of the day comes from a man named Seth Godin. He is in the marketing industry but that doesn’t make what he says any less relevant to the collision industry.
He says, “Your work is too important to be left to how you feel today”. This saying is profoundly important because it revolves around one of the most important things in our industry, consistency.
All the training, learning and SOPs will not help at all if you cannot be consistent. This applies to the technician who does a great job normally but sometimes he ships things that are less quality because he has an off day. It applies to the estimator who doesn’t review his estimate because he is backed up with work. It even applies to the managers who do not enforce the rules equally or bends the rules when it’s convenient.
Consistency doesn’t mean getting it right every time because we know that things can happen. What consistency means is that we are following the steps every time to significantly reduce the chances of things going wrong.
The story that you hear in every body shop is that “they used to do that and then they stopped” or that it applied to certain people and not everyone. The common underlying problem is that management hasn’t been consistent in enforcing the rules.
The most profitable and well-run shops are the ones that have a strong consistent management staff. Things usually slip because the managers start to ease up and become less consistent when trying to enforce certain SOPs, guidelines, or rules. One time becomes two and then turns into three and then before you know it, it becomes a suggestion more than a guideline.
A person cannot achieve the goals you set out for them if the goal posts don’t exist, or worse, the goal posts keep moving around. To make sure your techs are successful in achieving your shop’s needs, a clear set goal and a path of how to get there needs to be established. Once that’s established you know that the person will more likely than not, deliver quality work because they have followed the steps to get them there.
There is another saying we hear a lot in the shop, “if everyone just did their job then we wouldn’t have this problem”. Almost every time we hear this, it’s because the roles and goals or the positions haven’t been clearly defined.
Let’s assume that everyone person on your team has a clearly defined role with clearly defined goals. Person 1 does their job and reaches their goals which means that person 2 can do their job to meet their goals for person 3 to do the same. When each person reaches their goal, it eliminates three things, most variables, confusion, and delays. This in turn means that the shop will have lower cycle times, better quality work and better productivity.
The bottom line is that there are lots of ways to save money, increase efficiencies, and become an overall better operation but none of them matter if you cannot remain consistent.
