During transition: Hide the big stick, try evolution

Most often in fleet management, we have to be the agent of change. It is important to motivate people in maintenance and to coach them into change, not from the basis of fear or intimidation. As I advise current clients, their employees and maintenance personnel, I am not here to take your job. I am not a consultant who will measure everything and claim that you have too much labor, your inventory it too high, you spend too much for parts, I have a better vendor who is a friend of mine, your shop is too dirty and, by the way, the way to fix all your issues is to put in place standard repair times (SRT,s) and a new computer system. That will fix all of your problems. Last but not least, your road call and CSA score is way too high, you take too much time on your PM’s inspections and the pressure phrase. You are over budget as well. I’m not here to tell you any of that.

So, I am retained by companies to drive change with these issues, which in most cases are all the same as described above All of these assumptions are correct. After tedious hours of labor, coaching, driving motivated changes through the most basic principles of quality PMs, detailed PM forms, cleaning up the shops, reorganizing the parts room, communicating with the staff, the changes are made, slow and steady improvements and some receivers would say quit painful. This is done through evolution.

The story is that when a new director, vice president and/or regional mangers of maintenance are hired, they come in charged up and charge on like house a fire. They want to “hit the ground running” and make a quick impact to prove they can get the job done. In short, he or she is the “Boss”. Often, the boss or owner pressures the new employee into seeing quick results by making intimidating comments, email action plans and suggestive demands of cost that will drop on the second day. They want movement at 100 MPH. The new employee continues to interview for the job he has already started; prove himself each day and each moment, justifying his new existent…(By the way, he already has the job).

I often strongly suggest slowing down; look around, observe, move slowly forward and get results from evolution and not revolution. Moving too fast and chest pounding causes more harm than good. Often I see that the new, aggressive, anxious maintenance leaders, at almost any level, become the victim of his or her personality to progressively move slowly, by stealth, rebuild the team and improve things as they go. For some reason, revolution is chest pounding, throwing our vendors for new ones, insulting staff and current employees, trying to convince technicians that everything they have been doing is wrong. To some degree this is accurate, not wrong, just not progressive. In the end, more often than not, the new DM or VP becomes a victim of his or her own unrealized revolution plan and end up on the street again, from moving too fast and disrupting employee feelings and potential operation disruptions. The bosses or owners do not want dissention among the troops or even change; check your revolution personality at the door. There is a fine line between what ownership and/or upper management wants and what they are willing to accept. It maybe in your best interest to walk softly and hide the big stick.

For more information, visit www.darrystuart.com or email comments or questions requests to Darry at [email protected].