In the past, when I let cynicism get the best of me, I would call this person a fire hydrant.

In an other life, I used to be a …

Read this most excellent story here.

The company described above needs a focused product to sell, smart business systems and competent people to make the company go.

As a hard working technician who wants to professionally develop on board a ship with a destination, how do you know whether or not your owner is capable? Or, if you are trying to hook up with a company to get you there, how will you be able to recognize a competent captain?

Read Built to Sell. This is an easy to read story about a business owner who desperately wants to sell his business and enjoy his family and life. To help envision what sort of shape his business is in think: 1973 Ford Pinto for sale. Proceeds to finance my daughter’s education at Harvard. What does Aerosmith say? Dream on, dream on, dream on.

While this is a work of fiction, it is an example of real life businesses and their often misguided owners. The business owner gets a family friend to help him turn his company around and make it into a desirable and sellable company.

The process in which this company turns around is the map you need to help identify a competent company to work for. The author, John Warrillow, weaves this process into eight steps. While some of the steps will not pertain directly to your quest, the ones that do are enough. Here are the first five:

1. Create a Standard Service Offering. This means selling a service that your company is really good at.
2. Create a Positive Cash Flow Cycle. You’ll hear it on the street if the owner doesn’t have positive cash flow. “Sorry Bob, XYZ Mechanical is three months behind payment. You’ll have to get a check if you want this item today.”
3. Hire a Sales Team. John recommends at least two salesmen. Competition upholds a healthy atmosphere. Consider it a humongous red flag if the owner is the company salesman.
4. Stop Accepting Other Projects. This one might be the key. Your company needs to do what it is wired to do. If you are trying to perform work you are incapable of, everyone suffers.
5. Launch a Long-Term Incentive Plan for Managers. This is a very cool one. You need your manager to be engaged and relatively happy at what he is doing (remember he is your career’s primary ally).

Items six, seven and eight are not really relative to your mission.

For the most part, owners are sincere people who want to do right by their family, self and you, their team member. To be brutally real however, many are not cut out for this role. This doesn’t mean that you disrespect them, make fun of them and talk about them behind their back. It simply means that you shouldn’t be working for them.

Pick up a copy of John’s book today and get yourself on a ship with a destination that helps your family, personal development and career.

I’m not too fond of the word train unless it has something to do with dogs or monkeys. I like the word educate. Managers teach. Teachers educate. While you look to your manager for education, you should also look to make sure he brings his sawzall to work everyday. The imaginary sawzall represents his ability to understand your learning needs and his ability to cut away whatever is covering up your potential.

Very few managers invest themselves enough to understand your strengths and potential. If you have a manager who is reaching out to you, attempting to understand you and suggesting or providing learning resources, do not take his gestures lightly. Follow his guidance. And make note of his actions. You’ll want these characteristics in your next manager.

Think of progressing through managers this way. Your first car was a basic model that included a couple of options that you liked. When you went to buy your second car, you made sure it had these options and then looked to upgrade with other features and options.

In the future you might have to make trade-offs when choosing managers. But never trade-off the manager who has a history of reaching out to his technicians, the one who educates and the one who unleashes the potential of his students.

Do you make waves at work? I’m not talking about whining, morale-depleting, soul-sucking technicians who hate being a technician. Or the type of technician who complains without trying to make things better. I’m talking about:

• Dave, we should do this
• Dave, I don’t think you’re on the right track
• Dave, let me try this
• Dave, I gotta stay here until I fix it
• Dave, you gotta get me in more classes
• Dave, we need more training
• Dave, we’re sick and tired of pizza

I love the technician who is making waves like these! Hands down, working with technicians who are making the right kind of waves, is more work – a lot more work. But the rewards are so worth it.

As a technician, you know when you are being a pain in the behind. The manager who recognizes when your being a pain is all about trying to improve and make things better, is the manager you want to keep.

As a manager, my one of my greatest obstacles over the years was getting techs to adhere to a baseline set of policies and procedures. While one could question my ability to assemble a quality team, almost all managers deal with this. For the record, I am not a big believer in too many policies and procedures. Some important ones are techs arriving at work on time, completed paperwork turned in on a timely basis, clean trucks, wearing clean and proper uniforms, proper care and handling of company tools and documentation of additional work to name a few.

When managers’ time becomes occupied with policing adherence, it takes time away from both business and employee development. I would much rather spend time helping a coworker with career development than I would making sure his truck is clean or chasing after him to clean it.

You are working for a decent manager and with a great team if your manager is not spending too much time on making sure the policies and procedures are being followed (as long as they are being followed). Feel good in knowing that you and your coworkers are doing a good job. At this point your manager should be totally involved and immersed in business and personnel development…unless you work for a large corporation that has their managers heading down too many rabbit trails, chasing too many rabbit tails…but we won’t go there right now.

In Part II I’ll talk about making waves…

The company provides four ways to apply these consumer trends. While the words are directed to your company’s owner, as a technician, its good to understand directions that they could be taking.

1. Influence or shape your company’s vision.
2. Inspire you to come up with a new business concept, an entirely new venture, a new brand.
3. Add a new product, service or experience for a certain customer segment.
4. Speak the language of those consumers already living a trend.

Perhaps the greatest benefit to your owner from watching and trying to apply trends is that the practice will keep his mind open to possibility.

Go here to sign up for the free monthly trend briefings.

If you’ve been reading along at The Technician Shop you know that I think existing management in the trades is in a world of hurt. There is a huge difference however, between the asshole manager and the incompetent manager. While the asshole manager is always incompetent, the incompetent manager is not always an asshole. There are thousands and thousands of well-intentioned, decent people who are in management roles, but shouldn’t be. I will also add that there are thousands and thousands of owners out there, who shouldn’t be. This is another story but does offer an explanation as to why so many people have been cast in management roles.

I am going to transport you to the article “Is Your Future Boss an Asshole?” written by Bob Sutton. Bob wrote the book, The No Asshole Rule and has an absolute wealth of information that will help you with asshole managers.

Although for many of you it is too late, Bob says that one of the most effective ways in dealing with asshole managers is to avoid them in the first place. No worries. Bob’s article (and his site) is still a boatload of help for those who deal with assholes. Make sure you read Bob’s list 15 Things I Believe, located on left hand side of page.

Go here for Bob’s article “Is Your Future Boss an Asshole?”

Visit Bob at his site Bob Sutton Work Matters.

Note to all you managers who have been my handler over the years: I can honestly say that I have never worked for an asshole. Note II: This does not pertain to those I worked with over twenty-five years ago, prior to entering the HVAC industry.

The trades are so short on talent that it’d be a shame to not at least consider trying to work with a technician whose ego is bigger than a 500 ton air conditioning chiller. Pointed in the right direction, engaged and packing a degree of civility, the technician with a large ego can be an invaluable asset…providing he really is talented and knowledgeable.

If our super tech degrades, is cruel to other techs and is causing morale problems, then all bets are off. But let’s continue this discussion based on a I am God’s gift to technicians and am master of the technician universe technician.

The problem that I’ve seen with most managers in dealing with their super tech is their inability to hang up their own technician boots. The manager seems to become enamored in the detail and takes his eye off the outcome. Most managers and their super techs will not argue about the outcome. They agree on satisfied customers, repaired systems and installed systems that work. One key for the manager is to let his super tech work his own way to the desired outcome.

Many super techs with huge egos are walking gold mines of knowledge. The fact that they tell the universe how great they are, should not deter the manager from letting them help other techs. Matter of fact, the manager should coach the other techs on how to mine the gold mine.

The less experienced tech needs to adopt a learning mindset. His goal is to learn. Yes, he will have to here how super tech brought the main chiller on line just in time for the Queen of Sheeba’s visit to the Gradisson Luxury Hotel and stories like it, but it’s a small price to pay for technical knowledge. The key is to ask good questions and make notes or use a small tape recorder. Most super techs love when one asks them good questions.

Super techs loved to be praised. While you think that the praising they are doing to themselves is enough, it isn’t. As a manager, dole out praise when the super tech does something good and of value. Remember to focus on desired outcomes and not on processes and how they get there.

A good manager learns how to modify the door. A great manager learns how to coach coworkers to expand the room, making it a rich, learning environment. And by the way, the world always needs people to rescue the Queen of Sheeba. Take pride in your hero.

Following this slideshow I offer a few points to consider.

Slides:

4 – an excellent visual of the various types of social media

22- if your company is not using social media, their attempts to do so will look like this

31- no doubt the wall of separation are preventing your company from moving forward

32- if you have a bunch of bosses running around telling everyone what to do, your company will look like the guys stacked up on the left hand side of this screen

73-74- okay, these two screens are a tad bit corporatey (like you’ve stepped in a big steaming pile of cow dung), but they do demonstrate a solid social business foundation and what it takes to make it work

80- changes pushing business to be more social

90- it’s how we do business. Most owners thing that social business is just a fad. It is not…any more than the fax machine or computer was just a fad.

Feel free to contact me for help in determining whether or not your company gets it.

Thanks to David Armano and his company the Dachis Group – they get it.

Aside from managers who who care only about themselves and their numbers, most managers are not your opponent. When it appears that your manager is opposing you, most likely it’s when they are not reviewing their own game film. But that’s another story. Today it’s about you reviewing game film of your manager.

For you to succeed you must know what your manager expects out of you. These points can be found on your manager’s game film. Who exactly is filming your manager you ask? You are. The film is rolling when you discuss your performance or when you’re getting direction on a project or at service meetings when you share dialog with your manager. You should collect and record this intel.

I’ve suggested elsewhere at The Technician Shop that you keep a notebook. Truth of the matter? I’ve recommended the practice of keeping a notebook to hundreds of techs over the years. All top notch, high level techs have them. I was trying to reach those who didn’t. I bet not more than ten ever took me up on my advice.

Okay, I’ve got another idea! Create your own film…for real. Sit down in front of your computer’s webcam and record yourself telling yourself about the intel that you’ve collected. Follow along here while I pretend to be a tech and shoot a quick film on myself…

Dave looking into camera: “Wassup holmes? You look like a pack of feral managers ate half of you for lunch son!”

Dave being serious: “The light bulb went off today. After two years I finally figured Jim out. When he sees that I am taking a class on my own or I am spending time on the internet trying to learn something – he goes out of his way to make my life easier. I can’t believe it. He even offered to give me a half day off on Friday with pay – no strings attached. I gotta keep doing this. But I gotta make sure I’m telling Jim what I’m doing.”

Dave’s mom in background: “Who are you talkin’ to Davo?”

Davo: “I’m talkin’ to myself Essay!”

Dave signing off as he winks to himself: “Okay now you good looking brother, this was fun! Who needs Reality TV when you got Reality You dog?”

To keep track of your films you could set up various categories like the ones I listed in the above link. You could have a blast with this! You could even invent a make-believe personality, shoot films about how this cat is succeeding with his manager, and post them to You Tube.