Chris Collins describes service departments where senior "legends" spend hours bragging about their tenure while ignoring financial losses and angry customers. He argues that transparent metrics and focus on profit-driving actions will improve performance, invoking the idea that sunlight is the best disinfectant for a culture that's currently dark.
came, they had like the white dress shirt that was a short sleeve. You guys remember this? In the black tie? Very well. So they would be sitting in their little tiny service manager office, and I would be in this little chair kind of up against the wall and almost touching their desk, right? And then for 2 hours they'd be like, so where did you work? What— and they're just like— and then the resume statement. They start telling me how great they are. And in my head I'm like, okay, like you're 55 years old and I get that you want to feel great. I get that. But your department's losing money. Nobody wants to work here and your customers hate it. Like, what are we talking— I don't understand what we're talking about. Like, I want to get to work. Like, I'm, I'm like, this is the other thing that drives me crazy when I'm in a service department, when a customer is upset, like I want to go help that customer that's yelling right now. And you're telling me that you're a legend and like, what? Like, I don't like— all I can deal with is I was hired to help you figure out how to make money. And we're talking about everything else but how to make money. And I promise you, if we start talking about how to make money, anything that we track will improve exponentially. Everything we start to work on is going to get better just because we're working. What is, what is the saying, Adam? Like sunlight is the best disinfectant. Yep. But we're not letting in the sunlight in this little office. Like, there's no sunlight. There's zero sunlight whatsoever.
