The Role Of The Shop Foreman | SDR #262

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the big show. Today we're going to talk about the role of the shop foreman and it's going to surprise you. I think a lot of times we have this mixed up. We think the role is something different than what it is. So we're going to talk about that. There's some interesting things in the news. Little thing about Top Dog we're going to talk about and much, much more coming up on this edition of Service Drive Revolution.

We did Irreplaceable Service Manager Live, the lecture series for people in our coaching group and that. But also we are allowing people on the outside to buy it for $50 a month with the understanding that a lot of dealerships won't invest in training. A lot of service managers are left to their own devices. They have really, the only training they've ever had is from the, you know, hand me downs like just watching the people they worked for before.

Yeah, the tribal knowledge.

Yeah, the tribal knowledge.

So if you're not in there and you're a service manager, the, the only reason you wouldn't be in there is you just don't care. I would guess.

That'S probably the top reason.

It's a great chance for you to get some, some training, some insights, but also to be able to ask questions and participate in it. So it's the Irreplaceable Service Manager live lecture series. I'm going through the book chapter by chapter. Every other Tuesday we go live for an hour, hour and a half and it's great stuff so we would love to see there. You can go to Chris collinsinc.com if you're not signed up. Now back to Top Dog.

Okay, let's do this.

When we have had people in here in the library. So we're having Top Dog here in the library. I should have said that.

Yes. First top dog in the library ever.

It is going to be smaller than previous Top Dogs because we can only hold 80 people in here.

Maybe it's just about sold out.

Yeah. So we're not selling tickets to it if you're not in the coaching group.

Or there's just so sold out was the wrong phrase. It's at capacity.

Unless you're, unless you're a client, you're not going to be able to come. As in previous years, sometimes we would sell tickets. This is going to be a little smaller, a little more intimate, but definitely more impactful. We had one coaching meeting here which was great, was kind of our test here in the library.

But what was my point? Oh, My point was, the last time we had a boot camp here and I was playing records because we have this incredible stereo system in here. How would you describe the stereo system we have in here?

The Rolls Royce of stereo systems.

The Rolls Royce of stereo system. So what happens is you think you've.

Heard.

Hotel California by the Eagles, you think you know that song, and then when we play it on this system, it's like the first time you've ever heard it.

Yeah. Your life is a lie up until you hear Hotel California on this system.

And that goes for Pink Floyd. You know, the best purchase I think I've made in a long time is the Led Zeppelin set. Like, the. It almost sounds like this system is made for that. Like it's nuts.

And I haven't heard it yet. I'm pretty excited, too, because some nuts.

Well, you heard Led Zeppelin 2 because I had that.

Oh, yeah.

But from that I bought all. All of them. Yeah.

Zeppelin 4 is my favorite album.

Okay, noted. Well, we'll listen to it. But if you remember, last time they. They were. There were some things they wanted to hear on the system, favorites. Like, what happens then is when people have the experience of listening to something on the system, then they want to hear their favorite.

Which maybe isn't my favorite, but we're here to please and create an experience. So I have bought from suggestions from clients that have been here in anticipation of Top Dog. I am loading up on vinyl, and one of the purchases I just made was all the who albums.

Holy cow, that's great.

So there's an old set out there of all of their albums kind of in one set. It's kind of hard to get. This one is new, like, not.

Used up or whatever, was a little expensive, but it was less than if you bought all of those albums in mint condition on their own. So I bought the who.

Good.

I bought all the Zeppelin, which was kind of a part of that. I am still kind of thinking about getting Eagles live on vinyl, although there aren't great pressings on that. It's just a normal pressing, but we'll try it.

What about just the. Do you have just the Hotel California album?

Yeah.

Okay. And do you like the way that came out?

Yeah.

I mean, because I think it sounds amazing, but you have a more trained ear than I do.

Yeah, sounds great.

The. The sounds a lot like art. Which reminds me. So I'm at the art.

Oh, my gosh, the Christian and his jokes. I got to tell everybody that he has told today the most inappropriate.

Jokes.

To the point One was so inappropriate that there was somebody standing next to us when he told it. And they didn't get. They didn't get. Like, they didn't even understand what just happened.

Yeah. And that particular person is a jokester.

Yeah.

And it.

But I think you've gone too far.

Yeah, that's fair. So. So I'm at the art museum the other day.

You were at the art And.

Yeah.

Connoisseur of art, Christian Lafferty over at the lacma. And LACMA stands for what.

Exactly?

Los Angeles.

Go ahead, keep going with the joke. You don't have to sound like, you.

Know, okay.

Modern arts. I'm about modern art. But so I'm at lacma, and then this guy, he starts giving me crap, like. And I punched him. Like, I got a fight. Right. So he comes up to me, he's like, what are you looking at?

The joke is that you're at an art thing looking at something. And then he said, what are you looking at? Yeah, that's great. Way more appropriate than the jokes that you've been telling all day.

That's fair.

What's always funny is after one of those jokes, you're like, can't do it on the show. Right. But you still, like, I know you want to.

Yeah. And I'm trying to think if, like, it goes past the. The censorship department or not. And I know that most of the times it's not going to.

There's some sensitive people out there that don't have our sense of humor.

Yeah. We have to be.

We don't need to make them uncomfortable because we are broken human beings.

Right. Just because.

Because we think stuff's funny.

So we're unoffended by almost everything. It doesn't mean that other people aren't.

Okay. What is in the news?

This is a print from Auto News talking about how the US is far behind on EV safety standards. And the thing that.

Wait, wait, so Mexico is ahead on ev, or what does it say? What countries are ahead?

Or just a.

It's a thing that everybody is behind on it.

Full transparency. It's not telling us what countries are doing better than us.

I'm just tired of the media picking on America. I'm just joking.

So.

So we're behind on EV standards.

Yeah. So the thing that sparked this, which in after I read this, and I'm like, oh, yeah, I guess I have seen that before, is that after Hurricane Ida Adalia pummeled Florida in August, there were like 300 Teslas that got flooded. Right. Which happens normally during A hurricane. And out of those 300, two of them spontaneously started on fire and burned to the ground. And the thing that that sparked was that essentially no one knows how to handle EV fires. So fire departments, emergency responders, the insurance companies don't know what to do with it. The consumers for sure, don't know what to do with it. And that just essentially it says that we're ill equipped to handle. And it's a lithium ion battery that's causing the problem because they can be completely put out and reignite, which I think is probably a thing. But I do remember now that, you know, we're talking about this, that the techs that worked on the electric cars for me had to go to, like, school and everything like that. And I guess I always thought it's like, wait a minute. The technician asks, what should the customer have to go through from a safety standpoint in terms of prepping for ownership?

Yeah, they're dangerous to work on.

Yeah. So they're dangerous to work on. But also, like, if something bad happens.

During ownership, it's not like the old days where you lick the 9 volt battery to see if it's okay.

Like.

One of my favorite things that makes my kid do.

That's not a. That's not a thing. So what is your. What is your suggestion?

I would suggest that maybe there's a little bit of a safety course that could happen for an owner in addition to really focusing on making sure that there's maybe training for municipalities so that they can be prepared for this.

Those car fires burn hot, man. They're crazy.

Yeah. So the pictures, the after pictures where it's like just bits of the frame or.

I mean, I've seen that on other car brands. I don't know that I've seen that on a Tesla.

I've seen a few car fires are scary few on the side of the road where it's like, oh, no, that's terrible. And, you know, that just happened. But.

I always worry about the people that were maybe inside them, because I think that the big thing is that happens fast.

You don't think the people got out?

I hope so.

You know what's crazy is the Tesla door release is electric.

Yeah. And the.

How do you.

The windows are electric.

How do you get out if the electricity isn't working?

Yeah. You almost need to have one of those things that pops the windows out. That's probably not a bad idea. Have that in the car.

Get one of those right away.

Yeah, for sure. And then I thought this was this Was interesting. Voil? Cars, tailors, a solution to the tech shortage. So. And this might be one of those things where people roll their eyes at, but I actually think it makes sense. So to make service technician jobs for more women friendly, the Swedish automaker strives to make doing the work more comfortable by reinventing the shop uniform. Now, I.

That's what. That's why women aren't getting into being technicians, is they don't think that the. Well, I think uniforms.

I would say that for the most part, the industry is not tailored towards women becoming technicians. And this is one way to kind of invite them in the outfit. I think it starts with that. I mean, just in general, I think that uniforms can be something that. I mean, it has a lot to do with identity and confidence and everything like that. Like technicians don't mind being heavenly.

So if you, if you make a technician uniform for female technicians that makes them look like a Virgin airline stewardess, they're going to want to be technicians.

No, I think that what it's going to do is going to make women aware that they are welcome into the industry to be technicians. Oh, that's kind of where I was headed with that. But you did laugh.

I'm looking at a picture of the uniform. It doesn't look good.

Compared to what?

Just a general fashion.

Yeah. We should put the pictures up of this thing.

Volvo's. I wouldn't say Volvo's on the cusp of discovering anything new.

Well, let's talk about Volvo as a car company and the attractiveness of some of their cars back in the day. So I would say fashion and style are probably not their. Their go to's, but they're at least attempting something.

Okay, so what were. What. What we're. What Volvo is saying is that if we make the uniforms less masculine.

Yeah. They have specific women uniforms.

They're tailored towards women, but they always had that.

You go to Aramark or whatever, they have cuts for women for all that stuff.

Yeah, you might be right. You're probably right.

And they don't. I mean, a uniform uniform in the shop is not about walking the Runway.

I think it's about comfort.

It's not fash week in New York.

Those are definitely not fashion week uniforms.

It's about being a technician, I think.

Yeah.

Which is a dirty job. Sometimes it is, but I think that there's.

There's an opportunity for function and for it to look nice all at the same time.

And then that then women are going to line up to be technicians because of that is our Thought.

Okay, we'll see.

Little bit of a flaw in the news.

A little bit of a flaw maybe in Volvo's psychology, but I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.

It can't hurt.

It's interesting.

I definitely wouldn't. I would say that it's a really good opportunity for us to, you know, invite women to join the industry. So that might just be one little olive branch. That's it for the news. That went over well.

There might be other ways to get women into the industry than uniforms.

Just thinking that clothes is the way to do it, like.

Well, no, thinking that bad clothes is the way to do it. That didn't look good.

Clothes still sounds sexist, I guess, Right? The fact that it's clothes. What about.

Let's be honest about this for a second. Like, are there more female nurses or male nurses?

Female nurses.

Okay. So am I. My girl is. She was a nurse. How attractive are those uniforms?

Not very.

Okay, well, there's tons of women nurses.

Yeah.

Are women going, we don't feel welcome in the nursing thing because these things look like potato sacks?

Yeah.

Would you say that they're fashionable?

No.

Would you say that the male nurses and the female nurses are wearing anything different? I mean.

No. They look like the same uniform, don't they?

Okay, so then.

Okay, so it might be a little bit flawed.

Volvo, you can call us before you have these ideas. We'll tell you.

God only knows how much I spent on market research to get that design.

Yeah, that also, like, who did they paint a design?

It's like the S4.

The military surplus.

The Swedish military.

Okay. You were excited about this subject. I am.

Really.

This is a Christian. Christian's idea for a subject. Really good subject, I think. But you were. You were pushing for it.

Yeah.

And you came up with some good ideas. I came up with a few more from your list. But really, Christian's list is kind of the backbone of this, so don't be. Maybe because you have yours numbered.

Yeah, but they're not in any particular order.

Maybe.

Yeah. We'll just keep going with the numbers. But you start with yours and then I'll add mine at the end.

Yeah. So our topic today is what should your shop foreman be doing?

The role of the shop foreman.

The role of the shop foreman. Exactly. So the role of the shop foreman. I'm going to set this up.

1. One is clearly.

Fashion.

Uniforms. Making sure the uniforms are fashionable.

How did that not make it to the list? It's not on my list.

If you're a Shop foreman. And you're not worried about making your uniforms fashionable and attracting more females?

It's gonna be a short career.

Next segment of Service Drive Revolution brought to you by Alexander McQueen, maker of fine technician uniforms.

Oh my gosh. Can you imagine?

I could.

By the way, those are Christian's favorite shoes.

Yeah.

They're which you shouldn't wear in the shop.

I. Oh, have I. Yeah, I might have once, but not normally. Okay. So the.

It'S so funny because over the, over time I've always thought that service managers were one of the lowest trained positions in terms of like there's no real good resources out there for how to be a service manager.

And what are you talking about? Irreplaceable.

Yeah. So if you take that out, there's, there's not a ton of resources out there for service managers and there's a.

Lot of advisor training.

Yeah. And, and what we've noticed is a trend recently is that shop foreman are moving into service manager roles after being a shop foreman, which I've had a couple of people go from shop foreman to service manager to general manager. So don't rule that out of the equation as well. But the funny thing that I find as a commonality is, is that none of them are, very few of them were trained in any way, shape or form about what their role was when they became a shop foreman. So all of them, essentially the, the, the path was you go from a really high performing tech to being a shop foreman. And we came up with a little list of things that you should be focusing on. And I think if you have this list, it kind of preps you for what the next role would be as a service manager. If you kind of pay attention to those things that really, really matter. And, and at the end of the day you'll be really successful. I think if you do these, you know, whatever. We got seven or eight different tips, but, but the first one I've got down here might sound like a no brainer, but you definitely want to attach your identity to this if you're a shop foreman, is that your responsibility is to drive production.

What, what do you think most shop foremans think their responsibility is?

To make sure that the hard cars get fixed.

Yeah, exactly. And that's the, that's the kiss of death. That's the trap.

That's right.

So a lot of times, and this happens in every position, every industry, the thing that gets you promoted is not the thing that keeps you there.

Yes.

And the thing, so the fact that you were the best Tech. The fact that you could fix the problem cars does not keep you as a shop foreman. It actually pushes you back to being a tech.

And I also would say that I think that sometimes service managers could be super selfish about that and ask the shop foreman to work on the hardest cars, which then, you know, stunts the growth of the team. There's a lot of other reasons that you shouldn't be doing it, but. Yeah. So the focus should be on driving, production, understanding what capacity is and how to get your team to produce as many hours as humanly possible out of the shop that you're in.

So let's go through some. I have some ideas on how to drive production.

Okay.

Okay. The first one is you would have goals with your technicians monthly. So every one of your technicians you would sit down with for 10 or 15 minutes every month and you would talk about their production, what they can do better, but you would treat them like professionals that are trying to get better, trying to improve. You would talk about their schooling, everything else, but you would have specific goals. You would post production daily. So I don't know how many shops out there, the shop is a production facility. But most of the time we're not tracking production daily. We might be tracking it monthly, we might be tracking it by pay period, but we're not tracking it daily. When you track it daily, anything you shine a light on or give energy to grows. So if production is the priority, then we should be looking at it constantly. The other thing is the quality of the inspections. So a lot of times if, if we go into service department, we pull some arrows from the cashier, the pickup box. So these cars or trucks have come in, we have done whatever we're going to do, and they're ready to be picked up. And we take those cars back in the shop, we call this a re rack. We re rack them and we look at the inspection that the technician did versus what the car actually needs.

If we, if we do three, there's always one or two that were missing an opportunity. Because what happens over time is either the veteran technicians pencil whip what they want to fix, not what actually the car needs, or we have a young technician that's hourly, that's on the quick lube, that is invested in, you know, really checking the car out. And they don't have the experience. And so they, they put what they know or nothing at all, but they're just on to the next one. They're so busy and they're moving so fast that doing a quality inspection is. It isn't in their, you know, it isn't on their radar.

Now we're just telling them to get the car done faster.

Now what happens when we go into a service department and let's say you're the service manager or the shop foreman. You'll. You'll be both. And I say, hey, what do you think there, Christian? Funny guy. What do you think about the quality of your inspections here in the shop?

I think we're really good.

And what. What is it that makes you think that?

Because when I look at the inspections, they're filled out.

Oh, okay. And then that's never true.

Right on. Not only are the inspections that are filled out not really that great all the time. A lot of times you find that they're not always filled out.

And here's the thing. Unless you're checking, how do you know?

You have no clue. You just go off of how you feel.

Yeah. So let's not. Let's not. Let's not manage by feelings. The shop foreman's job is to have a system in place that we're guaranteeing. We're. We're inspecting the inspection. We're. We're coaching to a certain quality, a certain expectation. A lot of times the technicians with the most experience are the worst at inspections because they don't want, like, I hear this all the time. I don't want to replace tires.

Yeah.

I don't want to. Blah, blah, blah. So I don't put it down. And it's like, okay, but this customer should know that they need tires. Like, you know what I mean? So the quality, you know, inspecting and creating a culture that the inspections are consistent and that they're. They're favorable to the customer, that we're. We're putting what the customer actually wants on a consistent basis to protect them. Like, we're doing the customer a favor by letting them know that, hey, you could fix this before it breaks or, you know, whatever it is. So quality inspections, the other one, and this is kind of might be on your list in another way, is I don't. I think that foreman's think of themselves as working in the shop.

Right.

But they're not.

I think they're part of the leadership team.

Yeah. And so their interaction with parts, their interaction with the advisors, like you're the glue between. Between them. Right.

Yep. I phrased it differently, but yeah, we're talking. How did you phrase it make everyone's life easier?