Episode 027: Top 5 Things To Do As A New Fleet Manager

Welcome to the Fleet Success Show, a podcast dedicated to talking about the fundamentals, standards, and best practices that empower today's fleets to achieve fleet success. Let's get into the show.

All right. Welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. It's good to have you guys all back with us again. Joining me as always, love having you guys with me, Steve Salzgiver. Hey there, and Jeff Jenkins.

You know, I love being here, so it's reciprocated.

It's fun, right?

It is fun.

We had a fun time, you know, doing our live Connect podcast. I thought that turned out really well.

Yeah, it was good. It was nice seeing faces out in the crowd and getting a little interaction. I liked it.

It's a little bit different. Otherwise, we just stare at James all day, and while he's pretty, it just doesn't work the same way. He doesn't clap as near as Lee is enough.

No, he doesn't, and I actually don't think he's that pretty.

All right, so before we get into our topic today, we got a fun, a fun little joke, and anybody who's a fan of basketball will appreciate this. So a reporter is asking Michael Jordan if the Bulls from the '90s— and if you remember, you know, you have the two dynasties of the '90s, awesome teams— if the Bulls of the '90s could beat LeBron's Lakers today. And of course, Michael Jordan says, well, yeah, absolutely, we could do that. You know, because he believes those teams are the best teams and he's got a legitimate claim there. The reporter asked him a little follow-up, says, "Well, how close would the game be? How much would you beat them by?" He says, "I don't know, maybe 2 or 3 points." And the reporter's a little bit shocked by that and says, "Well, why so close? You know, if you're this confident in yourself, why would it be such a close game?" And Michael Jordan doesn't even skip a beat. He looks right at him and says, "Well, most of us are in our 60s now, so—" Listen, everybody should appreciate that.

I'm sorry, if you actually think LeBron James is better than Michael Jordan, you're delusional.

You have to go watch those games. You're delusional.

There's no way around it.

But I would say, like, I actually don't think LeBron's even the second best. I think it's Kobe.

I think Kobe's better than LeBron too. Yeah, absolutely. The mentality is just completely different between the two. LeBron's a baby. He quits on his team. He whines all the time. He just doesn't have that toughness to bring him up to being that. If he had that toughness that Michael Jordan or Kobe had, you could probably put an argument in there.

Yeah, just not that way mentally.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. Of course, we just upset a whole bunch of legion of Lakers fans and Cavaliers fans. We're sorry, but we have opinions. I'm not sorry. Maybe we'll start another sports podcast. That'll be a different thing. We could, we could go all day on some of that stuff. We could. Uh, all right, so today Today's topic is the top 5 things when you come into a new fleet and you're trying to figure out where do I start, what do I get my hands on. You know, Steve, you got a lot of experience as a consultant coming in from the outside. Jeff, you've been, you know, one of these turnaround artists as you've gone to different trucking companies. As you start looking at the top 5 things that you do, like first 5 things on your checklist, we wanted to kind of go through for any new fleet managers out there what their top 5 things should be. And how do they get a sense of it all?

And I think— and just keep in mind when we're going through this, right, these steps we put in place as if we were going to go to someplace new and how we would work on trying to improve something or turn it around. So if you're currently somewhere and you're a fleet manager and there's stuff that you already know, obviously these numbers of our top 5 things can go out of order.

Yeah. Well, and I think too, It's something to keep in mind as well as if you're a current fleet manager, even though you're a current fleet manager, it doesn't stop you from being the replacement fleet manager. One of the, one of my favorite stories when I read about Intel and Gordon Moore and Andy Grove is, you know, they're sitting around the table one day trying to figure out what to do next. How do they go out and, you know, effectively, you know, win in the marketplace? And they were debating between, you know, do we do microchips? Do we do memory? Like, what do we do? How do we fix this part of our business? Because they were struggling in some areas. And so they looked at each other and they've been going back and forth on it. And they finally just said, well, what would the board do? You know, what would a new CEO do? If the board said, look, Andy, Gordon, you guys aren't getting it done for us. Let's bring in a new CEO. What would they do? And they said, well, they'd get out of the memory business. And they'd go all in on microchips. Well, why don't we do that? And so they effectively, they stepped back from the situation and said, well, what would a new fleet manager do if they were coming into this situation today? And so if you are in that situation where you're the current fleet manager, think about it as if you were the replacement fleet manager in your own operation. So, and if you're the brand new fleet manager, well, then this is for you too. It's a truth bomb right there. Just dropped. Right there. That's why we do this show. That's right. Little nuggets like that that you would never get outside of Fleet. So, all right. So the first thing that we kind of looked at, it says this is the first thing you have to do before you do anything else. And it's probably going to seem like really common sense when we say it, but you have to evaluate. You can't just come in and make a change immediately. You need to evaluate where things are at, how things are going. We identified things like inventory, you know, what inventory controls are in place. What do your people skills look like? How do your, you know, do you have the right talent? Do you have the right people on the bus? We talked about identifying waste. You know, as you look at the processes and you look at the things that people are doing, are you evaluating, is that a value-add activity or is that just somebody doing something because we've always done that? Identifying things, issues with safety. You know, as you walk around the shop, do you see things that are going on that might not be safe? Now, obviously, if there's a critical issue, you don't want to wait on that, but for the most part, you're just trying to evaluate the overall culture, the overall feel, the overall processes that are going on. Steve, Jeff, as you guys have gone through and done evaluations, what does it look like and what—

It's a lot of observation, a lot of notes. When I've gone in, I've sat down, I've interviewed every one of the I've interviewed people out— excuse me— outside my department, making sure that, you know, I've interviewed customers to see what the expectations are, what the past was, what they expect the future to be. You know, I ask all those questions because ultimately you've got to have all involvement in that culture. It's kind of that stakeholder satisfaction we talked about, you know, find out where that circle of influence is and then start involving yourself in interviewing those people.

Yeah, this isn't a quick process either. When you evaluate and you're evaluating your people and your data, what's going on throughout the, the purview that you have, I mean, it can take months. And the best way, in my opinion, is through people, having conversations with people and getting them to open up to you. About what they see and what they're going through. Because when you come in at a certain level as a manager, you don't know everything that they go through and that they end up dealing with. And there may be a lot of very easy roadblocks that you can remove for those people to make their jobs easier and to make the overall operation a lot more successful. Some of the best tips that I've ever gotten are from admin-type people. Because they are looking at it from, hey, we're doing all the work right here on this ground level. We're in the weeds. It would be great if we had X or if we could do Y. And you can make very, very subtle and small changes. That's not only going to improve their workload, but also the overall operation.

I got a standard list of questions that I would ask. And then— but the last question I'd always ask every stakeholder was, it was. If I gave you a magic wand, what would you do to improve this operation?

What would you do first? Yeah. I always like, what would you do first? What's the thing you wouldn't wait to change?

And usually you get some pretty good ideas from people that have been observing the operation for the last several years before you arrived. You know, I mean, they'll say things, well, I don't know why they haven't ever done X, or things like that. So I think that's a good way to start. And like Jeff said, you know, I mean, this could take 60 to 90 days. You know, you don't want to come in like a bull in a china closet and just start making a bunch of edicts and policies and procedures. And you might be trampling on yourself. You might already have some of that stuff in place.

Well, you got to build up, you know, what we call political capital. Yeah, it's the people's capital. You have to put some debits in that bank account first. And so that, you know, as you're going through things that you do, you earn the trust because you're going to need that trust when you start making changes.

You know, part of the evaluation would be to sit down with your boss, you know, executive director, whoever that is, and say, what are your expectations? What do you think is missing? You know, and really kind of flesh that out because he might have a lot of ideas of things that he thinks that the previous, your predecessor, may not have done.

Yeah, but I think that's one of the overlooked things. It's why we put stakeholder satisfaction as one of our key pillars for fleet success. Is that you have to not manage, not just manage down, but also manage up and learn the expectations that you need to live up to. Because if you don't do that, then ultimately, no matter how successful you are with the people that report to you, if you don't do a good job for the person you're reporting to, it might all be for a moot point.

And you have to understand the culture. You have to understand if they have strategic plans in place, if they have goals and objectives that they're trying to do. You know, how do you fit into those goals and objectives as a new fleet manager?

One of the things that I like to do with our employees is, you know, every quarter we'll sit down as we go into our quarterly planning. And this is, you know, for those of you who are established fleet managers, something you could implement is ask them that question. You know, if you were the fleet manager today, what would you do differently? I usually will ask them that question for my company is if you were the CEO, what would you— what would be the first thing you would do? What would you change? The idea being almost like that magic wand. If you had the control to make any changes that you wanted to, what would be that thing you would change? Now, sometimes it comes back and it's something really silly, like, oh, I'd have lunch provided for the staff every day of the week. Okay. But other times it comes back and it's very pointed of, oh no, well, we really need to make sure that we're communicating our benefits properly or that this process is done correctly because it's really hurting us over in this department. So little things like that come to the surface. You're like, "Oh, I had no idea that was even a problem. I'm glad that somebody said something." And it gives them an opportunity to do it in a safe way that's not threatening to you. Because sometimes you might ask them, "Well, what's the one thing you would change?" "Oh, well, I would get rid of you. Like, I want your job, you know, and you're the problem that I have, not anything else." So ask it in a different way. "If you were in my position, what would you do today?" Yeah, what wouldn't you wait to fix?

So, and this is why it's important to, to spend time and to get to know people so you can get that honesty. I mean, you talked about not coming in right away, making changes, building up that capital with folks, because if you just come in and you just start sitting with people, you don't talk to them, you don't get to know them, you're just sitting there. Maybe answer— asking a question or two as you go, you're not going to get the type of responses that are going to help you in this whole evaluation process. People aren't going to talk to you and be open with you if they don't feel they can trust you. You got to make it very clear, hey, this has nothing to do with your job. I just want to know how things are going. I want to see what we can help to make your job easier, what we can do to improve our overall operation. People get scared when the new guy comes in, or girl, and starts sitting with people or going around because they think, oh my gosh, these huge changes are gonna come and I may be one of those changes. So make sure that you do this in a very sensitive way.

Yeah, non-threatening. Yep. And you can let 'em know right up front you're not gonna make any changes for 60, 90 days. You're not in there to, I mean, if the operation you took over is fairly well run, You may not make any changes immediately, right? So I think that's the biggest threat. People, they kind of personalize it when a new boss comes in and they think they either become a fanatic brown-noser or they become a recluse. So they want to get by you because they're afraid they might be the first to go out the door.

Yeah, so you definitely have to build bridges, you know, build bridges. And then it also helps, we talk about conflict a lot, but it does help bring in the weigh-in and include them in that process of, hey, you know, we are all trying to change this to make it better. What would you change? And then, you know, later on when you start making those changes, as you know, you're going to get some resistance, you say, yeah, but you remember when we talked about this? The reason why you feel this way is because of this process and this problem. So let's just deal with that instead of coming up with all these workarounds to— instead of dealing with the issue. And it helps someone because they understand that you know what they're going through because you've heard them and you've listened to them. And you can take that feedback and include it in any kind of changes that you're going to make rather than just coming in with, "Oh, I've got my preconceived notions and I know exactly what needs to change around here." Odds are is if you go with that approach, you'll come in and you'll start making changes and you'll start kicking over hornet's nests that you had no idea were even there and you could have avoided completely had you just done it in a more diplomatic way. So, things that you're evaluating, you know, again, we talked waste, people, safety, you know, look at things like inventory controls, purchasing controls. What's your data look like? Do you have good data to rely on? I know in trucking, one of the first things you're looking at is cost. You know, what's our cost structure look like compared to other places you've been? You know, where are ways, where are things that we're spending money on we shouldn't be spending money on? That all implies, though, that you do have at least some semblance of good data. And so one of the next things that we say you really have to have as a new fleet manager coming in or as an existing fleet manager, you need to make sure you've got the right tools in place to generate that data. And during your evaluation, that's one of the checkboxes is how quickly was I able to get the data that I needed and was it really difficult or was it fairly simple? Because that will tell you right away do you have the right tools in place? If it's really difficult to get the data or you can't make heads or tails of it or the data is garbage, it might not be the data problem and you could have a process problem or a quality problem. But there could also be an issue with your tooling.

You know, I was thinking too, as part of that evaluation process, you want to walk the fleet, you want to look at the assets you have, you want to look at the tools, the shop, you know, just everything in general, just to see what kind of condition they're in. Yeah. You know, I mean, you can find out about your fleet without even looking at data just by looking at the way the condition.

Right. And seeing it in person is going to tell a much different story than seeing it on paper, you know, because a fleet, an asset on paper could look completely different than when you go out there and you get an actual real feel for it. So when we talk about tooling in place, things that you should have, you know, you want to make sure that you've got an FMIS, you know, Fleet Management Information System. Where you do have a record of all your assets, their repair histories, you know, their total costs. So you understand where those are going. You want to make sure you've got a good telematics solution so you can actually tell where your vehicles are at. I remember sitting in a NAF class one day and we had a gal in there who was very new to her position. She'd been in accounting before getting put in as the interim fleet manager, and she was basically handed a stack of papers and says, hey, these are all of our assets. And she's looking at them, she's like, "I don't even know where these are." You know, they had no clue where the vehicles had gone over the course of 20 or 30 years. So there was assets that they owned, quote unquote, but that they didn't know where they were. And so they couldn't go out. They were on the books, but they couldn't walk out to the yard and find that vehicle.

It had just wandered off. A lot of construction companies have that dilemma. They leave them at a construction site, at a job site, in the middle of the woods somewhere.

And then, you know, you can't find those exact coordinates because, well, they manage their jobs like projects, right?

So once the project's over, they don't care about that equipment. You know, it's just the way that they run their business. It's kind of a weird dynamic, right?

Well, because the project paid for the equipment, right? Yep. So hopefully they can reuse it, but otherwise they write it off and, well, we don't know where that went.

They usually depend on the public to find it for them.

So, but having a telematics solution would help eliminate a lot of that drama and a lot of that headache. You know, there'd be nothing worse than having a company-owned vehicle that you didn't know the company owned get into an accident, and then suddenly you learn through a lawsuit that the company owned that vehicle and you were responsible for its maintenance, even though it hasn't seen your garage doors in 2 years. You know, so getting a good solution in place to track where they're at, you know, having a good inventory management solution from an asset perspective. We talk about accounting and trucking. This is big, but having a good operational system, you know, how do you do things with dispatch? How do you do things with load planning, routing? If you don't have a good system in place for that and you're doing everything with paper and pen or spreadsheets, heaven forbid, that's a good sign that, okay, this might be one of your first initiatives is we need to get some technology in here to help us with our business processes and our operations.

Yeah, technology is a great thing, obviously. It can also be intimidating if you're not used to using it. When I first took over this company in Texas, we had an FMIS, but it was 20 years old.

And they hadn't updated it. They hadn't updated it.

The company that originally sold it stopped supporting it. Just actually got rid of it, didn't even really do anything with it anymore. And so it was, okay, well, how productive is it for us to use this without any updates, without the technological advances that have taken place? And we discovered that there was a lot missing that would have helped us and given us those tools to make ourselves a lot more efficient. You know, technician timing or a lot of the advances in inventory or, you know, even something simple as in scheduling maintenance or whatever the case may be. So we went out and we evaluated, hey, this is our current system. Is this what we need or do we need something different? Because you could also have some of these technological, technological items in that you don't ever use. There's a lot of features in telematics that you may not need, but you could be paying for them. So is that the right telematics solution for you? There may be other things that you're using or that you have that you're not using, but you continue to pay for year in and year out. So do you have the right tools? If you don't, well, let's look at getting them. And do the tools that we currently have, are they the right ones for what we're doing? There's a lot of times I think that companies will go out and they'll invest in technology and they won't get the buy-in from the people who are actually using that technology. So it just sits there wasted. Either they don't use it at all or they don't use it to its full capabilities. And the best part is, is they're probably still paying for that. That— well, exactly. So it's one of two things. You either got a serious training issue where no one knows how to use it, or they don't like it because they think it's terrible, or whatever the case may be, or it's just something you don't need at all. So why are you paying for it, right?

You could have several applications that you bought in the prior that you're still paying for, you know, some diagnostic equipment that's no longer good. You might have a whole inventory full of parts that The trucks and vehicles have moved on. You know, I mean, that's part of that evaluation process as you're going through that is to make sure you understand what you've got. You know, I mean, there could be money laying around. We go back to the waste part of it. Right.

You know, and I think that's key too is, you know, Jeff, you mentioned this, but as you evaluate and you say, oh, well, we have a tool in place, but you had two distinctions there. One was we don't even need this and it's gone, or no, we do need something like this. Why isn't this one working? You know, we've had cases where I know clients have had evaluators come in and look at it and say, oh, well, you need to get a new system. Well, it's not that you need a new system. You just needed training on how to use the system you already had. The capabilities were already there. What was lacking was just the know-how. And like you said, maybe they just didn't want to use it and you just didn't have the buy-in that you needed. And that's where that political capital comes in, is when you understand the problems that they're having. And you can connect a solution to a pain, then suddenly that solution becomes a lot more digestible. Yeah. And it becomes like, okay, well, now I understand what that's going to do for me. Not just, you know, that you're forcing me to do something, but you're actually trying to solve a problem I'm having and make my life easier. And this tool is how we're going to do it. So just identifying that, you know, do we have the right tools in place? Do we have the wrong tools canceled and offloaded? And maybe it's just a training issue on the tooling. And so we need to get adoption in place for that. And then I think segues really nicely to the third thing that we want to look at. You know, the first one being just evaluate, figure out where you're at. Second thing is get the right tools in place. Otherwise it's going to be very difficult to do anything else because you won't have the data to back yourself up. But then the third thing is once you get those two in, you're going to see a skills gap and that's where you need to identify Where do we need training? How do we get the people that we have on board and get them to the level that we need to be at? If there's an issue with a process or a procedure, and maybe that we've got somebody running inventory that has no idea what a good inventory looks like, we need to get them trained so they understand this, because training somebody is a lot more cost effective than replacing them, especially in today's job market. Yep. So getting them the training they need. Maybe they're a technician, but they don't know anything about the new DEF systems that are out. Yeah, let's get them trained on that. Maybe they don't know anything about the new electronic systems that are in, you know, the new trucks that are coming on. How do we get them training? There's a lot of free training that's out there, especially from the OEMs, but that's a huge investment you can make in your technicians and your drivers, in your operations people. How do you get them the knowledge they need in order to be at the level that you're expecting them to be at? And finding that skills gap.

I think that's part of it too, to having your— making sure operations and maintenance are aligned, you know, doing the same goal. I mean, your goal is to get them vehicles. Their goal is to help you maintain those vehicles to a standard, you know. So I think, yeah, right away your operations partners are going to be critical to your success as you're coming into an organization. You know, you've got to have them, for example, filling out the DVIRs. They're the eyes and ears of everything on the road.

And sometimes in training them just might be explaining the process to them, how they, how their work and their impact trickles down to other people in the organization.

I always see that. That's one area I think is always missed. You know, this maintenance department doesn't train the driver department.

Well, maybe the driver department doesn't train the maintenance.

Yeah, either way. Yeah, either way. I mean, they have to be in lockstep to be successful.

Well, all you're doing when you spend that time and effort training is bettering yourself and your organization in general. There's that story where that CEO and CFO were talking and the CEO says to the CFO, "Hey, let's spend all this money to train our people." And the CFO says, "Well, what happens if we spend all this money and investment and train them and they leave?" The CEO looks at him and says, "Well, what if we don't and they stay?" Exactly.

That story is exactly it. Yeah, it's 100% out of that mentality. And I know people that have that mentality as well. What happens if we do this and they leave? And that is exactly it. Well, what if you don't and they stay? And they, they're just going to weigh your organization down. In order to get better, you're going to have to invest in your people. And your people— and I think that the other thing too that goes a long way to the retention is if you invest in them, they're more likely to stay. It's kind of a catch-22, but it's not even a catch-22. It's just You know, maybe we call that a consequence of being a good person, is that people want to stay around you because you've invested in them and you care about who they are.

Yeah, but even if they, even if they leave after you spend that time training, you're still going to get value out of it, right? Because they're not going to, hey, I'm going to go through training and then the day after it ends I'm going to quit and leave, right? You're going to train them, then they're going to spend time utilizing those tools that they learned bettering themselves, bettering the organization overall. If they end up leaving down the road, well, good for them. Maybe they found something better that's better suited for them.

Well, and odds are what you're doing for them too is that training is going to get them a skill that you're going to get a little bit of what we call a— I'll call it an employee discount, where you're going to get that cheaper because you trained them than if you went out and hired for that skill right out of the gate. And so while they're working for you, you're actually getting it a little bit of a discount. Then they can go out and find a better paying job. And so you are investing in them and their future. Hopefully, you know, and I know not every fleet department can do this because budgets are tight, but hopefully as time goes on, you're able to reward them as well. So you don't have them leaving for a better paying job, but know that if that's what happens, then at least you got something out of it. And both, both parties ended up benefiting from that.

I think there's also a fine balance as you're coming into an organization. You need to exhibit leadership skills 'cause you're kind of, as soon as you hit the ground, you're setting the culture, right? And so you have to have the right leadership skills as you're going through that process. Make sure you're approachable, make sure you're inclusive, make sure you're communicative so that when, by the time you get to the fifth step that we're gonna be talking about, the trust is built in the organization.

Yeah, I think one of the things when I look at building skills too is that you mentioned this, it's not just about job skills, but it's also evaluating the culture fits and setting the culture and you as the leader being the example of what that culture is going to be. You know, we talk about one of the second pillars of fleet success being setting an intentional culture. And if that culture isn't well-defined, Define it. Define what it is you're looking for. And every leader that's going to come in, you know, you see this in NFL teams, every coach comes in, every leadership change there is, there's always something a little bit different that that person does. And unless you came up in this organization, odds are is you're going to have a different way of doing things than they're used to. You need to get really clear about what those differences are and if they're deal breakers or not. Get really clear about what it is that you're looking for and expecting out of your people. From a behavior standpoint. And then know too that you're going to commit and say, when we bring on new people, this is the type of person we're bringing on. This is the culture that we're defining here. And if, and if you're in a turnaround situation, it's even more imperative that you do this. If it's not necessarily a turnaround situation where you're having to rescue it or save it from itself, then that can be a little bit more of an organic process. Involve them in defining it if it's not been defined already. If it has been defined, then— actually, I'm going to go back a step here. Your first 60 days almost needs to be as much about you evaluating your fit in the organization and whether or not you fit that culture, if it's been defined. If it's not been defined or you just can tell you don't really fit this place, there's going to be a lot of work in order to define it and redefine it based around your needs and your feelings and personalities. But I think that's just as critical as getting the right people on the bus as getting the right people in the right seats and getting them up to the skill level they need to do that job. So, so that's number 3, is getting your skills and your people where they need to be. 4 then really becomes about processes and procedures. And, you know, Steve, anytime you go into a consulting gig, it was always about, well, show me your documents, show me your documentation. Where's your policy on this? What process do you use for this? And it's, it's about having that stuff documented. As much as we hate, you know, I know a lot of us, not all of us, but a lot of us hate the word documentation, policy. There's a benefit to it. You have to think beyond yourself.

Oh yeah, that's the most difficult part about it. I mean, if we're all working together in harmony and everything's going well, then you probably don't have a real need for policies and procedures to be documented. But as soon as one of us quits and moves on, all of a sudden bring in something, then it becomes a crisis, right? You know, you think about all the people, the great— you call it the great resignation, you know, the mass retirements that are going on. The great realignment. Yeah, all the stuff that's going on. If you don't have things well documented and procedures laid out, how can you expect anybody, you know, to really perform at their top level?

Well, there's gonna be a huge loss of productivity when the new person has to come in and take over for a job that they don't know how to do. Because the old person leaving didn't have any of their practices defined. Yeah, you don't know what this person was doing all day, let alone how they were doing it.

And that's always the hard part because, I mean, if a person leaves, it's a good time to do that because, you know, you could do the new with the old, right? Right. I mean, there could be some things that person was doing that are not useful, but it also gives you the opportunity. And that's part of the documentation process— see what you've got already and You know, when's the last time you looked at policies and procedures? Has it been 10 years? You know, I mean, those should be looked at every 1 to 2 years.

You need to be reviewing, make sure they're relevant, you know, right? That you don't have a policy that is suddenly not relevant for the times that you're in. Or, you know, maybe you've got a handbook and there's nothing in your handbook about COVID Yeah, probably ought to have a paragraph about that now, you know, that there's things that need to be updated, the things are rapidly changing in the world around us, we need to make sure our policies and documents are doing the same thing.

Well, and Jeff, when he was running a trucking company, one of the first things you're going to start looking at is, you know, what's your CSA score? How are you compliant, you know, with the industry? I mean, they could shut you down immediately if you're not compliant, right?

Well, didn't you have somebody that said they were doing something but weren't because they thought that they were doing the company a favor?

Oh, he was falsifying logs. We were missing driver logs, and so he thought it'd be a good idea to falsify them. And turn those into the DOT officer sitting like two doors down. Well, they were missing, so we had to have them, so I just forged all these signatures. Yeah, so I mean, that shouldn't be something you have to write down as a process or a procedure. Hey, don't lie to the government.

I think there is something to be said about that because a lot of times policy becomes what I like to call bureaucratic scar tissue. Yep. You know, that we create this stuff, this bureaucracy to to aim at the lowest common denominator. There is some element of common sense, but at the same time, sometimes you need it just to be written, is that, hey, if you're brand new coming into this industry and you've never been in this type of position before, this might be something you don't even know you need to do, is fill these papers out and how it— how the right way is for it to be done and who that needs to go to. You know, there's been times where you might have a document, maybe he had all the documents sitting in a file folder and he's like, we don't need these anymore, right? And he threw them away. Because he didn't understand the chain. And so having those just a simple policy or a procedure of, all right, this is the process and this is why. I think that's the biggest thing that we miss in our documentation.

Why does this document even exist? Kind of a retention policy. And, you know, what is the purpose of the document?

Is this even relevant anymore? Is this process still relevant?

I think people tend to hoard stuff and keep stuff forever. And there is times when you need to get rid of stuff. Right? But you got to do it, yeah, the right way.

I'm not a big advocate of a huge manual when it comes to your handbook or your policies and procedures though. You know, we, we make rules sometimes just to make rules and CYA stuff, right?

It's very, very annoying.

I mean, I worked at a company that you had like this 3-inch thick employee handbook and you're looking at it and you're like, this is just bullshit. I'm not— first of all, I'm not going to read all this, right? There's, there's no way. But just some of the things in there were dumb. It's like having to put, you know, on a coffee cup that it's hot. I mean, are you that big of a moron, right? But, you know, someone burned themselves, sued, won some money, so now everyone's trying to do that CYA you're talking about.

Well, I have a whole story about that. There's a whole backstory, like a Paul Harvey 'Now You Know the Rest of the Story' thing with the hot coffee. It's a different podcast, I think. Um, but But to your point, yes, like too much, you know, if you get HR too much or you have too much somebody in there that's like your general legal counsel wrote your HR manual, it probably isn't a very good HR manual because it is going to be a lot of CYA stuff instead of relevant, what do you need to know about succeeding at our company? And I think when I look at policies and procedures, that's what I'm looking at it through is what do I want a new employee coming into my organization to know and to learn as quickly as possible? And so, you know, like our documentation, we've thrown up in a tool called Trainual that helps them when they get in. It's got like a list of quizzes and tests and, you know, like we can throw in GIFs and make it fun and entertaining. So it's less stiff and formal and more engaging about what's really important about your job and where do you need to go when you can't find an answer? Because if you can train people how to find the answers for themselves, you'll be that much better than you would be of, okay, Well, you need to go through and do all these 6 steps. And then when you get to the end of that, you still don't know what to do. Go do this other procedure. And then after that procedure— and sometimes you just need to go talk to the guy next to you.

To Jeff's point, sometimes less policies is more. I mean, one of the reasons people don't update their policies frequently enough is because they're just too many. They're too onerous. Right. You know, it's a— there's a balance. Yeah, it's a big project. There's definitely a balance.

So And I think the other side of that too, that you mentioned, too many policies, it really stifles ownership. Yes. It stifles the ability for somebody to take on a process and say, I'm going to do this my own way. And as long as I fill what we call Commander's Intent, as long as I fill the mission, then it's okay. Instead, we prescribe everything and we basically remove all responsibility and authority from that individual to make any choices about their job. And if you want a great way to limit the ability of your organization, that's a good way to do it. Overprescribe policy, document everything, and if somebody steps out of the lines, nope, can't have it. That's a good way to stifle innovation at your company. Robots and monkeys. Yeah. Unfortunately, we don't work with any of those. Unless you're building cars, I guess you work with robots in those cases, but—

I've worked with some monkeys in the past. I don't know if that's true.

Well. Not all of us got to work at the zoo, Jeff, or Waterworld. So once you have all those, you've got at least an onboarding. I always like— your onboarding process is almost the most important one because it's the one that sets the tone. Have some training processes, have some documentation around that, make sure you've got it in a central place where people come, they know where to go look for things. Then you get to step 5, which I think is the most important step of all, And Jeff, step 5 is? Repeat the process. Repeat the process. Go through, start at the beginning, evaluate, take that same set of fresh eyes and look at it. Okay, what's next? What are the next things I need to go through? And is there more waste? Do I still have people issues? Is there a safety issue I need to work on next? How are my controls working? Are my inventory and purchasing controls in effect? What's my data look like? And you just go through that process again and you just keep iterating. And either upskilling and upleveling people, upleveling your technology, upleveling your processes, building out your culture, and you just rinse and repeat.

Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where things change all the time, so— and you may have missed something the first go-round, or the, the part of your business changed, you've got new customers or new things that you've got to go through. So if you don't constantly go through that evaluation process and make those changes you're going to be right back where you were when you started at the very beginning when you got there.

There's two sayings that I go back to all the time. One of them is that your business, your organization, is perfectly designed to get the results that you get today. It's perfectly designed to get those results. The problem is that most of us aren't happy with those results, which means only one thing: the organization has to change. In order to get different results, the organization has to be designed differently. The other process I have, or the other saying that I always like to repeat, is "What got you here won't get you there." You know, whatever got you here, whatever success you've been able to have, if you want to change and get to another thing, like, you're gonna have to reinvent yourself. You're gonna have to think about things in a different light. The environment changes, the product changes, life changes. What got you here will not get you there.

You know what I think, you know, as we're wrapping this up, you know, I think the last thing you need to think about is change management, you know, getting people to that next level. You know, if you're— especially if you're a new fleet manager and you're going to start implementing a lot of change, you better be prepared to take those people through that change. Yeah, because some of the— some changes can be harsh on people.

Well, and anytime you do change management, I think I've heard it said that 10% of the people will be 100% behind you. Another 80% of the people will be kind of on the fence. They're not really sure, but they'll see where it goes and they'll follow along. And then you're gonna have 10% of the people who just absolutely will not agree and they won't go with you. And you have to make a decision very quickly about what to do with those last 10%. Bye, Felicia! Right? Because you can't have them holding back the organization just because of their love for the status quo. The other thing to look at it when you think about leadership and what leadership really is, leadership at its core is influence. I probably have said that before, but I say it because I believe it. Leadership is nothing more than influence, and maybe that's a little bit trite, but it's all about helping people find the motivation to do what you want them to do because they want to do it. That is the art of leadership. That might sound manipulative, But that's really what it's about, is about painting a picture, about setting a vision, about saying, look, there's a pain and we're going to solve that pain and we're going to get rid of it. And this is how we're going to do it. Do you want to do this with me? And getting people to row with you and follow you to a desired outcome, knowing that, you know, yeah, this isn't exactly what I had in mind, but I know what this is going to work out for me. And I want to do that thing now. I'm not doing it because Steve told me to do it. I'm doing it because I want what Steve told me I could get.

I've been a leader for over 30 years, and that's the first thing my wife always tells me. I'm not one of your people. You don't need to manipulate me. I always laugh. That's what she— that's what she thinks I am, is a manipulator. But I said, no, it's called teamwork and leadership and trying to get people to be on the same page with you. But ultimately, if you look at the traits of leadership, influencing is one of the traits. That's all it is. You have to have it.

You can't be a leader without followers. That's just the definition of it.

You know what I got out of that right there?

What did you get out of it?

Don't go to Steve for marital advice. Seriously. That's all I got out of that.

That's probably really good advice. Although I have been married for over 40 years.

It's a good thing he's a Fleet Hall of Famer. That's right. This is a Fleet Success Show. If you're tuning in and looking for marital advice, this is the The worst show to listen to. I could probably turn you on to about 5 other podcasts. All right. Well, I think that's going to wrap it up for us today. Again, thanks to everybody for listening. If you have any comments or questions that you'd like us to answer, email podcast@rtafleet.com and we'll see you next time.

I'm going to make like a tree and leaf. Till next time.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Fleet Success Show. If you liked our show, we'd appreciate your 5-star review. Be sure to subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts and come hang out with us anywhere on social media at Fleet Success. See you next time.