The Fleet Success Show: Episode 176: Fleet Coaching: Developing Technicians Into Tomorrow’s Leaders

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All right. Welcome back to the Fleet Success Show. I'm Facundo Tesara, joined here by Sarah Burnham. I'll introduce myself and she can introduce herself. A little bit about me. I started off a part-time job at my dad's mechanic shop, and then that kind of turned into, hey, I kind of like this business, and got into fleet management. Did a couple fleets when I started in Florida, then City of Norfolk in Virginia, then got into the tech startup world, spent 8 years there, which is a lifetime, 2 different tech startups, and then joined RTA to be a fleet success manager. So we work with customers and do a bunch of other stuff that we're going to talk about today. Sarah.

So I'm Sarah Burnham. I am currently with RTA, also in Fleet Success. I started out also in the automotive industry. Interesting enough, we have similar backgrounds. I worked at a repair shop, started there literally my first week I graduated high school, started working with fleet people, and I'm like, what is this fleet thing? It seems interesting. So I got on at the patrol And then I eventually went to Palm Beach County where I was the Director of Fleet Management. And it's been a great career for me. Made Public Sector Fleet Manager of the Year in 2023. And then I got curious about just what else is out there. And I'm here today, super excited about what RTA does. We are all about helping fleets succeed. And I know I'm passionate about that. I know you're passionate about it. So, Excited to talk about Fleet Coaching and what we're doing.

So quick question for you, 'cause I know it was for me. How did you really end up in fleet? For me, it was a Google search. So it was like, I can't remember, it was automotive, government, and then fleet management. And I was like, wait a second, that matches what I've been doing for the last 12 years. And it matches now what I was doing for my master's, which was a public master's, a master's in public administration. and I was like, this is perfect. So then that's kind of how I got into it. What about you?

For me, it was, I was the highway patrol. When I worked at Goodyear, they would outsource their maintenance repairs to us. So I would call the fleet people to get authorization, and that's kind of how every time I would call, they were always happy. They were fun to talk to. And I liked the automotive side and the business side, like together. And I ended up waiting for a position to become open there, and I applied and got in. But Google is how I landed at Palm Beach County. I, I decided I wanted to move to paradise, Florida, and I literally Googled jobs in fleet in Florida, found the assistant job, assistant director job at Palm Beach County, and the rest is history.

So that's why I didn't— so similar for me working in my dad's shop, we were maintaining Customs and Border Patrol vehicles because we were right down the street from the airport. Also a couple other agencies, and it didn't even occur to me that they were all different vehicles and they were all fleet management. And I was already kind of involved, but I had no idea.

So anyway, yeah. So we've both been on the supplier side.

That's right.

Yeah.

So, all right, so what are we talking about today? Fleet coaching. So I'll give you a little bit of background and share of kind of how I came up with this concept. I don't want to say I came up with the idea, kind of was like, hey, we should do something about this. And then it turned into something. So it was kind of funny. I don't know when exactly it was, like at least 4 or 5 years ago, actually. We talked about this with Steve Saltskiver today. I approached Steve at one of the events, Government Fleet NAPA, and he was going, I think, up the escalator and I was going down. I was like, hey, Steve, hold on. So I got to the bottom, went back up to talk to him, and I said, what happens after consulting? And he's like, well, there's some things that consultants can do to help after consulting, but typically it's, you know, you give them a report, you get paid, and you, you know, present to the board or whatever it is, and off you go. So I was like, well, who's helping after the fact? Like, well, it's kind of on them. And so I was thinking at that point, I was like, there needs to be something after the fact. I don't know what I was thinking. I was thinking along the lines of implementation or coaching wasn't really a thought. And so I thought You know, okay, well, there's definitely a gap. And then, you know, kind of forgot about it, was doing my own thing at the time. And then it kind of really started to take shape a little bit more recently when I was thinking about some of the issues that always exist in the industry and continue to exist when I was there, and they still exist now, and they were before I was in the industry, which is the shortage of technicians. I would say kind of a shortage of every position, really. And so, um, I thought about, well, there needs to be some education that's happening for these professionals that, that tells them there's another career path. Like, if you're looking— if you're thinking about being a technician, if you're a young guy or girl that's looking to get into something and you're a young technician, maybe you think about what happens in 20 years, or what am I doing in 20 years. Maybe they don't, but maybe if they had somebody in front of them saying Well, you can get in as a technician and then you go to a supervisor, then you go to a manager, and then you go to some senior level thing. And that really wasn't being done. So then that was kind of the next step of like, okay, here's what fleet coaching could be. And then it kind of turned into when I joined RTA is like, hey, I'm having all these conversations with manager or fleet managers or fleet people and they have all these needs and goals and challenges. And my question to them was like, what are you kind of doing about it? Like, what are you going to do? And they're like, well, well, that's the thing is that we don't have a resource for that, or I can't get that kind of training. I can't go to my local college and say, hey, I want to learn about KPIs and fleet management. And I was like, hmm, I might have a solution for that. So that's kind of where we are today.

Yeah, I— there's such a need out there too. I mean, the options for fleet coaching are endless. Just from, so you have the fleet side of it, learning, having the skills to manage a fleet, using data, what have you. But then you have, as you mentioned earlier, like maybe you start out as a tech and you become a supervisor. So, having those either soft skills, leadership training. So, we have over 1,000 customers at RTA, and I know from talking with different fleets, everybody's at their own level of understanding and I think that's what makes this so exciting is like it's almost endless on what we can do, who we can coach, the skills that we can share.

And I would argue, and you were kind of going there anyway, was it's more— it's not just people are like, oh, fleet coaching, that's for fleet managers. Well, yeah, it could be. Maybe think about it like professional coaching or whatever. But there's also the very much like we talked about is it's also for those folks that are not at that level. That want to understand the career path. One of the Fleet Coaching things that we're doing now, one of the engagements is they have technicians that are moving into supervisor roles that have never been supervisors and have never managed folks other than themselves. So one of the things that we're talking about through this curriculum is, well, what is the difference between managing yourself as a technician and going through some of those metrics that they're thinking about And then how that changes when you become a supervisor. One of the things that I did for this group, um, as we talked about this, is I played the noise of a knocking engine to them. At first, when I hit play, it was really loud in the room, so it scared them. But, um, when I played it again, I was like, I want you guys to listen to that and tell me what it is. So they listened to it, and they're like, hmm. And one of them was like, you know, I was asking, I was like, well, what is that, guys? Listen to it. I'm like, that sounds like an engine knocking. I was like, yes, exactly. I was like, so think about that part of your brain that you just used, right? The listening part. Welcome to being a supervisor, right? Because now it's you got to listen a lot more than you're turning wrenches, and depending on how you're getting paid or whatever. And so it was interesting to see kind of like, okay, I understand now that I have to listen a lot more than I'm talking. And that's one of the things that some of these folks that are transitioning, I could see might struggle with or might think about, well, maybe this isn't the right thing for me. But that was interesting to, to see that.

Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of gaps in knowledge that we can help bring information to. I think it's really exciting. And I think when you think of a lot of like fleet managers that we all know and we respect, like Steve Saltskiver, Tony Yankovich, Scott Rood, all folks with RTA, but they started out as technicians and more than likely they had someone that helped mentor them or they went through some kind of training program. And a lot of especially smaller government fleets, they may not have those options, you know. And so now we're helping bring some of that— those opportunities to them.

So when you back out further from what's going on within an organization, the tech school side of it too. I've been talking to some folks about, well, let's talk about adding some stuff to your curriculum, you know, and bringing that education to those folks. I've had that conversation both on a technical college and also at the public school level and where I live in Florida to say, let's talk about including that into part of your curriculum because everybody knows, you know, hey, I want little Johnny to go to school to be a lawyer or a doctor and all that kind of stuff. A lot of times, and I wrote this article years ago, which was sometimes the plumber that's coming to your house— well, probably all the time— has less student debt than the doctor that they're at the house fixing the plumbing issue, but they're also billing them more per hour than the doctor bills. Um, so that's kind of eye-opening when you put it in that perspective, is that you have this career path that people need to be made aware of. Early on.

Yeah, I love that.

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A couple other things. So how does it work? Well, the Fleet coaching, the way it works is a lot of times it kind of comes from conversation that we're having with customers. Again, we realize they, they have an opportunity, they have a challenge, they want something done. They don't have the staff to, you know, teach people. For example, one, another engagement that we have, there's no middle management. There's the fleet manager and then there's a couple of shop supervisors and then shop staff. They have no middle management, and so they're trying to promote more from within. And so what we're basically doing is teaching their technicians that seem to have that ability to move into management some Fleet Management 101 concepts. And so they can understand how when they're doing a work order and they're creating a work order, the things they're putting into a work order, How is that gonna feed into the metrics that they're looking at and why does it matter? But they, you know, that's the way that they're looking to fill that middle management because they've been trying to fill 'em for a while and they can't recruit anybody. There's nobody interested in that area. So they're trying to bring people up from within to fill those roles and they're basically using us to teach them Fleet Management 101.

That's great. I think I love that because a lot of, I was talking to another fleet manager the other day and a lot of technicians, may not understand why they're having to input all this data. And so having that opportunity to explain it and how it could affect them in a big picture way is really key as well. And helping management understand that concept of helping explain the why of technicians are doing what they're doing.

And then the other thing is when you phrase it in a way like, How many KPIs are you tracking? Oh, we're tracking 50, right? Or something like that. And that's when you know, like, okay, well, you're doing way too much. Focus on the few. And they're like, what do you mean? We're only going to focus on a few? Like less than 5? What do you mean less than 5? Yeah, like 3. At that point they're like, wait, what? So when you talk about— and then you're like, well, let's talk about asset availability. And then you talk about the feeder metrics. And then they're like, what is a feeder metric? So you start talking about all these things that impact asset availability. They're like, Oh, that seems to make sense. And I think that's part of the coaching too, when we talk about maybe for more of the administrative or the fleet management levels that they can understand, because some of the fleet managers have either come up from being a technician. I know of another fleet manager that was like, hey, you were successful somewhere else doing X, Y, and Z, you get the fleet manager job. Here are the keys. Good luck. See you later. Right. And so they've been doing this position for— I know in one case, about 20 years and they've never had any formal fleet training. And so they're just kind of like, you know, what feels good today? Yeah. And then they just go with it without tracking these metrics.

Yeah. And how many times is it possible that the data they have isn't even correct or they're not inputting the right data?

Context of the data.

Yeah.

Like if your asset availability is like 85%, you're like, well, that's pretty good. 85% of the time. But that's not good.

Right, um, especially if they're not tracking it correctly. I mean, it could really be a useless number unless you know exactly what you're looking at and what you should be looking for.

So some other things with like, how does it work, is, you know, a couple of these, um, coaching gigs that we've done, uh, one of the first things is to build some context around what we're doing. We'll do an on-site to kind of do an evaluation of like Okay, here's this process and here's where that's set up and here's where that guy's office is and here's where the parts room is. Just so you can understand is as you're coaching for their very specific thing that they need, you understand how any recommendations that you have or whatever curriculum you're working on, you can basically map out. And I think that like for a consulting job that I just was pitching in to help on, I noticed one of the things was that when you looked at a map, literally, of their facility in their parking lot, it was kind of all over the place. And so it's like one of the first recommendations is like, organize what's going on outside so you don't spend 45 minutes looking for a vehicle for a job that's going to take 10 minutes. So that was kind of an interesting little thing.

Yeah. I mean, it also gives you a good insight into their fleet because every fleet is different. Every, you know, their makeup, their way the organization is set up, what they're managing is different. So, to be able to tailor the coaching to the specific fleet is awesome.

Well, and like you said, so like no set curriculum, right? There's no set curriculum for what coaching is. I've had somebody say to me, "Well, send me what the curriculum looks like." Well, it's based on the conversation that we're having about what you need. Tell me what you need and I'll design that specific curriculum and send it to you. and then, you know, build it around however, you know, you're able to spend money, which by the way, kind of brings us to the next point, which is one of the things, cool things that we've done here at RTA is that we now, when we're working with a customer that's purchasing, um, RTA, we're including that on the front end. And so you can have a set number of hours that you have part of these coaching hours that then you can renew next year. So as we all know, when we're talking with purchasing, we don't then have to go out and then justify this additional, however much money they're spending on coaching. It's part of their package of their RTA software. So that seems to be something that's pretty cool that's starting to gain some traction now. What else? So some of the things, as we talked about, that it covers is like implementation of KPIs, right? So we can talk about— well, the other thing it covers is what KPI should you be tracking? Like, why track these? The other part, I think the most important part of coaching is kind of like the handholding that goes on. Like, I'm the, you know, one of the things that we set up for the coaching is, okay, so now we've gone through this initial curriculum part. So you go through the initial curriculum part, and then towards the end, if you have, say, 8 supervisors that are participating in this coaching, we'll all start to set up one-on-ones with them individually for the last 30 or 60 days to help them work through specifically the things that they're struggling on. To, to help whatever, implement some of the things that we've shown them, or to help solve some of the challenges that they're having. One in particular, I asked all of the supervisors to say, what are the things they're struggling with? Time management, getting people to bring their vehicles in on time, a lot of different things. So I'll work specifically with them on strategies and things they can do to overcome those challenges.

Yeah, I've even had conversations with folks on leadership skills. Like, how— I had, um, one person ask, like, what, like, what do you mean they're not listening to me when I tell them to do something? You know, like, motivating other people, learning those skills, and how do you tie, um, what's important to one person, how do you use that to help motivate them and to be tied into what they're doing?

Um, that's hard in government, right? Because you can't use money to motivate them.

Correct.

And that's definitely not usually the motivator.

Right.

What did you, I'm curious, what did you do to motivate your people?

So to find out what drives them, like what, why do they want to be a tech? Like, is it because they like solving challenges? Maybe they like, you know, the aspects of working for the community. Maybe they like that, you know, it's an ever-evolving, vehicles are ever-evolving technology and having to keep up with that. And that there's endless— you're not doing the same thing every day. You know, it's always changing. And like being— when you're communicating with people, tying it back to what you're doing to those things and just making sure that it all kind of comes together.

To be honest, I kind of struggled with that when I came from the private sector. Automotive to fleet management, how do you motivate people? And so the first thing I went with was, well, how do I feel about the job that I have and what motivates me? And what motivated me was, kind of came to me in the way that it came into my mind was, well, we are the city, right? So everything we do, everything we touch, it was every service that happens in the city is fleet management. When you call 911, You know, part of the service is somebody takes your call, figures out what you need, you know, they do the dispatch of the vehicle, off it goes. Well, if the vehicle doesn't start when that fire truck is trying to leave, well, then fleet management played a role in that, you know, and, and if it starts and if it goes to the scene, and I would always have this conversation about particularly fire apparatus and trying to justify getting new ones is I might be able to get your fire apparatus to start, but that's only half of the gig. Because when you get to the scene of the fire and you need to turn on the pump to pump the water, if that doesn't work, then we still suck, right?

Right.

And so, um, you know, that's— there's so many elements to, to getting it right. And that, to me, kind of made it feel like a sense of community. There's this story I always tell where We had a supervisor in the night shop who had an emergency one day and had to call 911. And the truck that responded was a truck that had been in the shop that he was aware of, that I remember the technician's name, Dennis, was working on. And so Don, Don, if you're listening, you can type something in the comments here. But So Don called 911, the truck responded. He saw that it was a unit that Dennis had been working on. And so that Monday when he went in, he went and he thanked Dennis for his work.

I love that.

Because he knew that he had been working on that truck. It came to his house, helped his family. Everybody was okay, thank God. Yeah. And I just thought that was a really cool story to kind of tie back, you know, fleet is the community.

Yeah. One of my favorite things to do sometimes when I would start meetings would be like, so how many of you drove on a county road this morning?

Yeah.

Or did you hang out at a county beach this weekend? Or did you go to the library? Like, because, you know, everything fleet does touches all these things and being able to tie that back in your communication and as often as possible, I think is key as well.

Thanks for joining. Check us out on RTAFleet.com and download the podcast wherever you check out your podcast or YouTube if you You want to see us instead of hear us. See ya.

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