61. The 3 Elements of Change

Foreign. Hey, my friend. Welcome back to Leadership in a Nutshell. For the home service professional, I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. This is episode 61. We cracked that 60 mark. Here we are this week, episode 61, and I want to talk to you about three elements of change. Yes, I wrote the book six dimensions of change 2.0 is out. Grab that on audible. If you haven't given it a listen, I promise I read it better than that. I did the reading for it. That was a challenge because I'm a speaker and a writer, but I'm not a reader. So I read to you. I'll read you a little story time book. Go grab six dimensions of change 2.0. Today, I want to talk about three elements of change. And so there's all kinds of. We could do an entire podcast just around change and breaking it down. And obviously, in Leadership in a Nutshell, here, when we focus on home service, we talk about change a lot. And today I just, I want to kind of think around the three main components, and they are processes, technology, and people. And so, you know, when we. If you're. If you're taking notes, just jot those down. Processes, technology, and people. And so this is an important topic to me because, you know, I'm blessed enough to have entered the home service space in 1994. So here we are, you know, next. Next month at the. Actually, I've already passed it 20, 27 years. Now, a couple months ago is 27 years that I've been in the home service space. As I track toward 30 years here, what I've realized is that, you know, processes, technology, and people have always been three elements of change. But the fascinating thing that's happening now in today's world is that there's a lot more of all of these. And so sometimes things get lost when we're creating change. Would you agree? I know we're not on video. Give me a head nod. All right, cool. Give me a thumbs up. All right, you're with me. Fair enough. Okay, cool. So. So when I, you know, you think about process. And so if you write this down, the processes are the. How the technology is for efficiency, and the people make or break the change. And I could get cutesy here. If I had a slide for you, I would type or I would. I would write break as make or break as in they'll break the process and it's not going to work. Or I would say break, and they could break the process like you're driving your car and they're gonna hit the brakes on creating any change. You see what I did there? I made that up on the fly, my friend. Watch out. So no, as I just, I gotta have a good time here with you. This is my opportunity to connect with you once a week. And I love the fact that our community's growing. Make sure you give us a rating a like a review and help us grow this community. Because home service is where it's at. It's where, that's why I'm on the planet. And I just want to continue to share some of my crazy mindset with your crazy mindset as we connect here. And you know, but, but when we make or break either B R E A K or B R A K E however you want to write it down. But we have processes that give us the. How the technology helps with the efficiency and then the people really make it or break it. So when we think about, you know, think about your dispatch software. When I started in 94, I had a whiteboard and a notebook and we wrote the client name up there. And what. That was a process. That was how we did it. And then technology enters in many different ways in many different forms. And now we have some amazing dispatch software and different technology that's available. Communication technology is staying in touch with clients. All the, you know, if you didn't have to, you no longer have to pull over. Your pager goes off and you pull over with. Get some quarters out of the ashtray and call a client back. Like technology's changed. But that was technology. I want you to think about this. My process was I wrote dispatches on a whiteboard. My technology was the answering service paged me with the client's name and phone number, repeated name and phone number. That was the technology. And then I would be able to go pull over and find a, find a payphone and call them back. And then that was where my people entered the phase. So that was by myself in a truck when I started as a dead broke drain cleaner. And then technology began evolving. And the next thing you know we got two way radios. Holy crap. I got a two way radio in my service vans. My dispatcher has a handheld back at the office. Now all of a sudden she's able to go beep beep, Kenny or anybody remember Nextel back in the day that beep beep Nextel. I worked in such a small market, we never had Nextel in our, in our heyday. So we had to use two way radios because it would run off a repeater up on the, the, the Grand Mesa there next to us. And so, you know, at the end of the day though, my people made or break that make, could make or break the technology. If my technicians didn't go to their van or they didn't answer a page or once we started wearing handhelds, everybody had a handheld two way radio and a tech left their handheld in the truck or they took it off to go under a house and dispatch couldn't get ahold of. Am I resonating? Some of you are going, good lord, Kenny, you're old. Guess what, I'm just getting started, baby. So we don't even know as technology, all these things are going to continue, evolve. Our processes are going to continue to evolve and change. The technology will evolve and change. We'll fast forward five years from now and we'll look at what we're doing now that we think is cutting edge and, and we'll laugh to each other and we'll give the nod at a live event and go, man, you remember back when we were doing that and there will be a time when we're going to go, man, you remember when we used to actually go, go to a client's home to quote a water heater and now everything's done video based and some of you are cringing and going, no, Kenny, it's not going to go there. That's fine. Feel what you feel. And I'm not here to predict or say what's coming in the future. What I'm here to do is help you navigate with whatever does come in the future and help you be prepared mentally, emotionally and subconsciously in order to do that. Because at the end of the day, the process is the how and then the tech, I'll say the technology. So I'm not talking about technicians. The technology supports the process and people support both. And so what I would encourage you to realize is, is as process, we got more driven. I went to the E. Myth Academy with Michael Gerber in December of 2000. Started in 94, beat my head against the wall a few years, realized I needed to get some help. I wanted to systematize. I wanted to have a self managing company even though I didn't understand what that was or what that could look like. Met Michael Gerber, got involved with E Myth, I should say I read the book first and then I got involved with Gerber and his philosophies. I started systematizing. So I attacked process. And then for me I went, wow, I can build process, I can implement the technology that we had. And for me the guy that you know, that loves people more than anything, values relationship more than anything on the planet. Guess what? People took a back seat to my process and my technology. I now said, wow, I can systematize. People can be interchangeable. I build systems so solid and so strong that that anybody can run my systems. And people went down on the totem pole, so to speak. And that's not where you want to go. And I know that because I did it. And it was a disconnect. It didn't resonate with me. I'm here on this planet to grow people, to help people grow themselves, to hold up a mirror, to help create behavior change, to help you draw out the very best in you to your greatness. And I went, hang on, wait a minute. So how can process and technology help people step into their next level of greatness? Understand that in the 2000 and 20s, we will be going through a new technology revolution. Every 30 to 40 years, the United States, Canada and Australia have an industrial revolution of some sort. Ours is going to be around technology. You're going to see a shift and change in how education is done in this industry for certain, I should say globally. Large colleges, student loan debt, all that stuff is going to have to change. There's process, there's technology that's going to enter the game and evolve in the game. And then people are going to embrace or not embrace, and we're going to have them make or break the changes that we want to see in home service, the education. We want them to adapt, adopt and apply best practices groups, the consultants, the people out there helping. Yes. I've got a company called the Blue Collar Success Group that if you're not involved in, you should see some of the incredible things my team is building over there. This is what it's all about, right? Helping each other. But I don't care where you get your education. I care. Well, I guess I do because I would love to have you as a client. That being said, I just want you to get what you want. I want you to win. And what I want you to think about in the three elements of change here today, process, technology, and people. We have this tendency to go, oh man, I'm going to dehumanize almost the process. So here's the process I want. I can whiteboard it out. I. I can apply some tech to it technology, meaning tech. And then I'll just have my people embrace it and run with it and some of that. Write this down. Consider your people at the onset, if you're Going to create change and you know it's going to involve process and technology. Get your people involved in the onset. Make sure you understand. Here's the deal. People need to understand why you're asking them to change. People need to know the change. They don't need to know all the details, they don't need to know every single thing, but they need to understand some why behind it. So anytime, if you know you've got to change process, if you know you're going to implement new technology, you've got to sell the why. I remember way back in the day in June, June 1, 2002, I bought a business. I closed on a new business 60 miles away from our, from our home office, if you will, in the service business. I bought another plumbing heating Air Co. 60 miles away, closed on that and implemented brand new service and dispatch software on the same day. And I'll never forget Robin, who ended up buying the business from me many years later. She came to me about a month into that and she said, don't you ever buy a business and implement a technology change like that all at the same time. Now the growth driven, quick to start leader in me, I was like, hey, this will be perfect. We're going to close on a new business and launch the new software across both platforms all at the same. Hey, it made perfect sense to me. People got involved and it was a challenge, it was a pain point. Had I sat down with Robin before I did that and said, hey, here's what I'm thinking, here's where we're at, maybe I could have avoided some of the pain that was created. Right? But you need to involve your people and you need to sell the problem of why. We might have had a conversation. She might have given me her thoughts and feedback around the change and I might have said, you know, that's cool, I get it. But here's the thing. We got a problem with communication of the two markets and how we're going to do it. Let's go ahead. We know our lumps. A couple episodes ago, I talked about effects and side effects. We're going to have some side effects from implementing this change. Let's know what they are. We, let's do our best with them and let's roll from there, right? So at the end of the day, uncertainty is scary for people. And I want you to honor that and understand that and realize that. So when you just start changing process or implementing technology and realizing that people are a component, but if you think they're the third component, or the least important component. You are completely wrong. And I know you're, you wouldn't be listening with me. You wouldn't, you wouldn't be jiving with me and, and on the same page with me to a level of wanting to tune in every week if you didn't know that people were a big important component here. Right? And so I just want to remind you of some stuff you already know, that uncertainty is scary for people. You know, we will have market corrections, we will have downturns, private equity money will, will leave the space or certainly slow down in the space. There's gonna be a lot of changes that are coming. It's gonna create a lot of uncertainty for people. And I want you to remember this, my friend. If you take nothing else from today's episode, I hope you take a few things, but I want you to realize there's no such thing as business transition. You don't transition a business. All transition, all change, all progress is human led, human influenced, human managed. So business goes through a transition, but there's no such thing as business transition. There's only human transition. No different than. I don't believe that history repeats itself. I believe that human behavior repeats itself at different time on the calendar with a different understanding of the world. And so as we see different things take place and as we move into, you know, moving through the 2020s and get the amazing opportunity to operate home service companies through arguably one of the greatest changes with process, with technology, with people, with going through the challenges, skilled labor with the opportunity of technology handling more and more complexity, with processes easier than ever to implement and have buy in different things. That's what it's all about. Focus on the process of being how. Focus on the technology as being the efficiency. But make sure you double down on your people because they make or break everything that you want to do. And I know that you want to be an effective leader in the home service space. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. Leadership in a nutshell for home service professionals. This has been episode 61, Three Elements of Change. Make sure you give us a like a rating, a review, a follow. Join us here every week we're dropping on Tuesdays. Share this with somebody. Send them an email, copy a link. I would be very, very grateful until we talk. Make it a better than fantastic week. We'll see you real soon. Thanks everybody.