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Subject: Your Role Is To Figure Out How & Why. Workers’ Roles Are To Do & Try.

Author: Dennis S. Vogel

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 22:30:06 07/14/09 Tue In reply to: Hillary 's message, "I'm confused about Nascent Processes" on 15:30:15 03/12/09 Thu Here’s an example (analogy) I’ll use to start explaining what comes next. (I promise I’ll tie it in effectively.) I know many will disagree with this, but it’s my opinion. It’s inefficient to have doctors teaching undergraduate classes. Doctors are overqualified for the job. Somebody who has a bachelor’s degree can adequately teach general education courses & anything below a graduate level. A college-educated professor can answer basic questions as easily as a professor with doctorate. Generally, in academics, answers to advanced questions wouldn’t help anybody until they’re tested on the advanced knowledge. That would happen in graduate school. This should be a safe assumption: Somebody, who knows a subject well enough to graduate from college with a bachelor’s degree, knows (hopefully remembers) enough to provide an identical education for other students. This education would be good enough to confer bachelor’s degrees. (Think of this logically. When graduate students study to get doctorates, do the professors have degrees a few levels above what the students want? NO! Doctorates are the highest. The education produced is good enough for the students to graduate.) Doctors/professors can do research, those with less education aren’t qualified to do & can supervise researchers. Maybe those researchers would be students or interns. There’s a snob factor in being educated by professors with the highest credentials, but it doesn’t mean a student is better educated or prepared for a career. Some employers are more interested in having employees who have college degrees than they (employers) are interested in the education or field of study. There’s a big difference between having a degree & getting, then retaining an education. Some employers are picky about which schools potential employees attended. (This is another inefficiency—It doesn’t make sense.) Here’s how this analogy may apply to your situation: In the short-term, it may seem more efficient & effective for you to do a task, instead of training somebody to do it. You probably have more knowledge & skill than the result justifies. You’re also probably overqualified for the job of a trainer. When somebody in an entry-level job (with entry-level wages) can produce essentially the same results as you can, you should only do those tasks occasionally. By using optimal marketing, you can increase your business revenue enough to cover somebody else’s wages. If your customers get just as much benefit from an employee’s work as they can get from yours, you should do higher-level tasks. It’s vital for you to still have contact with customers, so you don’t lose your perspective. You may be overqualified in serving some customers. (You shouldn’t tell them if you are, since that could offend them.) If they want/need basic service & their questions require entry-level knowledge, you can have somebody else serve them while you focus on creating more value for your whole customer base. Depending how big you’re staff is/will be, you should decide if you’ll have somebody specifically in charge of training. The trainer can do other tasks when there aren’t any trainees. Having designated trainers makes it easier to have consistent, standardized training. Having any experienced worker train new workers can be ineffective & inefficient because knowing how to do something is different than knowing to teach others to do it. Side Note: Some self-important people will insist on being served by the top person (owner/manager). I’m against arbitrary price increases, but if somebody will only accept your work, the fact you did it may be worth a higher price to that person. A higher price may encourage people to save money & accept employees’ work. Customers may object to paying more for the owner’s work & may say, “It’s not worth that much. I can get the same thing for less money when an employee does the work.” ***Exactly!*** Sometimes, I think people expect to served by—or at least meet—the business founder because his/her name is in the business name. Somebody, who decides to buy from Hank Smith Fashions, may figure Hank would be involved in the transaction. Why would Hank put his name on his business, if he doesn’t intend to serve people? However, if a business name is Valu Books, people will expect good value, but they won’t expect to meet “Valu”. People feel like bait-&-switch victims when they feel lured into a business transaction by the expectation of being served by senior people but the work is really done by entry-level people. Example: My name isn’t part of this forum/blog’s name, but it’s still part of the forum. GRand Mushroom sometimes offers adequate insights. So, I could kick back for a while. But I’m expected to contribute also. (I’m also expected to edit out some improper messages & comments, right? GR M?) Factors In The Decision About Trainers Do you have an employee who did a job enough to master it? Do you think s/he will still work for you long enough to justify your extra investment in being taught how to train people? If you don’t & won’t have a designated trainer, do you have an employee who will consistently & patiently mentor a trainee? If a trainee doesn’t have the same schedule as a mentor, the training may be haphazardly left to whomever is available. Whoever is available may not know what a trainee was already thought or how thoroughly. Example: If you’re a trainee & I'm your mentor for a day, I’d end up asking what you learned from the previous mentor. You may think & claim you learned something, but as a trainee, you probably wouldn’t realize how much you don’t know. Because of this problem, a trainee can have a job for a year & still not have fully learned to do any tasks. Some people want to fake it until they make it. But without an experienced perspective, how would s/he know if/when s/he’s made it? S/he may be faking without realizing it. A simple example: A trainee may think s/he knows how to put a price sticker on a product. After all, how hard could it be? But many price stickers are made to shred if somebody tries to remove them. When a removed sticker is shredded, a dishonest “customer” isn't apt to successfully switch prices to get an expensive product for a cheaper price. But the proper way—to place a price sticker—is to be sure it can’t be removed intact. A trainee may not realize that & haphazardly slap stickers on. Your store could sell a lot of products & become bankrupted because the price discrepancies may not be drastic enough to be noticed by a stressed, distracted cashier. When you keep ordering more products to replace those that sold for the wrong prices, you could lose thousands of dollars on hundreds of sales. You could lose all of that money about $5 at a time, so in the short-term it may go unnoticed. That $5 per product could’ve been your whole net profit per product. As inflation increases, it’d decrease the value of the rest of your gross margin. Hopefully, I’ve persuaded you to institute consistently complete training whether you have designated trainers or not. Dennis S. Vogel thrivingbusiness@email.com You can only have a thriving business if your messages to consumers & employees stick long enough to get a desired result. You can find some of what you need by sticking around here & using these URLs. http://www.lakefield.net/~thrivingbusiness/ http://www.voy.com/31049/ [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

Subject	Author	Date
Should A Boss Occasionally Do Nonexecutive Labor?	Dennis S. Vogel	01:02:08 09/20/09 Sun
Re: Should A Boss Occasionally Do Nonexecutive Labor?	Cris	18:56:09 09/20/09 Sun
You're Right. Accuracy Is Always Vital. -- Dennis S. Vogel, 22:14:15 09/21/09 Mon