Josh Wilkerson
Forum Replies Created
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I appreciate your advice regarding my situation. I have actually tried two of the suggestions (1 and 2). I returned to the shop in January after being gone for 1 year. This actually helped our relationship and gave me perspective on my situation. After posing my question the other day I spent some time thinking about this and I realized why my arguments aren’t getting through. I’m arguing logic, reason, and math to someone whose actions are dictated by fear. I’m sure this situation isn’t unique since every shop owner who wants to pass on their shop has a good deal of fear/ anxiety although this one is fear of retirement, fear of loss of income (on his part), fear of changing the shop in a way that damages the business. This realization helped me mainly because I had only superficially considered his motivation in the past (why he considered all of my suggestions as wrong without trying them first). Obviously our shop needs a turn around in almost every area, but all of the operational metrics don’t really mean much if you can’t get management on the same page. I also realized that I have to consider myself as part of the problem as well in that I know I have areas that could be greatly improved.
I remember reading the book “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” where the author explains that when you work diligently on your sphere of control that many times problems actually become diminished because your spheres of influence and concern realign to fit the things that you have control over. If I work hard on the many areas of the shop that I have daily and direct control over and don’t allow myself to be concerned with things I have no control over then I won’t waste energy on things I currently can’t fix. I’m not so naive as to believe that I can just bury my head in the sand and everything will be fine, but worrying about this is unproductive and since we have so many inefficiencies already my time is better spent right now learning better methods, procedures, and strategies for my daily responsibilities. While I believe most of the users of this forum may have already had this realization I just wanted to share so possibly someone in a similar situation can use this because there are many baby boomers who will be retiring in the next few years. -
As to the idea of cutting the workforce given current production that thought has been considered (at least by me) several times. I wouldn’t expect them to keep me on if I couldn’t pay for my own salary with my labor and parts sales. We have a long history of doing this wrong so we have set ourselves up for this.
On a separate but related note has anyone been through this situation where you can see the problem and the fix but because you’re not calling the shots you can’t really affect the situation positively. I have tried showing my argument in black and white explaining every way I know how. The conversation basically ends with “we’re not doing it that way” along with an irrational argument all of this to avoid the reality of facing our situation. I ask this not to air dirty laundry but simply to ask for ways to resolve this since reason and math don’t seem to work.
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OK so basically I should approach this in increments. So when I move everyone to 40 hrs do I keep salaries at the same level or change them to reflect less hours worked? My techs are like most I’m sure in that they live paycheck to paycheck so any reduction in take home pay means I may be looking for techs. They’ve never had their checks go down in a bad week/month which is our fault.
