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While efficient profitability is the objective for being in business, travelling the path engulfed in discipline, process and training are only the definitions of insanity and disappointment. Only the authentic behavior of your people will build the efficiencies you want to achieve except it is done naturally and not with all the utility training, process and the rules.

Of course along the way everyone needs to know what guidelines and benchmarks to play with otherwise the enthusiasm would be drowned in lack of clarity.

In auto retailing our biggest detriment has been the employee turnover and lack of loyalty. It is hardly driven by anything else other than inadequate leadership that is not empowering and nurturing. In today’s society it is more important to care for each individual for who they are and what they are inspired to do than holding them up to a measuring stick and quantify what they are capable of by the number of cars they sell and the revenue they generate. As Dr. Deming said “You need to be concerned with the production capacity and not the production itself”. In this case your people and I mean not just some but all of them represent your production capacity; nurture them.

Keep in mind that if you have just done this, you are basically measuring against the average performance of retailers in South Western U.S. I have clients who are at 6.5% ROS and our composite average is 3.5%. Over the years and after 120 plus clients across four states, I can proudly say that we did not achieve these results with training. We did it with humility, compassion, nurturing and relentless determination that became an epidemic among most of our clients and their employees.

I always remember and am inspired by John Wooden’s famous advise to his players, “when you think you practiced enough and got tired of it practice some more.”

See you next month.

Arlan

arlan@tarhangroup.com