Signs indicating the challenges and changes we will face often are posted many years in advance and often from industry leaders. The current changes to the EPA requirements and the trend towards waterborne products have been with us since 1990. The lack of qualified technicians and slow entry of new personnel into the industry has been an issue for at least 25 years. The decline in the number of claims creating a surplus of repair shops has been predicted for over 25 years. The increased requirements to operate a collision repair business today are nothing like what my grandfather or father had to deal with in the "good old days."
So why haven't some of you been taking the time to look at your businesses outside your daily tasks? Let me use the constant focus on new technology as an example.
The pace of operating a business today is like everything else in daily life — accelerated to almost light speed. When fax machines first came out, I distinctively remember thinking, "What in the world would anybody need one of these machines for?" Now e-mail isn't fast enough. The speed of instant messaging and text messaging often is so fast it can create stress levels we can't handle at times.
In the last three months I have been tracking the telephone call minutes as well as the text messages of my two daughters (18 and 21 years old). You'd be astonished how much today's 15-21 year olds spend their lives on these two communication devices. My daughters average between 3,200-3,600 text messages per month and have telephone minutes averaging 2,000–2,400. Doing the math simply, and giving text messages 30 seconds of read and respond time, this works out to slightly over 30 hours per month spent messaging. The telephone time breaks down to 40 hours per month as well. That's 70 hours of every month my daughters spend holding and using their cellular phones.
Looking at how they could be productive doing other things during the day sheds a discerning light on this technology. A 30-day month consists of 720 total hours. If you consider both my daughters also like to sleep or nap when not in school or athletics, I can safely remove 240 hours from the total hours to 480 hours of waking time (30 days @ eight hours per day). If I take the time they spend in school in which cell phones are not supposed to be allowed that also reduces the total available "cellular" time down to 340 hours (20 school days @ seven hours per day). There are also times in the month I assume the phone is not in use as well such as when they are showering (since I don't buy the waterproof versions of these phones), attending church or participating in athletics such as their basketball practices and games.
Bottom line is that my daughters have only 300 available hours each month when they could be messaging. That means they get a text message every five minutes (3,600 texts in 300 hours equals 12 per hour). They also handle telephone calls at a rate of eight per hour or one every seven and a half minutes. Basically their cellular phones are in use every three minutes of every waking hour each month.
Last year my younger daughter did not meet our household's minimum grade requirements in school, so I turned her cellular telephone off for four months. In fact, I must admit, I actually broke it in half so I or her mother would not break down before the required punishment end time. I was amazed that this denial of a fairly new technology was to my daughter the equivalent of a "caning" in Singapore or of her losing her best friend. It actually was the most effective behavior-changing punishment I have ever seen. This removal of a time-wasting device freed so much time that she actually had time to concentrate on her schoolwork. She had no interruptions since we also do not allow instant messaging on the computers, Facebook or MySpace access. TV and couch time were limited to one hour per day with the family. We limited e-mail and Internet access to school work only.
So what does this have to do with your business? In your business there are many "time wasters" that can suck you into a deep hole that keeps you from looking at your business from the outside. They pull you in, and the harder you work, the stronger they get, making them even more wasteful. They are just like the Chinese finger traps we played with when we were kids. The harder you pull, the stronger they keep a hold upon your fingers.
Today it is critical for the owner or general manager of the collision business to be able to look at the business away from the daily processes, challenges and issues. Give these factors constant priority, and you end up putting out fires at the same rate my daughters use their cell phones. They become time wasters. That's unfortunate because there are many resources available to make necessary changes to your business, but most will not utilize them. This is really a shame since most of the businesses I have seen that fail or severely struggle do so because the business owner or general manager waits too long to get or ask for help.
One last comment, at the end of her punishment, my daughter said, "I don't see how you lived back in the days before cellular phones and the Internet." I can only imagine how we ran our businesses in the past without much thought to the future or the changes that were taking place around us. Those days are gone. Those that are stuck in the past certainly will have a tough future ahead. Don't let it be your business. n
Please send your comments, questions and potential discussion topics you would like to see addressed in future columns to [email protected] . For additional information you can also visit www.aeii.net
