Best Practice on Education:
How Does Your Company Compare?
Many senior managers know they should be training their people, especially their key managers. Top performing contractors and businesses of all sizes have formal education programs. People in positions like; project manager, shop manager, senior estimator, superintendent, foreman and certainly top line executives, all need to stay on top of their game. If the only place or way for your people to get knowledge is from on-the-job experience, your company is paying a horrendous price. This puts you a long way from maximizing your company's potential to increase profits.
There is only one reason companies spend money to train their employees. That reason is that education makes companies money, period. The minimum Return on Investment (ROI) you should expect to get from a well designed class with a good presenter is ten dollars for every dollar you spend on education! Motorola, a long time leader in educating its managers and staff estimates their average payback per dollar spent is $44.00.
How do you recruit, keep and bring out the best in your key people? What have you done this year to re-motivate and energize your staff and in particular your managers? Our businesses have a way of sucking the life out of people. Long hours, continuous pressures and problems all create stress. You get tired of it all. How much more do you think this all affects your people? Well designed and led education programs will certainly motivate. But, even more, these programs will make permanent changes in people. A few of these changes are; acceptance of change, creativity, desire to be better, improve quality of work, acceptance of company policies and many, many more areas.
Jack Welch who successfully led General Electric to new highs, credited his management training program that they conducted in-house at Crotonville, NY, for much of his success. Welch used Crotonville not only as a place to educate GE employees, but as a medium to spread the changes in culture and thinking that have helped make GE what it is today. In Jack’s own words, he said "The GE of the future will be based on the cherished values that drive us today: mutual trust and the unending, insatiable, boundary-less thirst for the world's best ideas and best people."
Do you want the best people and ideas in your company? You need to take on responsibility for change. But how do you do this? It is really quite easy and you do not need to have a purse the size of G. E.’s, to do it. Number one, I would recommend that you stop being your company’s “expert”. (The one with all the answers, the one every one comes to get answers.) There is an interesting definition of an Expert. The story goes that an expert is a person who is more than 50 miles away from home with a briefcase!
This story draws from ancient writings about a man who roughly 2,000 years ago stated that “a man cannot be a prophet in his hometown”. In case you do not know who said this, it was said by no less than Jesus Christ himself. You can read his exact quote at Mark 6:4. I figure that if he could not do it, I probably will have trouble doing it. By being the “expert” in your company, you set yourself up for failure.
The best advice on education for your people that I can give you is to bring into your company experts in from outside to say what needs to be said. Your life will be a lot easier. When the expert leaves you just bring up and remind your people of what they learned from the expert.
How do you do this? Companies, just like your company, are planning to bring speakers, educators and experts into their company at this time of the year or early next year. Below are some resources that would greatly benefit you.
By the way if you think that because you send your people to a trade show and sign them up for classes, you are meeting the Best Practice Standards. Well, I am sorry to tell you that you are not there yet. The accepted standard for all management level people (including you), is a minimum of 45 hours a year of continuing education.
I am not criticizing you for sending people or going to trade shows. You should be doing this. I conduct trade show seminars. Here is a link to a video of a class I did at ConExpo (http://www.conexpoconagg.com/). The class was delivered to one of their largest audiences and highly successful. The title of the course is, “How much does that machine cost? Click here to see the video. http://machinecost.blogspot.com/
If you watch this video and you should, you only have 44 more hours to go this year.
If all of this does not apply to your company, please go: http://www.decisivecost.blogspot.com/ and comment on what your company is doing and how your company is actively involved in annual employee and management education. It may be an inspiration for others in our business
Many of you know a little about me from my previous contacts to you. But do you know that every year, I also conduct classes for companies interested in improving their management team? I have spoken to groups, organizations and businesses all over the world. I go wherever you need me to go. I have worked with groups of five people to five hundred. (I have found that doing a two-day class with 500 is interesting, but I’d suggest that if you can, limit it to 25 people for the best classes. If you have a larger group, I might suggest multiple classes.)
Here are some of my classes that may help you and your people to grow. Often these are classes are conducted in one or two-day formats and are modified to better fit your company and its goals.
- Achieving Excellence in Project Management
- Best Practices in Construction Supervision
- Best Practices in Construction Productivity
- Best Practices in Construction Quality Management
- Best Practices in Heavy Equipment Costing
To get more information on any of these classes or bringing these courses for your company or association, just call or e-mail me.
