October 7, 2024 • 53 mins
Episode 339: At the Heavy Duty Consulting Corporation, we have partnered with TRAITS to help you with your people and organization. Having the right people is so important when predicting the success of your heavy-duty business. TRAITS is a psychometric assessment tool that can help you evaluate your team based on their personality fit for their job.
In this episode, Mike Moreau, President of TRAITS, explains that each job has a personality and that when the best person from a personality standpoint is doing that job, the chances of success and happiness go up. You will also have the opportunity to take your personality assessment for free.
Show Notes: Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com for complete show notes of this episode and to subscribe to all our content.
Sponsors of this Episode
Heavy Duty Consulting Corporation: Find out how many “fault codes” your heavy-duty parts business has. Meet with us today. Visit HeavyDutyConsulting.com
Hengst Filtration: There's a new premium filter option for fleets. If you're responsible for a fleet, you won't believe how much using Hengst filters will save you. But you've got to go to HeavyDutyPartsReport.com/Hengst to find out how much.
Diesel Laptops: Diesel Laptops is so much more than just a provider of diagnostic tools. They’re your shop efficiency solution company. Learn more about everything Diesel Laptops can do for you today by visiting DieselLaptops.com today.
HDA Truck Pride: They’re the heart of the independent parts and service channel. They have 750 parts stores and 450 service centers conveniently located across the US and Canada. Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com/HDATruckPride today to find a location near you.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jamie Irvine (00:00):
You're listening to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report.
I'm your host, Jamie Irvin, andthis is the place where we have
conversations that empowerheavy-duty people.
Welcome to another episode ofthe Heavy-Duty Parts Report
presented to you by theHeavy-Duty Consulting
Corporation.
I'm your host, Jamie Irvin.
(00:21):
One of the things that we arenoticing as an ongoing trend at
most of our clients is that,despite having to deal with a
number of very difficultproblems in their business,
people and organizationconsistently ranks at the top of
the list, and so we'rededicating today's episode to
(00:43):
talk about real strategies thatwill help you to put the right
people in the right positionswithin your company to get
optimal performance.
I hope you enjoy this extendedconversation with our featured
guest.
He's a real subject matterexpert in this regard and we are
(01:03):
really looking forward tohaving that conversation.
So I'm going to get right intothe interview now, because this
is a bit of an extendedinterview this week and I want
to make sure that we dedicate asmuch time to the interview as
possible.
So I hope you enjoy ourconversation with our featured
guest this week.
My guest today is Mike Morrow,President at Traits.
(01:25):
Mike, welcome to the Heavy-DutyParts Report.
So glad to have you here.
Mike Moreau (01:29):
Thanks for having me, jamie.
Good to be here, good to seeyou.
Jamie Irvine (01:33):
I think for people who are listening to the show
and you think of the Heavy-DutyParts Report, what are we
talking about when we talk abouttraits?
What are we talking about whilewe're talking about people?
Mike, a long time ago, many,many years ago, my mentor said
Jamie, the heavy-duty partsbusiness is a people business
always has been, always will be,and I think right now, as we
(01:55):
record this, there's some uniquechallenges that our industry is
facing when it comes to people,and so we're not really going
to talk about parts today, butwe are going to talk about the
people who make sure that thetrucking industry, which is the
backbone of society, has theparts they need to keep those
pieces of equipment rolling, andthat's why I'm so glad to have
you here today to talk to usabout that.
(02:16):
Would you say that it's fairthat people is one of the most
difficult challenges thatbusinesses are dealing with
right now, in late 2024.
Mike Moreau (02:29):
Yeah, well, you're talking to the people guys, so
yes, A little self-serving, butyeah yeah, you know this whole
idea of whenever I think aboutproblems inside of a business.
So many of those problems aresolved by people or are caused
by people, and so wheneveryou're sort of looking around
(02:50):
trying to figure out whysomething's going wrong or
what's happening, oftentimesjust getting the right set of
eyes, a different set of eyes onit is all that you need.
And to kind of give you adifferent illustration of that,
it's almost like the restaurantbusiness and we can have all
sorts of people problems insideof our one little restaurant.
And when somebody comes up tous and says, well, why don't you
(03:11):
expand your restaurant?
You do a fantastic job, andthat owner just kind of shakes
and quivers a little bit whenyou think about expansion, like
I can hardly hold on to thisright now.
But you put a different personinside of that and now we have a
nationwide food chain likeBoston Pizza that shows up and
is Canada wide and there arehundreds and probably hundreds
(03:32):
of restaurants that are acrossthe nation doing something like
that and it's the same business.
You just brought a differentperson to the table and now all
of a sudden things are solved ina very different kind of a way
the table and now all of asudden, things are solved in a
very different kind of a way.
Jamie Irvine (03:45):
Yeah, and you know , when I look at our business,
specifically the heavy dutyparts business, you know, if you
go back in the way back machineto when I started the industry,
it was challenging to getpeople.
Back then, I mean even 25,almost 30 years ago there was a
challenge getting young peopleto be interested in our industry
.
You know, the dot-com bubblehad just started and every kid I
(04:07):
went to school with wanted togo and get involved in computers
and so getting kids to thinkabout trucks and truck parts
that was challenging back then.
I think it's gotten a lotharder today.
When I talk to our clients inthe industry, we talk about two
main issues.
One is recruiting, finding newpeople to join our companies.
The second one is hanging on togood people.
(04:29):
So when I think about that, Iput it in those two buckets.
You know you as the people guy,you're working with people every
day.
We're going to get into moreabout what you and your company
does in a little bit.
But how do you see that?
Is it actually harder todaythan it used to be in the
industries that you serve?
How do you see that Is itactually harder today than it
used to be in the industriesthat you serve and that you deal
with, because you have a bit ofa wider perspective than just
(04:53):
the heavy duty parts or truckingindustry.
Mike Moreau (04:55):
People always do have this struggle with finding
the right people and havingenough people to be able to do
the work that they're doing, andit's something that exists for
lots of organizations, but againexists in different ways for
different organizations, becausesome people put a really high
importance on being able to goin and find new bodies that can
come in, and so that could besomething that you know.
(05:17):
You have one shop on the roadthat struggles with finding
people, and then you startasking a lot of questions about
okay, well, what are you doingto attract people to your
business?
Well, nothing, mike.
What do you mean nothing?
Well, you know we don't reallyhave any job ads up or we don't
have any hiring signs on theroadway.
Well, how do you ever expect tofind anybody?
(05:38):
And yet you know the person downthe street can be going and
actually be doing some prettyproactive work.
That way, they're out there inthe community, they belong to
different business clubs, theyhost different sessions at high
schools or at vocationalcolleges and they get their name
out there on a more activebasis, and so there are lots of
(06:00):
people that can say you know,finding and attracting talent is
a tough thing to do and again,like anything, we sort of say
well, it's just really importantabout trying to kind of, you
know, figure out differentstrategies, some of which is
important, some of which youknow.
Some organizations will just say, well, I'll just post something
and see what comes in, and andthen and then deal with whatever
sort of walks in the door fromfrom that standpoint.
But finding people is alwayshard Entry-level jobs,
(06:24):
blue-collar jobs people canoften put an inappropriate and
negative sort of connotation tothat.
There's some amazing careersthat are built in a lot of
blue-collar jobs and people cango on to do your organization
and getting out there in theworld and attracting people,
(06:47):
making yourself look shiny.
That can take care of a lot ofissues of trying to get other
people to pay attention to yourbusiness.
Jamie Irvine (06:56):
So two questions in a row.
Now You've answered both ofthose questions by kind of
highlighting both ends of thespectrum.
You talk about same business,but one person reacts one way to
the challenge.
A different person reacts adifferent way to that challenge.
What you're really highlightingthere is that when you are in
(07:21):
an industry or a business, youall have similar challenges to
deal with, but there's reallydistinct differences in the way
people respond to thosechallenges, based on who they
are as a person.
So let me ask you somethingwhen a business owner is
approaching recruiting they'relooking to hire new people for
(07:41):
their business what are some ofthe common mistakes that they
make?
How can we do it differently?
And a third component to thatis if we're consistently having
problems, how do we look inwardat ourselves?
So let's break that down First.
What are some of the commonmistakes people make when trying
to recruit new people in theirbusiness?
Mike Moreau (08:01):
There's probably all sorts of different angles
that we can go down on that ordifferent directions that we can
take that, jamie, but sort ofwhen you get to the place where
you're actually taking a look atcandidates.
One thing I see over and overand over again is people put way
too much emphasis on a resume.
I don't know about you, butnumber one I've never sent out a
resume to anyone that lookslike I've messed up in any sort
(08:24):
of way.
In any job that I've ever beenin, it's always a glowing resume
, and so when we're usingsomething like that to be able
to evaluate candidates andwhether or not they've done
things or not, I just thinkpeople put way too much weight
in there, and so we want to pickthe nines and tens in terms of
resumes.
But we've all had theexperience where you've hired
(08:44):
somebody that is, from a resumeor experience standpoint, maybe
a five out of 10, maybe a sixout of 10, but we taught them
how to do the job and theyperform better than the person
that's been doing that job forthe last 10 years.
So that's one piece that I seeover and over and over again
just too much emphasis on aresume.
The other one that I see overand over again is this you know,
(09:04):
kind of this orientationtowards just, you know,
evaluating somebody based on howmuch you like them, and so you
know the age, old.
If I could sit down and have abeer with that person, then you
know I want to be able to bringthem on.
Well, I don't know, I can sitdown and I have sat down with a
whole bunch of people in my lifethat are wildly different in
terms of the jobs that they haveand their personalities and
(09:24):
their everything, and I can havea beer with all of them and I
enjoy having a beer with all ofthem.
But I do know distinctly thateach one of those will do things
in really different ways outthere in the world.
And so this likability piecethat we have in interviews, it's
sort of like you have an hourto sort of figure out if I think
I can get along with you, andif I can get along with you,
then I hire you.
But I probably a lot of timesfigure out the other side of it,
(09:47):
which is, boy, I hired thisperson that I had a good resume
and that I really liked, butthey're not delivering the mail
every day, and so this isn'treally working out.
Jamie Irvine (09:57):
Okay, so if we're not looking at education,
experience and skills andlikability exclusively, what
else should we be looking at?
Mike Moreau (10:07):
Yeah, well, you know, we're just a massive
believer in this idea of jobshave personalities and it's sort
of an interesting thing to sortof think about.
A job has a personality.
So if I give you two verydifferent kinds of jobs, let's
call one position a data entryclerk and the other person in
(10:28):
the other job a outside salesman.
Go knock on doors and find newbusiness.
Jobs have a personality.
That should kind of pop inpeople's minds and say, yeah,
those are two really differentpersonalities and so that's sort
of doing the opposite sides ofthe spectrum there.
But it's a truth that sort ofexists that if you're not
thinking about that in terms ofthe roles, a job has a
personality and you're kind ofusing the old school well, I'm
(10:52):
just going to hire somebody andI'm going to mold and manipulate
and sometimes even torture alittle bit to do the job that I
need them to do, and as soon asI take my hands off of that
person, they go back to doingthe job the way that they know
how to do it, and so that's theover and over and over again.
This performance performanceissues that happen within
(11:13):
businesses is sort of this ideaaround.
Well, a job has a personality.
A person has a personality, andwhen those two match up, then
performance naturally has comes.
It comes from it because peopleare naturally motivated to do
the work.
When those two have adisconnect, now all of a sudden
we're forcing that person intodoing something that they're not
naturally geared to doing.
(11:34):
And so I get the question allthe time and I said to you sort
of the old school way of lookingat things, mike how do I train
this person, prod this person,torture this person to do the
job the way that I need them todo it?
And always the answer is well,it's not the person that changes
to fit the job, but it's thejob that changes to fit the
(11:57):
person.
I'm going to change whateverjob I jump into to fit me.
I don't have any other choice.
I can't do it the way that youwould do it.
I can't.
I don't see the world the waythat you do.
So the job is going to changeto suit me, and if my
personality doesn't fit thepersonality of the job, we start
to run into some issues.
Jamie Irvine (12:16):
Okay.
So if we add the element oflooking at the ideal personality
that would be best suited to dothe job, does that mean we can
ignore education, experience andskills?
Mike Moreau (12:30):
No, no, not at all, I think.
Well, you know, using adifferent illustration, we need
to hire an engineer If yourtraits fit beautifully to the
engineer's traits, to the jobmodel that we have.
But you're not an engineer, youknow, then you're absolutely
not starting in our businessbecause we need an engineer to
do this position.
So it's just about the orderingthat you start to look at how
(12:52):
these pieces come in.
I usually talk about five keysto high performance education,
experience, skills, all things Ithink that you can find in a
resume personality andintelligence, okay, and when all
of those five things line upreally well, then we see
performance.
That comes when you hiresomebody.
(13:13):
That's actually.
I had this experience years agowith a medical school who were
looking at marks for thestudents that were applying and
they actually came up with anumber.
I think it was like 3.2, theyactually learned over and over
again that from a marketingstandpoint, if you didn't have a
(13:33):
3.2 average, you fell behind inclasses, you couldn't absorb
the material fast enough.
But we also know on the otherside, just because you're smart
doesn't make you a good doctor.
So you know, all of the medicalprofessionals have gone through
the education, experience andskills, but there's something
that sort of stands out therecalled personality.
That is a really importantpiece.
(13:54):
So when you're hiring people, Ibelieve that you know there are
things that I can change insomebody, things that I can't.
Personality and intelligenceare things that I can't change
in people.
Education, experience andskills are things that I can
change in people.
But as long as there's areasonable enough fit you've got
to fit the right traits to thejob and sort of have the right
(14:15):
characteristics to do it.
And if you're missing a fewthings, as long as we're not way
off on the education,experience and skills, I can
often equip you with that kindof information so that in not
too much time you can becomereally effective inside of that
role.
Jamie Irvine (14:30):
Okay.
So, if I have this correct, youwould hire somebody with
sufficient education, experienceand skills maybe not as much as
you would like to see, butsufficient to do the job Well,
like if you're going to be atechnician, you're going to fix
commercial trucks.
There's a minimum amount ofeducation, experience and skills
you need, but you would choosesomebody with that minimum
(14:51):
amount, with a great personalitymatch to the job, than somebody
who has more experience,education and skills but a poor
match to that profile to do thejob.
Is that what I'm hearingcorrectly?
Mike Moreau (15:04):
Yeah, I think you've got lots of people
that'll be listening to thisJamie.
That sort of have gotten a bitof a sense of you over the years
and so maybe they start tothink about you and you know,
maybe you have the education,experience and skills to do the
heavy mechanic.
You know heavy duty mechanicsort of work.
But they know pretty quicklyand sort of watching you through
the years to say he's tootalkative for that and he's too
(15:25):
excitable for that and you know,if we threw him inside of that
job he'd be going around andbossing everybody around in no
time.
We're not going to ask him to dothat job because his
personality traits are going tocause him to kind of jump out of
that and do other things.
It doesn't mean that he hasn'tdone it sometime in his career.
You haven't done it sometime inyour career but you've moved on
from that and I can't pull youback.
And probably there are going tobe some people that you sort of
(15:47):
notice that are in some of yourclients' businesses where they
have somebody in their businessthat's been doing that job heavy
duty mechanic for the last 15years and they never want to do
anything else and thank goodnesswe have them to be able to do
that kind of work.
The worst thing we would wantto do is kind of pull them up
through an organizational chartto make them GM of the branch,
(16:09):
because that's not what theywant to do.
It's not the way that they'rewired, not the way that they're
motivated to do things.
Jamie Irvine (16:19):
I hope you're enjoying my conversation with
Mike Morrow at Traits.
It's now time for our break tohear from our great sponsors.
We'll be right back.
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We're back from our break andnow we're going to continue our
conversation with Mike Morrow,president of Traits.
Okay, so I got two questionsfor you then One early on in the
conversation we talked aboutthe owner of the business or the
hiring manager, and one personin that position does well.
(18:08):
The other person is struggling.
So it's not just finding theright people for your frontline
positions, it's also finding theright people for management and
ownership.
What do you do if one of yourmanagers or you, the owner of
the company, realize, afterlistening to us and after maybe
working with us in our peopleand organization program, what
(18:30):
do you do if you find out thatyou're not a good fit?
Mike Moreau (18:33):
Yeah, well, good, good question.
So so I'm not the right fit formy job, Jamie, Okay.
Jamie Irvine (18:40):
But you're on your job, but I'm in my job and and
so so I do.
Mike Moreau (18:44):
We've got a small team and I do better with a big
team.
I do better with more thingsthat are going on.
I do better when things are upand running in a different kind
of a way, and you'll often hearabout leaders that sort of see
that Maybe some of your clientswill sort of understand that as
well, that I'm better for thisperiod of time in my business.
And oftentimes that just comesout because the business owner
(19:05):
says a long time ago I thoughtclients deserved something
better and I thought I could dothat, and so I started that and
fast forward the clock 15 yearslater and I have this machine
that just is doing somethingthat's totally different than
the real reason that I steppedout to do this.
And so I think lots of peopleare can do the things that I
(19:38):
don't naturally do and that Ikind of get in trouble with
because I because I know I seethings this way and I do things
this way I'm left to my owndevices.
We're not going to grow.
But if I start to surroundmyself with the right kind of
people that take the things on,that I don't want to do, that
I'm not naturally gifted at, butthey are then now, all of a
sudden, that's where theorganization starts to swell,
(20:00):
and so I've seen business ownersthat literally have started a
business that all they wanted todo was serve their customer
better, never wanted to be anentrepreneur.
Now they have a $10 millionbusiness that they're running
and feeling it every day From astress standpoint, from a health
standpoint.
They're feeling all of thetension that exists inside of
(20:23):
that and the ability to be ableto go in and actually help
people to find others inside ofthe organization that can
actually take on moreresponsibility, educate the
owner on how they get in theirway and what they have to be
aware of, and even sometimeshelping them migrate over to
more of an ownership role asopposed to a president role all
things that you can start tohave some discussions on.
(20:44):
But having that insight aboutyourself and what sort of gets
in the way and the impact thatyou make, those strengths and
whether they're effective insideof the role I think all of that
stuff is hidden away, but it'ssomething that we can start to
bring up for people and helpcrystallize, for them to have
some more insight about whatthey need to do and ultimately
build a roadmap for them movingforward.
Jamie Irvine (21:05):
Yeah, I think, at the end of the day, if you are
in a leadership position, andespecially if you're in an
ownership position, and youdiscover that maybe there's some
need for change, if you cansurround yourself with people
who offset the areas that maybeyou're not the strongest in but
need to be to get the job done,you can find those people that
(21:25):
can have a massive impact on notonly the ability for the
leadership group to performbetter, but I think it has a
trickle-down effect in theorganization as well.
I wanted to ask youspecifically, Mike.
We talked about recruiting,we've talked about leadership,
but what about retention?
What are some of the commonreasons that people leave
(21:45):
companies?
Mike Moreau (21:46):
So I have a client that owns a machine shop.
He's got all of these CNClathes that he's got laid out
all over his shop and herebuilds diesel engines.
And so he once said to me Mike,how is it that I could be
hiring somebody that isimpatient and putting them into
a job where they have to bepatient, sitting at a lathe all
(22:09):
day punching in codes and thenstanding around and waiting?
How could I hire somebodythat's impatient and put them in
the job where they have to dothat?
And he says I've done thatbefore and they wander all
through the shop and do allsorts of things, get into all
sorts of trouble andproductivity slows down because
now the machine is done and weneed to change everything over
(22:29):
and that person is nowhere to beseen.
And so we raise our voices alittle bit and get them back to
the station for a bit of timeand then they leave again.
And so what's one of the majorreasons that people leave is
just not a good fit to their job.
That's one of the big thingsthat ends up happening when you
take a look at that.
Number two, I think, and maybeeven number one, is this idea of
(22:51):
that Number two, I think, andmaybe even number one, is this
idea of you know, why do mostpeople leave their jobs?
Well, because of their manager.
Why do most people stay intheir jobs?
Well, because of their manager.
And so when we do a better jobof figuring out who are the
people that are really wired tobe managers and your resume
doesn't tell you that, by theway, a resume doesn't tell you
whether somebody is going to bea good manager.
(23:12):
You and your listeners have allseen that repeat itself over and
over again.
Just because you have a goodresume doesn't make you a a
manager.
And when you get that wrong,when you hire somebody that's an
exceptional supervisor, wherethey're managing the work every
(23:36):
day, and you put them in a jobwhere now they have to manage
more systems and they can'toversee the work.
They have to leave that behindand go and manage the systems
and deal with other problemsthat are facing them from a
different direction.
It's kind of like all they wantto do is go back over here and
they don't want to face all ofthese things that are up here
and so that eventually createsturnover inside of businesses,
(23:59):
because now you have a managerthat's far too hands-on, barking
orders about how things have tobe done, which is exactly the
way that he did them 10 yearsago, or she did them 10 years
ago, and those are no longerrelevant for the business.
And hey, aren't you supposed tobe focusing on where the
business is going, not harassingme?
And so it just creates turnover, turnover, turnover.
So yeah, two areas that job fitand not having the right
(24:23):
manager in place, two areas thatcan cause a lot of turnover.
Jamie Irvine (24:27):
Why do excellent frontline employees sometimes
get promoted to supervisor ormanagerial positions and they
actually get worse at their job?
Mike Moreau (24:52):
and uh, and so not everybody is wired that way.
And it's sort of the idea of,uh, you know, wayne Gretzky, who
is one of the or the greatesthockey player, uh, you know,
being Edmonton Oiler fans, we'vegot, we've got to choose
between Gretzky and McDavidthese days, but uh, um, you know
, but put him into a coach's job.
He's not a coach, and uh.
And so again back to this ideaof some hard wiring that exists
inside of all of us thatoftentimes the reason that your
(25:14):
best entry level position is thebest at what they do in terms
of the group is because theirtraits match up most closely to
the job.
But it's the job that they'rein, it's not the job.
That's one up, or two up, andso you actually see that, or two
up, and so you actually seethat.
And a long time ago they wrote abook about this called the
(25:35):
Peter Principle that employs.
Well, it was a study that wasdone, actually out of the
University of Toronto, wherethey went and took a look at
people and why people leavemanagers, and what they actually
started to understand throughthe study was people will rise
to the level of incompetenceinside of an organizational
structure where there they willstay because you're a nine out
of 10.
So we're going to promote youknow best in the group, so we're
(25:57):
going to promote you.
Now you're a seven out of 10,still better than all these
sixes so we're going to promoteyou again.
You end up being a five out of10 and now we can't promote you
anymore and you're a five.
So so you know, you may not bedoing all the things that we
need you to do, but we can'tfire you because you're not that
bad.
So forever we're going to stayand live with mediocrity at that
position.
And what an awful thing for usas humans to sort of think about
(26:21):
.
But it repeats itself over and,over and over again.
But if we had a better?
Jamie Irvine (26:30):
peek into again hardwire.
I think we could save a lot ofthat from happening.
Anybody listening to this inthe heavy-duty parts industry.
I'm just going to say twothings Counterperson who becomes
a parts manager and a greatoutside salesperson who becomes
a sales manager.
It doesn't always work out.
They were great on the counterand they just struggle as a
manager.
They were great out on the roadas a salesperson, but managing
a team of salespeople just seemsto be beyond them.
I think on the road as asalesperson, but managing a team
(26:51):
of salespeople just seems to bebeyond them.
I think on the entrepreneurialside of the equation we often
see this where you have someonewho is a technician and so what
do they do?
They start a mobile repaircompany or they get a repair
shop and they start a businessthat does that.
Well, that's two different jobsbeing a technician and running
a business that offers thatservice, two completely
(27:15):
different jobs.
And yet oftentimes this iswhere people find themselves.
So tell me about, for those whomaybe know, they know where
we're headed with this.
For those who don't, what is apsychometric assessment and why
is TRAIT traits specificallyvery reliable?
Mike Moreau (27:32):
Yeah, so a psychometric tool is really,
technically, it's the usingstatistical analysis to quantify
human temperament.
To simplify that a little bit,it's sort of this idea of if you
took all of the words in theEnglish language that describe
behavior and you wrote them downon a little sticky and threw
(27:56):
them down on the ground, becausethere's about I think about
3,200 of them take a look at allof that pile of words.
And then you started to groupthose that sounded the same
introverted, talkative, social,gregarious, um, quiet, all of
those kind of sound the same.
So we throw them all in a boxand then we do that with all of
(28:18):
the words and then you're goingto look and you're going to
you're going to have fewer boxesthat are spread out around the
room and then you're going to gointo each one of those boxes
and you're going to start to putthose words out and you're
going to put extremes on eitherend of them and you're going to
have probably very few of themon the edges and lots more of
them towards the middle, andthen you're going to assign some
(28:39):
math to it and then, literally,what a psychometric tool is is
all about sending it out to anapplicant or to an employee and
saying here are a whole bunch ofwords, pick the ones that best
describe you or don't describeyou, some sort of version of
that, and then we'll put all ofthat back into a bit of a math
formula and say, listen, weasked you a whole bunch of
(29:00):
questions, we asked you in acouple of different ways about
the way we were doing that, andyou kept describing yourself as
this as you were going through.
So it eventually gives us somedata to be able to take a look
at.
We've worked with some PhDs andwe have a PhD on staff here
that spends a lot of timestudying this and again trying
to quantify this idea of people,but ultimately it gives a
(29:24):
really, really accuraterepresentation of the
individuals that are goingthrough this.
Again, I've been called allsorts of interesting words Mind
reader was the most recent one,or the Oracle from the Matrix or
something like that, but all itis is.
It was so simply put to me,mike.
(29:44):
You asked me 120 times who Iwas, roughly how many questions
we have, and I told you over andover again who I was.
Of course, these are theresults that come through, and
of course this is going to tellme who I am, and so it just
gives really really accurate,really reliable information on
candidates, employees that gothrough the survey.
Jamie Irvine (30:04):
So why should someone want to use this kind of
a tool in their business?
Mike Moreau (30:09):
Today you have employees that are walking in,
they're doing a job, they'regood at it, they're not so good
at it, they're somewhere in themiddle and then they walk out
and you've captured no real dataon the way that they're wired,
how motivated they are to docertain things.
So it's kind of like well, Iwant to hire somebody that's
more like Bill or a little bitmore like Sandra, and we're
trying to like we're doing that,but we're not actually pulling
(30:32):
or we're not actually measuring,getting any data off of them.
What Traits allows people to beable to do is to be able to say
let's go take a look at thelast five people that have gone
through this I think you saidcustomer parts desk.
Let's go take a look at thepeople that have been successful
.
And let's take a look at onescale called assertiveness, and
(30:53):
the more people are over on thisside, the more naturally
accommodating they are.
The more they are over intothis side, the more assertive
they are.
And when we take a look at thelast five people in the job, we
say, geez, we hired some peoplethat are naturally more
assertive and they came in, theythought they were the boss and
then they left because we didn'thave anything else for them and
we told them they had to stickon the parts desk.
We had some people that werereally low on that
(31:16):
characteristic and very, veryaccommodating and they weren't
actually all that good atselling.
But we had this group of threepeople that were right around
here on the scale, where theyjust love the security of being
part of a team and part of a job, that they could build some
consistency and some reliabilityaround, didn't have a lot of
risk.
They like helping people,serving people and guess what?
(31:38):
All of those people came tothem and they just got to help.
They didn't have to do a wholebunch of sales stuff, like
people on the other end of theshop and and and you know they
were happy doing it.
So it allows us to be able tocollect some data on on the
people that are coming into ourbusiness and doing different
jobs, and the more data we canstart to collect, the more we
can start to make somepredictions of oh boy, I've,
(31:58):
I've got somebody that's moreassertive.
I better get them into into asales job.
I'm, you know they applied forparts, but I'm going to suggest
sales and oh boy, I've gotsomebody that's naturally more
accommodating.
Maybe parts is a place to startoff, or service tech might even
be a place that they could moveover to, so gathering data and
being able to make betterdecisions over time because of
(32:19):
that.
Jamie Irvine (32:20):
Okay, let's do something fun here.
I want to talk about twopositions first.
They're both considered salespositions and I want you to
really illustrate how those twopositions are actually requiring
different people.
So let me give you the twopositions.
To start with, you got a partsperson on the counter.
They're in sales.
(32:41):
They have people coming intothe counter every day asking for
parts.
People coming into the counterevery day asking for parts.
They have people phoning them,texting them, emailing them.
It's a very busy environmentand they are definitely
responsible for sellingheavy-duty parts to those
customers who are coming to them.
Then you also have outsidesalespeople.
Now, they're sales as well, buttheir job often entails a lot
(33:04):
more of going and trying toconvince people to buy more from
them, right, so they're outthere.
They're going from business tobusiness.
Sometimes there's signs thatsay no trespassing, no
salespeople without appointment.
Not everybody is thrilled tosee them show up.
So both of these jobs are insales One's inside, one's
outside.
(33:24):
Why does that require twocompletely different you know
personalities to be able to besuccessful in those two
positions.
Walk us through that.
Mike Moreau (33:33):
So let's, if I can just to try and simplify this a
little bit think about twotraits, two scales one
assertiveness and the other onedetail orientation.
When you talk about the partscounter, that to me is a lower
assertiveness, naturally moreaccommodating.
Why?
Because people are coming to me.
I get to serve the people thatare coming to me and and and I
(33:54):
like that sort of thing, I don'twant to go out and sell people,
press things on, press peoplethat's too much risk.
I'm not naturally assertive, Iwant to be there to service
others.
It's also a higherdetail-oriented job.
So more structure inside ofthat position, more of a parts
catalog that I have to sort ofgo off of, going into the back,
finding where those things are,remembering where those things
(34:17):
are, ordering parts, followingup on them, naturally thinking
about holy smokes, that parthasn't come in for Jamie yet.
Why is that not here I'm goingto call the supplier and
thinking about the repercussionsof what happens after an order
is made.
And, again, concern for otherswith the assertiveness scale.
So that's what that to me whenyou describe that position and
(34:40):
when I think about that role.
Jamie Irvine (34:41):
Pretty accurate, you got it.
Mike Moreau (34:45):
When you talk about outside sales, that's a higher
risk oriented job.
Nobody's coming to you askingfor the salesman to come in
through the door and holding thedoor open for you as you come
in.
Those are the people that needto have more of a risk
orientation looking at a sign,seeing that there's an
(35:08):
opportunity for me to go inthere and knock on the door and
to not sort of take no for ananswer.
So when I get a light sort ofturn away at the door, then I
say no.
I think this is actuallysomething that really would be
important for your business toknow about and to understand.
I'm pressing more.
I need more assertiveness to dothat kind of a job and so on.
That assertiveness scale,getting somebody that's higher
inside of that position isreally important.
On detail and sorry, that alsocontributes to the resiliency of
(35:31):
somebody more willing to kindof take the rejection.
But they hold those opinions intheir minds more firmly.
They're like, no, maybe Ididn't get it on this one, but
I'm going to go to the next doorbecause I know that this is a
product that needs to get acrossto other people and I'm going
to keep pushing on this.
Detail orientation would be theother one where somebody that's
high on detail orientationdoesn't want to make mistakes.
That's what makes them so goodat the parts desk.
(35:53):
But when you put somebody atthe parts desk high detail
orientation into a sales job,they're overanalyzing all of the
sales position, all of thesales calls, they're trying
something, they're getting itwrong and then they're going
back to their office andspending a whole bunch more time
studying catalogs again.
And that's not what you need.
You need somebody that's loweron detail orientation, that kind
(36:14):
of sheds the mistakes off ofthem, is more willing to try
something, say something in asales call just to get
somebody's attention so thatthey can go in.
And it's more about the biggerpicture, probably walking into a
client and saying what'sworking for you and what's not
with your current vendor?
Not, hey, I have this to sell.
What's working for you or whatisn't with this?
I want to explore the situationas opposed to sell a product.
(36:36):
So you can see pretty quicklywhen you put the opposites in.
When you take somebody that'slow assertive, high detail parts
counter and you put them intoan outside sales job, they
struggle with being able tobuild up the courage every day
to do that job.
When they do make a mistakewith something or the client
doesn't buy from them, they tendto kind of go back into their
corner quite a bit more andthey're less willing to try
(36:59):
things in those conversationsand sort of take that more
personally as they're doing thatwork.
When you take somebody that'shigh on assertiveness and low on
detail orientation, you putthem into a part service desk.
They're kind of the people thatit doesn't take very long
before they start arguing withthe client Because this is the
fourth time you've come inasking for warranty on this and
(37:21):
we're not doing warranty on this.
So they start challenging back,they start pushing back.
Or, oh shoot, did I place anorder for that?
I don't even remember you fromthe last Tuesday when you came.
You came, are you sure you camein on Tuesday and you gave me
an order?
Low detail orientation.
Jamie Irvine (37:35):
Oh geez.
Mike Moreau (37:35):
I'm really sorry.
You know, and and you knowchanging things up so you can
see what happens when you kindof put the opposites into the
opposite job.
Jamie Irvine (37:46):
As you're.
As you're talking about allthat, what came to mind is is
that, um, if someone says no,I'm not interested, the the
person better suited for theparts counter would say
something like oh, okay, well,thank you very much for your
time, have a nice day.
And the person with higherassertiveness would say
something like uh, really, soyou're not interested.
Okay, so that's one rejection.
What six more before youfinally buy something from me?
(38:06):
and there's that moment, yeah, amoment of awkwardness, and then
they both laugh, yeah, and and,by the way, that's a true story
.
I actually have seen that inthe real world.
So, okay, let's have some funhere.
Um, I want to.
I want to give you anotherscenario two managers parts
manager they're responsible forone counter and four parts
people branch manager they wereresponsible for the parts
(38:31):
counter, the warehouse, thedelivery drivers, the outside
sales people, the entire branch.
Both managers, both needing tohave a manager type profile, and
yet two very different jobs.
So help us see the differencesin those two positions.
Mike Moreau (38:47):
Well, you actually start to see when you think
about structure of anorganization and what traits are
required structurally inside ofa business.
So when you talked about partsmanager, maybe I'd argue a
little bit that it's almost moreof a supervisory kind of a
position.
The title might be manager,that's fine, but what am I doing
?
I'm overseeing the work ofother people.
(39:07):
I'm making sure that the workgets done every day and
everything.
All of the problems that I haveto solve are all within this
little bucket over here.
And so you know, found a part,couldn't find a part, need to
get something ordered.
It's all about what happensinside of this area.
Here A customer comes in andsays, hey, I think I have an
(39:28):
issue over here.
Good, this is the part that youneed.
And so it's very much sort offocused downward inside of the
organization, supervising,overseeing the people that are
doing the production work.
And then when you talked aboutgeneral manager, it's almost
like, well, that's up a coupleof levels where now the problems
that you're dealing with everysingle day have got far more
(39:49):
complexity and far moreambiguity to them and the
answers are not as quicklyavailable, and so a general
manager just might have thisissue that starts to arise.
The parts manager comes up tothem and says clients are losing
their minds because we don'thave any of the product that are
(40:11):
coming in from the supplier andthings are going wrong.
And that's where the generalmanager says, well, what's going
on?
I've got to dive into thesituation, I've got to figure
things out.
But again there's lots ofambiguity and complexity inside
of all of that to be able to say, well, is this a logistics
problem?
Is this a supplier problem?
Where are the issues coming infrom?
(40:31):
And then how are we going tosolve it?
How are we going to come upwith a solution to that?
And trying to sort of guidethings into the future a little
bit more, at Parts Manager, inthe way that I sort of describe
the job overseeing theproduction, you can see and
start to hear how that's just areally different.
You know it's a manager job,but kind of the work that
they're overseeing is reallydifferent than what a general
(40:52):
manager has to deal with.
Jamie Irvine (40:54):
And they not only have to deal with that.
Mike Moreau (40:55):
Now they've got salesmen that's promised
something that I'm not sure howwe're going to deliver on that
thing and that's going to get usin a whole bunch of trouble,
but it's a great opportunity.
So let's figure out how toflesh that out, and they're also
having to, you know, thinkabout whatever they're.
You know the fact that thebuilding is now starting to
burst from the seams, and so nowI have to start thinking about
what is the, what's the next bitof real estate that we have to
(41:16):
be thinking about?
So two really different sets ofresponsibilities that come in
that require two very, verydifferent kinds of people.
Jamie Irvine (41:23):
And the sad part is is a lot of times a really
good counter person becomes theparts manager and then becomes a
branch manager, maybe even thena general manager, and the
Peter principle sometimestotally applies to them, other
times not, you know.
Other times people are destinedto to have that.
Why?
Because they've got thatgeneral manager profile and so
as they got more experience theyactually get better.
(41:44):
You know they may be worth thebest parts person in the world,
but by the time they get togeneral manager boy, they're
really really doing well.
Well, that's because they'reoriented towards that.
And now they have also theabout that you know.
Mike Moreau (42:01):
A good question to ask people and for them to sort
of do some reflection on is whenwas I happiest in my life doing
what kind of a job?
And for a lot of people it'srewinding the clock a bunch of
years to when I was doing that.
When I was, when I was thesupervisor man, I had it nailed
and I'd sort of argue well, thatperson's still a supervisor,
(42:23):
but now they have a title ofmanager and how do they do that
job called manager?
They supervise.
I had a client that was, Ithink he was about 33 years old
and his dad owned a nationalcompany and I think they were
doing probably about $100million in sales a year and he
(42:45):
had sort of flirted in andoutside of the company, never
could really get along with dad,and so then he'd leave and he'd
go and start up a company andkind of get that going and be in
startup phase and then maybehe'd sell that off and something
else would happen.
And then one day his dad gotsick and couldn't run the
business anymore and at 30, 33years old he got the job of
(43:05):
president of this national $100million business like pretty
massive in terms of what he tookon for the family and it was
interesting as he was sort oflearning about all of these
things.
He said you know, mike, this isso interesting.
He said you know, most peoplewould be absolutely terrified of
a job like this interest.
And he said you know, mostpeople would be absolutely
terrified of a job like this.
(43:26):
And this is the first jobwithout the resume, the
education, experience and skillsto do this job.
This is the first job I feltlike I actually fit in and so
that whole idea fit back to thesupervisor in a manager job and
where was I best and all of thattype of thing.
Again, there's a real somethingunderlying inside of all of
this that they can start to comeout and when you, when you
think about that, it's kind ofinteresting.
(43:47):
And that business has gone onto continue to grow and do some
pretty amazing things out there.
But you know, again, traitsthat match up against that job.
So I just wanted to kind ofthrow that story.
Jamie Irvine (43:56):
I'm so glad you told us that story.
So what we do at the HeavyDutyDuty Consulting Corporation
for heavy-duty companies youknow we really work with them in
several different areas oftheir business People and
organization is a big part ofthat, and we're so happy to work
alongside you, mike, and youprovide us with the tool that's
called Traits.
(44:17):
That allows us to evaluatepeople at this level.
So it's really important forthe listeners to understand that
when we get to a place where wehave created what's called a
job model, which is where we'veoutlined the optimal personality
traits to do a specific job ata very high level, we have that
job model and we've got thatreally figured out.
(44:38):
Then we take people, whetherthey are candidates applying and
we're trying to recruit them,or existing employees, and we
get them to take the assessment.
So now we have that person'sprofile, their personality
traits are there and we canoverlay one on top of the other
and we can look for a match ormismatch mismatch.
(45:09):
When we get to that level, whatcomes next and how do we get
access to information to help usmake the necessary decisions
Hire this person or not, promotethis person or not, change this
person's job description or not.
Can you walk us through that?
Mike Moreau (45:20):
I think a lot of that, a lot of it, just comes
from knowledge that you have tobuild as you're working with
something like this.
Again, it's an instrument.
It's a tool that you need tofigure out how best to leverage
it, and more knowledge is better.
And so, I think, for yourclients, I think contacting you
and having some of thosediscussions, I think, is one
thing.
I think you can take a look atsome of the reports that we've
(45:42):
built with the job modeling tool.
We're asking in terms of whatwe need inside of this job and
then taking a look at thecandidates' results and
understanding who they are andthen being able to see some of
that.
There's a graphical overlay.
That happens.
That is probably the mostmagical part of this tool that
we can really define what it isthat we're looking for, again
(46:04):
using scales, because peopleunderstand scales very well.
If I say I'm six foot three and190 pounds, boom, everybody can
kind of picture me reallyquickly, because we all
understand that scale and weunderstand whether Mike can dunk
or not or whether he'd be abetter hockey player than he
would a basketball player.
We can make some interestingassumptions on some of those
(46:25):
things.
And so when we're doing that.
With these scales of behavior,we can start to see very quickly
where is there fit, where isthere not fit.
And we've just actually launchedanother tool that just came out
this week actually that talksabout when you are comparing a
person against a job.
It says, well, here's the job,here's the person.
And then this report willdescribe here's how this person
(46:48):
is going to do inside of thisjob.
Here's how they're going towant to change it to suit
themselves.
Here's how they're going towant to, how motivated they're
going to be in these areas.
So lots of sort of ways to beable to dig in deeper.
Overall, back to that knowledgestatement, you need to learn
what these traits mean and youhave to be able to interpret
these graphs.
And as soon as you start tobuild that knowledge, it's like
(47:09):
all of a sudden, you know,instead of pouring through a
whole bunch of reports, we lookat it like a doctor looks at an
x-ray and says here's what'sbroken, here's what's right, you
know, and off we go from there.
Jamie Irvine (47:19):
Yeah, and we are now using this tool exclusively
in our consulting service andI'll tell you the clients that
are using it the insights thatthey're getting.
We're helping them avoid making, maybe, what would be a poor
hiring decision.
We're helping them to makechanges with people's job
descriptions to bring betteralignment.
All of this contributes toincreasing your success rate
(47:42):
when you're recruiting,improving your retention rate,
which is so critical.
We've got to hang on to theknowledgeable people we have in
this business.
We can't have them leaving andgoing somewhere else because
they're mismatched to the wrongjob.
So this is just such a powerfultool.
We've talked about a lot ofthings.
Mike and I always like to askmy guests if there's like one
(48:05):
thing they want people toremember from this conversation.
What's that one thing?
Mike Moreau (48:11):
Sorry I'm going to ramble for a couple seconds here
, but I think this idea of youknow, if there was something
that was out there that allowedus to be able to predict how
somebody was going to do in aposition before we hired them,
before we put them in, whywouldn't we be doing that and
getting some more insight aboutwhat we're going to do?
So many of our businesses'problems and solutions lie in
(48:34):
people, and so if there was away that we could dial in and
really understand how to predicthow somebody's going to do
inside of a position and howthey're going to turn the job
around, why wouldn't we do thatExactly?
Jamie Irvine (48:47):
You've been listening to the Heavy-Duty
Parts Report Today.
We've been talking about peoplein the parts business.
I'm so happy that we had you on.
Mike Morrow is the president ofTraits and if you'd like to see
Traits firsthand for yourself,I want to encourage you to go
over to heavydutypartsreportcomslash traits and that's spelled
T-R-A-I-T-S, soheavydutypartsreportcom slash
(49:10):
traits and you will be able totake an assessment for yourself.
We will meet with you and wewill review that.
You'll be able to see firsthandhow accurate it is and we'll
also be able to demonstrate toyou some of the features that
you can use inside your businessto make your business more
successful.
The trucking industry is thebackbone of society and we need
heavy duty people to thriveinside the industry so they can
(49:32):
take care of the rest of us.
Mike, thank you so much forbeing on the show and thank you
for your ongoing support of ourcompany, the Heavy Duty
Consulting Corporation.
I really genuinely appreciateeverything you do for us.
Mike Moreau (49:44):
Yeah well, thank you, jamie.
The relationship is importantto me, so thanks for having me
on and all the best.
Jamie Irvine (49:49):
What a great interview with Mike Morrow from
Traits.
We at the Heavy-Duty ConsultingCorporation are certified
facilitators for Traits, so weuse this with our clients all
the time.
If you're interested in that,you should reach out to us.
We'd love to have aconversation.
Head over toheavydutypartsreportcom.
Slash traits and you'll be ableto get one free assessment done
(50:11):
.
So have somebody in yourorganization, take the
assessment, we'll meet with youand we will discuss how it works
.
We'll show you the wholeprogram.
We really look forward toworking with you on that.
Now, just by way of a quickconclusion, I want to switch
over to our final segment that'sNot Heavy Duty.
In this week's edition ofthat's Not Heavy Duty.
I just want to continue thetheme of people and organization
(50:34):
and I want to highlight onething that Mike and I talked
about in the episode.
To really drive this point home, it used to be the heavy duty
way where we would just promotepeople who had stayed in their
positions for a long time andthey would just take the natural
steps.
So counter people would becomeparts managers.
Parts managers would becomebranch managers.
(50:55):
Sometimes branch managersbecome general managers.
That wasn't necessarily becausethey were the best person for
the job.
A lot of time.
It had to do with that they hadwon the attrition war, meaning
they were just there.
Everybody else had left, theywere still there and so they got
promoted.
I saw that in sales as welloutside salespeople.
Oftentimes they come from theinside, they come from the parts
(51:19):
department.
They were on the counter.
Then they go into outside sales.
Then they become a salesmanager, maybe a regional sales
manager.
Then they become maybe adirector of sales, and it isn't
necessarily because they're thebest person for that job.
Like we talked about in theepisode, that Peter principle is
a real thing and it's reallyimportant to understand that.
(51:40):
Because, you know, we mighthave been able to get away with
that in the past when there waslots of people available in the
industry to choose from.
But because things arecompletely radically different
today, where there are so fewpeople available to us to work
in our industry, we just cannotafford to have the wrong people
in the wrong positions.
We cannot afford to take goodpeople and promote them beyond
(52:04):
their abilities and then losethem.
This is not the heavy duty way.
It can no longer be heavy duty.
So the heavy duty way has to bethat we use the best technology
at our disposal to be able toidentify the right people,
whether they're internal,already they're people who work
for us or we're recruitingoutside.
We've got to get the rightpeople sitting in the right
(52:25):
people, whether they're internal, already they're people who
work for us or we're recruitingoutside.
We got to get the right peoplesitting in the right seats.
Traits is that technology.
So, again, if you want to takeadvantage of it, please head
over to heavydutypartsreportcom,slash traits and get your free
assessment done.
One free assessment and we willsit down with you and we'll
talk through the strategy foryour company.
This is the Heavy-Duty Way.
(52:45):
Thanks again for listening.
This was an extended episodethis week, but the subject
matter was very important.
I hope that you enjoyed it.
Thank you for continuing tosupport the show.
If you haven't already, headover to heavydutypartsreportcom,
hit that follow button.
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(53:07):
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Thank you again for yourongoing support and, as always,
I want to end today's episode byencouraging you to be heavy
duty.
You're listening to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report.
I'm your host, Jamie Irvin, andthis is the place where we have
conversations that empowerheavy-duty people.
Welcome to another episode ofthe Heavy-Duty Parts Report
presented to you by theHeavy-Duty Consulting
Corporation.
I'm your host, Jamie Irvin.
(00:21):
One of the things that we arenoticing as an ongoing trend at
most of our clients is that,despite having to deal with a
number of very difficultproblems in their business,
people and organizationconsistently ranks at the top of
the list, and so we'rededicating today's episode to
(00:43):
talk about real strategies thatwill help you to put the right
people in the right positionswithin your company to get
optimal performance.
I hope you enjoy this extendedconversation with our featured
guest.
He's a real subject matterexpert in this regard and we are
(01:03):
really looking forward tohaving that conversation.
So I'm going to get right intothe interview now, because this
is a bit of an extendedinterview this week and I want
to make sure that we dedicate asmuch time to the interview as
possible.
So I hope you enjoy ourconversation with our featured
guest this week.
My guest today is Mike Morrow,President at Traits.
(01:25):
Mike, welcome to the Heavy-DutyParts Report.
So glad to have you here.
Mike Moreau (01:29):
Thanks for having me, jamie.
Good to be here, good to seeyou.
Jamie Irvine (01:33):
I think for people who are listening to the show
and you think of the Heavy-DutyParts Report, what are we
talking about when we talk abouttraits?
What are we talking about whilewe're talking about people?
Mike, a long time ago, many,many years ago, my mentor said
Jamie, the heavy-duty partsbusiness is a people business
always has been, always will be,and I think right now, as we
(01:55):
record this, there's some uniquechallenges that our industry is
facing when it comes to people,and so we're not really going
to talk about parts today, butwe are going to talk about the
people who make sure that thetrucking industry, which is the
backbone of society, has theparts they need to keep those
pieces of equipment rolling, andthat's why I'm so glad to have
you here today to talk to usabout that.
(02:16):
Would you say that it's fairthat people is one of the most
difficult challenges thatbusinesses are dealing with
right now, in late 2024.
Mike Moreau (02:29):
Yeah, well, you're talking to the people guys, so
yes, A little self-serving, butyeah yeah, you know this whole
idea of whenever I think aboutproblems inside of a business.
So many of those problems aresolved by people or are caused
by people, and so wheneveryou're sort of looking around
(02:50):
trying to figure out whysomething's going wrong or
what's happening, oftentimesjust getting the right set of
eyes, a different set of eyes onit is all that you need.
And to kind of give you adifferent illustration of that,
it's almost like the restaurantbusiness and we can have all
sorts of people problems insideof our one little restaurant.
And when somebody comes up tous and says, well, why don't you
(03:11):
expand your restaurant?
You do a fantastic job, andthat owner just kind of shakes
and quivers a little bit whenyou think about expansion, like
I can hardly hold on to thisright now.
But you put a different personinside of that and now we have a
nationwide food chain likeBoston Pizza that shows up and
is Canada wide and there arehundreds and probably hundreds
(03:32):
of restaurants that are acrossthe nation doing something like
that and it's the same business.
You just brought a differentperson to the table and now all
of a sudden things are solved ina very different kind of a way
the table and now all of asudden, things are solved in a
very different kind of a way.
Jamie Irvine (03:45):
Yeah, and you know , when I look at our business,
specifically the heavy dutyparts business, you know, if you
go back in the way back machineto when I started the industry,
it was challenging to getpeople.
Back then, I mean even 25,almost 30 years ago there was a
challenge getting young peopleto be interested in our industry
.
You know, the dot-com bubblehad just started and every kid I
(04:07):
went to school with wanted togo and get involved in computers
and so getting kids to thinkabout trucks and truck parts
that was challenging back then.
I think it's gotten a lotharder today.
When I talk to our clients inthe industry, we talk about two
main issues.
One is recruiting, finding newpeople to join our companies.
The second one is hanging on togood people.
(04:29):
So when I think about that, Iput it in those two buckets.
You know you as the people guy,you're working with people every
day.
We're going to get into moreabout what you and your company
does in a little bit.
But how do you see that?
Is it actually harder todaythan it used to be in the
industries that you serve?
How do you see that Is itactually harder today than it
used to be in the industriesthat you serve and that you deal
with, because you have a bit ofa wider perspective than just
(04:53):
the heavy duty parts or truckingindustry.
Mike Moreau (04:55):
People always do have this struggle with finding
the right people and havingenough people to be able to do
the work that they're doing, andit's something that exists for
lots of organizations, but againexists in different ways for
different organizations, becausesome people put a really high
importance on being able to goin and find new bodies that can
come in, and so that could besomething that you know.
(05:17):
You have one shop on the roadthat struggles with finding
people, and then you startasking a lot of questions about
okay, well, what are you doingto attract people to your
business?
Well, nothing, mike.
What do you mean nothing?
Well, you know we don't reallyhave any job ads up or we don't
have any hiring signs on theroadway.
Well, how do you ever expect tofind anybody?
(05:38):
And yet you know the person downthe street can be going and
actually be doing some prettyproactive work.
That way, they're out there inthe community, they belong to
different business clubs, theyhost different sessions at high
schools or at vocationalcolleges and they get their name
out there on a more activebasis, and so there are lots of
(06:00):
people that can say you know,finding and attracting talent is
a tough thing to do and again,like anything, we sort of say
well, it's just really importantabout trying to kind of, you
know, figure out differentstrategies, some of which is
important, some of which youknow.
Some organizations will just say, well, I'll just post something
and see what comes in, and andthen and then deal with whatever
sort of walks in the door fromfrom that standpoint.
But finding people is alwayshard Entry-level jobs,
(06:24):
blue-collar jobs people canoften put an inappropriate and
negative sort of connotation tothat.
There's some amazing careersthat are built in a lot of
blue-collar jobs and people cango on to do your organization
and getting out there in theworld and attracting people,
(06:47):
making yourself look shiny.
That can take care of a lot ofissues of trying to get other
people to pay attention to yourbusiness.
Jamie Irvine (06:56):
So two questions in a row.
Now You've answered both ofthose questions by kind of
highlighting both ends of thespectrum.
You talk about same business,but one person reacts one way to
the challenge.
A different person reacts adifferent way to that challenge.
What you're really highlightingthere is that when you are in
(07:21):
an industry or a business, youall have similar challenges to
deal with, but there's reallydistinct differences in the way
people respond to thosechallenges, based on who they
are as a person.
So let me ask you somethingwhen a business owner is
approaching recruiting they'relooking to hire new people for
(07:41):
their business what are some ofthe common mistakes that they
make?
How can we do it differently?
And a third component to thatis if we're consistently having
problems, how do we look inwardat ourselves?
So let's break that down First.
What are some of the commonmistakes people make when trying
to recruit new people in theirbusiness?
Mike Moreau (08:01):
There's probably all sorts of different angles
that we can go down on that ordifferent directions that we can
take that, jamie, but sort ofwhen you get to the place where
you're actually taking a look atcandidates.
One thing I see over and overand over again is people put way
too much emphasis on a resume.
I don't know about you, butnumber one I've never sent out a
resume to anyone that lookslike I've messed up in any sort
(08:24):
of way.
In any job that I've ever beenin, it's always a glowing resume
, and so when we're usingsomething like that to be able
to evaluate candidates andwhether or not they've done
things or not, I just thinkpeople put way too much weight
in there, and so we want to pickthe nines and tens in terms of
resumes.
But we've all had theexperience where you've hired
(08:44):
somebody that is, from a resumeor experience standpoint, maybe
a five out of 10, maybe a sixout of 10, but we taught them
how to do the job and theyperform better than the person
that's been doing that job forthe last 10 years.
So that's one piece that I seeover and over and over again
just too much emphasis on aresume.
The other one that I see overand over again is this you know,
(09:04):
kind of this orientationtowards just, you know,
evaluating somebody based on howmuch you like them, and so you
know the age, old.
If I could sit down and have abeer with that person, then you
know I want to be able to bringthem on.
Well, I don't know, I can sitdown and I have sat down with a
whole bunch of people in my lifethat are wildly different in
terms of the jobs that they haveand their personalities and
(09:24):
their everything, and I can havea beer with all of them and I
enjoy having a beer with all ofthem.
But I do know distinctly thateach one of those will do things
in really different ways outthere in the world.
And so this likability piecethat we have in interviews, it's
sort of like you have an hourto sort of figure out if I think
I can get along with you, andif I can get along with you,
then I hire you.
But I probably a lot of timesfigure out the other side of it,
(09:47):
which is, boy, I hired thisperson that I had a good resume
and that I really liked, butthey're not delivering the mail
every day, and so this isn'treally working out.
Jamie Irvine (09:57):
Okay, so if we're not looking at education,
experience and skills andlikability exclusively, what
else should we be looking at?
Mike Moreau (10:07):
Yeah, well, you know, we're just a massive
believer in this idea of jobshave personalities and it's sort
of an interesting thing to sortof think about.
A job has a personality.
So if I give you two verydifferent kinds of jobs, let's
call one position a data entryclerk and the other person in
(10:28):
the other job a outside salesman.
Go knock on doors and find newbusiness.
Jobs have a personality.
That should kind of pop inpeople's minds and say, yeah,
those are two really differentpersonalities and so that's sort
of doing the opposite sides ofthe spectrum there.
But it's a truth that sort ofexists that if you're not
thinking about that in terms ofthe roles, a job has a
personality and you're kind ofusing the old school well, I'm
(10:52):
just going to hire somebody andI'm going to mold and manipulate
and sometimes even torture alittle bit to do the job that I
need them to do, and as soon asI take my hands off of that
person, they go back to doingthe job the way that they know
how to do it, and so that's theover and over and over again.
This performance performanceissues that happen within
(11:13):
businesses is sort of this ideaaround.
Well, a job has a personality.
A person has a personality, andwhen those two match up, then
performance naturally has comes.
It comes from it because peopleare naturally motivated to do
the work.
When those two have adisconnect, now all of a sudden
we're forcing that person intodoing something that they're not
naturally geared to doing.
(11:34):
And so I get the question allthe time and I said to you sort
of the old school way of lookingat things, mike how do I train
this person, prod this person,torture this person to do the
job the way that I need them todo it?
And always the answer is well,it's not the person that changes
to fit the job, but it's thejob that changes to fit the
(11:57):
person.
I'm going to change whateverjob I jump into to fit me.
I don't have any other choice.
I can't do it the way that youwould do it.
I can't.
I don't see the world the waythat you do.
So the job is going to changeto suit me, and if my
personality doesn't fit thepersonality of the job, we start
to run into some issues.
Jamie Irvine (12:16):
Okay.
So if we add the element oflooking at the ideal personality
that would be best suited to dothe job, does that mean we can
ignore education, experience andskills?
Mike Moreau (12:30):
No, no, not at all, I think.
Well, you know, using adifferent illustration, we need
to hire an engineer If yourtraits fit beautifully to the
engineer's traits, to the jobmodel that we have.
But you're not an engineer, youknow, then you're absolutely
not starting in our businessbecause we need an engineer to
do this position.
So it's just about the orderingthat you start to look at how
(12:52):
these pieces come in.
I usually talk about five keysto high performance education,
experience, skills, all things Ithink that you can find in a
resume personality andintelligence, okay, and when all
of those five things line upreally well, then we see
performance.
That comes when you hiresomebody.
(13:13):
That's actually.
I had this experience years agowith a medical school who were
looking at marks for thestudents that were applying and
they actually came up with anumber.
I think it was like 3.2, theyactually learned over and over
again that from a marketingstandpoint, if you didn't have a
(13:33):
3.2 average, you fell behind inclasses, you couldn't absorb
the material fast enough.
But we also know on the otherside, just because you're smart
doesn't make you a good doctor.
So you know, all of the medicalprofessionals have gone through
the education, experience andskills, but there's something
that sort of stands out therecalled personality.
That is a really importantpiece.
(13:54):
So when you're hiring people, Ibelieve that you know there are
things that I can change insomebody, things that I can't.
Personality and intelligenceare things that I can't change
in people.
Education, experience andskills are things that I can
change in people.
But as long as there's areasonable enough fit you've got
to fit the right traits to thejob and sort of have the right
(14:15):
characteristics to do it.
And if you're missing a fewthings, as long as we're not way
off on the education,experience and skills, I can
often equip you with that kindof information so that in not
too much time you can becomereally effective inside of that
role.
Jamie Irvine (14:30):
Okay.
So, if I have this correct, youwould hire somebody with
sufficient education, experienceand skills maybe not as much as
you would like to see, butsufficient to do the job Well,
like if you're going to be atechnician, you're going to fix
commercial trucks.
There's a minimum amount ofeducation, experience and skills
you need, but you would choosesomebody with that minimum
(14:51):
amount, with a great personalitymatch to the job, than somebody
who has more experience,education and skills but a poor
match to that profile to do thejob.
Is that what I'm hearingcorrectly?
Mike Moreau (15:04):
Yeah, I think you've got lots of people
that'll be listening to thisJamie.
That sort of have gotten a bitof a sense of you over the years
and so maybe they start tothink about you and you know,
maybe you have the education,experience and skills to do the
heavy mechanic.
You know heavy duty mechanicsort of work.
But they know pretty quicklyand sort of watching you through
the years to say he's tootalkative for that and he's too
(15:25):
excitable for that and you know,if we threw him inside of that
job he'd be going around andbossing everybody around in no
time.
We're not going to ask him to dothat job because his
personality traits are going tocause him to kind of jump out of
that and do other things.
It doesn't mean that he hasn'tdone it sometime in his career.
You haven't done it sometime inyour career but you've moved on
from that and I can't pull youback.
And probably there are going tobe some people that you sort of
(15:47):
notice that are in some of yourclients' businesses where they
have somebody in their businessthat's been doing that job heavy
duty mechanic for the last 15years and they never want to do
anything else and thank goodnesswe have them to be able to do
that kind of work.
The worst thing we would wantto do is kind of pull them up
through an organizational chartto make them GM of the branch,
(16:09):
because that's not what theywant to do.
It's not the way that they'rewired, not the way that they're
motivated to do things.
Jamie Irvine (16:19):
I hope you're enjoying my conversation with
Mike Morrow at Traits.
It's now time for our break tohear from our great sponsors.
We'll be right back.
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We're back from our break andnow we're going to continue our
conversation with Mike Morrow,president of Traits.
Okay, so I got two questionsfor you then One early on in the
conversation we talked aboutthe owner of the business or the
hiring manager, and one personin that position does well.
(18:08):
The other person is struggling.
So it's not just finding theright people for your frontline
positions, it's also finding theright people for management and
ownership.
What do you do if one of yourmanagers or you, the owner of
the company, realize, afterlistening to us and after maybe
working with us in our peopleand organization program, what
(18:30):
do you do if you find out thatyou're not a good fit?
Mike Moreau (18:33):
Yeah, well, good, good question.
So so I'm not the right fit formy job, Jamie, Okay.
Jamie Irvine (18:40):
But you're on your job, but I'm in my job and and
so so I do.
Mike Moreau (18:44):
We've got a small team and I do better with a big
team.
I do better with more thingsthat are going on.
I do better when things are upand running in a different kind
of a way, and you'll often hearabout leaders that sort of see
that Maybe some of your clientswill sort of understand that as
well, that I'm better for thisperiod of time in my business.
And oftentimes that just comesout because the business owner
(19:05):
says a long time ago I thoughtclients deserved something
better and I thought I could dothat, and so I started that and
fast forward the clock 15 yearslater and I have this machine
that just is doing somethingthat's totally different than
the real reason that I steppedout to do this.
And so I think lots of peopleare can do the things that I
(19:38):
don't naturally do and that Ikind of get in trouble with
because I because I know I seethings this way and I do things
this way I'm left to my owndevices.
We're not going to grow.
But if I start to surroundmyself with the right kind of
people that take the things on,that I don't want to do, that
I'm not naturally gifted at, butthey are then now, all of a
sudden, that's where theorganization starts to swell,
(20:00):
and so I've seen business ownersthat literally have started a
business that all they wanted todo was serve their customer
better, never wanted to be anentrepreneur.
Now they have a $10 millionbusiness that they're running
and feeling it every day From astress standpoint, from a health
standpoint.
They're feeling all of thetension that exists inside of
(20:23):
that and the ability to be ableto go in and actually help
people to find others inside ofthe organization that can
actually take on moreresponsibility, educate the
owner on how they get in theirway and what they have to be
aware of, and even sometimeshelping them migrate over to
more of an ownership role asopposed to a president role all
things that you can start tohave some discussions on.
(20:44):
But having that insight aboutyourself and what sort of gets
in the way and the impact thatyou make, those strengths and
whether they're effective insideof the role I think all of that
stuff is hidden away, but it'ssomething that we can start to
bring up for people and helpcrystallize, for them to have
some more insight about whatthey need to do and ultimately
build a roadmap for them movingforward.
Jamie Irvine (21:05):
Yeah, I think, at the end of the day, if you are
in a leadership position, andespecially if you're in an
ownership position, and youdiscover that maybe there's some
need for change, if you cansurround yourself with people
who offset the areas that maybeyou're not the strongest in but
need to be to get the job done,you can find those people that
(21:25):
can have a massive impact on notonly the ability for the
leadership group to performbetter, but I think it has a
trickle-down effect in theorganization as well.
I wanted to ask youspecifically, Mike.
We talked about recruiting,we've talked about leadership,
but what about retention?
What are some of the commonreasons that people leave
(21:45):
companies?
Mike Moreau (21:46):
So I have a client that owns a machine shop.
He's got all of these CNClathes that he's got laid out
all over his shop and herebuilds diesel engines.
And so he once said to me Mike,how is it that I could be
hiring somebody that isimpatient and putting them into
a job where they have to bepatient, sitting at a lathe all
(22:09):
day punching in codes and thenstanding around and waiting?
How could I hire somebodythat's impatient and put them in
the job where they have to dothat?
And he says I've done thatbefore and they wander all
through the shop and do allsorts of things, get into all
sorts of trouble andproductivity slows down because
now the machine is done and weneed to change everything over
(22:29):
and that person is nowhere to beseen.
And so we raise our voices alittle bit and get them back to
the station for a bit of timeand then they leave again.
And so what's one of the majorreasons that people leave is
just not a good fit to their job.
That's one of the big thingsthat ends up happening when you
take a look at that.
Number two, I think, and maybeeven number one, is this idea of
(22:51):
that Number two, I think, andmaybe even number one, is this
idea of you know, why do mostpeople leave their jobs?
Well, because of their manager.
Why do most people stay intheir jobs?
Well, because of their manager.
And so when we do a better jobof figuring out who are the
people that are really wired tobe managers and your resume
doesn't tell you that, by theway, a resume doesn't tell you
whether somebody is going to bea good manager.
(23:12):
You and your listeners have allseen that repeat itself over and
over again.
Just because you have a goodresume doesn't make you a a
manager.
And when you get that wrong,when you hire somebody that's an
exceptional supervisor, wherethey're managing the work every
(23:36):
day, and you put them in a jobwhere now they have to manage
more systems and they can'toversee the work.
They have to leave that behindand go and manage the systems
and deal with other problemsthat are facing them from a
different direction.
It's kind of like all they wantto do is go back over here and
they don't want to face all ofthese things that are up here
and so that eventually createsturnover inside of businesses,
(23:59):
because now you have a managerthat's far too hands-on, barking
orders about how things have tobe done, which is exactly the
way that he did them 10 yearsago, or she did them 10 years
ago, and those are no longerrelevant for the business.
And hey, aren't you supposed tobe focusing on where the
business is going, not harassingme?
And so it just creates turnover, turnover, turnover.
So yeah, two areas that job fitand not having the right
(24:23):
manager in place, two areas thatcan cause a lot of turnover.
Jamie Irvine (24:27):
Why do excellent frontline employees sometimes
get promoted to supervisor ormanagerial positions and they
actually get worse at their job?
Mike Moreau (24:52):
and uh, and so not everybody is wired that way.
And it's sort of the idea of,uh, you know, wayne Gretzky, who
is one of the or the greatesthockey player, uh, you know,
being Edmonton Oiler fans, we'vegot, we've got to choose
between Gretzky and McDavidthese days, but uh, um, you know
, but put him into a coach's job.
He's not a coach, and uh.
And so again back to this ideaof some hard wiring that exists
inside of all of us thatoftentimes the reason that your
(25:14):
best entry level position is thebest at what they do in terms
of the group is because theirtraits match up most closely to
the job.
But it's the job that they'rein, it's not the job.
That's one up, or two up, andso you actually see that, or two
up, and so you actually seethat.
And a long time ago they wrote abook about this called the
(25:35):
Peter Principle that employs.
Well, it was a study that wasdone, actually out of the
University of Toronto, wherethey went and took a look at
people and why people leavemanagers, and what they actually
started to understand throughthe study was people will rise
to the level of incompetenceinside of an organizational
structure where there they willstay because you're a nine out
of 10.
So we're going to promote youknow best in the group, so we're
(25:57):
going to promote you.
Now you're a seven out of 10,still better than all these
sixes so we're going to promoteyou again.
You end up being a five out of10 and now we can't promote you
anymore and you're a five.
So so you know, you may not bedoing all the things that we
need you to do, but we can'tfire you because you're not that
bad.
So forever we're going to stayand live with mediocrity at that
position.
And what an awful thing for usas humans to sort of think about
(26:21):
.
But it repeats itself over and,over and over again.
But if we had a better?
Jamie Irvine (26:30):
peek into again hardwire.
I think we could save a lot ofthat from happening.
Anybody listening to this inthe heavy-duty parts industry.
I'm just going to say twothings Counterperson who becomes
a parts manager and a greatoutside salesperson who becomes
a sales manager.
It doesn't always work out.
They were great on the counterand they just struggle as a
manager.
They were great out on the roadas a salesperson, but managing
a team of salespeople just seemsto be beyond them.
I think on the road as asalesperson, but managing a team
(26:51):
of salespeople just seems to bebeyond them.
I think on the entrepreneurialside of the equation we often
see this where you have someonewho is a technician and so what
do they do?
They start a mobile repaircompany or they get a repair
shop and they start a businessthat does that.
Well, that's two different jobsbeing a technician and running
a business that offers thatservice, two completely
(27:15):
different jobs.
And yet oftentimes this iswhere people find themselves.
So tell me about, for those whomaybe know, they know where
we're headed with this.
For those who don't, what is apsychometric assessment and why
is TRAIT traits specificallyvery reliable?
Mike Moreau (27:32):
Yeah, so a psychometric tool is really,
technically, it's the usingstatistical analysis to quantify
human temperament.
To simplify that a little bit,it's sort of this idea of if you
took all of the words in theEnglish language that describe
behavior and you wrote them downon a little sticky and threw
(27:56):
them down on the ground, becausethere's about I think about
3,200 of them take a look at allof that pile of words.
And then you started to groupthose that sounded the same
introverted, talkative, social,gregarious, um, quiet, all of
those kind of sound the same.
So we throw them all in a boxand then we do that with all of
(28:18):
the words and then you're goingto look and you're going to
you're going to have fewer boxesthat are spread out around the
room and then you're going to gointo each one of those boxes
and you're going to start to putthose words out and you're
going to put extremes on eitherend of them and you're going to
have probably very few of themon the edges and lots more of
them towards the middle, andthen you're going to assign some
(28:39):
math to it and then, literally,what a psychometric tool is is
all about sending it out to anapplicant or to an employee and
saying here are a whole bunch ofwords, pick the ones that best
describe you or don't describeyou, some sort of version of
that, and then we'll put all ofthat back into a bit of a math
formula and say, listen, weasked you a whole bunch of
(29:00):
questions, we asked you in acouple of different ways about
the way we were doing that, andyou kept describing yourself as
this as you were going through.
So it eventually gives us somedata to be able to take a look
at.
We've worked with some PhDs andwe have a PhD on staff here
that spends a lot of timestudying this and again trying
to quantify this idea of people,but ultimately it gives a
(29:24):
really, really accuraterepresentation of the
individuals that are goingthrough this.
Again, I've been called allsorts of interesting words Mind
reader was the most recent one,or the Oracle from the Matrix or
something like that, but all itis is.
It was so simply put to me,mike.
(29:44):
You asked me 120 times who Iwas, roughly how many questions
we have, and I told you over andover again who I was.
Of course, these are theresults that come through, and
of course this is going to tellme who I am, and so it just
gives really really accurate,really reliable information on
candidates, employees that gothrough the survey.
Jamie Irvine (30:04):
So why should someone want to use this kind of
a tool in their business?
Mike Moreau (30:09):
Today you have employees that are walking in,
they're doing a job, they'regood at it, they're not so good
at it, they're somewhere in themiddle and then they walk out
and you've captured no real dataon the way that they're wired,
how motivated they are to docertain things.
So it's kind of like well, Iwant to hire somebody that's
more like Bill or a little bitmore like Sandra, and we're
trying to like we're doing that,but we're not actually pulling
(30:32):
or we're not actually measuring,getting any data off of them.
What Traits allows people to beable to do is to be able to say
let's go take a look at thelast five people that have gone
through this I think you saidcustomer parts desk.
Let's go take a look at thepeople that have been successful
.
And let's take a look at onescale called assertiveness, and
(30:53):
the more people are over on thisside, the more naturally
accommodating they are.
The more they are over intothis side, the more assertive
they are.
And when we take a look at thelast five people in the job, we
say, geez, we hired some peoplethat are naturally more
assertive and they came in, theythought they were the boss and
then they left because we didn'thave anything else for them and
we told them they had to stickon the parts desk.
We had some people that werereally low on that
(31:16):
characteristic and very, veryaccommodating and they weren't
actually all that good atselling.
But we had this group of threepeople that were right around
here on the scale, where theyjust love the security of being
part of a team and part of a job, that they could build some
consistency and some reliabilityaround, didn't have a lot of
risk.
They like helping people,serving people and guess what?
(31:38):
All of those people came tothem and they just got to help.
They didn't have to do a wholebunch of sales stuff, like
people on the other end of theshop and and and you know they
were happy doing it.
So it allows us to be able tocollect some data on on the
people that are coming into ourbusiness and doing different
jobs, and the more data we canstart to collect, the more we
can start to make somepredictions of oh boy, I've,
(31:58):
I've got somebody that's moreassertive.
I better get them into into asales job.
I'm, you know they applied forparts, but I'm going to suggest
sales and oh boy, I've gotsomebody that's naturally more
accommodating.
Maybe parts is a place to startoff, or service tech might even
be a place that they could moveover to, so gathering data and
being able to make betterdecisions over time because of
(32:19):
that.
Jamie Irvine (32:20):
Okay, let's do something fun here.
I want to talk about twopositions first.
They're both considered salespositions and I want you to
really illustrate how those twopositions are actually requiring
different people.
So let me give you the twopositions.
To start with, you got a partsperson on the counter.
They're in sales.
(32:41):
They have people coming intothe counter every day asking for
parts.
People coming into the counterevery day asking for parts.
They have people phoning them,texting them, emailing them.
It's a very busy environmentand they are definitely
responsible for sellingheavy-duty parts to those
customers who are coming to them.
Then you also have outsidesalespeople.
Now, they're sales as well, buttheir job often entails a lot
(33:04):
more of going and trying toconvince people to buy more from
them, right, so they're outthere.
They're going from business tobusiness.
Sometimes there's signs thatsay no trespassing, no
salespeople without appointment.
Not everybody is thrilled tosee them show up.
So both of these jobs are insales One's inside, one's
outside.
(33:24):
Why does that require twocompletely different you know
personalities to be able to besuccessful in those two
positions.
Walk us through that.
Mike Moreau (33:33):
So let's, if I can just to try and simplify this a
little bit think about twotraits, two scales one
assertiveness and the other onedetail orientation.
When you talk about the partscounter, that to me is a lower
assertiveness, naturally moreaccommodating.
Why?
Because people are coming to me.
I get to serve the people thatare coming to me and and and I
(33:54):
like that sort of thing, I don'twant to go out and sell people,
press things on, press peoplethat's too much risk.
I'm not naturally assertive, Iwant to be there to service
others.
It's also a higherdetail-oriented job.
So more structure inside ofthat position, more of a parts
catalog that I have to sort ofgo off of, going into the back,
finding where those things are,remembering where those things
(34:17):
are, ordering parts, followingup on them, naturally thinking
about holy smokes, that parthasn't come in for Jamie yet.
Why is that not here I'm goingto call the supplier and
thinking about the repercussionsof what happens after an order
is made.
And, again, concern for otherswith the assertiveness scale.
So that's what that to me whenyou describe that position and
(34:40):
when I think about that role.
Jamie Irvine (34:41):
Pretty accurate, you got it.
Mike Moreau (34:45):
When you talk about outside sales, that's a higher
risk oriented job.
Nobody's coming to you askingfor the salesman to come in
through the door and holding thedoor open for you as you come
in.
Those are the people that needto have more of a risk
orientation looking at a sign,seeing that there's an
(35:08):
opportunity for me to go inthere and knock on the door and
to not sort of take no for ananswer.
So when I get a light sort ofturn away at the door, then I
say no.
I think this is actuallysomething that really would be
important for your business toknow about and to understand.
I'm pressing more.
I need more assertiveness to dothat kind of a job and so on.
That assertiveness scale,getting somebody that's higher
inside of that position isreally important.
On detail and sorry, that alsocontributes to the resiliency of
(35:31):
somebody more willing to kindof take the rejection.
But they hold those opinions intheir minds more firmly.
They're like, no, maybe Ididn't get it on this one, but
I'm going to go to the next doorbecause I know that this is a
product that needs to get acrossto other people and I'm going
to keep pushing on this.
Detail orientation would be theother one where somebody that's
high on detail orientationdoesn't want to make mistakes.
That's what makes them so goodat the parts desk.
(35:53):
But when you put somebody atthe parts desk high detail
orientation into a sales job,they're overanalyzing all of the
sales position, all of thesales calls, they're trying
something, they're getting itwrong and then they're going
back to their office andspending a whole bunch more time
studying catalogs again.
And that's not what you need.
You need somebody that's loweron detail orientation, that kind
(36:14):
of sheds the mistakes off ofthem, is more willing to try
something, say something in asales call just to get
somebody's attention so thatthey can go in.
And it's more about the biggerpicture, probably walking into a
client and saying what'sworking for you and what's not
with your current vendor?
Not, hey, I have this to sell.
What's working for you or whatisn't with this?
I want to explore the situationas opposed to sell a product.
(36:36):
So you can see pretty quicklywhen you put the opposites in.
When you take somebody that'slow assertive, high detail parts
counter and you put them intoan outside sales job, they
struggle with being able tobuild up the courage every day
to do that job.
When they do make a mistakewith something or the client
doesn't buy from them, they tendto kind of go back into their
corner quite a bit more andthey're less willing to try
(36:59):
things in those conversationsand sort of take that more
personally as they're doing thatwork.
When you take somebody that'shigh on assertiveness and low on
detail orientation, you putthem into a part service desk.
They're kind of the people thatit doesn't take very long
before they start arguing withthe client Because this is the
fourth time you've come inasking for warranty on this and
(37:21):
we're not doing warranty on this.
So they start challenging back,they start pushing back.
Or, oh shoot, did I place anorder for that?
I don't even remember you fromthe last Tuesday when you came.
You came, are you sure you camein on Tuesday and you gave me
an order?
Low detail orientation.
Jamie Irvine (37:35):
Oh geez.
Mike Moreau (37:35):
I'm really sorry.
You know, and and you knowchanging things up so you can
see what happens when you kindof put the opposites into the
opposite job.
Jamie Irvine (37:46):
As you're.
As you're talking about allthat, what came to mind is is
that, um, if someone says no,I'm not interested, the the
person better suited for theparts counter would say
something like oh, okay, well,thank you very much for your
time, have a nice day.
And the person with higherassertiveness would say
something like uh, really, soyou're not interested.
Okay, so that's one rejection.
What six more before youfinally buy something from me?
(38:06):
and there's that moment, yeah, amoment of awkwardness, and then
they both laugh, yeah, and and,by the way, that's a true story
.
I actually have seen that inthe real world.
So, okay, let's have some funhere.
Um, I want to.
I want to give you anotherscenario two managers parts
manager they're responsible forone counter and four parts
people branch manager they wereresponsible for the parts
(38:31):
counter, the warehouse, thedelivery drivers, the outside
sales people, the entire branch.
Both managers, both needing tohave a manager type profile, and
yet two very different jobs.
So help us see the differencesin those two positions.
Mike Moreau (38:47):
Well, you actually start to see when you think
about structure of anorganization and what traits are
required structurally inside ofa business.
So when you talked about partsmanager, maybe I'd argue a
little bit that it's almost moreof a supervisory kind of a
position.
The title might be manager,that's fine, but what am I doing
?
I'm overseeing the work ofother people.
(39:07):
I'm making sure that the workgets done every day and
everything.
All of the problems that I haveto solve are all within this
little bucket over here.
And so you know, found a part,couldn't find a part, need to
get something ordered.
It's all about what happensinside of this area.
Here A customer comes in andsays, hey, I think I have an
(39:28):
issue over here.
Good, this is the part that youneed.
And so it's very much sort offocused downward inside of the
organization, supervising,overseeing the people that are
doing the production work.
And then when you talked aboutgeneral manager, it's almost
like, well, that's up a coupleof levels where now the problems
that you're dealing with everysingle day have got far more
(39:49):
complexity and far moreambiguity to them and the
answers are not as quicklyavailable, and so a general
manager just might have thisissue that starts to arise.
The parts manager comes up tothem and says clients are losing
their minds because we don'thave any of the product that are
(40:11):
coming in from the supplier andthings are going wrong.
And that's where the generalmanager says, well, what's going
on?
I've got to dive into thesituation, I've got to figure
things out.
But again there's lots ofambiguity and complexity inside
of all of that to be able to say, well, is this a logistics
problem?
Is this a supplier problem?
Where are the issues coming infrom?
(40:31):
And then how are we going tosolve it?
How are we going to come upwith a solution to that?
And trying to sort of guidethings into the future a little
bit more, at Parts Manager, inthe way that I sort of describe
the job overseeing theproduction, you can see and
start to hear how that's just areally different.
You know it's a manager job,but kind of the work that
they're overseeing is reallydifferent than what a general
(40:52):
manager has to deal with.
Jamie Irvine (40:54):
And they not only have to deal with that.
Mike Moreau (40:55):
Now they've got salesmen that's promised
something that I'm not sure howwe're going to deliver on that
thing and that's going to get usin a whole bunch of trouble,
but it's a great opportunity.
So let's figure out how toflesh that out, and they're also
having to, you know, thinkabout whatever they're.
You know the fact that thebuilding is now starting to
burst from the seams, and so nowI have to start thinking about
what is the, what's the next bitof real estate that we have to
(41:16):
be thinking about?
So two really different sets ofresponsibilities that come in
that require two very, verydifferent kinds of people.
Jamie Irvine (41:23):
And the sad part is is a lot of times a really
good counter person becomes theparts manager and then becomes a
branch manager, maybe even thena general manager, and the
Peter principle sometimestotally applies to them, other
times not, you know.
Other times people are destinedto to have that.
Why?
Because they've got thatgeneral manager profile and so
as they got more experience theyactually get better.
(41:44):
You know they may be worth thebest parts person in the world,
but by the time they get togeneral manager boy, they're
really really doing well.
Well, that's because they'reoriented towards that.
And now they have also theabout that you know.
Mike Moreau (42:01):
A good question to ask people and for them to sort
of do some reflection on is whenwas I happiest in my life doing
what kind of a job?
And for a lot of people it'srewinding the clock a bunch of
years to when I was doing that.
When I was, when I was thesupervisor man, I had it nailed
and I'd sort of argue well, thatperson's still a supervisor,
(42:23):
but now they have a title ofmanager and how do they do that
job called manager?
They supervise.
I had a client that was, Ithink he was about 33 years old
and his dad owned a nationalcompany and I think they were
doing probably about $100million in sales a year and he
(42:45):
had sort of flirted in andoutside of the company, never
could really get along with dad,and so then he'd leave and he'd
go and start up a company andkind of get that going and be in
startup phase and then maybehe'd sell that off and something
else would happen.
And then one day his dad gotsick and couldn't run the
business anymore and at 30, 33years old he got the job of
(43:05):
president of this national $100million business like pretty
massive in terms of what he tookon for the family and it was
interesting as he was sort oflearning about all of these
things.
He said you know, mike, this isso interesting.
He said you know, most peoplewould be absolutely terrified of
a job like this interest.
And he said you know, mostpeople would be absolutely
terrified of a job like this.
(43:26):
And this is the first jobwithout the resume, the
education, experience and skillsto do this job.
This is the first job I feltlike I actually fit in and so
that whole idea fit back to thesupervisor in a manager job and
where was I best and all of thattype of thing.
Again, there's a real somethingunderlying inside of all of
this that they can start to comeout and when you, when you
think about that, it's kind ofinteresting.
(43:47):
And that business has gone onto continue to grow and do some
pretty amazing things out there.
But you know, again, traitsthat match up against that job.
So I just wanted to kind ofthrow that story.
Jamie Irvine (43:56):
I'm so glad you told us that story.
So what we do at the HeavyDutyDuty Consulting Corporation
for heavy-duty companies youknow we really work with them in
several different areas oftheir business People and
organization is a big part ofthat, and we're so happy to work
alongside you, mike, and youprovide us with the tool that's
called Traits.
(44:17):
That allows us to evaluatepeople at this level.
So it's really important forthe listeners to understand that
when we get to a place where wehave created what's called a
job model, which is where we'veoutlined the optimal personality
traits to do a specific job ata very high level, we have that
job model and we've got thatreally figured out.
(44:38):
Then we take people, whetherthey are candidates applying and
we're trying to recruit them,or existing employees, and we
get them to take the assessment.
So now we have that person'sprofile, their personality
traits are there and we canoverlay one on top of the other
and we can look for a match ormismatch mismatch.
(45:09):
When we get to that level, whatcomes next and how do we get
access to information to help usmake the necessary decisions
Hire this person or not, promotethis person or not, change this
person's job description or not.
Can you walk us through that?
Mike Moreau (45:20):
I think a lot of that, a lot of it, just comes
from knowledge that you have tobuild as you're working with
something like this.
Again, it's an instrument.
It's a tool that you need tofigure out how best to leverage
it, and more knowledge is better.
And so, I think, for yourclients, I think contacting you
and having some of thosediscussions, I think, is one
thing.
I think you can take a look atsome of the reports that we've
(45:42):
built with the job modeling tool.
We're asking in terms of whatwe need inside of this job and
then taking a look at thecandidates' results and
understanding who they are andthen being able to see some of
that.
There's a graphical overlay.
That happens.
That is probably the mostmagical part of this tool that
we can really define what it isthat we're looking for, again
(46:04):
using scales, because peopleunderstand scales very well.
If I say I'm six foot three and190 pounds, boom, everybody can
kind of picture me reallyquickly, because we all
understand that scale and weunderstand whether Mike can dunk
or not or whether he'd be abetter hockey player than he
would a basketball player.
We can make some interestingassumptions on some of those
(46:25):
things.
And so when we're doing that.
With these scales of behavior,we can start to see very quickly
where is there fit, where isthere not fit.
And we've just actually launchedanother tool that just came out
this week actually that talksabout when you are comparing a
person against a job.
It says, well, here's the job,here's the person.
And then this report willdescribe here's how this person
(46:48):
is going to do inside of thisjob.
Here's how they're going towant to change it to suit
themselves.
Here's how they're going towant to, how motivated they're
going to be in these areas.
So lots of sort of ways to beable to dig in deeper.
Overall, back to that knowledgestatement, you need to learn
what these traits mean and youhave to be able to interpret
these graphs.
And as soon as you start tobuild that knowledge, it's like
(47:09):
all of a sudden, you know,instead of pouring through a
whole bunch of reports, we lookat it like a doctor looks at an
x-ray and says here's what'sbroken, here's what's right, you
know, and off we go from there.
Jamie Irvine (47:19):
Yeah, and we are now using this tool exclusively
in our consulting service andI'll tell you the clients that
are using it the insights thatthey're getting.
We're helping them avoid making, maybe, what would be a poor
hiring decision.
We're helping them to makechanges with people's job
descriptions to bring betteralignment.
All of this contributes toincreasing your success rate
(47:42):
when you're recruiting,improving your retention rate,
which is so critical.
We've got to hang on to theknowledgeable people we have in
this business.
We can't have them leaving andgoing somewhere else because
they're mismatched to the wrongjob.
So this is just such a powerfultool.
We've talked about a lot ofthings.
Mike and I always like to askmy guests if there's like one
(48:05):
thing they want people toremember from this conversation.
What's that one thing?
Mike Moreau (48:11):
Sorry I'm going to ramble for a couple seconds here
, but I think this idea of youknow, if there was something
that was out there that allowedus to be able to predict how
somebody was going to do in aposition before we hired them,
before we put them in, whywouldn't we be doing that and
getting some more insight aboutwhat we're going to do?
So many of our businesses'problems and solutions lie in
(48:34):
people, and so if there was away that we could dial in and
really understand how to predicthow somebody's going to do
inside of a position and howthey're going to turn the job
around, why wouldn't we do thatExactly?
Jamie Irvine (48:47):
You've been listening to the Heavy-Duty
Parts Report Today.
We've been talking about peoplein the parts business.
I'm so happy that we had you on.
Mike Morrow is the president ofTraits and if you'd like to see
Traits firsthand for yourself,I want to encourage you to go
over to heavydutypartsreportcomslash traits and that's spelled
T-R-A-I-T-S, soheavydutypartsreportcom slash
(49:10):
traits and you will be able totake an assessment for yourself.
We will meet with you and wewill review that.
You'll be able to see firsthandhow accurate it is and we'll
also be able to demonstrate toyou some of the features that
you can use inside your businessto make your business more
successful.
The trucking industry is thebackbone of society and we need
heavy duty people to thriveinside the industry so they can
(49:32):
take care of the rest of us.
Mike, thank you so much forbeing on the show and thank you
for your ongoing support of ourcompany, the Heavy Duty
Consulting Corporation.
I really genuinely appreciateeverything you do for us.
Mike Moreau (49:44):
Yeah well, thank you, jamie.
The relationship is importantto me, so thanks for having me
on and all the best.
Jamie Irvine (49:49):
What a great interview with Mike Morrow from
Traits.
We at the Heavy-Duty ConsultingCorporation are certified
facilitators for Traits, so weuse this with our clients all
the time.
If you're interested in that,you should reach out to us.
We'd love to have aconversation.
Head over toheavydutypartsreportcom.
Slash traits and you'll be ableto get one free assessment done
(50:11):
.
So have somebody in yourorganization, take the
assessment, we'll meet with youand we will discuss how it works
.
We'll show you the wholeprogram.
We really look forward toworking with you on that.
Now, just by way of a quickconclusion, I want to switch
over to our final segment that'sNot Heavy Duty.
In this week's edition ofthat's Not Heavy Duty.
I just want to continue thetheme of people and organization
(50:34):
and I want to highlight onething that Mike and I talked
about in the episode.
To really drive this point home, it used to be the heavy duty
way where we would just promotepeople who had stayed in their
positions for a long time andthey would just take the natural
steps.
So counter people would becomeparts managers.
Parts managers would becomebranch managers.
(50:55):
Sometimes branch managersbecome general managers.
That wasn't necessarily becausethey were the best person for
the job.
A lot of time.
It had to do with that they hadwon the attrition war, meaning
they were just there.
Everybody else had left, theywere still there and so they got
promoted.
I saw that in sales as welloutside salespeople.
Oftentimes they come from theinside, they come from the parts
(51:19):
department.
They were on the counter.
Then they go into outside sales.
Then they become a salesmanager, maybe a regional sales
manager.
Then they become maybe adirector of sales, and it isn't
necessarily because they're thebest person for that job.
Like we talked about in theepisode, that Peter principle is
a real thing and it's reallyimportant to understand that.
(51:40):
Because, you know, we mighthave been able to get away with
that in the past when there waslots of people available in the
industry to choose from.
But because things arecompletely radically different
today, where there are so fewpeople available to us to work
in our industry, we just cannotafford to have the wrong people
in the wrong positions.
We cannot afford to take goodpeople and promote them beyond
(52:04):
their abilities and then losethem.
This is not the heavy duty way.
It can no longer be heavy duty.
So the heavy duty way has to bethat we use the best technology
at our disposal to be able toidentify the right people,
whether they're internal,already they're people who work
for us or we're recruitingoutside.
We've got to get the rightpeople sitting in the right
(52:25):
people, whether they're internal, already they're people who
work for us or we're recruitingoutside.
We got to get the right peoplesitting in the right seats.
Traits is that technology.
So, again, if you want to takeadvantage of it, please head
over to heavydutypartsreportcom,slash traits and get your free
assessment done.
One free assessment and we willsit down with you and we'll
talk through the strategy foryour company.
This is the Heavy-Duty Way.
(52:45):
Thanks again for listening.
This was an extended episodethis week, but the subject
matter was very important.
I hope that you enjoyed it.
Thank you for continuing tosupport the show.
If you haven't already, headover to heavydutypartsreportcom,
hit that follow button.
Sign up to our weekly email.
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(53:07):
opportunity to give us afive-star rating and review,
would you do that for us.
We'd really appreciate it.
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that subscribe button and thebell notification on YouTube.
Thank you again for yourongoing support and, as always,
I want to end today's episode byencouraging you to be heavy
duty.
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