Transcript

Training #1216 · From Chad

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If they don't know how, that's on you.
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There's a story behind that. This is your daily message from
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Chadmur 12116 to upgrade your mental game today by telling
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yourself a better story. Because the most important story
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you hear is the story you tell yourself.
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This message is dedicated to Ernie Calibran.
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Here's the upgrade. When someone gets it wrong, you
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may want to blame them. But upgraded thinking first
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asks, did I train them? Here's the story.
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Pals Sudden Service is a small burger chain in Tennessee.
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Drive through only, mostly part time workers, lots of teenagers.
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They get your order wrong about once every 3600 times.
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Pals hires for attitude. That was message 12:15.
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But attitude only get you in the door.
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Skill is a different system. Before you work a station alone,
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you train for 120 hours. Then you get certified.
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Not in the job, but in each station.
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Grill, fries, shakes, window one at a time and it never stops.
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Every shift, at every store, a computer picks a few names at
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random for a surprise test on their station.
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You don't know when your name will come up.
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The standard is 100% competence. Fail the check and you get
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retrained before doing that job again.
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Sounds harsh, but here's why it isn't.
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Long time CEO Tom Crosby put it this way.
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People go out of calibration, just like machines do.
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In message number 956, I told you that you don't rise to the
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occasion. You sink to your level of
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training, Crosby adds. The catch?
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Your level of training doesn't hold still.
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People drift. When a machine drifts, you don't
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yell at it, you recalibrate it. PALS applies this understanding
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to its people. Crosby's rule is if people
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aren't doing something right, that's not a problem with them,
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it's a problem with the training.
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So the test isn't a punishment, it's a diagnostic.
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The leaders live by it, too. PALS executive spent about 10%
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of their time teaching. Every day they pick one subject
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and one person to teach it to. The whole place is a classroom
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that happens to sell burgers. John Wooden ran his program the
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same way. In message number 1140, I told
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you how the greatest coach in college basketball spent his
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first practice teaching Kareem Abdul Jabbar how to put on his
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socks. Great leaders are never above
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teaching the basics. A willingness problem and a
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training problem aren't the same thing.
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If someone doesn't know how the leaders first question should
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be, have I taught them? In message #1191, I told you how
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you're not bad at something, you're just untrained today.
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Flip it around. When someone around you isn't
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doing something the way you think they should, whose job is
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it to train them? Most of us skip that question.
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We trained them once, three years ago, and when they drift,
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we call it a character problem. PALS assumes competence drifts
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by default, so they never stop teaching.
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You're a leader somewhere, at work, at home, on a team.
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Who around you is out of calibration.
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Pick one subject, pick one person and teach it today.
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The better story to tell yourself is I can't get mad if
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they don't know how if I haven't taught them yet.
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Tell me a story of the best training you ever had to from
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chadsmith@gmail.com. Send someone a text and ask them
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when would be a good time for you to teach me the thing you're
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best at. You can get a free copy of my
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book, The Most Powerful Story in the World, by going to from
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chad.gumroad.com. The transcript of this message
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and hundreds of others are always available at
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www.fromchad.com.