Tying the Past to the Present and Future
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From the Harvard Business Review: Prevent Negativity from Taking Over Your Team
| Prevent Negativity from Taking Over Your Team |
| As a manager, you need to constantly be taking the pulse of your team’s collective emotions—whether they’re frustrated with a new strategic direction, anxious about a leadership transition, or upset because of recent layoffs. How can you prevent these negative emotional dynamics from festering on your team? First, to the extent that you’re able, modify the situation that’s at the source of the negativity, and express to your employees that you recognized their collective emotion and made a change. At the same time, reappraise the underlying situation that’s brought on the negative energy. Can you reframe it in a way that inspires hope and positivity? Next, galvanize your team by returning its focus to a collective goal or priority. Finally, practice “response modulation.” This involves controlling your outward expression of your own emotional experience in order to set the tone for others. Your employees are looking to you as a signal of what they should feel. If you maintain a positive and authentic posture in response to a challenging situation, you can positively influence the group’s collective emotion. |
| This tip is adapted from “Managing Your Team’s Emotional Dynamic,” by Amit Goldenberg |
What to Do When a New Hire Isn’t Working Out
| What to Do When a New Hire Isn’t Working Out |
Not every new hire pans out. If you’ve onboarded a new employee who’s struggling to hit their targets, how can you decide whether to invest in them further—or whether it’s time to terminate their employment?
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True Leadership
From my friend Rhoda Kreuzer:
Many leaders feel their success is determined by sales revenues, how few problems they experience, or how popular they are. These things are not bad, but they do not define true successful leadership. Instead, they are counterfeit definitions of success that look good on the surface while struggling to sustain any growth.
Authentic leadership instead is based on our influence, the results and momentum achieved, and the culture created. It is not quick and easy to go the authentic route. The real leadership pathway is harder and takes far more effort. It demands more from a leader and forces us to ask hard questions.
We have never needed true leadership more than we do today. There is more insecurity in safety, health, and the economy than ever before. All of this insecurity and change produce anxiety and the desire for a quick answer. The reality is that we do not have quick answers, but we can guide our teams through those changes and bring about long-term good. As leaders, we must speak into these challenging times.
True leadership means displaying courage, integrity, and being mission-driven.
It is always easy to discuss being a true leader, but hard to do. True leaders do not run from challenges, or from obstacles, or change. Instead, we commit ourselves to a mission and purpose that compels us to press forward and challenge our teams to excel. The incredible joy of succeeding in spite of risks and issues is one that forges teams to work together.
Our challenge is to avoid settling for counterfeit Leadership which is cheap and shallow. These leaders are burning out at massive rates and leaving an empty, discouraged feeling at the end of the day. Counterfeit leadership feels good because it is quicker to achieve but falls off rapidly when stress comes our way.
True leadership is deep and lasting. Which will you choose? Let’s be true leaders who will impact those we serve and sustain success for the future.
KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS, MEASURING WHAT YOU MANAGE, COMMERCIAL COLLECTION.
The next in the series, “Measuring what you Manage, Key Performance Indicators” deals with Commercial Collection. As a recap, what is a KPI? KPI stands for key performance indicator, a quantifiable measure of performance over time for a specific goal. KPIs provide targets for teams to shoot for, milestones to gauge progress, and insights that help people across the organization make better decisions.
As you collect data and analyze the numbers, these numbers will talk to you if you are willing to look and spot the trends that they are showing you. Now, many of these reports are available from the many software providers serving our industry. If not a standard report, your provider may be able to design a custom report for you, making this data collection less daunting.
COMMERCIAL SERVICE KPI MEASUREMENT
Residential and commercial collection differ in a few but important ways. While residential waste streams are consistent from customer to customer, commercial collection introduces many variables into the day-to-day operation such as container size, service frequency, distance between stops, material compactability, material density, space constraints for material storage and time of day service requirements. All these variables influence efficiency, productivity and pricing.
Commercial collection technology varies greatly from urban, suburban and rural areas. Old cities have particular demands due to lack of space and access for containers of different materials, where suburban communities can better accommodate the extra space needed to store materials for longer periods to provide the optimal collection schedules. The economies of fewer pickups with larger containers have a significant impact on the cost to the waste generator.
While most people in our industry think front load technology when it comes to commercial collection, the same principles can apply to rear load and side load commercial collection as well. Many operations have dedicated residential and commercial routes, however in many suburban and rural areas mixed residential and commercial routes exist to be able to collect both residential and commercial customers on the same route with the same truck. When a particular KPI (Key Performance Indicator) concept is different between the different collection technologies, I will note the differences. Many KPI’s for commercial collection are the same as for residential collection.
Time. The one thing all of us are given equally is the gift of time. How we use the time given to us is especially important when running our business. Week to week and month to month consistency is difficult with commercial routes due to the number of variables (traffic, weather, special pickups, etc.) that change daily, but some trends can be seen while keeping these variables in mind. Route time, travel time, wait time at disposal sites can, with some effort, be tracked.
Miles. At its core, the garbage business is a specialized TRANSPORTATION company. Tracking the number of miles traveled during the day has a direct correlation to many other elements you should be tracking such as Operating Cost per Mile, Miles per Gallon, Average Miles per Hour, Stops per Hour, and others.
Average Miles per Hour. Dividing the miles driven by the number of hours needed to complete a route. Not a considerable number by itself, but helpful in identifying trends over a period of time.
Fuel. Best done if each day starts with a full tank. Record fuel usage daily.
Miles Per Gallon. Divide number of miles by gallons of fuel used. This is a great way to track efficiency of truck and driver’s habits. Also, a way to check for fuel theft from the truck’s tank. If MPG shows a drastic decline, either fuel is disappearing or there may be a mechanical issue with the vehicle.
Total yards collected. This would be the total number of yards collected, not necessarily based on container yards.
Total yards disposed. Even if you pay disposal fees per ton, recording yards disposed will help you track your trucks compaction ratio.
Total tonnage disposed. Easily determined by landfill tickets. Toonage between weeks may or may not be consistent, depending on the specific characteristics of your specific route.
Average tonnage per yard. Dividing tonnage collected by the number of yards disposed will show total load density. If day to day tonnage per yard varies greatly, perhaps there are some accounts whose density needs to be reflected in their pricing. Deciding what accounts are outside the norm may take a little investigative work. Look at those ethnic restaurants your salesperson picked up cheap!
Stops or yardage per mile. Dividing the number of stops or yardage by the miles driven is a good measure of the density of your work. A goal of every waste collection company should be to build and increase customer / route density. When density increases, its good! If density decreases, you need to dig deeper, find what’s going on, and correct it as soon as possible!
Software generated reports. If you are using an industry-specific software program (and why wouldn’t you?) many come with standard productivity reports that will combine data from your billing, routing and operational data base. In time, these numbers will begin to talk to you and tell you things about your business you never knew. You will see trends developing which will make you ask “why?”. Most software providers will customize a report for you if you know what data you are looking for.
So, if this sounds like a corporate type, make work, terrible waste of time to you, that’s fine. But then, ask yourself and feel free to tell me in the comments, what are you doing to gauge productivity, hold your team members accountable, and assure yourself that you are running an efficient, profitable company?
vantholenassociates.com
#afriendinthebusiness
Measuring Maintenance Costs
Measuring Maintenance Costs
When running your business, can we all agree that it’s better to be proactive than reactive? And since we are going to be focusing on measuring maintenance costs, I believe this is one of the most crucial areas of proactivity. “But Ed”, you say, “I just need to get out there and pick up the trash. If the truck breaks, I fix it. What is there to measure?” I’m glad you asked!
Maintenance costs can comprise 15-20% or more of your total operating expenses. In a time of rapid inflation where we are trying to save money anywhere possible, maintenance is an area that can be controlled, if you are willing to take the time to do so. Whether you are using QuickBooks or some other form of software to manage expenses, utilize the categories and track your costs.
Preventative Maintenance is the easiest of categories to manage if you have your equipment on a regular PM schedule. If not, we can help with that too. When performing regular PM services, keep track of the potential problems that you find while underneath greasing the chassis and changing the oil. You may find a brake about to cam over, a hydraulic hose about to burst, broken leaf spring, or a bulge in a tire. These are all things that could result in a roadside breakdown. When you catch them in advance, you have saved yourself untold amounts of time and money. It’s almost like finding $20 bucks in your pocket!
Track all your repairs and why they are being performed, whether they are PM’s, roadside breakdowns, driver inspections or warranty repairs. Once you have done that, you can begin to recognize patterns. For example, if you have a lot of breakdowns on the road, what are they? Tires? Hydraulic lines? Maybe those are some areas that need more attention during a scheduled PM service. Train your techs to look for these things during a service and track that as well. A hydraulic line replaced in the shop during a routine service is like money in the bank compared to having it blow out at the farthest point on the route from the shop!
Now that you have a system in place and can track the patterns, there is a formula we have developed to measure how well the maintenance team is doing. You can compare month to month to track your progress and even use it as an incentive. If you would like more information on this system, message me or give me a call! I would enjoy talking with you and getting to know you and your business.
Ed Dryfhout
Van Tholen & Associates
ed@vantholenassociates.com
616-813-6600
vantholenassociates.com
616-813-1657
KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS, MEASURING WHAT YOU MANAGE, RESIDENTIAL COLLECTION
Over the next several weeks, we will be presenting a series about Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for specific areas of the solid waste industry. The information we will provide is not Master’s Degree level stuff, after all, we are just garbagemen as well! What it will be is a few simple data points to track and analyze the performance of your company in the past, and set goals for future success. We will be focusing our efforts in these areas: Residential Collection, Preventative Maintenance, Commercial Service, Equipment Cost, Rolloff Service and possibly more!
First of all, what is a KPI? KPI stands for key performance indicator, a quantifiable measure of performance over time for a specific objective. KPIs provide targets for teams to shoot for, milestones to gauge progress, and insights that help people across the organization make better decisions.
As you collect data and analyze the numbers, these numbers will talk to you if you are willing to look and spot the trends that they are showing you. Now, manty of these reports are available from the many software providers serving our industry. If not a standard report, your provider may be able to design a custom report for you, making this data collection less daunting.
RESIDENTIAL SERVICE KPI MEASUREMENT
Residential collection service is often considered the most basic service our industry has to offer. The relative consistency that residential service represents makes data collection and analysis easy and valuable. While routes will change due to growth, re-routing, acquisitions and other factors, monitoring your KPI’s can help you effectively manage your business. Here are just a few of the KPI’s you may want to track week to week, month to month and year to year. A simple Excel spreadsheet can be used to track and compare this data on a regular basis.
Miles. Simply, the number of miles accumulated by a route truck on a given day. This can be calculated using Total Daily Miles, from leaving the garage in the morning to returning to the garage in the afternoon, or Route Only Miles, measuring from first stop to last stop. Unless a route changes dramatically, this number should be fairly consistent week to week. Most KPI’s can be measured using Total Daily Miles or Route Only Miles or both, depending on the conclusions you are hoping to draw using this data.
Average Miles per Hour. Dividing the miles driven by the number of hours needed to complete a route. Not a significant number by itself, but helpful in identifying trends over a period of time.
Fuel. Best done if each day starts with a full tank. Record fuel usage daily.
Miles Per Gallon. Divide number of miles by gallons of fuel used. Great way to track efficiency of truck and driver’s habits. Also, a way to monitor for fuel theft from the truck’s tank. If MPG shows a drastic decline, either fuel is disappearing or there may be a mechanical issue with the vehicle.
Number of Stops. Simply tracking your number of stops week to week is a good place to start. While you may not notice growth from one week to the next, a 6-month review could tell you a different story, maybe good, or maybe bad! This number could be helpful to show you where to concentrate advertising activites.
Stops per Hour. This is a good number to identify productivity trends over time. Stops per hour is easily determined by dividing the number of stops on a route by the number of hours needed to complete the route. You can use the Total Daily Hours, hours from punch in to punch out, or you can use Total Route Hours, the number of hours from the first stop to last stop. If you run combined residential / commercial routes, this number may need additional interpretation. If your route includes a large number of Every Other Week customers, you may need to compare routes every two weeks, so you are comparing apples to apples.
Stops per Mile. Dividing the number of stops by the miles driven is a good measure of the density of your work. A goal of every waste collection company should be to build and increase customer / route density. When density increases, its good! If density decreases, you need to dig deeper, identify what’s going on, and correct it as soon as possible!
Fuel ($) per Stop. Measured in gallons or dollars, the usage or cost of fuel per stop can aid in determining the need for fuel surcharges or rate adjustments. Dividing the gallons of fuel by the number of stops spreads the fuel consumption evenly across the number of customers serviced.
Pounds per Stop. Disposal cost, like fuel cost is a major operational cost that needs to be monitored. Simply dividing daily disposal cost by the number of stops collected will provide an AVERAGE disposal cost per stop. If you are running mixed residential / commercial routes, this number will be less relevant given the inconsistency of volume and type of material generated by commercial customers.
Time per Stop. Similar to Stops per Hour, this data is valuable in determining rates and keeping drivers accountable. Best used when a route is 100% residential curbside pickup, but can be used with some modification if you are running mixed residential / commercial routes. Dividing the number of minutes to complete the route by the number of stops will allocate all time needed to complete a route evenly across all customers on that route.
Revenue by Route Report. Depending on your software provider, a Revenue by Route Report may be a standard report included with your software. Generally speaking, this report will take the monthly rate the customer is charged, divide in by the number of services per month and calculate the revenue that was earned from that customer. This is a great tool to see the effect a rate increase can have on the revenue and profitability of a single daily route.
So, are you geeked out yet? Don’t let all of this intimidate you, start with tracking just a few of these KPI’s, like Stops per Hour or Stops per Mile, and let those numbers talk to you. Are there things that you track on a daily, weekly or monthly basis? List them in the comments section!
John Van Tholen, jvt@vantholenassociates.com
vantholenassociates.com
#afriendinthebusiness
DISASTER RESPONSE PLANNING
It sounds awful, doesn’t it? Disaster, that’s something we see on the news, nothing that will ever happen to me or my business, right?
Over my 33-year career in the waste and recycling industry, I experienced a multitude of disasters. Our office burned down, 4 trucks had crippling fires onboard, trucks went over on their sides, accidents, disposal sites shutting down, and others I do not care to recount. One night while walking out to my truck, I watched a tornado across the street narrowly miss our property where all our carts and trucks were parked. Take it from me, it can happen to you.
I hope none of you ever have to experience any of these things but if you’re in the business long enough, something is bound to happen. Are you ready? Let’s take a look at a few things you can do to make sure you are prepared in the event of such tragedies.
First off, how’s your relationship with your fellow haulers? If you haven’t made an effort to reach out to a competitor who could be an ally, do so. Talk about these things and what you could do to help each other in the event of an emergency. Some will be uninterested, but others who are willing to talk with you may turn into a great ally in the future. You may even work together to secure contracts you would not otherwise have been able to secure on your own. Recently, one of the members of the Facebook group Mom and Pop trash business for dummies experienced a heartbreaking fire. They reached out to the friends in the group and were met with help from all sides. This is an incredible way for all of us to help each other no matter where we are located.
Second, build a relationship with a heavy equipment dealer who has equipment similar to what you are using close at hand. Open an account with them if you haven’t already so if disaster strikes, you don’t have to wait for credit approval! In addition to dealers, find out who the closest refuse equipment rental company is to your location and again, open an account. In our industry, you can’t just go down to Main Street and get a truck, they are sometimes hard to come by.
The most important part of a disaster response plan is to document what to do if and when disaster strikes. My friend and business partner can laugh now about putting our plan together. We sat down, locked the door, turned off the phones and brainstormed every potential disaster that could befall our humble company. You have to know us to understand how much laughter went into that process but suffice to say that we came up with quite a list. Fortunately, not much of it ever came to pass but we were ready! We had documented everything from loss of equipment or offices to loss of life and what we would do step by step following any of the occurrences. This plan was put in print and all of our employees had access to it. After all, it did include the possibility of John and I perishing while in the same vehicle on our way back from lunch at Five Guys.
I hope none of you has to deal with the worst of what can happen but if you do, be prepared. If you would like to talk more about how to put together a disaster response plan, we would love to talk with you!
Ed Dryfhout
vantholenassociates.com
Below is a picture from 1989. It is a route sheet that survived a fire. While this was before the common use of computers, it is a good reminder to have your data backed up in multiple locations. Fortunately, only the edges were singed. The route sheet was just legible enough to stop follow. More to come on fire in future episodes.
CRAZY TIMES IN VEGAS, BABY!
WasteExpo is happening next week in Las Vegas, NV. This annual gathering of waste professionals from across the world always provides a great time to get away and get a new perspective on our industry.
But many will say their biggest purpose in going to Vegas is the partying. After all, “What Happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”, right? While having fun is certainly important, the value you go home with is much greater than winning (?) at the craps table.
I attended my first WasteExpo in 1968 (I was very young), and I still walk around the show floor in amazement at the shiny trucks like I did so long ago. But, I now have a whole different perspective when I realize the cost of these glittering works of art, and the complexity involved in getting materials picked up at the curb and recycled, landfilled or incinerated.
Besides the lights, the give-aways, the food and drink, here are few things to consider as you spend time at WasteExpo:
Visit with vendors. An obvious one. Ask questions. Open your mind to new ways of doing things. Don’t be blindly loyal to just one make or model of truck, compactor or container, but weigh carefully the advantages offered by the alternatives.
Visit the big company’s booths. Talk to them, ask questions, get some insight in the way they do business. Who knows, you may get invited to their private parties! I remember seeing the Doobie Brothers and REO Speedwagon at WasteExpo in years past!
Visit with old friends. Look for the folks you’ve passed along the way in your career. See what they are up to. Grab a drink and learn something new. Seek out your competitors and get to know them on an entirely different level. Today’s competitors can become tomorrow’s friends!
Make new friends. Don’t be bashful! Introduce yourself to people looking at the same products you are. Ask questions about their business, you may find some great ideas from someone across the state or across the country facing the same challenges you are.
Take in a conference session or two, or ten! It may be hard to sit inside a building all day while its sunny and warm outside, learning about the latest trends in the industry, the newest technology, the best way to manage employees, these are all topics you will hear discussed. Get the most of your investment by hearing from some of the best minds in the industry.
So, if you come for the gambling, OK. But you can leave a winner if you have a plan and organize your time and attend WasteExpo in an intentional manner. And make sure, What Happens in Vegas DOESN’T Stay in Vegas! Bring home some solid ideas to improve your business!
Boy, I’ve been guilty of this….
From the Harvard Business Review:
Overcome Your Team’s Resistance to Change
Many teams suffer from “active inertia” — the tendency to seek comfort in the old ways of doing things, even when the world around you is changing. To help your employees meet the moment, there are two techniques you might try.
• The “foot-in-the-door” technique. Start by asking people to do something small or easy. By agreeing to the request, and then meeting it, they develop a sense of commitment and confidence that makes them more enthusiastic about agreeing to the next (bigger) request. In other words, the path to big change is paved by lots of small steps and little bets — each of which builds on what’s come before.
• The “door-in-the-face” technique. With this approach, you ask your employees to do something even more demanding than what you actually have in mind. The idea is that by setting aspirations that seem extreme, you can push people to perform at a level — and creatively solve problems — that would have otherwise felt unachievable. This often pushes people to imagine innovations or work-arounds they wouldn’t think of in the normal course of business.
This tip is adapted from “Persuading Your Team to Embrace Change,” by Bill Taylor