Skip to main content

is seeing comprehending?


Oh yeah, visual inspections are why God gave us eyes.  There is not a single machine learning, IoT, computerized environment that can match the skills a human's brain can assess and deliver based on visual feedback. The trick is making sure that the person connected to those eyeballs actually knows what they are looking for!  Face it, aren't the best workers those that can recognize an issue long before it becomes a problem? So instead, is the challenge really not that they can visually see, but instead that they can comprehend and correlate potential challenges? While we have many different definitions for "wisdom" in context of this topic, I think about it as those individuals which have had the most experience, both good and bad. Coincidentally I am a firm believer that the best service people are those that make the most frequent mistakes. When I was in the field I had lots of experience screwing things up. The difference is that I would always check and triple check my work, for the most part nobody else saw those mistakes but me. So we add another dimension to this visual inspection paradox, if I see it and I attempted to work on it but don't double check my work is the third variable, "I just don't give a crap".



Possibly the capability of visual inspection combined with the attributes of comprehending how the pieces fit together, and topped with either a good or bad attitude, can measure up to tell you whether you have a good worker or a poor worker. In essence it's this amalgamation of variables that separate your workforce from strong to weak. A friend of mine, Haig Nalbantian, would describe these in in Mercer's internal labor market model (@mercer) as labor stocks. Value and outcomes are achieved when you can take these labor stocks; punch them through enabling tools, and flow out the other side the right combination of capabilities, attitudes and attributes which positively affect the value you have to your client. Was it Einstein who said "repeating the same process and expecting different results is the definition of insanity"? Isn't that what many of you do day in and day out as we talk about managing and optimizing workforces?  It's time for us to connect the simple act of visual inspection to the valuable components of intuition. For the most part this cannot be accomplished with individuals and instead needs to leverage tools which take in these factors to create "best performer scenarios". If we allow ourselves to only look at things across a single dimension then how are we any better than the human race prior to Christopher Columbus taking sail when the World was assumed to be flat!



-----

Next post:  employees motivated by money?

-----
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

entusiastic about preventative maintenance

Why do I really care if my field technicians are enthusiastic or not? When you look at a person's work output, as directly related to workforce sciences, you come up with three primary ingredients required to achieve your desired results.   These ingredients are; attitudes, attributes, and capabilities and when mixed properly with enabling tools can yield unbelievable outputs. So what does any of this have to do with routine maintenance? If your maintenance routines actually become way too routine then pretty soon performance will be replaced with complacency. In order to keep any piece of equipment running as trouble-free as possible the maintenance performed, and the thoroughness of the inspection and tasks at hand, have a direct impact on the asset's life expectancy.   There are some strategies that help service organizations keep the enthusiasm at all-time highs. Switch techs from time to time :   One of the best ways to ensure maintenance is being performed...
Post a Comment
Read more

It's the little details

As overwhelmed Oscar sits in his office, surrounded by piles of overdue work order tickets to review and material orders to procure, his heart yearns to give the customer anything they want, yet the tools at his disposal make it difficult. On this relatively ordinary day Oscar receives a phone call from a marquee customer. This new customer has multiple locations and has asked for just three pieces of information every time a person visits their sites to perform service or maintenance. Oscar gathers his thoughts as he prepares to discuss this seemingly small challenge with reluctant Ruth, the dispatcher who has been with the organization for decades, Ruth can be a bit of a curmudgeon. Oscar does appreciate the inconvenience of gathering unexpected information both for the field worker as well as the back office.   A seemingly great example of ending up between a rock and a hard place. In a world of perfect harmony where all customers, work orders, and requests are exactly...
Post a Comment
Read more

why transform?

Why do I want to change, who said anything was wrong with my stack of papers and sea of Excel files?   We solve problems, that is a key characteristic of any successful service organization, if it isn't broke why fix it?   Often, when discussing a transformation from paper or cobbled together systems to a cohesive digital approach, folks struggle with the gap between what they currently do and how digital tools can help.   You really need to look at where the pain points are in your organization and how these compare to your business objectives.   Consider writing down these points on the whiteboard in no particular order, spend a few days shuffling and consolidating into a prioritized list.   Once you have the "why" and the "what" identified, the old remaining step is "how".   Some of the most popular observations over the years have been; Slipping through the cracks :   you know, not the major muscle movements, instead those little i...
Post a Comment
Read more