Introduction to 22nd Century Management

If we're meeting for the first time, my name is Ken Edmonds. And on this blog, I share information to help managers get better at managing people, growing their profit, and achieving success in every area in their department.

In my experience working in the copier business, something I saw happens way too often was an owner would walk up to his best technician and tell him, “Congratulations! You're our new manager!” Then they turn around and walk away. And that was the end of their training.

Here is one experience where that happened. A technician who was probably one of the better technicians I met in my career was very good at fixing equipment. So the company wanted him to step up and be a supervisor and promoted him to the position of supervisor, but they didn't give him any training.

It was interesting because I got to see him struggle and try to succeed in leading his team. But he failed at that. The result was he quit working for the dealer and went to work managing a bar.  Now what’s regretful is that this individual probably would have succeeded if he'd had the right training.

 I believe that promoting a person to a managerial role and then leaving them to sink or swim is one of the cruelest actions any business could take. I do also believe that most individuals with proper training can learn to not only survive as a manager but to thrive and deliver outstanding results.

When I retired from Konica Minolta, which was my last role as a full-time employee, I made it my mission to try and help 500 service managers get the training they need to be able to excel in their job. And I plan to train all 500 by the year 2030. In this video, I'm going to share three pieces of content that are designed to help you see what managers need to understand and need to learn to be successful.  The proper use of these three pieces of information constitutes a pattern of success. I've seen it work over and over again, and hopefully, it will help you create your pattern for success.

One of the most important factors in being successful as a manager is to develop leadership. Leadership is a quality that will get people to want to follow you toward some objective.  Business, in general, is filled with people that are managers and bosses, but they're not leaders. And so they may get some results. They're not getting anywhere near the results they could if they really worked to develop true leadership characteristics.

And, interestingly, leadership is not a skill. Leadership is not the application of knowledge. Leadership is a character trait, but it is a character trait that you can develop in yourself. And if you are a leader it is something you should strive to keep improving.

Throughout my life, I am constantly learning to get better as a leader. And so that's something that I encourage all of you to think about and work on. And we'll share content about that.

The second pillar of content that we're going to talk about on this blog is providing outstanding customer service.  In most cases, in every team, at least part of the job is to take care of customers. It could be all of some members’ jobs to care for customers.

 Isn’t it interesting that customer service is lacking in so many companies today?  In videos on this blog, you will get stories about the customer service experience because it is something that too many companies don't emphasize enough.  And they don't even know how to build systems that deliver consistent, outstanding customer service.

In fact, if you pay attention and apply the things that I'll cover on this blog, you will learn how to build a cadre of customers that love you and love your company.

None of this matters if you're not making a profit. So we will talk about the factors that impact your ability as a company and as a department to make a profit. And you will learn how to improve your profitability without hurting your customers because you can squeeze additional profit and hurt your customers in the process. And that's very, short-sighted. You squeeze customers long enough and hard enough and they're no longer your customers.

So we'll examine processes and techniques that you can use to improve your profitability or control your costs in your department, but do it in a way that doesn't jeopardize your service. If this information sounds like something useful to you, you're going to want to subscribe to this blog.

I'd like to share just one more story to show what is possible. This story is the experience of one of my first students to complete both my two live-training courses: Service Success, and Advanced Service Management.  This student was in the first class of both of those courses. Afterward, I visited with his manager. You can watch the interview on the bta.org website. His manager said that in the first few weeks of attending the class, the service manager generated a positive return on investment in his training.  She commented on how, what he learned in the class not only transformed his department, but it had an impact on transforming the company. That was because he took what he was learning in class and shared it with other employees and other managers. And that knowledge spread throughout his company. The results he's had, using the data from his company and applying what he learned In the class, have resulted in the most successful service department in the country, based on industry metrics.

It's because he applied what he learned to drive improved customer satisfaction, better employee morale, and more profit. That's the result of training.

Do me a favor and let me know what subjects would interest you for future blog posts?  Please put an answer in the comments.