Anthony Perl:
The TATS Strategy: Solving the Efficiency Crisis
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with Triage, Action, and Testing.
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Join passionate automotive trainer
and coach Andrew Uglow as he
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exposes the hidden costs of poor
communication and ineffective
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information flow in the workshop.
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In this episode, you'll learn the
three pillars of the TATS framework,
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discover why your instructions aren't
yielding the results you expect, and
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understand how to align your team
to boost morale and productivity.
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Along the way, you'll hear
powerful lessons from the field,
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including a cautionary tale about
a heater box repair that highlights
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exactly why triage and testing are
non-negotiable for any business.
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I'm your co-host Anthony Pearl and this
is the Frictionless Workshop podcast.
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Let's get cranking.
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So I love a good acronym.
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Andrew, I know you've written one down
here for me too, as a talking point
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here, and we're talking about TATS.
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And at first I thought, "Wait, does it-
Are we assuming everyone's got tattoos?
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Is it, is that what it's all about?"
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But no it's not that, but perhaps this is
the thing, and you're gonna explain it.
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Maybe it should be emblazoned
all over everybody because
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this is the problem, right?
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Andrew Uglow: Right.
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So TATS is the strategy or the
structure that we use to address this
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issue of, "I've told them a thousand
times and I'm not getting a result."
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And so TATS stands for
Triage, Action, Testing.
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And again, I say this with empathy to
technicians, and I say this with empathy
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to foremen as well because for the
technician, when the foreman comes to
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me and tells me to do something and I
don't understand, or I don't completely
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understand, or I think I do, and I go
and do what I thought was the right thing
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and it turns out to be the wrong thing,
and now I'm the one that has to back up
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to the mechanical butt-kicking machine.
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Or I'm the one that looks like a peanut,
and I get the public humiliation and
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the shame and the shade because I did
what I thought was right, and it wasn't
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right, but I didn't know it wasn't right.
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And so for the technicians, I
have profound empathy because
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if my instructions are bad,
my results are gonna be bad.
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It's just y- like you can get lucky, and
I've been lucky, but it's really hard.
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For the foreman, no one ever taught them,
quote unquote, "how to tell people."
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The issue here is not the information.
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The information is super
important, super, super important.
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But the issue isn't the information.
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The issue is how the information is
delivered, and the framework we use for
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delivering the information is TATS, right?
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We start with a triage, and
then we talk about the action.
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This is what I actually want
you to do and how you know that
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you're doing the right thing.
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And then we have at the end a test.
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We wanna make sure that what you heard
and what I said are the same thing.
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Just as importantly, we want to test
that you know what correct is So when
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you've completed it, you can, you
can use this test to know that you've
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completed it so that you don't spend
time you don't have to, or, or worse,
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do things we didn't want you to do.
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Which i- in both cases aren't
a good use of your time.
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Anthony Perl: Let's get a
couple of stories in here.
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Give me some examples of where
this has prevented what could
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have otherwise been a mess.
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Andrew Uglow: Well, let me
give you a personal example.
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When I was a technician, which is a
couple of years ago now, probably a
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couple of decades ago now, but we, we,
we don't wanna say that out loud- Yeah,
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Anthony Perl: it's time
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um,
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Andrew Uglow: I remember being
given a repair order and some--
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a- and the instruction was,
"Andrew, we want you to fix the..."
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It was the heater box.
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And so I set about fixing the heater box.
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What I didn't know was that
this was a repeat repair.
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I didn't know that the heater
box actually comes out without
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having to remove the entire dash.
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And I didn't know that I should
check that the part was actually in
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stock before I start doing the job.
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So I just got, "Here's my instruction.
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Andrew, here's your heater box.
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Car's on the hoist, off you go."
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Which can I offer is not an
abnormal thing in the workshop.
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So I go, "Oh, heater box, no problem."
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So I start disassembling the entire front
dash area of the vehicle, and an hour or
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so after doing this, and, and can I offer,
I'm doing pretty well, like I'm getting
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into this quite, quite efficiently.
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The foreman comes up and goes,
"Andrew, what are you doing?"
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Maybe not those exact words, but you, you
get the WTF, "Andrew, what's that for?
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What are you doing?"
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And I said, "I'm doing the heater core."
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And he goes, "That's not
how you do a heater core.
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You just undo this, this, this,
this, and it should be done."
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And I've gone, "Oh, well, that would've
been nice to know to start with."
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And so I then go to parts and
find out that we got the right
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box, but we got the wrong part.
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And so I've spent an hour
disassembling this car unnecessarily,
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only to find out that I now have
to spend an hour reassembling
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the car 'cause the part's wrong.
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And, and so I go back to...
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Now, here's...
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You ready for the cruncher?
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So here's the cruncher.
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Andrew's now stressed,
and not without cause.
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Andrew's now embarrassed.
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Andrew feels very small and
humiliated, and so they give me
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another job, and they said something,
but I can't recall what they said.
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And so Andrew looks at the repair
order, starts on this job, and
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largely repeats the same mistake.
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At least this time I checked
to see if the part was right.
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And so the cruncher was there was no
triage in any of this, and particularly
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for that second job, because Andrew
isn't in a state- That he can ac- I
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can see your lips move, I can hear the
sound that's, your voice is making,
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but I cannot connect what you're
saying with anything m-meaningful.
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It's, it's, it's eluding me entirely.
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And so this is- Can I- ... the
part of the triage I was gonna,
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Anthony Perl: I was gonna say that is
such a relatable little area there because
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that happens in day-to-day life, right?
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When something, something goes wrong and
your mind is distracted by a reaction
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to that problem, and then when someone
starts talking to you about the new
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thing, you haven't really been paying
attention, and suddenly you've skipped
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the crucial bits and you're trying to
fill in some blanks, but you're already
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in a negative space, and then it's
going to just exacerbate the problem.
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Andrew Uglow: Absolutely.
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I, I'm, I'm really behind the
eight ball, like internally with my
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internal dialogue, with my emotional
state, with my, my ability to
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access the resources that I have.
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I, I'm, I'm really facing some significant
barriers, and so my ability to perform
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in that state is really, really low.
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It's not quite at the level of
winning lotto, but it's moving in
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that direction in terms of likelihood.
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So we go back to the idea of triage
first, action and testing, which largely
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mitigates that situation from happening.
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Anthony Perl: So if we've got that,
tell me the positives as well.
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I mean, we're talking
about, you know, some of the
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negatives where those things...
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How do you, how do you describe what
it's like when it's actually working,
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when that system is, is happening?
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Because I think there's also the
opposite can also be true, right?
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That people may not realize that
they're actually doing the right thing,
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and that that is something that they
need to pass on and continue to do.
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All
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Andrew Uglow: right.
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So a great example of what it
looks like when it's right would be
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like for the foreman, when you get
really good quality on the repair
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order from the service advisor.
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So when the, the service advisor says,
you know, "Noise in left-hand front of
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car when turning left over speed humps,"
that's really high-quality information.
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It's explicit, as in there's
a lot of detail here.
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It's tested in that what the customer
said and what's on the RO and what's
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meant by the customer are the same things.
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Like, we know that what the customer
meant and what's on the RO mean the
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same things, and it's actionable.
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I know exactly how to
go about testing that.
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We call it the QIM,
quality information model.
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If I don't give my techs good quality, if
I don't give my techs good instruction,
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I, I'm making their life
hard, I'm making my life hard.
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What does it look like?
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It looks like when I ask my tech to
do something, they actually do it.
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They do it to the quality and the
standard that I was expecting because
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that information was transferred in
the instruction, and I don't have to
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quality check them because I can tell
straight up that it's right based upon
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the test that they did at the end I, I
don't have to go and fix it for them.
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I'm less likely to have a comeback.
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I'm going to have more time to spend on
the things that actually need me rather
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than th- the things that actually demand
me, and they're not the same thing.
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It makes for a smoother flow.
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It addresses a lot of the bottleneck
that we spoke about in previous episodes.
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Quality of information is king.
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So how do you know that you
have quality information?
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Well, at the service advisor level,
we use the quality information
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model or methodology, which is
explicit and tested and actionable.
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For technicians, when I'm giving
instructions for technicians, I use TATs.
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I triage first, and we'll,
we'll dive into that shortly.
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Then I give them correct action,
like exactly explicitly what I
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want them to do and why it matters.
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And then test how do they know
they've done it right and how do I
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know that they've heard me correctly.
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Anthony Perl: So talk to me then
about, we've talked about the
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triage part, but what happens
when the test part is ignored?
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Andrew Uglow: Oh, the short
answer is they think they've
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got it right and they haven't.
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They th- they, "Well, you told me
to do this, I did that, but I did it
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to my standard, not to the standard
that you wanted me to do it to."
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And so that, that creates
a lot of friction.
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You know, potentially
can result in a comeback.
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And so the car comes back,
worst case scenario, it's
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slipped through quality control.
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Customer gets the car, customer gets
upset and, and not without cause.
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Uh, comes back, gives the
service advisor a good serving.
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You know, "You're ugly and y- you smell
and y- your, your mother dresses you
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funny," and all these sorts of things.
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So now the service advisor's
all distressed and upset.
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They come back because in dealership,
and I don't mean to be rude when
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I say this, but the vast majority
of times it's about the blame,
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it's not about cause resolution.
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And so they come back and they
go, "Andrew, what were you
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thinking when you did this?"
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And here's the discussion with
the foreman, "Andrew, I told
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you to da, da, da, da, da, da.
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Why didn't you do it?"
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And I go, "Well, I did do it."
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"Oh, well, it's got to be
like this, not like that."
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Well, if that wasn't
communicated, how do I know?
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Like you, like I'm not a
senior tech, I'm not a foreman.
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I don't have that level of knowledge and
expertise if you don't unpack this stuff.
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And I usually get the pushback
from the foreman and they
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go, "Well, they should know."
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Yeah, right, they should know,
but if they don't, how are
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you going to address that gap?
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Because that's on you if you don't.
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Because all meaning, and I can't
say this loudly enough or strongly
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enough, all meaning of any
conversation is on what the hearer
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understands, not what the speaker said.
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Anthony Perl: The Frictionless
Workshop podcast is brought
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to you by Solutions Culture.
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For details on how to get in touch
with Andrew, consult the show notes
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below, and don't forget to subscribe
so you don't miss an episode.
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Now, back to the podcast.
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And it's so important that because we've
all experienced this as well, where
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you've been in a conversation, there's
three of you in the conversation, maybe
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it's your partner and, and yourself
and, and someone else, and you get back
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after that conversation, and you and
your partner talk about that particular
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conversation, and you can interpret
things in completely different ways.
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You, you sort of sit there
and you go, "Well, that's not
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what I heard that was said."
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Yeah.
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And that happens in the
workplace all of the time.
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Andrew Uglow: Yeah.
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Anthony Perl: So which kind of then
begs the question, if you had to hammer
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this home and teach this quickly to make
an impact on them, how do you do that?
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What do you say?
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Andrew Uglow: All right, so here's
your Monday morning, this is how
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you do it short, short version.
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So just as a, a quick side note, I am
working on a cheat sheet for this that
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you can take a photo of on your phone.
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You can create prompts, whatever you want,
that will help you step through this.
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It will be available by the
time the podcast's come out.
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But it's, it's the TATS framework.
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So we start with triage.
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So the idea of triage comes from medical.
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Someone turns up with a broken
fingernail versus someone that comes
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in holding their own leg that's
no longer attached to their body.
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One of those is wildly more
life-threatening than the other,
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and so triage is about addressing
the critical stuff first.
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So the most critical thing when
I'm gonna give instructions is me.
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If I'm stressed, if I've just had
a very unpleasant conversation with
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whoever, it doesn't matter, and I'm
not in a good state to be able to
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give good instructions, I've got
to solve that before I go anywhere.
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That is step one.
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There's no point in me turning up angry in
front of a tech and unpacking instructions
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out of this internal stuff that's going
on for me be- 'cause it won't land.
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The second part is there needs to be...
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The, the tech themselves needs to, need
to be in a state to be able to hear.
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So if the technician is stressed,
is anxious, is frustrated, is having
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a bad moment, okay, I need to help
them manage their state, because
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until I do, they can't hear me.
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They might hear the words, but
they can't hear the meaning.
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They can't make sense of it,
and this is where a lot of
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the communication gets lost.
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The other element is, and this is
the thing that you fix before you
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even start to have the conversation,
which is a, a long-term thing, is
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there needs to be a measure of respect
or rapport between me and the tech.
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Because if the tech thinks I'm a
mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging,
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forward-sloping, picking on him the
whole time, evil overlord, when I give
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them an instruction, it will just come
across as a demand if I don't have
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respect and rapport with that technician.
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And so it's crazy important
that I cultivate that over time.
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So my state, the technician's state,
and rapport, I've got to have those,
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then I have to give them an outcome.
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What's the outcome?
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"Hey, Anthony, here's your job.
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It needs to be fixed.
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Here's the outcome.
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Here's the whatever it is, the job."
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We then move into the,
the action side of things.
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So action needs a couple
of different pieces.
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I'm not gonna dive into all of them
right now, but the first thing they need
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to know is what to do and why to do it.
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Because if I don't have why, I can't know
whether I'm successful or not, right?
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So, "Anthony, here's a,
here's a brake job for you.
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You need to change out the brake pads,
and you need to do it in a way that the
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customer doesn't die at the end of it."
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"Oh, okay."
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If I don't explain the why, or you
need to do it in a way that is fast and
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efficient without killing the customer.
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Usually there's a couple of parts to that.
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The next part with the action is how.
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I might need to give them how.
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I might not.
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Depends upon the level of skill.
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But I've got to start with what I want
you to do, why it matters, why it's
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important, and then we go into how.
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And then of course the last part
is the test, and the first chunk
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of the test is, "Now explain
back to me what I just asked."
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And they go, "Fix brakes."
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"Okay, good.
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We're, we're some of the way there.
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Fix brakes how?
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To what standard?"
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"Fix brakes in an hour
without killing the customer."
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"Right.
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Okay, great.
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You know what I mean.
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I know that you know what I mean.
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So when I come back and I check to see
if you've done your job correctly, I
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can come back in an hour and I can see
that it's assembled correctly in a way
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that it isn't gonna kill the customer."
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Now, that's a, a lovely generalization.
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I would like to be more specific,
but just for the sake of the
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podcast and time, there's my TAT.
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Start with the triage.
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What condition are they in?
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'Cause if they can't hear you
or if they can't hear what
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you mean, not gonna end well.
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Then explain the job, not just
what to do, why it matters, and
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maybe how if they need the how.
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And then test.
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"What did I just ask you to do?
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Explain back, give me, feed
back to me what I just said."
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Da, da, da, da, da.
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And the reason we want the feedback,
and this is really important, is when
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they say it out loud, they're also
saying it in their head, and so they
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have to make sense of it internally
before they can explain it externally.
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And so this is where the meaning part
gets installed in the person that
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I'm expecting the performance from.
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Anthony Perl: Drew, we touched on in
a previous episode the hidden cost of
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what you're not measuring, and I think
it's something that we've got some great
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feedback on and we want to expand on.
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So let's unpack that whole
concept a little bit more.
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What are we not measuring,
and what is the cost?
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Andrew Uglow: Oh, dear.
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So bit of context.
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There is an organization in America called
Wrench Way, and they are specialists in
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helping quality technicians find quality
businesses, and helping quality businesses
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find quality technicians, but also helping
both technicians and businesses that are
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working towards their quality get there.
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And so it's a kind of a, a
technician advocacy for want of a,
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a, a fairly gross simplification.
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They published a state of the industry
paper not so long back, and some
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of the results were heartbreaking.
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Can I offer-- I read this and I've
gone, "You've got to be kidding me.
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Like, really?
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That was the result?"
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But back to the question and,
and I say that by way of context
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'cause we're gonna dive into that.
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One of the things that doesn't get
measured in a dealership, and one of the
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big things that doesn't get measured in
the dealership is the cost of inaction.
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Okay, so we didn't do this.
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What does that cost us?
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And the reason that we, we don't
measure that is because it doesn't
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have a line item in the balance sheet.
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In the P&L there isn't a, "We didn't do
these things and it cost us $7 million."
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Th-that, that isn't the methodology.
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It's akin to not tracking
your lost part sales.
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You know, so customer comes in and
says, "I want a, a widget for my
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thingo," and you go, "Ah, let me
check to see if one's in stock."
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And parts go, "Sorry, we're all
out of widgets for thingos."
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Well, that was a lost sale, so that,
that was lost part, that was lost labor
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that like if we'd stocked that part,
maybe we could have got that sale.
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But we don't track that, and so
if you're not tracking what you
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didn't get, you might have seven
or eight or nine inquiries for
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people wanting widgets for thingos.
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You only have anecdotal evidence.
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You don't have any reasonable measure
for going, "Well, gee, we're getting a
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lot of demand for widgets for thingos.
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Maybe we should keep a
couple on the shelf."
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And so I go back to the cost of inaction.
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Because I didn't train my person,
because I didn't my foreman, because
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I h- I'm, I'm not closing the foreman
capacity gap, well, we don't have a
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measure for what that impact is, but we
do have the consequences all the same.
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So this still shows up in foreman burnout.
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It shows up in a higher number
of comebacks, of silly errors, of
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things that quality control missed,
of upset customers, of all of
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the things that then go ahead and
consume my time- That would be better
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spent otherwise on being proactive.
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And so I slip into this
nasty reactive cycle.
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Anthony Perl: Well, that's all we have
time for in this episode, but if you
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realize today that your instructions
are not landing because you're
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skipping the feedback loop, it's
time to implement the TATS framework.
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To help you put these ideas into
gear, we've put together a dedicated
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workbook that includes a breakdown of
today's episode and specific activities
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to help you improve communication
and reduce costly workshop errors.
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You can download your copy right
now via the link in our show notes.
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Grab that workbook and start
testing for understanding today.
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Make sure you join us for the next
episode where Andrew reveals the
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single most expensive event that
could ever happen in your workshop,
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and surprisingly, it's something that
never shows up on a standard report.
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We're diving deep into the massive
hidden costs of losing key technicians
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and service managers and how
you can stop that drain on your
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bottom line before it's too late.
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We love your comments as they
help us frame future episodes,
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so please leave them wherever
you're listening to this podcast.
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Don't forget also to like,
share, and subscribe so you never
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miss that crucial conversation.
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This show has been produced by my
team at podcastdoneforyou.com.au.
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Until next time, keep your workshop
running smooth and frictionless.
