Anthony Perl:
Installing foreman effectiveness without tanking the month.
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Join passionate automotive trainer
and coach Andrew Uglow as he
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tackles one of the hardest questions
facing service departments.
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How do you close the foreman
capability gap without pulling a
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critical person out of the workshop
and creating even more chaos?
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In this episode, you'll learn why
training alone is not enough, why coaching
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works differently, and why the first
improvements often show up in the silly
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mistakes, unforced errors, and comebacks
that quietly drain the bottom line.
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Discover how micro moments,
practical frameworks, and ongoing
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accountability can help foreman build
capability while staying connected
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to the real work of the workshop.
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Along the way, you'll hear why
automotive may be one of the few
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performance-driven industries still
underusing coaching where it matters most.
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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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Andrew Uglow: Andrew, let's
talk about this concept of
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Anthony Perl: installing foreman
effectiveness without tanking the month.
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And I know we've alluded
to it in previous episodes.
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There's a bunch of research and
things that you want to bring out in
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this particular episode as well, so.
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But let's start by understanding what
this is, installing foreman effectiveness.
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What does that actually mean?
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And then how do you do it
without tanking the month?
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Andrew Uglow: Yeah.
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So-
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It's funny.
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I don't-- I feel a little bit like,
and I'm sure I've said this before,
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uh, Haley Joel Osment from the movie
"The Sixth Sense" with Samuel L.
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Jackson and Bruce Willis.
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And there's a scene, it's like a critical
scene in the movie where Haley Joel
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Osment unpacks this enormous burden that
he carries, and he sort of says in this
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quiet whisper, like hesitant, worried
about the pushback that he's gonna get.
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He says, "I see dead people,
and they talk to me, but they
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don't know that they're dead."
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And I feel a little bit like that because
you ask me these questions, Anthony,
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and I go, "Anthony, I see patterns,
and other people can't see them, and
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they don't know that they're there."
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And so you, you go, "Well,
how do I install foremanship
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without screwing my month over?"
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And, and it's not just the figures, right?
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Sure, it's the figures
that, that matters, right?
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We're a business.
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We're not there because we wanna
hold hands and beat drums and
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give primal screams and get in
touch with our inner child, right?
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We're there to make money.
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Like that's, it's, it's a financial game.
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But it's also the customer.
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You know.
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You know what it's like
to be without your car.
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You know the stress and the, and the
grief that happens when your car isn't
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available or breaks down or what…
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Like this is a, this is a big issue.
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This ripples into all sorts of
different areas that, again, that's
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perhaps a discussion over a, over
a beverage in a venue somewhere.
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But we haven't…
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Firstly, the first point to
make is we haven't installed
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effectiveness for foremen.
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We have a capability gap, and it
shows up in all of the elements
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that we don't have measures for.
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So staff turn, technician engagement,
trust, reliability, attitude, experience.
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These are all symptoms of
the foreman capacity gap.
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And so the challenge becomes for dealers,
"Okay, so I'm, I'm gonna close my gap.
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How do I do it?"
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If I take my foreman out of the
workshop, I just compound my problems.
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If I go, "Foreman, go to a
two-day training class, and we'll,
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we'll kind of save everything
for you for when you get back."
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And the foreman comes back to a…
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Well, there's the, the stuff's
hit the fan and there's a very
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unpleasant brown mist in the air.
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It's a right mess.
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And, and the foreman's now scrambling.
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They're so busy trying to solve stuff and
fix stuff and get things back on an even
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keel that they don't get the opportunity
to go and practice what they do.
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They're back in this rush, urgency stuff.
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S- and at the same time, the business
just lost a foreman for however
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many days of productivity, and
that has a very significant impact.
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And Deloitte's talking about
this, and Errol, again, if you're
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listening to this episode, Errol
from, from Complete Dealer Services,
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we- we're seeing people with a 0.4
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margin on their gross, on
their, on the dealership gross.
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Now, 0.4,
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that doesn't give you
a lot of margin, right?
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You, you, you're really riding
the ragged edges of disaster.
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You take someone that, that has a
direct impact on profitability and
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productivity out of the business
for two days, I mean, ouch.
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Like, anyone who's even loosely
in touch with their inner Scotsman
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is turning pale and shaking
their head going, "No, no, no."
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You know?
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I'd just…
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Can't, you can't afford to do that.
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So th- this-- and, and, and
here's the crunch, right?
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We don't measure the failures.
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We don't have a line item for stuff
that went wrong in the workshop
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that cost me a lot of money, and
there's a dollar figure there.
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We, we don't have a line item for that.
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So we've got this unmeasured
component creating this influence
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that I'm not addressing, but I'm
still suffering the consequences of.
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And so the solution, and finally
they're going, "Andrew, finally
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he's getting to the solution."
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The solution isn't to do training.
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The solution is to do coaching,
because coaching leaves my
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foreman in the business.
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I can take them out in small chunks,
so micro moments, hour and a half,
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and I can work with the foreman at a
personal level, and I can help them
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learn the skills that they need to know,
practice the skills that they need to know
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so that they're not conducting ungodly
experiments on the technical team, right?
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They get to practice it with a coach.
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They can understand the frameworks
and the pieces that were missing
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for them because when I talk to
foremen and I ask, you know, they
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tell me about all these problems.
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You know, they, "I told
them once 1,000 times.
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I told them this, this is
happening, that's happening.
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My service advisors are this and
my service manager's that, and the,
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the parts people are, are suboptimal
and, and da, da, da, da, da," and
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they, they've got all these stresses.
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And, and I go, "Well, how
are you gonna manage that?"
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And they just, they look at me blankly.
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They don't have a structure.
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They don't have a framework.
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They don't have a, a means to
address the capability gap that
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they are experiencing personally.
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Now, hear me right.
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We're not suggesting that the workshop
operation is an absolute nightmare.
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It runs well enough.
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It does okay.
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We hit the numbers.
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We do good.
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But I go back to what I said in one of
the earlier episodes where the foreman
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is, and even the service manager, it's
the duck on the pond, calm, serene,
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but under the water paddling like nuts.
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And that has a cost which doesn't
show up on your spreadsheet, but
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it does show up when they leave or
break down or throw in the towel.
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"I'm not gonna be foreman anymore.
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I've had enough.
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Put me back on the tools."
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And I guarantee you that there are
hundreds if not thousands of service
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managers out there listening to this who
that has been their exact experience.
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And so how do you install
foreman capability?
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Well, you do it with coaching.
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Coaching, Anthony, you tell me
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How effective is coaching?
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Anthony Perl: It, it, it's so incredibly
effective, and for those listening in,
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that's how Andrew and I first met, was
through shared coaching at the time.
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It's something that personally I believe
every business owner should have, and
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certainly I can see the value at the
level that we're talking about here.
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Coaching is something that filters
all the way through, because if
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you don't have a coach, you're just
winging it- Yeah … and you're not
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having the opportunity to learn from
others and the mistakes they've made.
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And it's funny how, again, I'm gonna
use the football analogy, it's funny
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how we accept it from, you know, under
fives all the way through to, you know,
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right through to international level.
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We all accept that there is a coach, even
though, particularly at international
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level, these are the best of the
best, but they still have a coach.
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And that's true in business as well as it
is in sport, and it's true for a reason.
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Andrew Uglow: Yeah.
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Right.
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You take the elite tennis players,
how many coaches do they have?
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You take the elite cricketers,
how many coaches do they…
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How many different coaches are
there for your football team?
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Like, if you want performance, there's
a reason that, that, I don't know, who
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do you, who do you barrack for in NRL?
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Anthony Perl: I'm a Manly fan.
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All right.
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So I'm, I'm, I'm the one
that everyone else hates.
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That's, that's the- Yeah,
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Andrew Uglow: okay … that's the truth.
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We still need it.
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I, I, I appreciate that.
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I'm a Collingwood fan too, so I, you
know, it's, it's, I just have more teeth
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and, and less tattoos than most of them.
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But the- there's a reason
that they don't- Performance.
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Yeah, they have fitness trainers, sure,
but they have fitness coaches, and they
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have mindset coaches, and dietary coaches.
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They have…
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They, they do it through a coaching frame.
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Here you go, Anthony.
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Uh, a question without
notice, on the spot.
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Show me an industry that doesn't
use coaching to get performance.
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Anthony Perl: Struggle to find one?
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Andrew Uglow: I can think of two
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Politics.
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Although arguably they do have speech
coaches, dress coaches, all that sort
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of stuff so they look and sound good.
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Anthony Perl: Depends where
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Andrew Uglow: you are.
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I think- But that doesn't mean
that they know what they're doing
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Anthony Perl: And, and, well, I
think, I think there is an important
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differentiation too between coaching and
mentoring, and I think there's probably
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some of those that it would exist in,
in the political landscape that might be
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more in the mentoring category but not-
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Andrew Uglow: Yeah, sure
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Anthony Perl: necessarily coaching.
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And I think that is an important
thing and perhaps speaks to the
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level of politicians we have.
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But let's, let's not go into politics.
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Andrew Uglow: Yeah.
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Because I don't know about you,
but I, I find myself a little
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bit upset for, for reasons.
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Yeah, so th- yeah, the two
industries, yeah, two industries were
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politics and, and something else.
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The second industry that
doesn't use it is automotive
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And I, again, I have one of
those Microsoft blue circles.
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It's like why?
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Why isn't there coaching
for service managers?
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Like, I'm not just talking intervention
teams, I'm talking ongoing development
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for leadership, for financial
management, for skills management, for…
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Like, why don't we
co-chair service advisors?
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And sure, we come in and we do
a training program or a coaching
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program, but is that enough?
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Is that, is that really working?
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And better than nothing, but gosh, how
much can you learn in a one-day session?
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Can you take someone who is a suboptimal
operator and turn them into an optimal
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operator or a near optimal operator?
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I'm gonna argue no.
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Anthony Perl: Well, one of the
important things that happens in a
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one-day event is that you get really
excited, and you walk away from
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that day and go, "This is fantastic.
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I've learned this, this, and this."
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But two weeks later, you haven't had
a chance to do anything about it.
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Three weeks later, you've
forgotten all about it.
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Coaching is the difference because it's
ongoing and it's, as you say, it's small,
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manageable chunks that you can implement
slowly but surely and have positive change
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that happens, and there's a level of
c- accountability- Yeah … that can go
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alongside of that which is so critical.
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Andrew Uglow: The Frictionless Workshop
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Anthony Perl: podcast is brought
to you by Solutions Culture.
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For details on how to get in touch with
Andrew, consult the show notes below.
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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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Andrew Uglow: Accountability is
vital, but also the ability to talk
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to someone not in the business and
go, "Hey, I'm really struggling with
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this and I don't know what to do."
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Because that's a really hard conversation
to have with your manager, because how
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many managers know how to look after that?
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Leaders might, maybe.
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But I don't know too many people
that go to HR and go, "Oh look,
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I'm having a really bad day.
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Can you help me?"
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Certainly technicians because…
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And, and perhaps, look, I know that
this is a generational thing for sure,
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that the, your, your millennials,
your Zeds, and your, your soon to
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be alphas are far more in touch with
their inner person and their, their
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feelings and sensations, and are more
likely to complain and talk about that.
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But certainly for Xs like myself and,
and even some Ys, you don't, you don't.
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That's a sign of weakness.
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You don't, you don't do that.
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And conversely, where it is you
millennials and your Zeds that are doing
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this, well, do you have an effective
method and framework for helping them
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manage that, to, to manage their state?
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We spoke about triage earlier.
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Well, do you have some, some strategies
and tactics that when they're not
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having a good time, when they're
really, really struggling, well,
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they've actually got some resource
that they can turn to that can help
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them get them back on track rather
than just taking a mental health day?
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Not that there's anything inherently
wrong with that, but from a financial
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perspective, that doesn't give
you the numbers that you need.
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And so I wanna point to-- We, we talk
about how to, how to get effectiveness,
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foreman effectiveness, how to
close the foreman capability gap.
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We, you do it with coaching.
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And here we go, shameless self-promotion.
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Um, I designed a coaching
program specifically for foremen.
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It doesn't work for anyone else.
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It was never intended to.
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It doesn't work for service managers,
it doesn't work for service advisors,
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it doesn't work for your parts team.
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It just is for foremen because
foremen are the middle child.
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And I, I, I don't say that to be
critical, I say that 'cause it's reality.
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Your apprentices get all this attention,
they get all this training, they
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get all this coaching, they get all
this mentoring, and they need it.
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And the technicians get all this technical
training, they get these resources,
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they get all this help and support.
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And the foreman gets that, but they
don't get anything for the 80% of
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their job, which is the people part.
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And I, I don't know about
you, but that blows my mind.
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I just go, "You, really?"
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That's a, that's a face
palm moment, you know?
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It's like, "No, what?"
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Much like you, you're not tracking
the types of comebacks you have.
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Really?
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And, and so we call it the Professional
Foreman Method, and it is a coaching
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program designed for foremen to
increase foreman effectiveness
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and close the foreman capability
gap, and we do it with coaching.
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Now, I'm a trainer.
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I've had to go and learn how
to coach because training
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isn't going to solve this.
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And I can say that as someone
who's been training automotive
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professionals and automotive
technical professionals for decades.
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If I was to count up, and w- we did a
fairly subjective count just recently, I'm
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closing on 40,000 technical professionals
I've had in my training class.
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So I know what works and I know
what doesn't work, and training
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doesn't work for foremen.
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Simple as that.
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Let me throw in a Deloitte for you.
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So Deloitte's are very big with their
Academy of Excellence and a whole
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bunch of other courses that they run.
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They are very, very big on data, as you
would be from an a- an accounting firm.
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There was a, recently a article in
GoAuto, and I, I wanna lay out Lee Peters.
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So Lee Peters is a, a partner at
Deloitte's, and they were looking at
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the financial state of, of the business.
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I'm looking at the article
as just a, a brief summary of
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what they were talking about.
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But the net result was that there is
a very distinct difference between
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the top 30% of dealers and others, and
that line is splitting, it's diverging.
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And whilst everyone has access to the
technology, everyone has access to the
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data, everyone has access to the systems,
everyone has best practice processes,
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KPIs, benchmarks, all of the other things
that towards helping a dealership perform.
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Mr.
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Peter's description of, well,
how do we address this gap?
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How do we, one, keep the people
who are performing, performing?
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And how do we then help the people
who are not yet performing at what
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they're capable of to perform?
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He makes this statement and he
says, "The path ahead is defined
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by strategic productivity and
robust talent management."
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Earlier on, he says that talent attraction
and retention emerge as decisive factors.
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So d- don't take it from
me, take it from Mr.
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Peters, who's a bit of
a guru, can I offer?
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If you're not creating the people
that you need in the business
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you're at a huge disadvantage because
the businesses that are doing well,
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they're not just finding the right people.
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Sure, there's some of that.
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They're making the right people.
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So how do you make the right people?
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You coach them
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And you coach them for as long as it takes
to get the results, because they will.
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Coaching doesn't produce an outcome
overnight, not like training can.
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Coaching is a commitment, but
it also produces better results.
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It helps cement in terms of
retention, because the person's
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got a reason to be there.
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We spoke about reward,
recognition, and resources.
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If you'd say to your foreman,
"Hey, appreciate that you've
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got a really tough job.
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We'd love to get you a coach who
can help you perform in this job."
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How do you reckon they feel?
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Do they feel recognized?
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Do they feel rewarded?
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Do they feel resourced?
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And if you've got a quality foreman
now or a foreman that's working
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on their quality, well, that's
gonna cascade down into your team.
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It cannot not if the
coaching is effective.
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And so Anthony asked me a
question about what I should be
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tracking when I coach my foreman.
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Anthony Perl: Should
you be tracking, Andrew?
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Andrew Uglow: Great question, Anthony
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One of the first things that shifts,
one of the first things that shifts
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is the amount, tennis call it unforced
errors, but it's the amount of
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silly mistakes that slipped through.
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And so that'll show up internally, like
the ones that you caught, but it'll also
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show up in the ones that the customer
caught and came back upset about.
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That'll be the first thing.
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Deloitte's talk about a, a 15, 12
to 15% or 12 to 17% comeback, right?
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Because there's parts
outside of their control.
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We'd like zero, right?
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But you watch that number in six
months start to shift, and I, I--
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Well, you would know your gross
profit out of the business, out of
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the workshop over a 12-month period.
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If you could add 3%, 5% to that
gross profit number, what would
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that do to your bottom line?
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Because that's exactly what's happening.
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This is, this is going
straight onto your bottom line.
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What would that be worth?
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And it's a very healthy six figure.
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It's a very healthy six figure, and that's
the first thing that moves when your
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foreman capacity gap starts to shrink
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Anthony Perl: Yeah, Andrew, just
to wrap this up, there's probably a
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question that people are asking as
well in regards to this whole idea
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of coaching, because it is gonna take
them off the floor at certain times.
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So how much risk and
damage can that cause?
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Because you have to manage that process
as well because hopefully they can now see
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the end result and the benefits of doing
it, but how do you manage that component
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of taking them away from the job for a
period of time, whether it's an hour and
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a half here and there, or whether it's,
you know, two or three hours at a time?
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Andrew Uglow: So this comes back to
how well you load your workshop, and
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you can load the workshop in a way
that facilitates the foreman having
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some, I, I don't like to use the
word free time, but having some time
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allocated specifically for this We
do the coaching Tuesdays, Wednesdays,
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and Thursdays simply because Mondays
and Fridays are challenging enough.
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We have Tow-in Monday
and Panic Friday, right?
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Tow-in Monday, there's all this
unallocated or unexpected work rocks
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up, which is great, we love the
work, but it loads the workshop in
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a way that, well, maybe we planned
for, maybe we didn't plan for it.
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Um, and then of course, Panic
Friday, it's all got to be done.
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We've got to get…
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It's, it's close that work in progress,
close the week, you know, get, get stuff
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:
out, invoice, get the money in, right?
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:
The, the, it's, it's a, it's a real thing.
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:
And so the foreman has enough to
do on the Mondays and Fridays.
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:
And so typically we find Tuesday and
Wednesday, late morning is good because
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:
the day is already set and structured.
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There's an opportunity then for the
foreman to go, "Well, do not disturb
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for a, a very short period of time,"
an hour-ish, and they can go and
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invest the time they haven't…
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:
Well, hopefully they haven't had the,
the, uh, thousand spot fires to put
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:
out before they get into the training,
so they're in a good mental state
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:
to be able to, to participate in the
training, in the coaching, I should say.
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:
And the goal is that this
is hardcore practical.
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:
Like, if you can't use it…
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:
Like, you've got to understand
structure, you've got to understand
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:
the tactics and strategy.
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:
Now that you understand what's
going on, how do you do it?
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:
Well, yeah, that's what we talk about.
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:
And I point to some of the things that
we've, we've mentioned in this, you know,
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:
the TATS framework, the, the 1-3-1, the if
I do this, if I would you kind of thing.
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:
If I do this for you, would
you do that for me, or can you
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:
help me here kind of thing.
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:
These are some of the basic frameworks
that we teach, and they're not
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:
necessarily rocket science, but
they're profoundly effective, and
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:
they all create those one percenters.
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:
And it's those one percenters that are
the difference that makes the difference.
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:
W- with a couple of exceptions, the, the
industry has emerged or evolved beyond I
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:
can make a change and I see a 25% increase
in my bottom line from one or two things.
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:
And, and look, it can happen, but
usually those dealers are profoundly
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:
dysfunctional at some level.
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:
And I, I don't mean to be
critical, but that's the reality.
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:
For the most part,
dealerships are run well-ish.
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:
They're good-ish.
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:
They're not horrendous.
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:
They're not the nightmare operation
that perhaps sometimes it sounds
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:
like I make them out to be.
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:
But- It's this 1% and that 1%
and that 1%, and before I know
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:
it, I've got a 7% movement.
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:
Now, some of that's top line, some
of that's bottom line, but the net
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:
result is it's, it's an improvement.
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:
And once I can move the needle
in that regard, it's now,
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:
well, how do I keep the needle?
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:
How do I keep that gain?
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:
And these are the sorts of discussions
foremen are profoundly resourceful.
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:
Generally speaking, there's a couple that
struggle, but profoundly resourceful.
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:
And so asking them that question, you'd
be surprised at the brilliant ideas
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:
and the simple effectiveness that they
come up with because they've had to
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:
learn this on cars, and a lot of those
frameworks that they learned on cars map
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:
to people and map to systems particularly.
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:
Anthony Perl: So Andrew, just to wrap
things up, I know you've got a boot
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:
camp that you can tell people about.
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:
We will include details in the
show notes about it, but do
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:
you wanna fill everyone in?
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:
Andrew Uglow: I run a, a series of
boot camps specifically for workshop
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:
foremen, and we unpack … Th- there
is actually, well, not hundreds,
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:
but th- 46 different frameworks or
thereabouts that we cover when we
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:
do the professional foreman method.
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:
So we unpack some of those or parts of
some of those in the boot camp, and we
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:
typically target the ones that are causing
the foreman the most harm or the most
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:
grief or the most stress or the- doing
the most head damage for the foreman.
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:
And so we, we do boot
camps semi-regularly.
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:
So if you've heard this, I'd
encourage you to encourage your
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:
foreman to go and check us out.
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:
If you look up Solutions Culture on the
internet, I'm pretty easy to find, or
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:
look up me, Andrew Uvlov on LinkedIn.
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:
We want foremen to perform because
it's all the difference that makes the
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:
difference, and it's low-hanging fruit.
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:
Anthony Perl: Thank you for listening
to the Frictionless Workshop podcast.
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:
For details on how to get Andrew
working with you and your technicians,
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:
take a look at the show notes.
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:
There's also a link to some
special content you can access.
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:
I'm Anthony Pearl reminding you to
subscribe so you don't miss an episode.
