Management Success! Honored to Have Hosted Omani Officials a Second Time for Automotive Training Courses

LOS ANGELES, CA - June 17, 2014

From May 28 to June 11, Omani automotive engineers Faham Yasser Obaid Al Salami and Aflah Nasser Abdul Wahab Mundhiri, who work in the Workshops Department under the Directorate General of Transport at the Royal Court in Oman, participated in comprehensive management training courses at the Management Success!’ training facility in Glendale, California. While the courses were directed towards automotive shop owners, Management Success! consultants and workshop instructors spent individual time with the engineers explaining how to apply the principles they learned to their large government fleet.

The Omanis’ visit comes on the heels of last year’s visit from two other Omani engineers, also from the Royal Court Workshops Department.

Al Salami and Mundhiri took the trifecta of Management Success! primer management courses: Controlling the Front, Improving Business Through Communications, and How to Get Compliance. These courses focused on a two-pronged approach to effective management, covering theory with the first and practical skills with the latter two.

What made the experience unique was that the engineers got to network with many automotive shops during the courses, allowing them to gain different perspectives into how to manage an automotive business.

“We appreciate the opportunity to study at Management Success! and to interact with automotive shop owners from the United States. We will take home our new skills to increase the efficiency and flow of our departments,” Salami and Mundhiri said in a joint statement.

Robert Spitz, Senior Vice President of Business Development at Management Success!, was incredibly honored that the Omani government chose Management Success! as Oman’s official automotive management training company, and he enjoyed hosting the visitors.

“It was a great honor to have Faham and Aflah here with us over the last two weeks. They were great to work with, and I know the instructors had as much fun as they did in the process,” Spitz said.

In addition to attending classes, Al Salami and Mundhiri explored the sights and sounds of Los Angeles for the first time, visiting spots like Grauman’s Chinese Theater and the Glendale Galleria.

With a great time had by all, Al Salami and Mundhiri foresee an ongoing relationship.

“We want to thank all of the staff and instructors for their attention and care, and we look forward to working with Management Success! in the future,” Al Salami and Mundhiri said.

About Management Success!:

Management Success! is an auto industry consulting firm that specializes in elevating the quality of life of shop owners all over the US, Canada, and overseas. Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Glendale, California, Management Success! helps shop owners become effective managers in order to increase profits. The Management Success! team believes shop owners deserve to be well-compensated for their hard work. Management Success! fully arms shop owners with every executive ability needed to win.

For more information, please contact:

Morgan Scott
eMarketing Manager
Management Success!
(818) 500-9631
www.managementsuccess.com

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Omani Officials Return to California for Another Round of Training Courses at Management Success!

LOS ANGELES, CA – May 19, 2014 – After a very fruitful international visit to Management Success! last May for automotive shop management training courses, Omani government officials will be returning to Management Success! for the Automotive Shop Management Training Course, which will take place from May 28 to June 11. This time, Omani engineers Faham Yasser Obaid Al Salami and Aflah Nasser Abdul Wahab Mundhiri, who work in the Workshops Department under the Directorate General of Transport at the Al Alam Royal Palace in Muscat, Oman, will be joining Management Success! at its offices in Glendale, California.

The Omani Directorate General of Transport was so impressed by the training provided last May for two of his engineers that he decided to send two more engineers from his team over so everyone could be on the same page. 

Management Success! is thrilled to have members of the Omani government back for another training session. “We are honored to be selected as the management training program for Oman, and we look forward to their visit. We want them to have a great learning experience here at our headquarters. Our consultants will work closely with our guests and ensure they know how to apply the principles they learn in class to their unique situation,” said Robert Spitz, Senior Vice President of Business Development at Management Success! 

The main problem they had when they first contacted Management Success! was efficiency. They needed to get their vehicles done in a timely manner and have better processes in place for tracking work and managing the workshop with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

“Our goal is to teach them organization - how to smooth out the workflow and make the process more efficient through their numerous departments,” Spitz said. “We’ll also show them how to set up KPIs to monitor production though the entire process, from the time the vehicle is dropped off to the time it is ready to go back into service.”

The Omani engineers will also be learning employee management skills to help motivate and increase production.

About Management Success!

Management Success! is an auto industry consulting firm that specializes in elevating the quality of life of shop owners all over the US, Canada, and overseas. Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Glendale, California, Management Success! helps shop owners become effective managers in order to increase profits. The Management Success! team believes shop owners deserve to be well-compensated for their hard work. Management Success! fully arms shop owners with every executive ability needed to succeed.

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The Adventures of MACH TWO – Chapter 3 & 4 by Mike Lee

Mike Lee
co-founder
Management Success!

Background

(MACH TWO gets his name from the fact that while at work, he is constantly going MACH TWO with his hair on fire.)
In the continuing adventures of MACH TWO, a once mild mannered technician turned automotive shop owner, he is in total overwhelm and he can't seem to find enough time to think.

Chapter Three:
Why Did I Come Out Here?

Oftentimes, MACH TWO finds that his day starts off bad and just continues to get worse throughout the day.  The shop opens up and there is a rush of customers.  Usually, while he is trying to get them handled, the employees are working in cruise mode.

By 11:00 a.m., the shop is in total chaos.  Of course, in the middle of all of this chaos, the phone rings and a customer wants to know what has been found out about his car.  MACH TWO puts the customer on hold and walks into the shop to find out the diagnosis of the customer's car.

Before he gets there, Bill, one of his technicians, wants him to look at a problem that he has with a customer's starter.  Then Frank wants to know what h should do with the linkage problem that he has on this hot-rod.  Ten minutes goes by and suddenly, MACH TWO is standing in the middle of the shop wondering why he came out there in the first place.

Part of the problem is that MACH TWO has no plan of attack.  He runs his organization by the CRISIS METHOD of management.  Basically, he is solving every problem in the organization.  He has the jobs that he is supposed to do, plus the problems that everyone else is supposed to handle but can't.  So, because he is busy solving all of his employees' problems, he never gets a chance to do the things that he should be doing.

The symptoms that exist in this type of shop:
The employees can't seem to handle the tough problems required to completely perform their jobs.

The real problem is:
The shop owner lacks employee handling and training skills.

Solution:
The shop owner needs to let all of his employees solve their own problems.  The way to do this is to consult the employee on the steps necessary to finding his own solution instead of giving the employee the quick fix that he/she wants.  The shop owner can do this by asking questions.  Find out exactly what it is that the employee does not understand and work from there.  Unless the owner starts doing this, he/she will never be able to grow and expand.

Chapter Four:
What Do I Do Next Boss?

MACH TWO finishes road checking a car and pulls back into the shop.  The first thing he notices is that all three of his technicians are not working but just standing around waiting for him.

MACH TWO goes ballistic.  It is four o'clock in the afternoon, there are cars all over the place, and he has lied to half of his customers about when their car is going to be done.
The office manager runs out and indicates that Mr. Royal Pain is on the phone demanding to know if his car is going to be done tonight.  Of course, he has been calling every half hour asking the same question.  She also tells you that she has two other customers on hold.
The blood pressure gauge on MACH TWO begins to burst.  He yells at his technicians to get back to work.  "Work on something, I don't care what, just don't stand there!" he yells.  He tells the office gal to just hang up on Mr. Royal Pain.  He then goes into the office and barks at the two customers on the phone.

When he finally arrives home, he yells at his kids, kicks the dog and ignores his wife and just sits in the chair staring at a blank television screen.  During all of this he is thinking to himself, "Why did I go into this business in the first place?"

Symptom: 
The shop owner is basically acting insane and is in total overwhelm.

Real Problem: 
The owner lacks organizational skills and employee handling skills.  He is running a "Hey, you!" organization.  This means that he is telling everyone what to do verbally.

Solution: 
The shop owner needs to start organizing his operation.  He needs to develop a method of routing work, where the employees don't have to come to him to find out what to do next.  He needs to develop a system that will make finding the status of a customer's car easy for any employee in the shop.  This also means without having to interrupt everyone.
In the next chapter, MACH TWO will enter the advertising jungle and try to figure out where he is.

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Growing Pains by Mike Lee

Mike Lee
co-founder
Management Success!

A majority of shop owners in the auto repair industry find taking the shop to the next level is their main problem. Their shops have either grown to a certain size in gross monthly sales and have then flattened off, or they can’t seem to take home enough money. It does not matter how big a shop has grown, when it comes to the owner’s checkbook, you should hear him groan.

The Four Stages of Business

The average business goes through four stages of development. These stages reflect the development of the shop owner’s business and management skills. Unfortunately some shops seem to get stuck in one stage of development and are unable to expand beyond it. Other shops are able to grow fairly quickly but can’t seem to make any money.

Stage One

In this stage we have the technician that has opened his first shop. In most cases, he is doing most of the work on the cars and handling the customers as best he can, along with doing all of the paperwork. Basically he is doing everything himself. This is the normal startup procedure.

Some shop owners get stuck in stage one and never really grow out of this condition. They hit a certain level of monthly sales and that is it.

Stage Two

In stage two we have a shop owner who has decided to go primarily into the front office to handle the customers or hire someone to do this for him so he can work on the cars. If he is the service writer he still helps out with fixing the cars in the shop.

Stage Three

In stage three the shop owner has expanded to the point that he has delegated the primary jobs to others. He has a service writer running the front office and other people fixing the cars in the shop. He helps out in the front with the customers in the morning and then will go into the shop to help solve the problems of his technicians. Delegating responsibility successfully gives him an opportunity to do other things to help the business grow.

Stage Four

Here we have a shop that has successfully expanded to high levels of volume. The owner is not required to be there to run the day-to-day operations. Profits are high and relatively stable. He is at a level where 80% of the shop owners in the country would love to be.

We Work Hard, So Why Don’t More of Us Arrive at Stage Four?

There is a rule of management that you will always expand up to the level of confusion that you can handle. When you get confused you go slow and make mistakes. This means that over time a shop owner may develop a big operation, but unless he really understands all the key areas of his business — personnel, marketing, finance, production, quality control, public relations, sales and management — his bottom line will suffer.

But I Don’t Have Any Dough!

Some shops do a million dollars in sales a year and aren’t making any money! If they are making money it isn’t a good return for the amount of business they have or the amount of effort they put into their business. Time and time again I have found shops doing more than $750,000 a year and not making any real profit.

The Real Problem

If you want to narrow all of these conditions down to one broad statement that defines the problem in the auto repair indus­try, it would be that the owners of these shops are very good at FIXING CARS. They can solve any problem with the cars in their shops if given enough time.

But the problem that is beating them up is that they don’t know how to FIX THE BUSINESS. They lack management skills and knowledge. Their lack of management skills is the primary reason they are not making enough money in the business.

Solution

In each of the four stages of a business, the solution is for the owner to quit being a mechanic and start being a businessman. He needs to learn to run his business. Running the business and making a profit is what a businessman is supposed to do. If the owner does this right he can slowly move up stage by stage.

Eventually he will move out of the hectic, overworked stages one and two until he arrives stably at stage three or four and is making DOUGH. That is my wish for you!

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How Do I Get My People to Work as a Team? by Robert Spitz

Bob Spitz
Senior VP Business Dev
Management Success!

Recently this question came up while I was having lunch with a friend of mine who owns a nice shop but is struggling with some production problems.  We were talking about increasing production by improving how employees dealt with each other within the business.  One of the problems he was running into was a lack of communication between the front and the back in his shop.  “I don’t get it, it seems so obvious to me, and yet my guys seem to be on different pages sometimes.”

“Did you ever play any team sports?” I asked.  “What makes a good team good?  Is it simply a matter of recruiting superstars, or is there more too it than that?”  He had played team sports and was still a member of a softball team in a league in his town.  We started to examine what made great teams great and how that could relate to his current situation.

All the good teams he had ever been on had the following attributes in common:

1. They had a common goal.
2. Each person knew his position in the game.
3. Each person understood how his actions and performance affected everyone else.
4. Each person knew all the other players positions.
5. They drilled and practiced all the time.
6. They had a good manager who knew how to motivate.
7. They looked at key statistics in their game.
8. They reviewed good and bad plays.
9. They got along great.

We then took the list and compared these points with his shop.  And I asked him the following questions:

1. “Do you have a goal for the business?  Have you shared this vision with your people?” 

Just like sports teams, any group needs to have an agreed upon goal or objective to perform well.  In sports it is usually to win the division or something even higher like a state championship.  Then that big goal is broken down into smaller goals, then right down to individual players’ goals. I worked with a shop years ago up in Minnesota who had similar problems.  We got his people together and asked them what would they really like to have that would improve their working conditions?  They unanimously announced they wanted a better building. This answer surprised the owner.  He had heard grumbling about the lack of work space but never saw this as an opportunity to unite his people toward a common purpose.  We set about a plan to accomplish this goal and gave it a two-year target.  This was presented to the crew with the sales and production numbers it would take to attain this goal.  Monthly and weekly targets were set with smaller short team bonuses for the crew to earn and within a year they were in a new building! So I asked my friend again, “Do you have a goal for the business and have you broken that goal down into lesser goals with a shorter time interval where everyone involved could experience the joy of winning?”

2. “Does each of your people really understand their job, what’s expected of them and how to measure their own performance?” 

A team only performs as well as the individual players are proficient at their individual jobs. There has to be a way of measuring the production and performance of each position in a shop, a certain statistic to keep track of for that position.

3. “Do your people completely understand how their actions and how their performance affects the performance of the others in the group and the overall performance of the shop?” 

Nobody in a group lives on an island.  Each member has to understand how their actions and performance effects the actions and performance of the other members in the group.

4.  “Do your people completely understand everyone else’s job and what it is they do and how that affects them?”

When individuals in a group do not have a good understanding of the jobs others around them perform it greatly decreases that group’s ability to perform at peak levels. Complete job descriptions for every position in the business must be available and completely understood by each person for their own position. 

5. “Do you take the time to train your people in their positions and drill people on the shop’s procedures?” 

A business that does not invest resources toward training is killing itself.  A shop has got to have a system and schedule for on-going training of each member of the group.  A shop also needs to hold training drills on the various administrative procedures in the shop.

6. “How do you compare with the good managers you have played under in those sports teams? Are you lacking any skills or knowledge to be a competent leader of your people?”

The owner of a business has many hats to wear but the primary ones are planning and the execution of plans.  This is easy to say but takes a very exact skill set to accomplish.  Top professional sports figures all have coaches.  An owner of a business would be wise to hire a competent business coach. 

7. “Like sports, a business must have Key Performance Indicators to gauge its effectiveness and progress toward a stated goal.  What stats or KPI’s are you managing with?” 

Understanding the sales-production-profit pipeline of a business and what the key statistics are to measure the success of an executive’s decisions and actions is vital to the achievement of the goals.

8. “It is a smart operator who videos their people in action and then review their performance with them. This gives management and staff a chance to reinforce positive actions and correct mistakes before incorrect actions become bad habits.” 

All pro sports players use video to enhance performance and it is something that should be done in the workplace.

9. “You had teams you were on where everyone got along great. That was because they were winning teams”. 

Keeping people winning on their jobs is an important part of managing and leadership.  Knowing how to set up bonus plans and quickly handling upsets with employees is all part of knowing how to win the game.

My friend sat back and looked at me and said, “I never looked at my business this way.  There is a lot of room for improvement, but now I have a direction to go in.” 

We hammered out a step-by-step plan to start implementing the changes that needed to be made to create a truly winning team, and I am happy to report the business now operates at a much higher level of sales and production and yes, they are getting along great!

If you would like to improve the performance of your business, give us a call, we would be happy to give you a free business analysis and get you pointed in the right direction.

Wishing you nothing but success!

Management Success!

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ATTITUDE by Mike Lee Management Success!

Mike Lee
Co-Founder
Management Success

It is amazing how much your attitude affects the results you get in business. In an auto repair shop, the owner’s attitude directly affects sales, gets mirrored in the attitude of the employees, and attracts or repels customers. A good attitude can carry you over even the worst setbacks. But a bad attitude also tends to gain momentum. When business gets bad, it has a tendency to get worse if your attitude goes bad with it, which causes the business to get worse, which causes your attitude to get worse.

A few years ago I was called to consult with the owner of a transmission shop that wasn’t doing well. The owner was depressed. He blamed the economy for his troubles and believed that nobody had any money. He was doing about half the business that he had been doing a couple of years earlier. He didn’t know what to do to improve things.

I got right to work attacking his attitude. “With your lousy attitude, it’s no wonder business is so bad!”

I asked how much business he was currently doing each month. He said that he was doing about $20,000 a month. I asked him how many other transmission shops there were in his area. He told me that there were six other shops that did nothing but transmission work. After some rough calculations, we figured that there was about $200,000 a month in transmission work being done in his area, which was down from about $400,000 two years earlier.

Then I pointed out that his REAL problem was that he wasn’t getting enough of the business that was there.

I asked what his “break-even point” was. He said that if he made about $21,000 a month he’d be able to pay all the bills. I asked how much business it would take to really make money. He said about $27,000 a month. We figured out that all he needed was to get about two more big jobs a week to be really profitable.

Then I gave him my four-question Attitude Test:

1.  Do you come in to work later than you used to? Do you want to go home earlier because it is slow?
2.  Do you assume the customer is not going to buy or doesn’t have the money instead of taking the attitude that he is going to buy and you are not going to let him out of there until he does?
3.  Have you stopped doing a full road check on each car and stopped using a diagnostic road check form and a complete checkout on the rack because you know he doesn’t have any money?
4.  Do you set your daily target and weekly target and go after it?

He gave all the Bad Attitude answers (“Yes” on #1, #2 and #3, and “No” on #4) and, with a bad attitude, proceeded to tell me it was all impossible and nothing could be done about it. Then I broke the news to him.

I told him that it was easy to get two more jobs a week if he had the right attitude. I set a target for him to sell a certain dollar amount, enough to be profitable, for each day of the next week and gave him several other things that I wanted him to do.

The following week, he did about double the business of his average week. I asked him how much of the business was due to the difference in his attitude. He admitted that he got three jobs that he wouldn’t normally have gotten, ALL BECAUSE OF AN IMPROVED ATTITUDE! (By the way, he is currently averaging about $27,000 a month.)

But there is another, perhaps even more common way in which the owner’s attitude affects his income. Your attitude directly affects how your employees respond to you and the amount and quality of work they produce.

I used to start each morning in the shop by having a small meeting with the employees. I would go over what we had to accomplish for the day and what I expected. If we were busy, I’d tell them, “I don’t want anyone standing around–I expect things to happen!” If things were slow, I would say, “When everything is done and the shop is cleaned up, then you can relax.” If I needed extra effort from them that day, I would tell them this so they knew what I needed. If it was going to be a just a normal-flow day, I would take a few minutes to make them laugh and then tell them to get to work. No matter what, I made sure to set a positive tone for the day.

If it wasn’t too hectic, I would also make a point of going out into the shop once in the morning and once in the afternoon to talk to each guy and see how it was going, to make him laugh and to keep him pointed in the right direction. The effect that this creates is amazing. Some owners don’t realize how many employees are willing to work hard simply to get an “ATTA-BOY” from the boss.

When your attitude is good, you’ll remember to communicate with your employees and acknowledge the good work they do. When your attitude is bad and you only complain, it drags everyone and everything down.

Attitude is a big factor in success. If you’re tired of feeling bad or if you’re not accomplishing what you want to, maybe it’s just an attitude problem. If so, go ahead and give yourself an ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT–a “check-up from the neck up.”

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The Home Of The Unknown Shop Owner by Mike Lee Management Success!

Mike Lee
Co-founder
Management Success

Unfortunately, there a many unknown shop owners in America.  There are several in your town.  Drive down the business section of town, or the industrial area or even on the main drag at night and you will see shop owners still working on cars. 

Most of the rest of working people in town have been at home.  They got there in time to have dinner with their wife and kids or maybe went out to a restaurant.  So have played baseball with their son or have helped their daughter with her school work.

But the unknown shop owner toils away trying to stay ahead of the bill collectors.  It is not unusual for the unknown shop owner to work 60 to 80 hours a week.  When they get home, their kids are in bed. 

They are tired and don’t have anything left for their families.

Vacation is for other people.  Some unknown shop owners have never taken any time off for their families. 

One of the benefits of working long hours at their shops is it makes them healthy.  Most unknown shop owners almost never get sick.  Of course, this is because they can’t afford to get sick.  So rain or shine, feeling good or not, they head every day for real home, their shops.

Unfortunately, the unknown shop owners have a very high divorce rate.  Women are so picky.  They get married and silly them, they expect you to go home once and a while.  So it usually takes 2 or 3 divorces before the unknown shop owners come up with a solution to this being married problem.  They talk their spouses into coming to work for them.  That way they get to spend all their time together at the their real home the shop.

One of the major attributes of the unknown shop owner is that he is persistent.   He has been working 60 to 80 hours a week for 5 to 15 years and things aren’t getting better, but he keeps on working.  Of course, his spouse begins to think that he is crazy because any sane person would have tried to fix it and do something else.  

Obviously, he is not on the road to success! He is on the road to burn out, depression, divorce, no money, no satisfaction of accomplishment and the worst punishment of all, not being able to spend time with his wife and kids.  You only have one chance to watch your kids grown up.  So who are the unknown shop owners.  They are the shop owners who spend most of their lives at their shops and who are not known by their families and kids.

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Keeping Your Eye on the Ball By Mike Lee Management Success!

Mike Lee
Co-Founder
Management Success

In the typical automotive shop, you will find that the owner has red hair and the nickname of ‘MOCK TWO’.  This is because he is going Mach Two with his hair on fire.

A good observer would notice that a high percentage of the time, while appearing to be in rapid motion, he is really on a treadmill, trying to do 12 things at the same time.

Most shops grow to a level of volume just above the level of confusion that the shop owner can handle.  Once the shop has reached this level, it quits growing because the owner lacks management and organizational skills.  The shop will tend to stay at this level for years unable to burst through to the next level.  It never seems to get better, only worse, because gradually the owner takes home less and less money.

MOCK TWO is suffering from lack of focus and lack of a simple game plan.  The shop owner comes to work with the intention to make things better but it never seems to happen.  He then wonders why he is unhappy and why he doesn't have a sense of accomplishment.

The problem is focus.  He is trying to do too many things at once.  When he hits the door of the shop, all of the problems seem to come directly to him and stick to him.  He tries to handle them all and usually doesn't get any of them done.

Most shops didn't get to this level of confusion overnight.  The shop owners have worked for years to get to this level of overwhelm.  Unfortunately, MOCK TWO never seems to have enough time to start fixing the problem.

The key thing here is that it is never going to get better unless MOCK TWO decides to fix it permanently.  While in a coping condition, he (and you) MUST start organizing or it is only going to get worse.

The solution to the problem is to sit down after work and list some of the things that you need to accomplish that will make you more money.  Decide which one you can do with the least amount of effort (and/or money).  You want to choose the project that will give you the best results and get it done first.  Do not focus on any other projects until you have this one done. It might take you three weeks to finish it, but it doesn't matter.  You have taken the first step of getting rid of overwhelm and confusion.

We call this KEEPING YOUR EYE ON THE BALL.  Focus every day on the one thing that you are trying to get done.  Keep your focus on it.  You should try to do the project you can accomplish the quickest and with the least amount of effort.  When you finally finish the project, you will feel good about yourself and have a little more time for other projects.  This will allow you to pick up the next thing on your list and focus on it.  The things that needed to be done in the shop will start to get done and gradually you will improve your whole operation.

Eventually, you will be renamed MOCK ONE and hopefully even renamed SANE in a very short period of time.

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Are You Suffering from the "Dad Syndrome" in Your Shop? - by Mike Lee, Management Success!

Mike Lee
Co-Founder
Management Success!

It is very common for auto shop owners to become overwhelmed. They try to do too many things at once; unfortunately, they do not get most of them done, or if they do, they are done poorly.

These owners are suffering from the "Dad syndrome." The reason they are unable to finish their tasks is because they are helping others or solving everyone else's problems. All of their employees treat them as a Dad.

All day long, whenever the employees have a problem, they come to the owner for answers or help with their problems. This leaves no time for the owner to finish what needs to get done.

"Dad! Can you help me with this problem?" "Dad! What do you want me to do with this?" "Dad! What should I do next?" Oftentimes, an owner leaves the shop for ten minutes and comes back to find three of the highest production people standing around waiting for him or her to solve their problems. The owner barely gets out of the car before they all start yelling, "Dad!"

It is like nobody can do anything or think for themselves. Dad has to make every decision and handle every problem. Is it any wonder that the shop owner goes home tired and overwhelmed?

The effects of the Dad syndrome are many. The biggest effect is it costs the shop lots of money. Because of the Dad syndrome, the shop grows to a certain volume level and quits growing. Dad can only handle so much.

It affects the ability of the shop to get into the profitable mode. It affects the ability of the employees to produce. It causes a great deal of confusion resulting in lost time, lost production, and lots of lost money.

So, what is the solution? The first step is to recognize that it is a problem in the shop.
Next, the owner must get employees to start doing their jobs without his or her help. Part of this is done by defining exactly what their job is and what is expected of them. Next, the owner should put the employees on an incentive program where they get paid based on the following: 

1) The volume of work they can do, and
2) The level of expertise they can handle. 

Owners must learn to train employees so they are just as prepared to solve problems they face. They should teach employees how to handle problems as they come up, and their pay should be based on this.

Eventually, owners should refuse to handle the employees' jobs, so the employees will learn not to constantly rely on the owners. At our company, the owner used to say, "Manage, Manager! I pay you to handle the problems, so handle them!"

The key to solving the Dad syndrome is for owners to recognize that they have to quit solving employees' problems and, instead, teach them how to do it.

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