Just ONE Thing
Your Shop Isn’t Stuck - You’re Fixing the Wrong Things
Episode 249
with Rick White, 180BIZ
Good morning. My name is Rick White from 180BIZ. We are a coaching and training company for the independent auto and truck repair shop industry. And this is my Just ONE Thing.
You know, it amazes me how you look at some stuff. Like I've seen people do stuff that just didn't make any sense at all. How many times have you stepped back watching somebody do something and go, “That makes no sense whatsoever”? Just think about that for a second. You are watching a team member and they're, you know, they're working on a car and they walk some big tool over or something like that, and you're going, “What are they doing?” And it doesn't make any sense.
I need you to step back and think about this for a second, right? Because most leaders, they see something like that and they wanna change it right away. But here's what I want you to really get.
This is worth writing down. Before you change the sentence, read the story. So I'm gonna tell you the whole thing about this. I talk to people all the time and they're like, “I gotta do this,” or “I gotta do that, I gotta do that.” And I'm like, “Hey, let's step back and look at this a little bit,” right? That's what this is really about.
See, what happens is everybody sees the sentence—what they're doing—but they don't understand the story. They don't understand why that sentence was created. You're reading along and all of a sudden it's like, “Damn, that sentence doesn't make any sense.” But before you just back it out or get rid of it or whatever the case is, you wanna be able to read the story.
Now I need you to understand the difference. The sentence is something you can see. It's a rule, it's a policy, a process, or a habit. The story is invisible. The story is the reason it exists. Maybe it's a mistake that happened. Maybe somebody got in trouble with a customer and it cost the shop thousands of dollars.
Who knows? Maybe somebody abused the system. Maybe something failed and then someone built something around it to protect the shop from that thing failing again. What I'm getting at is every sentence in a business usually comes from a story someone learned the hard way. Do y'all get what I'm saying there?
Most of the time, sentences are built from scars, from wounds. And I need you to hear that. And you know what brought this whole thing up? I was, you know me, I like reading. So I was reading and I came across this quote by GK Chesterton. He described a situation where someone finds a fence across a road.
And they look at it and they say, “Hey, fence is in the way. Let's get rid of it.” And Chesterton's response was very simple but profound. He says, “If you don't understand why the fence was built, you shouldn't remove it.”
Now, I started thinking about that because the fence could have been protecting something. It could have been either keeping something in or keeping something out. And the same thing happens every day in businesses. I was thinking this through, but I could have said, “Hey, you know, leaders tear down fences before they understand what those fences are protecting,” but it really didn't seem to hit as well as before.
Here's what happens. Typically, a new owner comes in, a manager wants to improve things, somebody sees something inefficient. And then they react to the sentence, but they never investigate the story. So they remove that rule, the process, or change the system.
And guess what? Six months later, that same problem that created that rule shows up again, and it was because the story was never understood.
So what I want you to do—I want to give you a really simple framework, okay? That's a very simple discipline for handling situations like this, and it stops you from reacting.
So before you change the sentence, READ.
That's the framework—the story.
And it stands for: “R” stands for Recognize the sentence. I want you to understand, before you start changing things and swapping stuff out, I want you to be able to clearly identify what it is you want to change. In other words, what exactly is the sentence I'm reacting to? Is it a rule? Is it a process, a policy? Is it somebody's habit? See, when you have clarity, it prevents emotional reactions. Curiosity creates that clarity, and it prevents emotional reactions, and that is super important. So the first thing you gotta do is recognize the sentence.
Second thing, the “E”—Explore the story. This is where you get curious. You're gonna start to ask questions like: Who created this? Why are we doing it this way? What problem is this solving? Or what happened to lead to this rule being created? See, when you start to explore the story, now you're looking for the context, the reason everything was built.
So we have Recognize the sentence, Explore the story. Now “A”—Assess the relevance.
What do I mean by relevance? Does it matter? That's what relevance means. So once you understand that story, you're just gonna step back and say, “Does this problem still exist?” Maybe that rule still protects you, but maybe the problem's still there. But the solution—the sentence—needs to be improved. Maybe what worked before isn't working now. Maybe you need to tweak it or there's some technology you can add that now makes it a lot easier for you. So you wanna assess the relevance.
And then the last thing is you want to “D”—Decide intentionally. Once you understand the story, now you're able to change the sentence. You can have three options with this. You can either keep the sentence, you can improve the sentence, or you can get rid of the sentence safely. But now the decision is intentional instead of reaction. So I hope that all makes sense to you.
If it does, I'm gonna ask you, please share this video. There are people out there hurting and we want to be able to help them.
So in closing, I just wanna say this:
“Every business is full of sentences, every shop—the rules, the processes, the policies. But I want you to understand that behind every sentence is a story.”
Weak leaders, they react to the sentence.
Strong leaders, they look for the story.
So before you change the sentence, read the story.
If this really hits you and you'd like to sit down and talk about what's going on in your shop, feel free to reach out. It's [email protected].
God bless. Stay safe, have fun, and go make some money.
I'll see y'all next week.
Take care. Bye-bye.
