Don't Hire To Cover Up Process Inefficiencies

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Being an agency owner isn't for the faint of heart. Strategy, market conditions, building a team that lasts. This is From the Field, where Josh and Joe help you do it all without losing your mind.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Thanks for joining us today. We've got an exciting episode for you. I've got my boy Josh with me. How's the day? Great day to be here. Happy to be here. Fantastic. Interesting topic today. So you and I had a conversation the other day, and you and I, and especially you, are enormous advocates for hiring, right? For staffing up, for scaling. But we talked about how sometimes it may not be necessary. So we talked about if your service staff is overwhelmed, how do you decide whether or not they truly need another person? Or is it, or do you have some inefficiencies inside of the workflow that now is creating a lot of pressure on your team? So from that standpoint, I'm curious to see kind of what's your thoughts starting off when it comes to do I add another person or do I work on my current processes inside of my office? Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

I mean, it's here we are saying we got to scale, you know, we need to take care of our clients, client first, do all this. So people hear that as I need to hire more people. Right. And if if uh if your team is busy, what's the first thing to say? I'm overwhelmed, I have too much to do, I have this. While we do advocate for scaling, I think it's an important time for you to take a look under the hood and see what's actually causing that. Like, are they overworked or do you have bad processes? Like, is hiring another person on your service team just a band-aid or is it needed? And and it I I just think it is worth double checking before you try to solve the problem by just adding more salary and help. So, you know, for the reason why when we were talking about this as a topic that is good is is you you've shared you've got teams that you oversee that are malnourished, right? They'll have large books of business with with maybe one administrative person or one service assistant. And then you have smaller books that seemingly have, what, two, three people? Right. Yes. Yeah. And and I thought that was an interesting dynamic. The ones that we would look from the outside and say they're underserved. They're like, no, we're running lean. And then the ones that look like they're overserved still say they're busy. So it's clearly not a per person or per policy issue. It's it's how they're running the business.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

For sure. And and do you see specific things or do you ever have specific processes to be able to test out what your efficiencies or inefficiencies are inside of your team? So you can figure out, I think of it like kind of like if your hose is leaking, right? I mean, if you if you you know track it, if you you you can see where the actual pinhole is at, you know, or or where there's maybe a bigger hole. But how do you kind of battle test your systems to see where things are and to see is it time to add somebody, or do we just need to tighten things up?

unknown 2:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

So we actually have a tool um inside of that practice management operating system where you can log an activity and it'll go through your whole day. So whatever you're gonna do, whether it's start a podcast or you know, you're gonna do an underwriting change or meet with a client, you can click start and then log it. It'll it'll summarize your whole day for you. But there's a very low-tech version as well. And and I have a my senior associate agent is going through this right now. And I've told him, I'm like, hey, buddy, here's what I need you to do. Two weeks. Write down everything you do. I I know it seems redundant, I know it seems low-tech, but at the end of two weeks, we're gonna be able to see what you did, how many tasks you did, how long they took, and we can you know bundle them all into there and say, hey, were you busy or were you inefficient? Okay. And I think it's a very low-tech thing that any agent or agency could do with an admin, with a service person, with anything to see like what is a real busy day look like. Is it 30 policy changes? Is it 15 phone calls, or was it five that you just kind of spun the needle all day long? Hey, I'm going here, I'm going here, I'm going here, and just felt busy. So low-tech or high-tech, I think there's solutions, but you have to measure it before you can manage it.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

You know, one thing I go back years and I remember watching, at least in my own mind, I'm sure it happened prior to this, but I watched your efficiencies go through the roof. And at least early on, one of the ways I saw you do it was through Microsoft Planner. And you were able to figure out the workflows to where it, you know, it eliminated redundancies. It it didn't have it so everybody had to touch something, things didn't stall out. So I wonder sometimes, and tell me if you think it'd be a good idea for an agency owner, is to take a common problem. So maybe I've got a billing question where I want someone to actually give me the rationale as to why it why it increased, and I threw it into the pipeline and then we see where it goes. So is it is it good sometimes to take a specific problem and then just follow it and see who all touches it and how the workflow transpires? Ooh, isn't that fun? Does it take four different handoffs to get this done?

SPEAKER_01 4:58

If so, we we don't have a personnel problem. We have a process problem, right? Like that that's a real test kitchen type item that we do. It is viable and it does need to happen. And you know it it it's so hard to tell somebody that they're not as busy as they think they are. Right. Like that's a hard thing to manage, is it's there. So I think sometimes the the numbers themselves speak for it. That planner you were talking about, it allowed us to put SOPs in there in a way that I didn't think we could really get to. Like building a handbook, you know, building a how-to. And and kudos to my wife, because she built out the whole thing. And she's brilliant. And uh, you know, I definitely outkicked my coverage on that. Shout out to High. Uh yeah. I mean, it I I did well. Um, probably how I got into sales. But um she built it out. And and what we do is if someone has downtime, right? This is a great takeaway. Like this wasn't the topic for today, but this is a great takeaway. If they have downtime, have them build out an SOP. Right? Just a small one. Pick the smallest thing they're gonna do today and build out an SOP that they could teach someone that started their job today how to do that task. And then just grow on it. You know, and by the end of a week, there might be three. By the end of a month, there might be 10. By the end of a year, there might be 50. And all of a sudden, your handbook looks great. Somebody could walk in and do that, and it helps them like when you can teach something, you have to really understand it. So, in order to build the SOP, they have to have a firm understanding. So that's just a great busy work thing that does help us be more efficient and might end up realizing you your process problem doesn't require more manpower. It requires better process. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

No, that's good. And for newbies, standard operating standard operating procedure, SOPs, just in case you just kind of joined the industry or didn't deal with them prior. The uh other question I have for you is you're part of a tremendous study group. And everybody in that study group has great minds, but their minds work differently and they see things differently. Do you ever have times that you take your current processes or exchange them with a with a person that's in that study group and you each look at each other's processes to see if they identify things where there's bottlenecks or things you could be doing better? Because sometimes I'm blown away when I take somebody that has a skill set, or they do not not even a skill set, they have a different vantage point than I do. And I think I have this thing as efficient as it can be and they dialed there, right? And they put eyes on it and they go, why are you doing it that way? You say, Well, what do you mean? And all of a sudden they explain it and you go, Jesus, I wouldn't, I never even thought of that. And they can identify things that that you have blind spots for. So do you ever use the people around you for feedback when it comes to the way you have things set up?

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Yeah, I mean, it's the mayo method, right? Like you want multiple people looking at a problem without having groupthink. So, you know, you look at the problem, they look at the problem, she looks at the problem, we all each come up with our own answer without you know cross-pollinating. And then you see what the answer is. And it's a wonderful way to solve a problem. We actually, when we have our study groups, you know, each person has a part of the meeting that they are in charge of. Sure. You know, it's their hour, their hour and a half, whatever it may be. And sometimes it has been, hey, I want everybody to take a look at this process for me. And those are those are challenging, right? You're you're you have something that you think you've developed that's really good, and you're going, hey, shoot holes in it. And it it's not always, you know, it doesn't always end up being bad. Sometimes it's like, that actually worked. I like that. Oh my gosh, I like what you're doing. Right. But that idea sharing and having different people, ooh, that's a hell of a way to improve your processes.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

And like I said, sometimes somebody telling you, hey, what you're doing is awesome. I'm gonna change what I'm doing really even strengthens your position of, hey, I'm doing the right things. So there's some real upside to having that happen too. Is there anything else relative to this topic that that comes to mind for you that you think it's important that the listener takes away?

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Yeah, I do. Um once you measure and you're trying to decide whether it's time to grow, like the best growth metric I've seen is you want your team at about 80% of their capacity. Like that is that's nirvana. All right. So what I mean by that is if they're 80% and we have a busy week, they can go up to 100. But if you have them pegged at 100% and they need every minute of every day to get there, and then something goes off the rails, you have a bad storm, you have something happen, you lose somebody, somebody's on vacation, you're you're just running them ragged. So once somebody gets to about 80%, that's probably when you need to evaluate your processes and see what needs to be solved next and staff up before you hit critical mass. So while I am saying it's not always the solution to just hire somebody, once you've measured it and identified that it is a staffing thing, you need more people, do it kind of before you absolutely are breaking. Because if you run it, think of it like an assembly line, man. If you've got a wonderful machine that is fantastic and you run it at 100% as hard as it can go, and then you just kind of church that up to 102, 103, 105, it can break down. Sure. Right? Take care of your people. Don't run them to that point. You know, do the due diligence. Like we're a big believer in scaling, but it's not just to solve all, it's just to hire more people. That that more people being inefficient is still being inefficient. So I think that was our takeaway from this was it's not the perfect band-aid, but as long as you know when to do it, you should have that as part of your playbook. Is when do I staff up and kind of how do I measure that?

SPEAKER_00 10:39

I think it's a perfect place to end the episode. So with that said, we always appreciate you tuning in. If you have questions for us, you can send them to FTF questions. So from the field questions, but FTF questions at gmail. You can find us at From the Field Podcast on all the other major platforms from the field if you're looking at Apple and Spotify. And you can go to FTFguys.com if you just want a place where all of um the audio version are put together in one easy spot. So with that said, we appreciate you. Josh, I always appreciate you as well, and we will catch you on the next one. Be safe out there. Take care.