Loaded: The Hahn Ready Mix Podcast
A podcast for the employees of Hahn Ready Mix
Loaded: The Hahn Ready Mix Podcast
14. Taking Action to Deliver Results
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Andrea and Griffin discuss Andrea's favorite Value: Taking Action to Deliver Results.
Also, major headline news: Lex is ordering new beam molds!
Welcome to Loaded, the Hahn ReadyVix Podcast with Andrea Meyer and Griffin Hahn and producer Lex. Happy Friday, everyone.
SPEAKER_02Happy Friday. How are you today?
SPEAKER_00Holiday weekend. I'm great. Ready to go.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so it's a little we're we're recording this right before Memorial Day weekend, and this probably won't get dropped until the next week. The next week. So it's gonna be it's like on a week delay. So I could I could be like, how was your Memorial Day? You gotta make it up.
SPEAKER_00You gotta That is way more thought than what we put into uh this startup conversation of the podcast.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00What is new this week? Uh rainy week. It was a sort of boring.
SPEAKER_02Rainy week. It's it's a bummer. We were really kind of on a tear here in May. Yeah. And um uh but the work's still out there, right? So we'll we'll catch it back up and next week hopefully it looks dry and we can finish strong for the month and power into June.
SPEAKER_00Yes, finishing the month of May is a very good thing for parents of small kids. When school is out, everything gets easier. I'm definitely ready for that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. We're also uh just as a topic of conversation, we're bidding some pretty interesting jobs right now. Um, we're looking at a big paving job in Muscatine, which would be a lot of fun, big big volume. And then we're gonna build a mini bridge. Well, we hopefully we'll get it. We're bidding it.
SPEAKER_00We had so much fun the first time we want to do it again.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so there's mass concrete requirements and everything.
SPEAKER_00No way.
SPEAKER_02And I've been digging into that all day today. And uh it's yeah, it literally looks just like the I-74 bridge. It's the gateway bridge over the um by by TBK in Bettendorf.
SPEAKER_00A pedestrian bridge though, right? But it looks just like it.
SPEAKER_02A tenth of the size of the actual bridge, which is still mass concrete. It's still got uh not not a ton of yards in the con in the job, but thick placements of concrete. So uh we're we're doing what we could today to mitigate uh the mass concrete effects of that. So we're gonna avoid nitrogen, hopefully.
SPEAKER_00Please.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_00Great. Well, I think we're uh going to try a format change here today and do our announcements at the top of the podcast.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we'll see how this goes.
SPEAKER_00Maybe we'll get some feedback.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. All right, what you got?
SPEAKER_00Um, I have a quick one here regarding the monitor at the river plant. I know drivers especially love to pop their heads in and see what the day looks like, and it's been very frustrating to not be able to see that. Uh, we do know about the problem and we are actively working on fixing it, so I will be happy uh to tell you on the next podcast, hopefully, that it's fixed and uh everybody can get back to using that.
SPEAKER_02Great, great. Uh I had one with all the rain we got this week, especially Tuesday when we got inches. Um just want to remind everybody when we have those big rain events, or just make it the standard procedure, make sure you run your drum backwards first thing in the morning, get any water out of there. We had a couple little issues uh Wednesday with with some variable slumps because we don't think we got all the water out of the out of the trucks. So please remember to do that if you're a driver.
SPEAKER_00Very timely announcement there. I also wanted to remind everyone again about the deal that we have on the registration for the junior BICS. So the kids race at the BICS, we are a headlining sponsor of that event and get to get all of our kids registered for free. So we're gonna repost that link to registration. If you have any questions, come in and see Leah or Danielle. Somebody can help you in the office.
SPEAKER_02Should we do like an internal competition? Whose kids fastest? Mine will not be. I will promise you that.
SPEAKER_00My youngest had field day today, actually, and she left the house determined that she was going to win every single event at field day. So if her confidence is reflected in her performance, maybe we could win.
SPEAKER_02I kind of remember that when I was a kid, be like, I'm gonna win them all, and then winning nothing ever.
SPEAKER_00We'll we'll see what she says at the end of the day today.
SPEAKER_02All right, cool. All right, what are we gonna talk about today?
SPEAKER_00Uh today we are talking about the next category, the next of the four categories of our employee values. And this category is do the right thing.
SPEAKER_02Do the right thing. This one is near and dear to my heart. Absolutely. Um, you know, and then the whole kind of tenet speaks to being good people, you know, a good organization, we're responsible for how we act and perform. And I think that is so critical. Like you, if you have if you don't have that, you have nothing because you don't have trust with the people you work with, you know, internally or externally. So um being people that others want to work with is so important. And that's all about doing the right thing. So we kind of broke this down into, of course, three different values. And uh the first one today we're gonna talk about is taking action to deliver results.
SPEAKER_00I like this one. This is uh personal to my personality. Like it is it is who I am at at the core. In fact, I have like a personal mantra where I believe that action is always over inaction. So if I'm ever deciding between something like, do I do nothing or do I do this thing, I always pick, do the thing, take the action. That's yeah. And it applies to work, it applies personally thousands of times a day when I'm faced with that decision, I always pick action.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Nice. What about you? Uh no, I agree. I agree.
SPEAKER_00You pick research, research, research.
SPEAKER_02So I was just gonna say that I I can be prone to paralysis by analysis, but it's not I'm aware. It's not a it's not out of a desire not to make a decision. I just like to be well informed. Yes. But uh, but he so here's my thing on action that works for me. I'm a to-do list guy. So the first thing I do every day when I come in is I write out my to-do list. And what I find is if I put it on my to-do list, there is no way I'm leaving at the end of the day without it crossed off. Or at least every attempt, everything in my power, right, to get through it. So that's my kind of internal mechanism for taking action is I gotta write it down on my to-do list. I mean, I go so far on the weekends I make a to-do list and I'll be like, uh, unload the dishwasher is on the to-do list. Make myself lunch is on the to-do list.
SPEAKER_00Just so you have something you cross.
SPEAKER_02Write a to-do list is on the to-do list, right? So uh yeah, so I I probably go extreme with that. But um, okay, when I think about this, to me, what it speaks to is uh a proactive mindset a lot of the times, right? So what can I do now to make things better later or to tomorrow, you know, whenever, right? What what can what can we do now? And um, you know, I we have a ton of examples for that. I'm gonna go through examples, but we're gonna talk through um some more kind of ideas behind this first. Um the other thing is especially bigger companies, a lot of times you have meetings for the sake of meetings. And communication is very important, and we want people to be on the same page. So I'm not saying that that's not um ever worthwhile, but anytime you have a meeting, there should be actions that come out of it and people responsible for making sure those actions come to fruition. And if not, you're not accomplishing anything, right? It's the actions themselves that might come out of a meeting or something that that actually uh make the impact, right? Um I agree.
SPEAKER_00Assigning actions or tasks and also like following up and confirming that those things have been done at a meeting is what meetings are for.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think when you think about taking action, um I like to think about beginning with the end in mind. What's the outcome we want from this action? And that can help us make the right decision on what action to make, right? Um, but also so that we're not kind of acting randomly, you know.
SPEAKER_00So I'm laughing because I get that from you, and I also get that from my husband, that people who really appreciate a plan, and I am more of a just start moving kind of person. So it's good to have a mix of both. Uh so you so there's not chaos.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Complimentary philosophies here, I guess. Yeah. Well, so our three o'clock meeting, for example. Um, as many of you probably know, uh all the operational management folks, we sit down for a meeting at three o'clock every day. We look at the orders for the next day and the day after that, the day after that, and the day after that. We make a plan for where we're gonna move trucks around, what's happening special with this order or that order, um, what special um materials may need to be used, if a plant needs to get ready for an order in the future, you know, we we cover all those things. We cover what went right today, all those things. But though that meeting serves absolutely no purpose if we don't take actions from it. You know, we bring everybody together to make sure we have all the knowledge and awareness and information in one room to have a coherent conversation. But then if we don't do anything with it, we're wasting our time. We're wasting our time. So uh that that one's in particular, when we leave there, we have our notes and we have everybody should know what it is that they're responsible for doing afterwards. And that and taking that action is is what makes the impact.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that's been a great evolution of that meeting, actually. When we first started doing it, it was a lot of people assuming, like, oh, Darren will anticipate this plant problem, or Sheldon will anticipate that we need drivers to be ready to do this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh, and just getting everybody together and confirming those assignments we're taken care of has made a huge difference.
SPEAKER_02Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And you know what? Uh it was your idea for it. So kudos to you that we're we'd do that. But it's kind of catching on in the industry. I've heard other suppliers are starting to do it, some of them because they heard of it from us, and some of them because it made sense for them, you know, on the internet. It does make perfect sense now that we're doing it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. I got some examples of how I see some of our people uh taking action that we we could always do more of. Or do you have more kind of concept discussion first?
SPEAKER_00No, go ahead. We'll go with the examples.
SPEAKER_02All right. So if you're a driver, let's talk about there's a lot of places you can take action when you see like an issue on a job site. Um, but some specific things that we can do kind of almost every day. Um, or for example, is a post-trip inspection, right? Oh yeah. So if we can find problems at the end of the day that can be addressed by the shop at night or early in the morning, then we have solved the problem for the next day instead of turning your truck on and go, uh-oh, I got a flat tire. You know. So post-trip inspections are a really important way that we can kind of regularly take action.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. We saw that kind of playing out the way we don't want it to the other day. I can't remember what the port was. We started at 3 a.m. And surprise, surprise, we had a lot of lights that weren't working at 3 a.m. Yeah, that we may, you know, didn't notice the day before when it was still daylight, but it was awful dark at 3 when we needed them that day.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell Yes. Yep. The same thing is, you know, sometimes taking action is just communicating. And um, you know, if you're went to a job site and you had to go a different direction because there's an embargoed road or because the road is closed or or whatever, like communicating those things so that the next person doesn't have that issue. Um or we can put it into the order that's that's important stuff. That's that's taking action that makes a difference.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's huge. Any corrections to directions is critical.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So outside of those, I have some ideas of some individuals that I see. I really like how they take action on certain things. One example I'd throw out there is Sean over in Geneseo. Uh his kind of business development actions that he takes are just exemplary, where he he hears about a project that, you know, sometimes it's like, oh, this project's happening in 10 years, and and and he goes, he he knows the project manager's dog's best friend by the end of the day because he's embedding himself kind of in a relationship with with them and really putting ourselves in the driver's seat. But he he doesn't wait for a better list or whatever. He's very proactive about we want to be on the front side of this work and know um what's going on and and how do we help the project move forward and how do we be a part of it, right? So uh that's really impressive.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a great example. I also think of uh Dan Berthoud sort of has appointed himself as the trash collector over across the street. As soon as those trash cans are anywhere near full, he's taking them out and making sure everything's back in in good shape. So we really appreciate people just taking action on something like that. Makes everybody's life easier.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I really like it when you know Darren and Beryl work together and a plan is calibrated for the season or um is is written is been fixed or something, and but we haven't run it for a while, right? So that we're talking Cambridge or Moline or East Moline or Plant 4 up there in Eldridge, something like that. Uh not LeClaire. But uh the they'll make a point of saying we need to get some yards through this, right? We don't want to find out when we need the plant that uh something else else is wrong with it that we weren't aware of. Let's kill the gremlins now, let's force some volume through the plant to make sure it's ready. And that's a way to be proactive with those problems so it doesn't cause a catastrophe when we don't have any other options. Um, John does this constantly, being proactive. Just this week, one of our biggest customers was pouring at 6 30 in the morning, and it was, you know, with all the rain, all the work got congested, and it was looking like it was going to be a rough morning. And John called and said, Hey, is there any way that you guys could start at five to 6 30? And and first of all, it's incredible that we have that relationship and they're willing to be flexible when when we ask like that. And and they were, and they started at five, and that was able to get that pour done earlier so that we um could kind of avoid the busiest part of the day and and make sure that we service all of our customers. So John went out of his way there to make sure that, hey, I see a problem. We're gonna address it, we're gonna take action and talk to a customer about what we could do differently. And that's huge.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. There's another example I'm thinking of here at at the office or out back where the we've had sort of a fire sale on blocks lately. Uh yeah. Everyone's coming out wanting to buy blocks. And I know Blaine and Chris and the guys back there have just been brainstorming all kinds of things from how to make jersey barriers a different way, how to get more blocks done in a day. And some of the things that they're trying out are really working. And without any direction from anyone, they're doing everything they can to make that process work better.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's wonderful. I had it uh one last example that I thought of that came up today where um we had some just incomplete information in an order regarding a special kind of fiber we had to use. And it was easy to look at that and just trust that what was there was right. And Andrew, first thing this morning, he's like, I something doesn't feel right about this. I'm gonna take the time, I'm gonna make the call and double check on this. And so he made some calls. Um, and it's a good thing he did because it was we would have proceeded with the wrong fiber. And so, you know, he took action. He said, this needs double checked, right? And that's a huge deal. That's that's that's taking ownership and and taking action. And so um that that really makes the difference.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think to kind of summarize these examples or how I play it to myself even at home, is like doing my future self a favor or doing someone else a favor. Like if I just do these two dishes now, that's gonna make it easier. The next time I do dishes, that's two less dishes that I have there. Or same thing with fueling my truck tonight, it means I'm not going to have a problem tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02That's good way to think about it. I think more about my past self. Normally, like I'm looking at something and I go, how did I come up with this answer? And I just I I have to trust that my past self knew what I was talking about. So that's good. You're more forward-looking than me, apparently.
SPEAKER_00Both both ways. And you're also like if you're if your past self was working out or doing the right things, then your current self is appreciative of that.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, too. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Um, okay, so you might be saying, all right, I okay, we get all the examples, we get all the examples, but you know, why is it me that you're asking to to take the take the action, right? Why is that my burden? Um and it and it's it's because it's a team effort, and because any positive outcomes that we can we can affect, right, by taking action, those are wins for us, those are wins for our customers. And you know, we're trying to be the very best in our market and anywhere in product quality and service and the customer experience, and being reactive won't get us there, right? It's just not gonna happen. If we're reactive to problems, we we won't be the best at those things. We have to be proactive. We have to take those actions ahead of time, um, and and then we'll get there. And and I think in large part we do, but it's something we have to continuously work on. It's not a it's not something we can sit on our laurels on.
SPEAKER_00I agree. And I think sometimes it feels safer to stay in in action, you know, or uh I'm sure you know, like the when when you're at rest, it's easy to stay at rest. Once you get in action, keeps going.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's no there's an inertia, momentum. Absolutely. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00So even if you're not the person to get to the final result, you taking action will get others to take action with you. And I think that we see that a lot here.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00I also think that waiting doesn't usually make things more clear. You know, like if you're if you're lost and you stay in the same spot, you're never going to find it. But if you turn left and you realize, oh, this is not the way, then you can turn around and go the other way.
SPEAKER_02So correct. Yeah. So my favorite getting lost story. I know this isn't on topic, but I just got to say it. We had a customer call one time and he says, the truck's an hour late. Where is it? I'm sitting here looking for the truck, and where are you guys? So the dispatcher uh looks in, and right at the same time, the the driver messages and they said, I've driven down every single street in Princeton and I can't find the customer. Well, the driver was loaded in Eldridge to go to Princeton, Iowa. He went to Princeton, Illinois. It has nothing to do with taking action, but you're talking about getting lost in a lot of people. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Went the entire wrong state. Yes.
SPEAKER_00Sometimes taking action is just making the phone call to make sure we know doing the right thing.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Another thing I wanted to add about taking action is a lot of times we're thinking about it from starting something, right? Like what should I do? You make a decision, you take action. But a huge part of taking action to deliver results is to actually get to the result. You have to actually follow through with what you started doing. You have to do it consistently over time. You have to communicate or pass things off or get other people to buy in and help you with the results you're going for.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. You're kind of talking about accountability there, right? You're talking about others being able to rely on that you followed through with the actions you said you do or that have been assigned to you, right? So um yeah, that's a big deal. That's a big deal.
SPEAKER_00Overall, I think this is kind of an easy, natural one for us doing the right thing and taking action to deliver results is something that we do all day long every day and why we like working here.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Do we have any loaded questions?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I do have a loaded question.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay. So is this yours or did it somebody from this?
SPEAKER_00So my question is what's something that you've had on your list that you will take action on next week?
SPEAKER_02Oh. So one of the things we've been I think we're we're pretty transparent on here. And that's the whole goal of this whole thing, right? And and I think if people asked questions on the loaded questions, they might be surprised.
SPEAKER_00We're still waiting for your loaded questions.
SPEAKER_02I think we'd be we'd be willing to talk about more than I think people expect. But um I think most people know that the muscatine plant, we definitely have designs on on replacing that and upgrading that facility. And so next week I'm going to be working on um some some kind of narrative um documentation for the bank to talk about, you know, why they should loan as much money to buy a new plant. So uh so that is that's the biggest thing on your list. Yeah, that's the biggest thing on my list, is is putting that all together because you know, we we really want to do that. We want to get more capability, and you know, that plant's not gonna last forever either. So we're um we're working towards that. And so that's probably the most important thing I'll do next week, be my guess. So yeah, that's uh that's on my list.
SPEAKER_00That's a good one. How about producer Lex? What's on your list?
SPEAKER_02Damn.
SPEAKER_01No, we have to call it explicit. I gotta order some beams, man. You gotta order some beams? Yep. That's my big thing. Some beam molds? Yep. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Super cool. Tell me about it.
SPEAKER_00I was hoping you were gonna say you were gonna complete your summary of quality control activities for me.
SPEAKER_02I'll complete that too.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Two things on your list.
SPEAKER_02We had a good idea today that I talked to both of you about that uh Lex was gonna help me put some information together that's on his taking action. Uh we want to build like a evaporation rate calculator for our customers.
SPEAKER_00So if anybody doesn't is not aware, you know, if it's if anyone's still listening, I understand if you just turned it off.
SPEAKER_02So rude.
SPEAKER_00Evaporation rate calculator is like an automatic skip.
SPEAKER_02Nerd. Nerd. Yeah, nerd alert. Okay. So the the concrete, you know, concrete sets, it doesn't dry. Well, except a little bit at the top, it does dry out because there if it's windy or dry out.
SPEAKER_00Um it's been uh gale force winds in Iowa for the past six weeks, I feel like we've had some instances of plastic shrinkage cracking.
SPEAKER_02Um and the only way to get ahead of plastic shrinkage cracking is to know that the conditions are right for it and to take action with you know adding a microfiber, not using a hydration stabilizer recover, and watering the subgrade, erecting windbreaks, things like that. So we were thinking if we could set up, I'm thinking like a beach flag, like a red flag for a bad day, black flag for like don't get in the water, don't pour concrete, right? Uh green flag for everything's good, and just put it up in the corner of our website so our customers could just pull it up and say, what's today look like? But we've got to build some algorithms for like real-world concrete temperatures from history and tie it to what the highs and lows were the three days before and the day of. Uh it's gonna be complicated, but uh maybe we'll just be something that's completed next week, but we'll definitely start it next week.
SPEAKER_00Good idea.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Great. All right. Well, thanks for listening, everybody. Thanks for listening to Loaded the Han Ready Mix podcast. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening. We'll talk to you again soon.
SPEAKER_02Thank you.
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