20. Strive for Organizational Excellence!

Andrea and Griffin discuss the final value under the tenet of LEVEL UP: Strive for Organizational Excellence. Also the Olympics, Rubber ducks and Taxes!

Find our values at: 

https://hahnrmg.com/about/values

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome to Loaded, the Hahn Ready Mix podcast with Andrea Meyer and Griffin Hahn and producer Lex again.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

How's it going today, you guys?

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Great. Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

It's Friday. We usually don't record on Friday, so this is feels like a good way to end the week.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Yeah, I suppose so. Since we're we're not hauling a ton of concrete today. Yeah. Yeah. What do you got going on for the weekend?

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Uh I have a big family reunion this weekend. My sister and her family are coming to stay at my house, which is always, you know, fun, but work too. So we're excited. Kids love it. She has kids that are around the same age as my kids, so they have a great time.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

That's good. Isaac has his uh sixth birthday party this Saturday. And uh he wanted to do a Ready Mix concrete themed birthday party.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

So who doesn't? What six-year-old isn't excited about ReadyMix?

SPEAKER_00 1:12

So Joe is gonna bring the truck by full of water, and we're gonna throw some rubber ducts in there and have him dump it all out on the kids, and it should be fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

So you're making it fun by removing the concrete? Correct. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

That makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Well, I mean I could dump the concrete on the kids.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

I just feel like that would not be fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Might end up in some lawsuits and things. Yeah. Hospital trips. So this water's better, I think. What do you got for announcements today?

SPEAKER_01 1:41

I have one announcement that I need everyone's help with. Actually, both of my announcements I need everyone's help with. But the first one is our friend, uh our friend John Allen, Johnny on the job, is becoming a non-smoker. He is a non-smoker. So we need everyone's help keeping him uh keeping him clean on that. If you if you see him, please uh encourage him to continue his smoking reduction.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Should we get like uh one of the Sam Sarah cameras just like pointed at him at all times to smoke?

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Only dash cam.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Yeah, that's the one we're actually gonna have live. So you can just watch what he's doing, make sure he's not smoking.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Well, yesterday uh I hit uh slapped his cigarettes out of his little front pouch and then slapped him down the hallway.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

That's what we're looking for.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Whatever aggressive actions, aggressive is the way to go. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

We're excited for him. He's made a lot of progress already. So I think I think it's really happening.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Good. Good for you, Johnny. What else? Uh I have two. The first one, the folks in Genesea would be aware that they've arrived there, but we bought two new to us trucks in an auction in North Carolina. And Darren and Sheldon drove them back. So we're going to get them repainted and um in the fleet. So be looking for those coming out soon. Excited about that. The other thing, there's been some talk about, I'm sure some of you may know, um, changes to the taxability of overtime hours. So in the new bill just passed uh in Congress and signed by the president, there's a provision that it it doesn't change what happens on your paycheck, you know, week to week, but when you go to tax return time, there's a uh additional deductibility for overtime. So I think the rules are that you can deduct up to$12,500 worth of overtime for your as an individual or up to$25,000 if you're finally joint uh with your spouse. So uh just to make sure everybody understands what deductibility means versus just money, uh so that means that that's you can reduce your income that you show on your taxes by$12,500. So if you are in, let's say you're in the 22% tax bracket, uh, which is kind of the widest band in the middle of the tax setup, that would mean if you're as an individual, you would reduce your your earnings that you show by$12,500, which means you will save about$2,750, which is great. We just wanted to make sure people weren't thinking that they have$12,000 to s to spend on stuff. It's it's a change in deductibility, not uh that you get that off your taxes, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Aaron Powell Yes. Yeah. It is it is generally good news for people who make money through overtime, but we just want to make sure that people don't overestimate what that means for them at the end of the year and spend more than you should.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

That's a good announcement. The other thing I wanted to talk about is entering your mileage when you get fuel. So everyone enters their engine hours and nodometer reading on their DVIR through Digital Fleet every day. But also when you get fuel, which should be every single day at the end of the day, you also have to do a fuel entry in Digital Fleet and enter the mileage at that time. And I'm sure it seems redundant if you don't know why that is, but the reason why we need that entry at the time of fueling is because we have to do a quarterly fuel tax and we run these reports to see where our trucks are getting fuel and how much tax we have to pay on that. So if we don't have that information specifically tied to fueling, it makes it a lot harder for us.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

So yeah, good point.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

I'm working on getting it uh to prompt you, you know, so when you drive into the fuel island, it'll pop up and say, Hey, what's your mileage? But it's a little tricky, especially at places like Muscatine, where the fuel island is right where the trucks park all day. So we're working on some things, but I just wanted everybody to get a reminder to do that.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Awesome. Okay, what are we gonna talk about today?

SPEAKER_01 5:50

We are just burning through these values episodes, and we're here at the end of the level up category, which is strive for organizational excellence.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

So two big words. I bet we're gonna screw them up at some point.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Yeah, yeah. So I think to me, you know, we believe we are, and we want to always be the best ready mixed company there is. Full stop. So that means we got to be excellent at everything we do if we want to claim that title, right? All facets. That's concrete production and delivery, sales, quality control, maintenance, HR accounting, everything that we do, we need to be excellent at it. Yeah, you talk about operational excellence and this is this fuzzy thing, right? How do you define that? How do you describe excellence? So I think maybe the best way would be let's let's kind of paint a picture in our minds. All right. So follow me on this journey here. We're we're it's 4 30 a.m. We're at a plant. Uh the batch guy, quality control, loader operator, the drivers that are in at that point are all on time. There's some trucks that were broke down the day before, but maintenance worked on them overnight and they're ready to go now in the morning. The trucks are fueled, they're clean, they're pre-tripped, we got cement inbound already. Moistures are being taken, and dispatch soon starts sending tickets. We're setting ourselves up in a place for the day to go well. Then another plant breaks down, right? So if if this, you know, we're saying it's one of the quad cities planted, let's say another plant in the quad cities breaks down and it's not going to be up again today. We scramble the trucks from dispatch, we get the cement rerouted, the orders moved. But if we have everything prepared, we're still able to be on time. Now our customers will know about it because dispatch will let the foreman know on the job site that, hey, you know, we might have a potential issue because we have a plant down. We want to be transparent about that. But our goal is that they shouldn't feel any of that, right? That we just move on and we complete our orders on the timing and spacing that has been requested. So that sounds like a simple thing, right? That sounds simple to have that scenario happen and have it go off without a hitch, but it is not. That is every one of the, you know, 40 or 50 people that are touched by that situation being on top of the game, being prepared, being organized, communicating well. That doesn't happen by accident, right? It happens because of purpose. It happens because of excellence in action. The hit home, does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 8:44

It does make sense to me. And I think the key word in this is strive for it, right? Like we're not saying that no plant is ever going to break down or no truck is ever. You can't just be excellent all the time, which is why we said strive for excellence. Like that's we have to always be working towards it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Perfection does not exist in our industry. There's so many variables that are happening, and too many things that can break down or go wrong or be affected by weather or stuff that happens out of our control. But we have to we have to know that those risks are out there and be prepared at all times to be resilient or resourceful to changes and put our maximum effort in at all times, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Aaron Ross Powell, What's funny to me is as we both come into this podcast, you paint a beautiful picture of what it looks like to be excellent, and my mind automatically goes to what's the opposite of excellent.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

You want to paint a picture too?

SPEAKER_01 9:45

I can tell you. I can tell you all of the things that uh might go wrong, but really, even just from the most basic of everyone getting here on time, like I know that people are overcoming really tough things to get here at all, let alone on time, at a time that they just found out about yesterday at 5 30 p.m. Like it's beyond just at work. It's it's really having your act together from the minute you get your start time to be able to get here on time.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Yeah. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

So we know it takes work and we're all we're all working towards it.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Well, I mean, in and nothing about this industry is easy once you even once you get here, right? We work in inclement conditions with physical labor, you know, demanding customers at times, uh demanding materials that it's perishable, right? So nothing about this job is easy. But that's why we love it, right? We talked about that with Dave Four. The challenge is what makes it fun. So and and the the diversity of the job every day. It's different every day.

unknown 10:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

I when I was thinking about the opposite of striving for organizational excellence, I also thought of, you know, kind of coasting. I feel like that is a trap that people can fall into when you're like, oh, this is good enough. And then you just keep at that level. So how do we, what are the ways that you see us working through coasting and keep pushing for more?

SPEAKER_00 11:08

I think it's keeping our eye on on what's really important, right? And and for us, we've talked about being customer focused, is what we're really proud of, right? So pushing through that coast because we know that if we do coast that the customer will be affected or they will have the best experience with us or the best product. We must be focused on their and their experience and making sure we do things right for them. So to me, that's that's the why that kind of can trigger me when I find myself coasting. Like, oh gosh, this if I don't figure this out or if I don't make action on this, then it's gonna, it's gonna have ramifications for our customers. So that's definitely the true for everybody in any kind of production or delivery or operational role. That if if we drop the ball, then our customers are the ones that feel it. So we that has to keep us moving.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Yeah, I think what makes us better in many, you know, for employees and for customers is that we don't have very many hard and firm policies where we won't consider exceptions, right? So customer might have an outrageous request or want to something at a crazy time, or you know, something that's unusual for us, or same thing with employees. They might have an emergency. And you know, we always take the time to listen to somebody's request and go through it. And that is I think what makes us excellent is that we're willing to do outrageous things as much as we can. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Right. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and and I think that happens because we have systems and processes in place, right? Like not necessarily the policies like you talk about, but the systems and processes that allow us to be successful with kind of the run-of-the-mill thing. So then our efforts can go towards the exceptional, right? What else you got on this topic?

SPEAKER_01 12:59

I have a fun question for you. Are you ready?

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Uh-oh.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

If concrete was an Olympic sport, what would it be and would we win?

SPEAKER_00 13:08

If it was an Olympic sport, like you're taking a an item and making it an action.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Um The action. The action of delivering concrete.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

I mean, I feel like the best corollary would probably be uh alpine downhill skiing.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

This is not where I saw it going, but it's great.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

You think about it, uh things are always a little bit out of control, and the margins for error are so small. And the ramifications for a mistake, you know, in alpine skiing, it's every boat in your body broken and dramatic. But I mean, think about we have big, dangerous trucks driving around. So from a physical standpoint, there's some corollaries. And then, you know, financially, if we think about, okay, what what do we make? We make you know very small percentages per yard that we sell. But our risk, our liability, if something goes wrong, especially if something is put in place that goes wrong, is you know, a multiple of a thousand of what we're making on that concrete. So yeah, so similar to alpine skiing, the the margins are small and the kind of the ramifications of things going wrong is is really bad.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Aaron Powell It's disastrous. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, it's very fast-paced and uh inclement weather is very damaging.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Yeah. I don't think you want to go alpine skiing in a blizzard, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

That's good.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

So yeah, so we're Lindsey Vaughn.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Yeah. I I do think uh I do think you know it's hard to compare to the Olympics because that's kind of a one-time event, and you might win it that day. But yeah. I think most of the time we win.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

What what Olympic sport did you have in your mind since you asked this question?

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Uh what came to mind for me was the track and field events, I don't guess like a decathlon or something where you have to do so many different things. Like we have to have the plants working and the trucks working and the people working and the pro and the material.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Like there's just so many different That metaphor might have given more opportunity for talking about how we all work together.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

You should have led me there.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Maybe you should ask the questions.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Great. Well, I mean, just kind of to wrap up on this, unless you have more to talk about on it.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Aaron Powell The only other thing I was thinking about was beyond just kind of a perfect day scenario that you talked about. There's so many things that happen in a week where you, you know, whether you're whether I'm by myself in the office or we do it at the three o'clock meeting, like there's so many small celebrations and just like fist-pumping moments where you're like, yes, we did that. We did a great job with this.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

And I think you're getting ahead of that's the last, that's gonna be our last values podcast.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Yes, but I think it's not really about the celebration, it's about recognizing that we are winning.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Like we're striving for excellence and we are doing it very frequently.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Yeah. Well, I would leave with this that this is a quote from Aristotle. Excellence is not an act, but a habit. Lex is scoffing.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

He loves when you bring out the quotes.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

Yeah, he pr he does. He doesn't even know who Aristotle is. So, you know, we have to ask ourselves if excellence is is a habit, where are our habits not perfect, right? Where are we accepting mediocrity? Where are we accepting the status quo? And we need to challenge that, right? So I think we are very good at what we do, and I would put us up against anybody else anywhere, but that is not to say that we don't have places to improve. We absolutely do, and we need to keep pushing that ball forward.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Very good. Are we ready for loaded questions?

SPEAKER_00 16:58

We are. We had one written down and left for us by an anonymous Anonymously submitted in a handwritten note. Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Okay. This question is what is your preferred method for de-escalation when dealing with an upset customer or contractor? For example, when a customer is unhappy with something and is yelling or verbally abusive with the driver.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Yeah, okay, that's a good one. So I am a firm believer in whenever possible face-to-face communications, for one. So if we have a customer that is uh upset at us, then want to try to get out there if if that's at all feasible or that makes sense. To look at them, look them in the eye. And then, you know, somebody knows you're being sincere when you can do that, right? So in this situation, a couple facets. First, I always think it's our responsibility to be the calmest people on the job site. Job sites can get tense because everybody has a lot on the line and they really want things to go well. I have never seen a situation where when we got upset or boisterous or anything that that has actually improved what's happening on a job site. So I like us to be the calmest people out there and kind of try to just bring bring the volume down, bring the the temperature down. So that that's the start. Now I do think in the scenario that that the question is asked is if you know they're being verbally abusive to the drivers, we need to make it clear that that is not acceptable for our people to be harassed. The bar for that in our industry is probably different from a lot of other industries. We are, you know, pretty rough and tough industry, and things that happen or get said on a job site uh in our industry would probably never fly in a tax accounting office or something like that, right? So we I have to be cognizant of that. But all of our people still deserve to be treated with respect. And so often in that scenario, uh our folks are getting yelled at for something that they had absolutely nothing to do with, right? So maybe, you know, assuming we made a mistake, it may be something that happened at the batch plant or in dispatch or any other place. So a lot of times they're just absorbing the anger that isn't really even directed towards them. So that was how you started to like, listen, we're we're just not gonna accept our people being treated that way, just calmly reiterating that. But then, you know, especially and I would say most of the time we have upset customers, they're they're not doing that to our drivers. So, you know, most of the time we can handle it differently. But we also need to address whatever it is they're upset about, right? So if we made a mistake and we need to make it right, then that's what we do full stop, right? So if we had a batch error or, you know, I don't know, the truck got lost and they have a bad cold joint, or if something happens that we are at fault, then we just need to let them know right away that we're gonna make this right. We're gonna make them uh not bear the burden of our mistake. That's what you do as a good partner, and we want to have partnerships with our customers, and we want them to be able to rely on us that we got their back. So that's the first thing. Often with construction-related issues, there's either some kind of shared responsibility or it's really unknown where the problem has originated from. So in those situations, uh our duty is to try to investigate that as much as possible, to try to figure out, okay, if the concrete's not acting right, why is it not acting right? We got to dig into that, find out. Or if there is uh a scenario where we didn't do something great, but they didn't do something great, well, let's figure out how do we move forward together then. And we each contribute to getting the owner or the general contractor or whoever is getting impacted, making them whole, right? So all those things we need to work through them, but I really think it's important to be calm, to be present for sure in person. If you if that's not the case, then then a phone call and not via text or something. I I never want us to handle any kind of conflict via text or email. I hate that. I absolutely hate it. So we want to have real conversations because people can get things can spiral out of the way out of control with written communication. So I get that lawyers have to do that, right, when they're but we're not lawyers. So let's have a face to face conversation. So yeah, that's that's how I would prefer that we handle any kind of issue with a customer. And, you know, there There are times where a customer's complaint might be completely unfounded. And I think we need to remain calm and just say we don't see it that way. And depending on the situation, you know, a lot of our really good partners will just say, let's we don't think we're at fault here, but we want to help you. So let's talk about how we can help you and we can all move forward together.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

Well, at risk of uh making this podcast go longer, I will uh answer this question also. Uh uh maybe a little bit more practically. I think frequently drivers are attacked. I guess you know that's a strong word, but I think they might feel attacked. They get to a job and they're late through no fault of their own, or the slump isn't exactly what the contractor was expecting. And oftentimes the reason why the contractor is so upset has really nothing to do with us, or especially with that driver. It's difficulty that they're experiencing that day or leading up to that moment. So they're kind of unloading on an innocent driver. What I frequently tell drivers to do is to, like you said, remain really calm, take a big deep breath, and just say, you know what, you're right. You're right. Or five minutes late, and I'm sure that really disrupted your day. How can I help you now? Yeah. Just telling someone that you're right and you understand their frustration takes all the wind out of their sails and puts you back on the same team. So do anything that you can to get on their side. Even if you know, if if they're yelling and you start yelling back, then you stay on opposite sides and you're not working together. So whatever you can do to get on their side and to get through it. And the best news is you get to get back in your truck and drive away. And they're gonna be there dealing with whatever they're dealing with long after you're gone.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Yeah. Right. No, that's good, good advice for the drivers. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

So maybe we should put an intro at the beginning of this that says just skip Griffin's answers and go straight to mine. Oh, just kidding. Yeah. Together teamwork.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

No, yeah, you're we we kind of have different perspectives. No, it's it's different responsibilities for different groups of employees, right? So your advice is exactly how we ought to handle it from a driver or a quality control person on site. And I guess mine is probably more towards whoever the management person that is responding to an upset customer, whether that be Brian or Sam or Lex or or Sheldon or somebody like that that might be going out to see what's happening and address it. So yeah. So I think both are valid. They're just yeah, the different responsibilities people have for their different roles.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Aaron Powell And a very good loaded question. I love to see more of those coming in. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Well, last week it was exciting. We had two loaded questions. We had to pick one. So this one had to wait a week because the other one came in first. So that was our first time we had a backlog. Now we're we're empty again. Keep them coming.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

I bet I bet we'll have another one by next week. All right. Thanks for listening to Loaded, the Hon Ready Mix podcast. I'm going to change my call to action here and ask everyone to please share this episode with a friend of yours. I think maybe that will help us reach people. Hopefully by now, if you're listening, you're subscribed. But if you click on the podcast and there's a little if it's an iPhone, it's a box with an arrow, and you push send, and you can send it via text message to anyone, and then they can listen to it.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Yeah. I think if you're listening to this and you're employee of Hon ReadyMix, that you're bought in on striving for organizational excellence. So I I applaud you and nice work.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

Very good. Thanks everyone. Talk to you soon.