A few episodes (of The DYOJO Podcast) back we introduced that we are working on book number five. The working title for this book is Challenge Accepted: An Open Letter To Young People Entering The Workforce. This Book is designed to help those entering the workforce. It's a tool for managers who are hiring young people and want to give them some tools to help them understand what it takes to be successful. It's a resource for parents who want to encourage their children to develop the right mindset and habits for career advancement. The Career Learning CurveWe recorded a video where we read from the rough draft of the Introduction for Challenge Accepted. For this article we will discuss The Learning Curve. What is the learning curve? It is the gap between where someone is (honest evaluation) and where they want to be (goals). This gap is bridged by what this person needs to learn. For anyone who wants to bridge this gap, they have to recognize where they are and establish a vision for where they want to be.
The learning curve is the bridge that carries a person closer to their vision for their life. We speak often on The DYOJO Podcast about helping contractors shorten their DANG learning curve. This is true for anyone at any point in their life, there is no shortcut for each person's learning curve. As a professional, at any age, there's no shortcut for the learning curve. But, everyone can shorten their learning curve. Achieving Your GoalsIn our latest book (COMING SOON) Challenge Accepted, we discuss the process of closing that gap. There are two factors that will help young professionals accelerate their journey, their inputs and their outputs.
If the reader viewed our prior video on the Introduction for Challenge Accepted, we discussed the Three Be's:
Each professional needs to develop their ability to apply their heart to what they observe if they are going to learn lessons from what they see. The most immediate challenge facing young people entering the workforce is moving from where they are now to where they want to be in the near future. This is the same challenge that faces any person wanting to move closer to their vision. Book for Young ProfessionalsChallenge Accepted is an open letter to young people entering the workforce. For business owners this is a book that will help people on staff who want to advance within your company. This book will help professionals identify ways to move between The Three Where's:
This book will help those who want to seek a career, develop as a professional, and pursue what success means to them. Challenge Accepted will help guide the reader transition from where they are (Where #1) to where they want to be (Where #3). To develop as a professional each person needs to be honest about their current level of knowledge, skills and abilities so that they can learn to develop them further. This book will help identify the resources that will help the reader shorten their DANG learning curve. Challenge Accepted, book number five coming from The DYOJO and author Jon Isaacson, also known as The Intentional Restorer. Challenge Accepted: An Open Letter To Young People Entering The Workforce.
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Project management is all about managing the project to completion, according to scope, on time, and on budget. The scope is based upon estimated time and material costs to complete the work. You can begin to master these basics, even as a technician or carpenter, by simply setting daily objectives for yourself. If you know what you will be doing tomorrow, you can set out your materials the night before, have a plan for how you will be efficient throughout the day, and document for your supervisor that you have met or exceeded the benchmarks that you set for yourself. For example, when you arrive on a project you can use the following acronym to develop your work SPEeD; this stands for:
If you aspire to a supervisory or leadership role, you can use this sequence to first lead by example. When co-workers and supervisors notice that you are bringing order to chaos, you will create opportunities to input on the daily goals for your team. When you can help yourself and others clearly set and consistently achieve goals you will become an invaluable asset for any workplace. Use The DYOJO Recipe for Production SPEeD to help you elevate your performance as well as everyone around you. Setting Clear Goals to Accomplish a TaskIf you know the goal, you can "reverse engineer" what you need to do in order to achieve this intended outcome. For example, if the team needs to remove all of the drywall in two rooms within an eight-hour shift, a simple goal would be to remove one wall per hour (eight walls total in eight hours). If it's lunch time and your team only has two walls down, either there was an unknown factor decreasing production efficiency or the team needs to light a fire under their butts. The more you practice setting goals like this and achieving them, the better you will be at this process of project management. This kind of success is addictive and contagious in that team members will respond positively to the sense of accomplishment and managers will be asking how they can replicate your team's ability to achieve your production goals. Imagine how powerful it would be for you and your team to be able to say, "This is what we are going to accomplish today and be able to hit your mark consistently." If you document your goals and how consistently you have met or beat them, this data will be helpful in showing value to your supervisors. If you want to become a site foreman, shift supervisor, superintendent, or a project manager, this process will help you set and achieve goals as you manager larger teams. The DYOJO Recipe for Production SPEeDSCAN your worksite to understand what needs to be done, how to do it safely, and how you can develop a PLAN that optimizes your resources. As a technician, if you have a detailed work order that your supervisor provides you with the night before so that you can prepare for the following day, you can create the framework for your PLAN before you ever set foot on the worksite. If you can master SPEeD from where you are, you will be proactive in pursuing your goals, and you will also have a solid foundation for leading your teams as a project manager. Use The DYOJO Recipe for Production SPEeD to help you set and achieve your goals. Once you have mastered these abilities you will have all of your past experience to share and equip the teams you manage with the same resources for success. More Resources from The DYOJO
Here are a few brief notes in recap of my experience at the Andrew Ask Building Science Symposium 2023 The main attraction for the Andrew Ask Building Science Symposium was the fourmember panel titled The Pioneers of Building Science. Each of these men has left an indelible imprint in the building sciences as well as in each other's lives. Their enduring relationship is a testament to the power of collaboration with other professionals who have similar zeal. If I remember correctly, John Tooley shared the presiding vision for their career paths and the event, the question, “What is truth.” While many admire their success, it was refreshing to hear that none of them were overnight success stories. The path to the “top” is paved with trials. Each member discussed the adversity that they faced in breaking into their industry, developing their skills, and building their businesses. Joe Lstiburek shared that he was broke, black-listed, and living in his mother’s basement. Lstiburek was the primary speaker for the two-day event. Equal to his ability to comprehend the many elements of building sciences is his ability to distill these concepts into useful information. Attendees of the symposium walked away with a wealth of applicable knowledge. Organizers of the event brought the pioneers as well as many emerging voices. I particularly enjoyed a presentation from Kimberly Llewellyn and Bryan Orr titled Chasing HVAC Unicorns. The information they shared was applicable to every discipline within the skilled trades. Kimberly opened with a quote by Vitruvius, “This knowledge is the child of practice and theory,” going on to explain how both are necessary to develop as a professional. Bryan clarified that rather than making things more complex, aspiring professionals need to master the basics and collaborate with other professionals to innovate creative solutions. He shared a quote, “When we get lost in the complex we fail to be masters of the obvious.”
Josh Winton (IAQ JOSH) (remediation) and Michael Symula (assessment) helmed the Remediation Panel for our Lessons Learned from Storm Response Workshop. They shared how important safety is for all involved as well as setting clear and grounded expectations. Assessors and remediators should work with, not against each other. Thank you to sponsor AEML, Inc as well as all of our sponsors, presenters, and participants. Watch the pre-workshop interview with Jeff Cross and Cleanfax magazine Bob Blochinger (Boca Raton, FL) and Casey Clark, Capital Restoration (Atlanta, GA) teamed up to share their Lessons Learned from Storm Response as our workshop Restoration Panel.
Thank you to all of the sponsors, presenters, and participants of the first workshop collaboration between Pete Consigil and The DYOJO. Lessons Learned from Storm Response and Hurricane Recovery Naples, Florida and online Thursday, January 26, 2023 Listen to IAQ Radio for a recap of this event with Joe Hughes and Cliff Zlotnik. On a daily basis, intentional restorers are flooded (pun intended) with tidal waves of information. If a restoration contractor wants to learn and perform their duties in a manner that is instep with the best practices in their industry, they have to filter through a lot of misinformation (dare we say, BS). Founding Father, Cliff Zlotnik, shares his perspective on how modern restorers can get a clearer grasp on solid information so they can form and train stellar habits for serving their clients in need. Mr. Zlotnik says, “In our industry, people look for the highest-tech solution rather than the lowest-tech solution. We should look for the lowest-tech solution that'll work first before we go to any higher-tech solution.” Cliff Zlotnik, or the Z-Man as he is known by his peers and those who listen to his weekly IAQ Radio show, is one of four key people that industry historian Pete Consigli chisled into Mount Restoration with his March 2007 C&R Magazine article. Of his friend and fellow watchdog, Pete says, “Perhaps Cliff’s greatest lasting legacy is as the pioneer who introduced and popularized the concept of hands-on restoration training. In 1985, he converted a vacant church rectory into a hands-on training site for fire and water damage restoration, a place which became known as the Unhouse training facility.” Restorers who enjoy history and want to develop their knowledge of the industry will be happy to see Cliff share training slides from his time at Unhouse in Episode 96 of The DYOJO Podcast. In the clip included with this article, host Jon Isaacson asks: “Say that the new guy coming in really wants to try to learn to do things the right way. Do you have anything that might help that person to decipher when they're being fed a line of bull?” In his storylike fashion, Cliff opens with, “I want to talk about two animals to answer your question.” Albert Einstein's Business AdviceMr. Zlotnik goes on to share:
If you take a baby elephant and you put a rope around his leg and you tie that rope to a tree. The elephant is going to learn to stay in a tight radius. You can actually remove the tree and still leave the rope on the elephant's leg and he will still stay there. He is kind of lost and helpless. If you take a honeybee and you put it in a jar, the honeybee will fly around for a while. It will try to get out. When it realizes it can't get out, it's going to feel helpless and will not try to get out anymore. In a video clip from The DYOJO Podcast, Cliff says, “I think a lot about complication. People can be made to feel helpless. I think that's what happens with a lot of these products. They give you this really sophisticated sales pitch. There are all kinds of numbers with equations and math, and none of us are good at math. People figure that they don't understand it. Therefore, the person who invented it is smarter than them. But it’s not necessarily true.” Cliff, who has heard it all in his decades of working in this industry, says that filtering through industry information begins with a simple question. He says, “Ask them to explain to you simply. How does it work? Imagine that I'm a six-year-old and explain it to me.” Mr. Zlotnik says if this test was good enough for Albert Einstein it should be good enough for our industry. He continues, “If these people cannot explain it to a six-year-old, they don't understand it themselves.” Simple Solutions Are Often The Best OnesWhen it comes to sales pitches for new innovations, techniques, and strategies for success, Cliff remarks, “I think there's a tremendous amount of complicated solutions, and the simpler the better oftentimes. I think in our industry, people look for the highest-tech solution, rather than the lowest-tech solution. We should look for the lowest-tech solution first before we go to any higher tech solution.” Whenever there is an opportunity to hear Cliff speak about the history of the industry in is interesting to hear how first, the issues of today are not that different from 30 years ago and, secondly that history has a way of repeating itself. For those who are interested in diving into the technical details of the property restoration industry from people who have “been there and done that,” Cliff co-hosts IAQ Radio every Friday with Joe Hughes. This is the cleaning and restoration industry’s longest running podcast. IAQ Radio was podcasting before that was even a term, using internet radio for their weekly broadcasts. Opportunities to Meet with CliffIn January 2023, Cliff will be with us for the Andrew Ask Building Science Symposium (Tuesday and Wednesday, January 24-25, 2023) and then for the one-day workshop, Lessons Learned from Storm Response and Hurricane Recovery (Thursday, January 26, 2023). The workshop is being produced by Pete Consigli and The DYOJO, it is available for in-person attendance as well as remote participation via Zoom. |
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