I hear about more and more of my colleagues in the industry adding a second or third (or even more) shop as a way growing their business or “owning” their market. For those of you who haven’t made that plunge, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that having multiple locations is totally different than having just one. Even if you had a behemoth of a shop, cranking out as much work as a two- or three-shop business, I can almost guarantee you would still be surprised by the curve balls that operating multiple facilities throws at you. It’s a whole different beast.
Think about it: How do you ensure production is flowing smoothly through different facilities? How do you make sure the staff at each facility is acting the same and portraying the same vision you have to their local market area? How do you create one culture among staff in different locations?
Take some of the even relatively simple changes you have made to your single-location business, like adding a new insurance company relationship or a new production team. When you are right there, keeping your thumb on things every day, it’s much easier than if you’re trying to get it accomplished from across town.
That means the speed of implementing change gets slowed down a little bit with multiple locations. I tell my staff that this is a very big ship, and because of that, we turn slowly. There are reasons for that. I don’t want to make any knee-jerk reactions to anything, and I realize there’s only so fast that I – and we – can do things.
That’s part of the reason I am glad – despite some initial hesitation – to have been switched into a 20 group that’s only for multi-shop operators. The issues and challenges we face with two or three or four locations are just different. Not necessarily harder, but very much different. I get that now. So it’s good to learn and work through those with others facing the same challenges.
One issue with multiple locations, for example, is determining what structure of management you need. I may do things a little differently than some multi-location operators. I once had production managers and sales managers who were in charge of multiple locations, along with a general manager. But we got away from all that. In essence I have zero managers.
Why? Because the staff at each location knows what to do. They know what’s right and wrong. When you pile a bunch of management on top of them, it just takes the power away from the people who are really most in tune with what actually needs to be done.
So each location has a team lead, but no one has a manager’s title or office. That lead employee is the person who, when I’m not at that location, can make any decisions another employee is struggling with. I coach these people, and they sometimes come to 20 group meetings to improve their understanding of the company’s overall goals and performance. So they have management skills but just have other jobs.
For instance, the leader at one of my locations is our head body man. He works on cars all day long. But if there’s an issue with a customer, for example, he’s the guy who cleans himself up and goes to deal with it. Everyone in the shop knows he’s there to help them when it’s really needed.
But I also believe empowering all of your staff improves the trust and culture throughout the company. My people all know, for example, if we’ve screwed up and we should put a customer into a rental car. The customer service representatives don’t have to ask if that’s the right thing to do. They know. They don’t need a guy at a desk in his own office to say, “Okay, I agree, we’ll cover that rental car.”
The types of management you need varies based on whether you have one shop or three shops or 10 shops or 15. At our current size, my people are their own best managers.
