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Tired of putting out fires all day? Trina Swenson, an operational excellence / continuous improvement coach, breaks down practical problem-solving for real businesses—how to spot the “nagging” repeat issues, use the 80/20 rule, get to root cause, and create a process that makes it easier for the next person to win. Expect simple frameworks (like Plan–Do–Check–Adjust) and a reminder you’ll want to repeat: ideal behaviors drive ideal results.
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Creators and Guests
Host
Mary Carter
Mary Carter is a seasoned sales and marketing leader with over six years at Trane Technologies, currently serving as Regional Sales Manager. With a strong foundation in RHVAC, consumer finance, and strategic account management, Mary brings valuable insights and real-world experience to every conversation.
Host
Producer
Editor
Kerianne O'Donnell
Kerianne O'Donnell is the Digital Learning Manager at Trane Technologies and serves as the editor of the HVAC Full Blast podcast. With a background in graphic design and a strong passion for developing digital learning experiences, Kerianne brings her creative expertise to the podcast, delivering engaging and impactful content to listeners.
Guest
Trina Swenson
Trina is a Senior Value Stream Coach at Trane Technologies, where she’s spent the past 13 years helping teams work smarter, solve problems more easily, and build cultures where people feel supported and included. With more than 30 years in manufacturing and supply chain, Trina has a deep passion for improving processes—but an even bigger passion for developing people and creating truly inclusive environments where everyone can thrive. She’s known for her practical, down‑to‑earth coaching style and her ability to help teams turn challenges into opportunities for learning and growth. Trina lives in Davidson, North Carolina, with her wife, Kimberly. They share a blended family of five grown kids—now living in Colorado and Arizona—and they’re proud grandparents who love staying connected across the miles.
What is HVAC Full Blast?
HVAC Full Blast is your bi-weekly dose of HVAC business growth, powered by Trane. Hosted by Mary Carter (Trane Technologies) and Stephen Ross (Sandler), this podcast is built for residential HVAC dealers who want to scale their business, sharpen their sales, and lead with confidence.
Tune in for expert interviews, dealer success stories, and practical tips on pricing, service agreements, workforce development, and more. Whether you're in the field or in the office, HVAC Full Blast helps you stay ahead in a competitive market.
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Today, Mary Carter and Steven
Ross are joined by Trina Swenson,
an operational excellence and
continuous improvement coach at
Trane Technologies.
Whether you're running a
dealership, leading a team,
or just tired of fixing the
same problems over and over,
this conversation will help you
work smarter and build better
habits that stick.
Let's get started.
Welcome back to another
episode of HVAC full blast.
We are so excited that
you've joined us yet again.
My name is Mary Carter.
I'm Steven Ross.
And you sound like a sales guy.
And if you're hearing another
laugh in the background there,
have another fabulous
guest joining us today.
Thank you, Trina,
for joining us.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Absolutely.
So Trina Swenson,
you're from the Trane
Technologies organization and
your official title is an
operations excellence coach.
I think I kind of
stumbled over that,
but operations excellence
coach, kind of a tongue twister
there, but what does
that mean to you?
How do you categorize that in the
corporate world that we live in?
Yeah.
Well, like, my official title
is a senior value stream
coach, and it's like an
operational excellence coach.
And if I think about what I do,
and if I were to be and
it's happened before.
I've been at a rental car
counter, and someone says, hey.
What do you do?
And it's really
easy for me to say,
I help people improve processes,
and I develop people.
And so it it's really
simple in my mind that I
try to help people be better
today than they were yesterday,
and I wanna be better
tomorrow than I was today,
and I wanna help our people
here at Trane Technologies or
anyone who wants to be involved.
I wanna help them improve
not just what we do,
but how we do it.
Nice.
I love that.
That's a very big, lofty,
and noble goal, I would say,
in in a role.
So I'm excited that you're here because
I think we're gonna learn a lot.
Well, thanks.
I hope people, like,
can break it down,
not just to think about
it as, like, really,
really big problems, but it's
those incremental things.
It's like that one
degree at a time concept,
because there's no such thing
as a problem that's too small.
Yep.
We you know, we I'm
actually in Florida right
now talking to a group of
heating and air contractors,
and we we kind of ran
through this where,
you know, if if the average
heating and air contractor
makes, let's say, five or
six percent net profit,
and and we just came
up with a number.
Let's say it's three hundred
thousand dollars a year,
and you go, okay.
Well, what if we could go from
five percent to six percent?
Well, that's enormous.
You're going from say three
hundred thousand dollars of net
profit to three hundred
and sixty thousand dollars
On paper,
your account just goes way
one percent more profitable,
but in real dollars in the bank,
that's an enormous number.
I think we're always looking
for what are those small
changes or things that you can
tweak if we can just gain a
little bit of efficiency in a
couple different places that
can be enormously impactful
to a small business.
So Trina, I'm really
excited to hear kind of
the practices in terms of going
around and trying to pick up
those operational efficiencies.
It's interesting, like you talk
about just that one percent
and a little bit of nerdiness.
Like one of my
favorite books is
Atomic Habits, and
there's this idea in there
that if you make a one degree
change every day by
the end of the year,
it's thirty thirty
seven degrees.
Right? Thirty seven
percent improvement.
So if you think about
what can you do, like,
one thing a day that will
improve your process.
Right?
And so the first time I
heard that, I was like,
you've got to be kidding me.
Like, what what could I do
that would change my life with
just, like, one
little percent a day?
And a lot of people
get wrapped up in like,
well it could be health or
it could be something else.
Well, you know,
if you were if I were to stand
up and you would see you'd be
like, oh, obviously health is
not her primary focus in life.
She's not working out.
I jump to conclusions more
than I jump at the gym,
but ideally, it
could be anything.
It could be mindfulness, right?
And when I talk to a lot
of people about problem
solving, we do this
in everyday life.
It's not just at work
and in manufacturing,
but people in healthcare and
in banking and everywhere.
So it could be just
that one thing.
It could be how we talk
to our kids or how do
we do everything.
It could be, I'm gonna go
to bed five minutes earlier,
and it could just change the
way we think about it that way.
So it's just very incremental
things that change
significantly.
Alright. I got a
question for you.
So I'm I'm I'm putting on my
heating and air contractor hat
because we have we
have lots of problems.
I mean, it's so
we I I would say I would
categorize problems into two
different buckets.
Here's bucket number one.
One day, we had we had
built a a new warehouse
and we had a little truck
washing station right next to
that warehouse where
it's a concrete pad
drain that could
drain water away.
There's a hose,
there's brushes, soap.
So the technicians, we said,
hey, we've wrapped the vans.
They look beautiful. We wanna
keep them. This is our brand.
We wanna wash the vans
at least once a week,
but especially if they
get dirty, wash your van.
And so that was just kinda
one of the requirements for
installers, salespeople,
technicians.
Everybody had to wash their
vehicles at least once a week.
And one of the
technicians one day,
running behind, he's late.
He he's due for
his van inspection,
decides to take his
van through a car wash,
and the ladder rack on the
top of his van does a hundred
thousand dollars worth of
damage to the car wash.
So you have like these I mean,
these are like when you think
about owning a business,
I never once did that
ever cross my mind.
So you've got like these one
off problems and so and they
could be big or
they could be small,
but they're they're
almost random.
And to the point where you
would never think that we need
to have a training class about
not driving your ladder rack
vehicle through a car wash.
But then you have like
these other problems and those are
generally just smaller
and and but repetitive
and they become you become
so used to them that they're
almost like blind spots like
you don't notice it anymore.
Like, you know,
if you have a litter box in
your house from cats and the
litter box stains, but you live
there and you don't notice it.
And then somebody else comes
in and like, oh my god,
I can smell your cat.
So how do you if I if you're
helping me troubleshoot
my heating and air company,
you've got these one off
problems that are kinda like
lightning struck or
something went really bad.
But then you've got like these
blind spot problems that are
just recurring, but they eat away
your margin and your revenue.
So I don't know which set of
problems you wanna talk about
first, Trina, but, like Yeah.
What's the process
for for tackling this?
So so I love the fact that
you brought up both kinds,
and and I'll I'll kinda
describe them differently.
So we in in problem solving,
we think about two
different types,
and one of them is when you want
to return to a known standard.
And when that's when
that's the case,
just think about those
all of those, like,
what I'll call those
nagging problems.
And and I'll use the
analogy of, like,
you buy a car and you're
used to getting, like,
thirty two miles per gallon,
and you're like, hey,
I'm used to getting this,
and all of a sudden you realize
you're only getting twenty
eight miles per
gallon, you're like,
I wonder what's causing this?
And in the meantime,
you haven't gotten your oil
changed in like six months,
and you haven't gotten
your tires rotated,
and there's all of those
nagging things that you just
mentioned, and
you're like, well,
here's the multitude of things
that I just haven't really
done, and that known standard
in your mind is like the thirty
two miles per gallon.
The Pareto principle, which we
often know about is that eighty
twenty, and you start stacking
up those things of like,
how do I understand what
is the one tallest candle
that I should really
go solve for quickly?
And once I get rid of
the tallest candle,
and it could be, oh, by the way,
the one thing that I know is
is that I had a flat tire,
so I'm running been running
on a donut for the last three
weeks, and maybe let
me solve that first
and then see what's happening.
Identify the tallest candle.
Get rid of that problem first.
Well, I put the
got the tire fixed.
Well, that got me one
more mile per gallon.
Well, I'm still not back
to thirty two, but I'm closer.
So you start getting
one thing at a time.
The other part that
I'll add, Steven,
is you gotta really understand,
am I just solving symptoms,
or am I really
getting to root cause?
Right?
So is it are we
solving the behavior,
or are we actually
solving, like,
what's really at the root?
Am I getting gas at a place
that might have, you know,
water in the tank?
And kind of those things.
So trying to understand what is
the root cause of the problem.
So once you get to that
point, you can be like,
could be that I, you know,
have a car that's
twenty five years old,
and it's just time
for a new car.
Now the other kind of problem is
and when you realize maybe
it's time for a new car,
so it's now it's a new standard.
Right?
So let's kinda talk about that
van that had the the roof rack on.
Right?
It's a new standard of of
understanding, if you will.
So that, when we
think about that,
it's a maybe it's
a new strategy.
Like we wanna help our folks understand
what do we wanna get out of this?
And you mentioned training.
Maybe this is something they've
never had before, they don't know.
We need to have training
and concepts of, hey,
it's not because we didn't care,
we just had never had to
be at that level before.
A hundred thousand dollars
of damage in a car wash was
because what did the
car wash have for
capability, learning,
understanding, okay,
how do we get better?
And they're like, alright,
this is what happens
when we do this now,
or how do we buy a new car?
Hey, I'm not prepared for
that level of financing.
I've been driving this Toyota Corolla
around for the last fifteen years,
and now I want to go get
a BMW three twenty three or whatever
I'm gonna go get.
I do.
Yeah. I'm also there.
You know, whatever my new
whatever my new is that
is different from
my current standard,
And when that happens, we have
to decide what my current state
compared to my future state,
and then define that gap,
and then how do
we bridge the gap?
I love this idea of
standards driving the
strategy rather than
outcomes driving strategy.
And I think sometimes
even when we
do some goal setting
exercises, right.
Or when we're in classroom
environments and we're talking
about setting goals,
like we're so end
state in mind that
we sometimes don't
outlay what's possible
or where we are today.
And then that can create kind
of like that lofty goal where
now all of a sudden it
doesn't feel attainable,
it's out of reach and
then it kind of snowballs.
But if you're looking at your
standards and then adjusting
that and choosing
strategy based on what's
true today, I think
that could almost drive
just a better success.
Because you're able
to really take in what
you have working with you,
for you in the moment.
It's it's so real, Mary.
I mean, you can use
that for anything.
You can use it for personal,
professional, whatever.
Like, you can say, hey.
You know what? I want a new
house. I want a new car.
I wanna figure out how to
get a fleet of from one from
one truck to five trucks.
I wanna go from HVAC to include
now, you know, plumbing,
or let's we now have plumbing.
Let's add electrical. You
know? I wanna you know what?
Let's add a building.
Let's add a warehouse.
What if you know
where you are today,
what do you want it
to be in the future?
And all it is is understanding how
to get from point a to point b.
And then identifying
the gaps of that.
Now as humans, we're super
we are really, really
good initially at saying,
I think I know what
the gaps are, and immediately saying,
I know how to solve that.
Like, if I tell you I'm hungry,
Steven is immediately
saying, well,
here's fourteen
different restaurants
before I told him
what I was hungry for.
This
is so true, and
especially as salespeople,
not only am I gonna
throw fourteen,
but I'm going to have a
leading five and a mid five.
Sure. Sure. Yeah.
I mean, we're definitely
wired that way too.
I mean, especially
in a sales role,
My inbox is flooded with
problems and it is like,
get these off as fast as I can.
Yeah.
So that's one of the ways
that I think that the two
different types of problem
solving are effective.
Interesting.
Alright.
Let's I mean, can we be I
mean, so to some extent,
we're having, a little bit of
a theoretical conversation.
But Yeah. Alright.
So I've never worked
at a at a company
or consulted at a heating and
air company that there wasn't a
little bit of friction
between the sales team and the
operations team.
Always I'll just
give you kind of a frequent one.
So sales guy goes out
and makes a mistake.
So either he mismeasures
sheet metal or
misses something.
And so,
installers are at a house.
They're thirty
minutes from the shop.
If they leave to go back and get
what they need from the shop,
it's at least an hour round
trip plus they gotta pack up
their tools so nobody steals
them and and that kind of thing.
Right.
So, you know, the other
option is, okay, well,
you you have a runner go from
the the warehouse to run it out
to the installers.
Hey, they need something
else. Let's run it out there.
We even got to the point where
we were using Uber to come to
the warehouse, pick
up the part we needed,
and run it out to the
installers because I didn't my
warehouse people were so busy.
And and so then one of the
the trickle down effects
was the salespeople didn't really
care because it didn't impact them.
And by coming up with a
solution that didn't involve
the salespeople,
then they really didn't
care because they're like,
I don't know what
size return that was,
but let's just replace it
and we'll just run out there
whatever material they need.
And so even if you said, okay,
ninety percent of our
installs go flawlessly,
that ten percent
is so inefficient
that you're eating
through the margins,
for the whole install
department on those ten percent
of the jobs that
are inefficient.
So what I let's say
I I own a business.
Walk me through, Trina.
Is it am I just dealing
with the symptoms?
What's the underlying problem?
How do you account for the
fact that even your your best
salespeople are gonna make
mistakes every now and then?
What walk me through how you would
help me kinda conquer that problem.
This is probably the thing that I
love the most about problem solving.
Because it's the
thing I hate the most,
so I'm glad we're on
this thing to get there.
And it's probably the well,
and it's probably
the most interesting,
and it's probably the
thing that has taken me the
longest to wrap my head around.
And once I did, I was like,
oh my gosh, it's
super cool because
and once I say it,
I probably have to say it again because
it's it's a little bit interesting.
And this And this kind of goes
back to something we said a
minute ago, Mary,
about there's a few
things that are
very train esque,
but
it's ideal behavior
drives ideal results.
K?
And this is a kind
of a lean thing,
but we can have
a system where we're looking
for where we want to have
the behavior driven
results versus
results driven behavior.
So if if we pause for a
second and think about that,
we really want to have
the results that are
driven by behavior versus
the other way around.
And think about for a second,
I'm sure we have scenarios
where people do something
that's just check the box.
That's results driven behavior.
So to your question then,
is what happened what we want
to have happen is we want
people to get the results
based on the ideal behavior.
So they do things so much
so that it's driven by
the desire to get exceptional
customer satisfaction.
I I love it's such simple
phrasing.
Right?
But it's so impactful
to how you even
approach problems.
And I think check
the box activities.
I mean, I can just speak
from the team that I work on.
We cringe when we have to do,
or we see something
where, you know,
the directive is coming from
that kind of attitude because
we innately the team,
we don't like that.
We don't want that.
That's not who we are. That's
hard for me to deliver.
Like, it's it's not a good feeling
when we just are going through
the motions for the sake of an activity
to say that we did the activity.
Like, that's a really
gritty place to live in.
And it's scratchy for
everyone to have to do it.
And so if I go back
to what you asked,
that's when we start
to peel it back and you
start looking for the symptom
versus, like, the real root
cause and you go, okay.
What was the behavior that drove
the act the the thing?
And so it can be the what
what was the behavior that
caused the incident or
caused the activity?
And then it can be also
turned the other way.
How do we turn it so it
becomes a positive outcome?
How do we make sure that
every behavior drives a
positive outcome for a customer,
which in turn drives a
positive customer experience,
which drives a positive revenue
generation for every single one of
our dealers or
and our customers.
So I think maybe in your
example with your sales team
and they're kind of going back and
forth with the warehouse, I mean,
you said it that it didn't
really impact them and they
didn't really feel the
ownership of the problem that
was being created.
And so I'm curious if your solution
had anything to do with, you know,
bringing ownership back to
the sales team so that they
understood what the
implication of, you know,
being careless with
measurements or quotes had.
I don't think we
didn't come up with some amazing
way to solve this problem.
I think we as a business
owner, very reactionary.
I do what a lot of
business owners do.
So to your point about
checking the box,
the first thing I
do is say, okay.
We have to have a
checklist. Right?
And so when the sales guy
turns in a job for the install
department to do,
does he have pictures
of the electrical panel?
Does he have pictures of
where the equipment's going?
Did we measure either the crawl
space door or the attic access
to make sure that the
equipment's actually gonna fit
up there or fit under the house?
Like and so
but then to some extent, the salespeople
just, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I did it.
But then the installers get
out there and they go, no, no.
We still have the problem.
So then what we do is we start
penalizing the sales guys.
So now we're docking their
commissions or charging them
back or something like that.
So then it's a very
kind of punitive system.
It becomes punitive. Yeah.
So, Trina, help me out.
I mean, what you know?
Unfortunately, we
call it I mean,
the terminology is
irrelevant, but where we hope
people see, like,
the the root cause.
Right?
Like, I I remember one of
your earlier guests when I
remember you talking
about checklists,
and it was really
about going to Gemba.
It's like, go and see.
And, unfortunately, like,
your salespeople are are
already on another sales call,
and they're generating revenue,
and they're they're
they're making sales.
They're making money.
Right?
And it's what's gotta
be so important is
making it safe for the next guy.
Right? Like, these guys gotta
make it right for the next guy.
And so when they go
and see, it's like,
how do we make it
so that you know,
I say make it OPEX proof,
make it Trina proof so that
there's no chance that Trina
can screw it up.
Right?
And in a way that
like, your checklist,
did you measure this?
Did you measure that?
Is there pictures?
Like, how do you perfect
it in such a way that
when when the
installer gets there,
they have no option but
to delight the customer.
And and that opportunity
to go and see
as effectively and
efficiently as possible.
Now the idea of problem in a
perfect world, what we
in my my lean
profession is, like,
the idea is to remove waste.
But, unfortunately,
it's not always perfect.
And the sales guy is like,
I'm doing the best I can.
Man, I can't I
can't do everything.
I'm not gonna climb up in the
attic because because I got
another sales call
right after this,
and I don't wanna be covered in
all the spiders and the creepy
crawlies and whatever
else is up in there.
But being able to go and
see and be like, hey,
I set this guy up for success
so that he can deliver
success to the customer.
That idea to go and
see and be like,
what is the next best way to
be able to set the installer
up for success as many times
as possible and reduce the
number of failure possibilities?
It may not be a hundred
percent of the time,
but if it's
one less than it was last
month, then you've won.
That makes a lot of sense.
And I love the
idea of leaving the
opportunity ready for
the next person so
that all they can do is
satisfy the customer.
I think that is so
eloquently stated.
I wanna kind of go back to
the term root cause because
certainly in a
business environment,
I think we hear that often and
maybe we can boil root cause
down into what it
is instead of just
plainly speaking, cause is what?
Yeah.
So root cause is
when I think about
root cause is what is let let me
use an Amazon example, or we can
actually, let's not.
Let's use this
example of, you know,
why did we have to send
Uber to deliver the
part instead of the installer
being able to take the part?
In an ideal scenario, it would
have been measured successfully.
We would have understood
exactly what parts and all of
the equipment that
was necessary on the
initial estimate.
If everything would have gone
perfectly on the pictures
and the identification
of that initial estimate,
there would have been no need
to go back to the warehouse
to to get anything else.
It would have been the
first time shot. Right.
So root cause is what we would
identify the gap is
there was a lack of
knowledge or a lack
of complete delivery
of initial parts.
Right? Right.
And so
the failure, right, is that we
are missing the complete
delivery on the first time.
Right?
So breaking that down and being
able to say, how do we
stop that from happening?
And when you stop
that from happening,
you've got root cause.
And so it might be
different at every site,
but you can pareto that back.
It might be that we
are not measuring the
if you can say, hey.
It happens eighty percent
when we have attic install.
It happens twenty
percent when we have
crawl space install.
It happens and then attics,
when we do this size
unit and when we do
in crawl spaces, when
we do this size unit,
maybe try to break it down even
more like when I talked about
the paredos.
You might be able to figure out
when does it happen the most
and start segmenting
it even further.
It's interesting.
I mean, I think having been at
different companies and we've
tried different things, I
mean, one of the things,
just to give you an example,
we said was, in some cases,
the sales guys were running
five calls in a day.
So to your point,
maybe they're feeling pressure
to get to the next call,
and they're not spending the
time they need on the first call.
So then we reduce the
number of calls per day.
The salespeople are going on.
We did I mean, it
in an ideal world,
if you could limit this is just
maybe a little bit of human
nature, but a salesperson
or a selling tech,
limit them to three or
four calls in a day,
you actually see their closing ratios
go up and their average ticket go up,
which compensates for the fact
that maybe they're losing that
fifth or sixth call that they
were running at a at a really
busy time of year.
So you see,
it's interesting to try to peel
back the onion a little bit
ago, what's the root cause?
Is it that salespeople
are rushed?
Is it that we're stacking
too many customers on them?
So there are those,
but I also think a lot of it's
just maybe a little bit of just
laziness or a lack of
priority or just human nature
being like we all are fallible
and we make mistakes sometimes.
And so sometimes you're
trying to figure out like what
is an acceptable error
rate is ninety five
percent of our installs
go off without a hitch,
do we just say, well,
that other five percent means
we're human and we've got human
installers and human
salespeople and so on?
Or do we go, man, if
we really got good,
we could crank down that five
percent error rate to three
percent error rate and push another
two percent to the bottom line.
I I don't know.
You know, as I'm sitting here and
we're having this conversation,
I'm actually doing something
that I say is really really poor.
I'm armchair quarterbacking
this whole process.
That's all I do for a living.
You know, and we just got talking
about, you know, go and see.
But one of the things
that, you know,
is probably one of the
really effective ways for,
you know, for these
folks to, like,
improve it is send an installer,
like, never problem solve alone.
Right?
It it's a team sport for sure,
but if you've got a couple
of sales folks that are
are the ones that tend to
have an opportunity and they're the
ones that consistently
have the high Uber tickets.
Send one of your best
installers with him when he go
when they do the estimates
and be like, hey.
This is what good looks like.
Yeah. Yeah.
Right?
Like, that real go
and see of like,
here's what what we want
to seeing good look like.
Because we talk about how to
Pareto what we call a Pareto of
miss of like, when it's bad,
we we track a lot of data,
and we that's always
a good way to see.
But it you know
what's also great?
Is track a lot of good
and and do more of that.
Yeah.
Like celebrate once people are
successful. Go sorry, Mary.
Go ahead.
You're good. No. We
celebrate successes.
I wanna just pick out the
word paredo for a moment.
And can you maybe
root cause for me at the moment
is I don't know what Pareto means.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Help me help
me understand that concept.
So we think about, like,
the Pareto principle,
and the Pareto principle is
like the eightytwenty rule, and
eighty percent of information
is where the majority of
the problem is going to be.
And just as a general rule.
So if you take all the
data and you graph it out,
that you're gonna see the
majority of the problem
in eighty percent of the data.
Interesting. As a
general rule. Yeah.
And so focus your calories and
your problem solving effort
on that eighty percent
of the data based on that
information and start there.
Because the other
twenty percent of that
tail is not worth
your calorie burn.
And then once you've solved
that eighty percent dead, done,
gone, and once that's done,
then you can re reassess
the rest of that.
Interesting. Okay.
And so as as as sales folks,
think about the same thing of how
you work look at your customers.
You've got that
small tail of, like,
folks that, you know,
you're getting some some
revenue out of them.
You know, they might buy one
or two systems, you know,
and and you care, but
they're not they're not
generating a ton of calls.
They you might get one
or two calls a year.
You need to keep an eye on it,
but you really need to
focus on the big ones.
Yeah. Okay.
And then as you're
saying, Pareto,
maybe like in the
verb tense, right,
that's that's as you're looking
at each different problem
applying that eighty twenty.
Yeah.
That's the act of stacking
up the reasons so that
you can build it out.
So so for example, we
talked about, you know,
understanding
where it came from.
So if you have fifteen calls
that all had to have an
Uber ticket, for lack
of a better word,
you might understand that
ten of them, you know,
come from an attic install
and five of them come from a
crawl space install.
I I hope I'm not embarrassing
myself from the reasons.
But No. No. Yeah.
You know, we did this exercise.
We my my business partner,
Tim, he's an engineer.
He's got an MBA, so he's very
methodical in his thinking.
And so on an annual basis,
we would kind of have
our management meetings.
We pull pull everybody out and
go to a hotel conference room
and dry erase board
and write it all out.
You're speaking my language.
Big rocks, little rocks,
and I'm a sales guy.
So I'm bored out of my mind.
So but anyway, so I'm sitting
in this meeting and, you know,
we list all of these problems.
There are probably fifty,
sixty problems on the board.
And it you know, some of
the problems were, you know,
sales doesn't get the
information to the install team
in a timely fashion.
And sometimes the problem
was the plumbing department
can't get what they need from
the warehouse department.
So we have all these
problems over the board.
And probably half the time that
I owned this heating and
air company, was really
kind of a part time owner.
Tim was there
running it full time.
I'm just coming in
a day or two a week.
And so I I'm sitting there kinda
scratching my head at all these problems.
I'm like, what's going on?
So here's what we did
is we, I just said,
I would like to put
names with the problem.
So instead of the plumbing
department has a problem with
the warehouse, I wanna know
that Joe has a problem with
Tim, right? Or whatever it is.
And with all of the
problems on the board,
this is the Pareto principle.
The vast majority of them came
from five people out of fifty
in our company.
Yep.
And this was on a Wednesday.
And so I just said,
hey, on Friday,
we're gonna fire them all.
And we did.
And so I don't know that that's
a genius management decision.
I probably could have done
a lot of things better.
Maybe could have handled
that better, but we had,
then we had a meeting the
following Monday and we just
said, Hey, if you're
gonna be a jerk,
you're not gonna work here
because being a jerk impacts
all of your other coworkers.
And and just that one
thing alone actually
probably pushed two
percent to the bottom line.
But it's interesting because
like, I'll give you an example.
One of the guys that we let go
was a plumber that was bringing
in about twenty thousand
dollars a week or eighty
thousand a month, million
dollars a year plumbing.
Well, that's a
heck of a plumber.
I mean, that's a tremendous
amount of revenue.
And so, you know,
we had to have a little are we
actually gonna let that guy go?
But from a culture standpoint
and everything else,
we're like, absolutely got to.
So it did let everybody know as
owners, we're not gonna prioritize
revenue over being a jerk.
If you're a jerk, you're
not gonna work here.
And it was interesting to
see that ripple effect.
I mean, on Monday, people are
like, am I getting fired too?
And I was like, hey, I mean,
if I was gonna fire you,
I'd have done it Friday.
So good news, it's Monday.
Right? Shut up and get to work.
No. Didn't I didn't
say that, Mary.
But
Jeez, tough sledding over there.
I know, but that's the
Pareto principle, right?
Which is just what are
all these problems.
And I mean, I think
to some extent,
sometimes on the sales
team, that's case too.
You got three or
four salespeople,
and one of them is the problem.
It's not all of them
are the problem.
And so then it's to to Trina's
point, we gotta alright.
Is it a training issue?
Does that one person need to
ride along with the installers?
Or do we need to have an
installer ride along with that
one salesperson to help
from a training standpoint?
But, also, there's just sometimes
a brick wall where where somebody's
bound and determined not to
improve or not to get better or
not to change, and that's
where you just go, alright.
Well, we gotta pull
the plug on that one.
So And I think
that's the you know,
after you figure out that where
do you where are you and where
you wanna go and you've,
like then it's important to
understand what are the gaps.
And to your point, Steven, I
think that's really the key is,
like, what's causing that issue?
And it can be one of
any number of things.
And I don't often advocate for,
like, mass firings.
However, if it works,
it works. Right?
Like, whatever you wanna do within
your business is kind of up to you.
But but I do
strategy. Right? Yeah.
It is one of many
strategies. Yeah.
It is one of many.
You go, I like that.
One of many strategies
and just like I say,
you know, hope is a strategy,
it is not one that
I rely on first,
but I do think it
is one of many.
Now I think like
problem solving is a
culture improver, right?
Because to your what you
exercise and you I like the
logic that you put in place
there is like recognizing
that culture killers is a really
impactful thing of like, hey,
if you've got somebody
that's wrecking your culture,
it doesn't matter how much
revenue they're bringing in.
Yeah. Yeah.
So but you can improve a
culture by problem solving
very quickly.
That's really Because
it it's how people see
that you are listening
and that you care,
and they recognize that
you are that you want them
to be part of the solution.
Right.
Because anything
that is a problem
is and most of the time,
if we're not solving
to root cause,
we're just putting
Band Aids on symptoms.
And
if if we just solve from
our desk and don't go to
where the problem is, And if
we're not solving problems at
the lowest level, at where our
installers are doing the work
and where our estimators are
seeing it happening and where
our sales folks are out in
the field and doing the work,
we're just solving at our desks,
then they don't feel heard.
And so they've got to be part of
that problem solving activity.
Yeah, I think
that's really true.
And I think we've said
it a couple times,
but that go and
see moment can be
such an eye opening activity
for everyone involved
to really actually
problem solve even faster.
Stop the pushing around.
Yeah.
And there were I had
encountered this with some
customers over the
summer and, you know,
little little bit of a quality
situation that we needed to tackle,
but it wasn't as
straightforward of just swap
this part for another.
It was like, okay,
why is this happening?
And connecting product
manager, oftentimes in
sales, especially in a
distributor role that I'm in,
I'm the bridge for a lot of
functions and just connecting
the people in the
factory with the people
in the field and saying like,
nowadays the power
of video and photo.
I mean, we were able to really
dial that in so much quicker than
all the pushing around of the
problem that I think creates, again,
a lot of that grit when we get
into problem solving of just
like, somebody,
like, just do it.
It's like Well, and you
don't have to overthink it.
Right?
Like, you know the solution and
it can be done quickly, like,
just JFDI.
Right? Like, we have a a yeah.
Like, JDI is just
do it, but, like,
let's throw the f in there,
and it's just freaking do it.
Like, I'm not here to,
like, make it scratchy. No.
Like, just solve the problems.
F on this podcast is financing,
and sometimes it's
freaking like Yeah.
Like, that's right.
But, like, let's just
solve problems and
layers.
The really, really go get
problems solved because when we
solve problems and we make it
easier for people to do their
work, they are happier.
And when they're happier
and they're more productive,
they will outperform
your wildest dreams.
So true.
I wanna touch on this
really quickly because when
Steven was talking about kind of
like the one off random problems.
Yeah.
Something that I see in our
world a lot is sometimes it
feels like the one off randoms
are hitting you from all sides
and you turn into
a master champion
firefighter and you never
get out of that position.
How can people who are
listening to this feeling like,
yeah, I hear you, would love
to Pareto and problem solve,
but I can't even get out of
one problem before I'm in the next,
apply some good skills to get
out of firefighting mode and
back into run your
business mode?
Well, so
there's a couple
of things to that,
and it's hard because
I am a recovering
firefighting addict.
And, you know, I grew
up playing whack a mole,
and it's what we do and
probably why I like to
problem solve now
because being a
like, let me just
say, burn your cape.
Just just go ahead
and burn your cape.
Because being a
firefighting superhero
is not going to make you rich.
Oh, good. That gave me chills.
That's really good. I think
I needed to hear that.
If you will if you
can that one degree
of difference, if you will spend
capture the data and identify
which is the actual big
problem to solve,
that will be worth the money.
Because if we play whack a mole,
you're spending the quarters.
Good point.
This the the shift is
I think, you know,
the way we would try to think
about it is going from being
reactive to proactive.
And if you're always reactive
You're in trouble. But
how do you be proactive?
And, you know, the biggest challenge we
have is we had very limited resources.
I mean, we're a small company.
Payroll's tight.
Money bills are tight.
And so to say, hey,
we're gonna block out
one day of a week,
once a quarter and pull our whole
management team out of the company.
It's like, well, how's the company
gonna run if all the managers go on?
Mean, that so you've got
those kinds of issues,
but it took a very
concerted effort to say,
we don't do that, we're a
hundred percent just reactive.
And so in order to be proactive,
you have to create the
time to be proactive.
That was kind of our initial
and that's a commitment of
payroll and time and money
and whatnot and say, okay.
We're gonna spend the
money to be proactive,
and we need to see the
ROI on the other side.
You're you're exactly
right, Steven.
It's a pay me now
or pay me later.
Right?
You can and I would
love for everyone who
listens to this podcast
to think about how
you can pay yourself
to get build
your problem solving muscle
enough both personally and
professionally such
that you can become
proactive
and then you can have the
liberty and the freedom to
be feel safe in your problem
solving skills.
It's it's almost like working
out where you build that
conditioning and the muscle
memory enough to be like,
I'm okay with the decisions
I've just made to know
that it'll be okay.
And just like you said, yep,
I'm gonna be proactive in this
and I'll set aside that thirty
minutes a day so that I can
problem solve this and it will
pay for itself.
Yeah.
And then being consistent
with that and keeping that up.
It requires, like,
we as a people,
we are risk averse
and it's scary,
but it's real.
Yeah.
I have a coach that I work
with sometimes and she calls
it my toddler mindset.
My toddler mindset just
wants to have my routine and
doesn't want, you know,
curveballs and just to follow
that routine and that instinct
and like keep that going.
Anytime life makes, you know
ways for me to have tantrums.
Boy, my toddler self
takes that opportunity.
I'm working on Take your
snuggie with you and okay.
Yeah.
Oh wow, really interesting.
Is there anything
that maybe, Trina,
that we haven't mentioned that
you were are kind of thinking
on that you would have
wanted to talk about?
I think, you know, there's
there's a cycle, right?
Like when you do problem you
go through this exercise and
you identify the gaps.
There's a cycle of problem
solving that's really important.
And you have to, after
you've identified these gaps,
you come up with these solutions
because we're really good at it.
It's really about
the follow through,
and not everything
works as planned.
So you have to go
through this, like,
it's it's a rinse
and repeat, and like,
continue to iterate.
So I just wanna make sure
people understand that it's not
gonna be perfect every time.
Right? So continue to iterate.
That's think about
engineers. Right?
There's Rev A, there's
Rev B, there's Rev C.
Continue to to
iterate until you get
it and keep going and
keep going and keep going.
Right?
In this cycle, we call it
the plan, do, check, adjust,
and it takes
time.
Right?
We talked about that in a
marketing episode as well where
you might plan,
do, check, adjust.
Is that what you said?
It's plan, do, check, act or
plan, do, check, adjust. Yeah.
It's the PDCA cycle. Yeah.
PDCA.
And so you check, but then you
adjust and then maybe you do again.
Then Absolutely.
Especially from the marketing
angle of the goal, you know,
getting frequency and reach
and how do you marry those two
principles, but you
do that by continually
iterating your strategy
and how you're doing that.
So lots of, lots of interesting
crossovers that flexing this
muscle can really strengthen
lots of different areas of your
business, which is intriguing.
Yeah.
Excellent.
Right.
So my takeaways with plan,
do, check, adjust, that's one.
JFDI, that's a takeaway for me.
And then like right at the
beginning, Trina, you said,
I think it was ideal behaviors
give ideal results. Did I?
Drive ideal results, but I
think you're close enough.
Ideal behaviors drive ideal.
I'm gonna keep that one.
I might get a tattoo
that says that.
That's very impactful for me.
I I know right where
you should get it too.
Billboard, let's go.
That's all. No. I
I totally agree.
And I and I loved our
discussion around standards and
strategy and go and see.
Go do the you had said another
word that might not be as
familiar to our listeners,
the Gimba Walk, right?
You know, go and see.
Yeah. So Gimba is Japanese for,
like, where the work is done.
Right? So go where
the work is done.
And I think that's why
I continue to use that
even in environments
that are not, you know,
traditionally manufacturing
because it sticks and it makes
people ask the question.
But it's like, go
where the work is done.
Right?
So if if that means that you
have to get a little dirty when
you go in the crawl
space or up in the attic,
Go where the work is done
because that's where it matters.
Oh, yeah.
So true. Well said.
Well, I really appreciate
your time, Trina.
This has been incredibly
insightful and lots of
takeaways that I'm sure
Steven, our listeners,
myself will all, you
know, eagerly apply.
I really appreciate and
I'm honored to have joined.
I will continue to listen.
I always learn something
from all of your podcasts so
thank you so much.
Oh thank you I'm so glad and
for those of you that want to
reach out to us maybe ask Trini
a question or get some insight
on a problem that you're having
please feel free to email us at
HVAC underscore full
underscore blast at train
technologies dot com.
We would love to dig
in further with you.
That's all for now, and we
will catch you next time.
Until next time. JFDI, Mary.
Woah. You see this?
We're out. Bye.