Monday Manufacturing Motivation – with Frank Pereira

Curt Anderson 0:01
Hey Damon, how are you my friend? Happy Monday to you, dude.

Damon Pistulka 0:05
Curt, this is awesome. You know why this week is awesome. I’m excited for every week. I’m excited to talk to Frank today. But you know what I’m really excited for this week, Kurt. What’s that? Where are you going to be this weekend?

Curt Anderson 0:21
Well, let’s see. I think I’m heading to the Great Northwest going up to Alaska and then I might sneak my way down to Seattle to see my buddy Damon so we’ll see we’ll possibly right but it’s a definite so I’m going to Damon we’re going to be in person this week. Absolutely. Can’t wait. What a thrill. We have an exciting week. It’s man what a great week to close out October you’ve got World Series is all set. You know football is in full blown. Congratulations, our friends in Philadelphia. Congratulate congratulations, our friends in Houston. But man, am I excited about our program today, man, we have an Rockstar. We have a true hero. This guy is Superman is super humble. He’s not going to you know, but I’m gonna go there anyway before he starts so we can do it without his his blessing. But we have a hero here today. So Frank, pure Frank, a Navy veteran. Happy Monday. How are you my friend?

Frank Pereira 1:15
Hey, I’m glad to be here. Thanks, Curt. Thanks, Damon.

Curt Anderson 1:18
Hey, this is awesome. So you come to us from a dear friend of ours, Ron Higgs, we’re just talking about Ron and I tell you like Ron, we literally the synonymous with the word integrity, humility, just an amazing, wonderful, dear friend of ours. And so frank, this is just an honor and privilege. And you know, again, thank you for your service to our country. You’ve gone through the Naval Academy Boy, that is, you know, the elite of the elite. And we thank you for your service. And just, you know, just share a little bit, I have a question for you that I always kick off our program with. It’s very I’m going to I’m going to do it anyway. We’re going to kick off the program with this question. Okay. Young man, you’re growing up on Long Island and you decide to pursue a career in the Navy. My question to you is, who was your hero growing up who was your hero or inspiration that led you to kick it off your young career in the US Navy Academy?

Frank Pereira 2:13
Was anybody really, in the Navy, it was really my grandparents who were immigrants to the United States, and my father and mother, all immigrants. And when I think about the hard things that we’ve done, fleeing at the time, Europe was economically total disaster. They had nothing they lived, if you go to my father’s hometown, it’s a dirt farm. And they went to America with nothing. And when they left, they thought they would never go back. And they somehow made it here and my mother’s father, who was a world war two veteran Merchant Marines, stowed away on a ship to get away from the Franco regime and ended up serving through the war got torpedo three times what the water twice. And he’s the reason I’m an American citizen, and that those values got instilled throughout my whole country. And I do appreciate that the outreach to the military to me it was an honor to serve our country. In my family, both my brothers and naval academy grads behind me and my daughter just graduated, she’s a Seabee like Joey, and my nephew, we’re gonna go see him this weekend. He’s He’s there. Right now. He’s a junior. So we have five of us and then I’ve got a cousin that served Coast Guard and the Air Force we got him across the board. So and I think for me, it’s giving back to the United States for everything this country has blessed us with. I do it over again 100 times.

Curt Anderson 3:36
What man you better than this right here. So Frank, thank you, man. And God bless grandma and grandpa and everybody that came over and just what an incredible story on how important you know, immigration coming into the United States. What a great story on just wonderful success. You’ve been first generation here and you know took your career and we’re gonna dig into like your superpowers and how you’re helping companies how you’re helping manufacturers so thank you for in what grandma and grandpa’s name you said your grandparents the tourism names.

Frank Pereira 4:06
So my my grandfather mother’s side who is the ended up retiring as a chief engineer from United Fruit Company. His name was Ramon Bermudez and his wife was a henna and my are Eugenia Right? in English. And my, my father’s side is Frank like me. I’m actually the I know I’m the seventh Frank and wow, we’re actually Francisco’s rural Francisco. According my father, it’s 12. I’m not really sure about that. But yeah, my son’s name by the way is Francisco so he is the eighth or the 13th Tobio.

Curt Anderson 4:44
Congratulations. In real quick mom and dad’s name’s Frank and Mary, Frank and Mary. So hey, God bless mom and dad and what an inspiration so you go from Long Island, you go into the US Naval Academy. Take us there, Frank. Let’s I’m gonna hear 1819 year old Frank You’re sharing a little bit before we went live about your time with, with our dear buddy, Ron Higgs, Ron was a roommate of yours, but just about your time serving our country. And just like, you know, from that experience, again, we’re going to take a deep dive into Coleman Consulting Group, your Managing Partner, I’m going to take a deep dive there, but just laying the foundation like maybe you know what got you going in this direction, maybe mentors or like who shined a light on you, where you were like, Man, I really see this as a great direction for my career. Well, so

Frank Pereira 5:27
the Navy was an amazing growing experience for me. I mean, I, you know, I grew up I was the first college student, my family, I had nobody really to help me figure out where to go to college. I got in really, because I did well on SATs test very, very well. And so I got in this thing I show up, Ron Hicks is my roommate completely straightened out this little punk. Although, you know, he probably gave me some bad. Bad influences, too. But it was amazing. For years. I, you know, the best part about the Naval Academy is the history. It’s the people that go there. They’re all like you’re, you know, like, I was like, it sounds like you guys are committed to the United States committed to making things right to doing the right thing. And that was the best part of being there. It still is today. I was just on a text this morning, a group text and we’re talking about the Army Navy game coming up. And my best friends, you know, the people that I literally went to war with my wife laughs at me, sometimes I say that. But we literally went to a couple of wars. It was the Gulf War, one vet, I can still remember when Saddam Hussein was our friend. That’s and then the service I, you know, my captain on the first ship, I was on Captain lines who later retired admiral Lyons next to my father is single greatest influence in my life. Really, just no excuses. And no matter how much I’d say, hey, I need to, you know, this isn’t working, I need to do something different. He would go in and say you can’t make an excuse, you got to deliver. I don’t care how tired you are, you have to deliver. And I learned a lot from from him, like, say him my father. And then the second in command there, the executive officer who also taught me you got to have a little fun, you had a little humanity. It’s not just the weather out there. And then I actually got my job by answering an ad in a paper. I got under Navy and I I was actually going to Berkeley, I have also have an MBA from from University of California, Berkeley. And I was doing all the interviewing and I got a letter back from one of the big consulting company, she handed a lot of letters, and some most of them actually come back. No. Well, I got one back that said, not only do you not have the skills, but you will never have the skill so don’t ever apply again. And my wife, we’ve been married a little while just cuz I walk in doors, she’s screaming at me. She’s I don’t get why you doing this, you’re not doing the same kind of interviews like this anymore. What you need to do is you need to get a job like my dad and the paper, she opens up the chronic San Francisco Chronicle, poinsettia, and I had a paper, you know, I gotta listen to my wife. So I respond to it. And a day later, I was hired by Dr. Richard Coleman. And I found a job that is really what I love doing, which is helping people at the same time helping companies and doing something changing the world. And I do love that part of what I do. I’ve been doing it for 30 years.

Curt Anderson 8:08
I so let’s unpack a couple of things right there. I love the story. You know, so Dr. Coleman is I’m assuming, you know, founder of Coleman Consulting Group, and you you apply for you know, you just fly for an ad wife, and I understand I think you had a baby at the time. And just you know, pregnant, she

Frank Pereira 8:23
was seven or eight months pregnant and screaming at me because I didn’t have a job and I’m leaving the Navy.

Curt Anderson 8:30
And so you’re just like, I mean, you could go or you could go into you know, you could go into anything at that point in time in your career. And you You found the nugget, so many people are like trying to figure out what they want to do when they grew up in their 50s and 60s. At this stage, you you know, you strike a chord with Dr. Coleman. And here you are all these years later, so passionate about the company took it over. But talk about that experience with Dr. Coleman. What was it that resonated so well that you found like where you finally found you really found your sweet spot and such an early part of your career?

Frank Pereira 9:03
Well, I think Richard koat.com and had this amazing idea to go ahead and bring health out to the workforces around the around the country. And really, he was a Stanford, Stanford professor, he was one of the CO directors of the Stanford sleep clinic. And they started realizing that companies out there really had no idea how to work compared to how the human body worked. Right? If you think about schedules that we have today, home lines or factories, they were designed in the I don’t know, you know, in the teens whenever the light bulb came on, and we could work 24 by seven, that’s when they were designed nobody knew how the human body worked. So Richard and is couple of co workers there. They opened up this clinic and they put a shingle out and the paper and say, Hey, if you have problems staying awake when you’re supposed to be awake or form sleeping supposed to be asleep, come see us. We’ll do a study on you. So the guy from the local Chevron refinery, who’s on the nightshift shows up, and doctors you know, the game was doing Started takes a couple of days, they put these electrodes on his head, and they figure out how long it takes them to fall asleep. And at the end, they realized the reason he’s having a problem sleeping at night is because he’s a night shift worker. And he needs to go on steady day shift, right? So this is a Chevron refinery running 24 by seven, their doctors, they know the answer, they send a little note to your supervisor, please place this guy on steady gravier of city day shift, right? So you could imagine what happens the next day, there’s like 300 people show up at the clinic. We want one of those notes. Yeah, right. So Richard, being a smart guy realizes the business here because companies do have to run 24 by seven, not just the refineries but think about hospitals, police departments, fire departments, people are in we are definitely a 24 by seven world sort of driven by costs and a numbered in demand number different reasons. And so he started the business. And when they first started working, they realized, hey, we can bring these health ideas to people. But if people aren’t happy with them, then they’re gonna lose sleep anyway, if it doesn’t fit in with your family and social life, you’re never going to sleep anyway. So they started serving people. And then where I came in is I’m really the business driver. I came in and said, you know, there’s, this is great doctors doing a study serving people, you know, that, Oh, what’s the CEO gonna pay for that? Because what’s the value in that? Right? It’s a feel good thing. But if we do these changes, we can save like $2 million in this company. And all sudden CEOs around the world are woke up and said, What do you mean? $30. And so this day, we typically deliver deliver six to 22% of total labor budget savings, so you put in your total labor budget, health benefits and everything else. 620 2%. That’s what we’re seeing. And that number holds true everywhere. Why? Because most people aren’t working the right schedule. That’s what we find out. Most people are, it’s like a round peg in a square hole and they can’t change. Right? What do you what are you doing? Right? If you operate? You know, if you’re in a we’re talking beer before, if you’re in a molting house, right, and moldy house operates? Basically, you have to malt the grain has to start to sprout started growing, that’s how malt house works. It’s like a 40 or 50 hour schedule, why are we thinking about the 24 hour day, we should be thinking about 50 hour days, right? If you have all this flexibility you need, we need to we need to match that as opposed to sort of, well, we have to work five, eight hour shifts, okay, we got to work, you know, three shifts, or a week or whatever, right? People get caught up in the eight hour day, or even the 12 hour day or that? Why don’t we figure out what makes sense. And let’s get people there, and find will still pay him. We’ll pay him what you need to. But more importantly, let’s find out what fits in with their family and social life. And then we’ll get something that makes sense. And unfortunately, we’re looking at we’re so caught up with these different, you know, systems that were in place. I tell people all the time. Hey, guys, you really know your schedule, I’ll never know better than you. You’re experts in it. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong one.

Curt Anderson 12:52
So that’s a great line. Well, hey, we’ve got a couple of people dropping a note. Hello, guys, if you’re here, drop a note. Let us know that you’re out there. Give a big low here to Frank, we have a Navy veteran, we have a war hero. And so what would be jobs line? Wow, that’s huge. And so again, connect with Frank here on LinkedIn. So Frank, I’m gonna take a deeper dive that we got so much to uncover, yeah, there’s a lot here. We put on your website on, we put out a promo for your speaking today. And you have a three circle strategy approach that is really powerful. Can you take us there, as you’re digging into, I feel like this is an appropriate time. Let’s slide right into the Coleman consulting group three circle approach.

Frank Pereira 13:33
So we look at if you’re going to put in a schedule, you need to look at three things the business needs, employee desires, and health and safety. And if you mix, if you miss any one of those, or you just hit two of them, it’s all going to fall apart. Right? So I talked about health and safety. When I was talking about Richard Coleman, we got to, we got to figure out what works for people really is two factors there if you’re working the night shift, are you in or out of sync? But there’s another big factor, which is playing today? Which is how many hours you actually working? What are you stealing from the sleep bank. And through many of our clients, we’ve actually been able to put some real data on there. And I’ll give you a big aha. If you’re working more than 53 to 55 hours a week on average. Right? And you say I need more production. So I’m just gonna work people harder, push them to 60 your amount you’re gonna put out is actually going to go down. I know those numbers sound crazy. We have companies they’re doing it today. I can’t tell you how many companies I’m working at where they’re doing 510s That’s 50 hours or five twelves. That’s 60 hours. And oh, yeah, by the way, we’re going to work Saturday. If you’re doing that you’re over 5253 hours. The wheels are gonna come off the wagon. Now I’m not talking about one week because one week we can all do 80 hours, right? Whatever. We’ve all done it. Don’t want to do it. We can do that. And I’m also not talking about that 55th hour. If you do it five weeks in a row or more. Then when I show up on the sixth week, the first hour, I’m 10 to 15% less per day octave. For those that hours throughout the week we find that and people are like they know that then why are we just jamming people? Well, we can’t find anybody will push them more hours, your numbers, your production actually goes down. I can’t tell you if times I have to teach people that. So health and safety matters. business matters, right? If you don’t, if you’re not meeting your demand, you got to change things. Right? And just to say, well, we’re going to push people harder when you got to figure out something different out there, and most people aren’t willing to get outside the box. So you have to do an analysis on what makes sense. We also find there’s a ton of idle time wasted throughout the throughout the day. So what I find is if this is your workforce, and this is your workload, they’re constantly going up and down. Right? They’re constant. And we’re trying to get as close as possible, but you’ll never get exactly the right number. For exactly, it’s impossible, right? Because when, because I know that people are going to change, right? Even nuclear power plants says by law 10 people, but I know these guys get sick, they go on vacation, right? Some you can predict some you can’t. So this is constantly moving up and down. But most companies, they’re going like this, right? So how do you if you have a lot of flexibility, how do you have flexibility. And so we need to do that. But I think the most interesting and most important part of what we do is, let’s find out what people like and what they don’t like. So we have the largest proctored database in the world, we’ve surveyed something like 350,000 people over the last 30 years where it’s been an hour and a half to two hours plenty what they like and what they don’t like, which is great means I can tell you what the average is any place in the United States or by industry. But in the end, the average person has 2.4 Kids, right? What’s the point for a kid? I don’t even know what that is. Right? So what are we? We got to actually instead of just using averages, let me ask them what they like. And what we’re finding is, generations are different, right? Even in our life, we know we’re different, right? Things like overtime mattered. For you, as you go through your life. When you’re young, you want to work as much overtime as possible. Typically, I just don’t want to work Friday or Saturday night because it’s got dates. I’m trying to get one. Right, but whatever. But I want to work as much. Because I’m indestructible. As you get older, you know, things change. You know, the baby’s born, my wife goes, Hey, we need more diapers, go get work some overtime. You know, maybe my kid gets older on Saturday is more important. So I can watch him play football, or baseball or soccer or whatever. So our how we change how we look at our schedule changes throughout our lives. But we also know generations change differently. So because I tell him old veteran, right, so I’ve been doing this for 30 years. So you know, I’m a little bit older. When I think about and what I think about work is different than the person coming at it at a high school and the person coming into college or my kids, they think about things differently. Right? When I grew up in New York, we had the blue laws, nothing happened on Sunday, Sunday was for church and go have dinner with mom, and you couldn’t buy a beer after midnight on on Saturday night. Today, I was working in a union shop in Milwaukee. And they said, you know really sunny Saturday is more important to us than Sunday. And it wasn’t because the guy was a religious but Saturday has become the kid day. That’s when the guy wants to go watch his kid plays sports or whatever do things of the family. Sunday, he doesn’t mind working. So So the world has changed.

There are so many places working 24 by seven, there are people that say you know, I don’t mind working the weekend. If I can work this weekend, can I get a four day break next week? Right? So we start a lot of that happen. So the best schedules are the ones where I can get something different. Damon gets something different. You can of course you can have what they have to tie together. But what can we do to give ourselves the most options. And for me, talking about schedules, everybody starts saying, Oh, this is about how long you work and what days you were. That’s only part of it. I’ll give you things that are a whole lot more important from an employee perspective, flexibility. If I have I’m working Tuesday, but I need to be off can Damon can you and I trade? That’s a big deal or more important predictability. The biggest disaster today in the United States by far is kids have plants. I’ve been to where the employees work Monday through Friday, they have this great schedule they get every weekend off. But the reality is, they don’t know if they’re working Saturday until Thursday. Yeah. Right? Sometimes Friday, but even worse Thursday, because I’ll tell you what, I’m going to look at the orders on Thursday. And guys, I’ll tell you on Thursday, if we’re going to work Saturday, but if the orders are really low, I might tell you don’t come to work Friday. So now you’re living paycheck to paycheck, and I’m taking you could even have no money or the baseball game you were planning on going to with your kid, he’s going alone because you got to come to work. How do people operate? How do they live? And we can fix that just by understanding the schedule is not really Monday to Friday, how much flexibility do you need, and then talking with people what makes sense? You know, what do we want to do that guy Milwaukee he’d say, Hey, can I flex into Sunday instead of Saturday? He might be one off and certainly that won’t work in the Bible Belt. But one of our clients is a little Debbie’s Makita Foods right? They make Little Debbie Snacks their Seventh Day Adventists. They Saturday is their holy day. They they all work Sunday, but Saturday Seventh Day Adventists they have Saturday, right? They don’t work from Sunday on Friday to Sunday on Saturday and actually have now we have a schedule with them that moves with the daylight. So because that day changes sundown it’s not a time it changes. And they can actually take advantage of that as they go through the summer winter months. Right. Yeah, I know. I rambled. That was a long answer. Well, you

Damon Pistulka 20:28
know, you hit several things. When I was I was one of the in in our company years and years ago, when I started as an injection molding, I was the first facility that went 24/7. And, you know, we took a lot of time to study because the other facilities, we had $1.02 or three other facilities that they would run, we run the five days 24 For five days. And then you’d see that Saturday that Sunday stuff and we just needed capacity. I mean, we were getting outstripped capacity wise and, and we knew seven days. And we took a lot of time to really ask the people what worked well for them, what would they do. And the flexibility was the biggest thing I mean, because we it was not physical work to for the large extends, so we could do 12 hour shifts. And they thought that was okay. But what they really liked is they could work. I forget what it was a rotation of three day weeks and rotation a four day weeks. And if you needed to switch with somebody else, which you said flexibility was the biggest thing. I could just switch a day. I could switch the day we said hey, long as you guys cover what’s got to go, you know who’s working opposite to you switch it, just let us know. And that thing that the flexibility is, is key in that and and allowing people to move around for family events. And that predictability, like you said, it didn’t matter if I have to work Sundays for the next three, four weeks. Because the how a seven day schedule works. I get four days off every week or three days off every week. Because the way it just people get used to them. They love it.

Frank Pereira 22:03
I tell people all the time with extended shifts, and this is not just the weekend issue. But if you go to 12 hour shifts. Well the number one thing people want more days off, the only way you get more days off is to work more hours in the days you do work. That’s why the 10 is kind of nice. The 12 Some people see as oppressive. If you take people to longer shifts, and they get used to 180 days off a year. They’re never going back. No, I always caution managers before we make the change, be prepared. I mean, this is what the employer is telling us. But there ain’t no way going to come back. Right? Yeah. Yep. Well, we

Curt Anderson 22:35
got a couple of great comments here. So like Diane again, danza Philadelphia Phillies fan, so congratulations, that Diane but she’s like, Hey, Ben there, you know, Whitney dropped a fascinating comment here. So frustrating. My husband works in healthcare, and just got a text this morning come in come in early, incredibly frustrating for all of us. So free, let’s let’s go there. So obviously, you know, this during COVID, obviously, no surprise and what’s not ended, you know, labor shortage, supply chain issues. It’s putting pressure on everybody. Now you work with, you know, my goodness, what a Cisco, Toyota, eBay, the US Army, Exxon General Mills, I mean, you’re working with the who’s who you just mentioned, like little dummies, and you know, it’s lunchtime where I’m at. So I’m getting a little hungry. But, you know, so let’s talk, you know, we, we target a lot of small manufacturers, and so they’re perking up, we’re like they need to jump on, you know, even if I only have 20 3040 employees, I need to be exploiting and exposing myself to flexibility. You guys do such an amazing job at the consulting Coleman Consulting Group. Just talk about any advice, suggestions for like the smaller manufacturers, and what they could be doing for flexibility? Or how do you advise some of your smaller clients?

Frank Pereira 23:44
Well, they have the same problems, the larger clients do, right? The nice thing about it with small manufacturers, you have the ability to change a little bit better, right? It’s easier. It’s a small family, in fact, them. I’m working with a chemical manufacturer right now. And they’ve got 50 People in the plant, right. And of those, I think in the manufacturing floor, it’s more like 28, something like that on the manufacturing floor. And they The nice thing about it is we have a great discussion. And it’s it’s a group meeting there where you can figure out what’s what’s going on. But they have all still the same problems and the same turnover problems, right, which is they use temp to hires and right now it seems like it’s tempt to fires. It’s the same basic Google printer coming in, and they’re just cycling. And so the meeting, I met with the employees for the first time two weeks ago, and I said guys, you know, are because they’re like, We got to fix this. Our problem is you can’t get anybody on second shift. So as we’re going through this process, tell me how you would fix it. Right? And we don’t want to just hear from the senior people. What actually I didn’t say this them but what I really want to hear from is the guy you just hired from that temp, why is that temp not sticking? What’s important to them? I do like the idea having mixed solutions. We’re seeing a lot of these today. Where Yeah, maybe there’s a 24 by seven schedule. And maybe there’s a five day schedule on top of each other have a big brewery mill of course, what are their breweries? where they, they in the brain department, half the people work 24 by seven on twelves. The day shifts different than night shift, and their fix shifts. And then the a bunch of people work on the on Monday through Friday, that’s traditional five, eight hour shifts. And when we first put it in just the brewery department have about the 700 people, there’s about 70, the burden department. We had to force the two most junior people onto the 12 hour night shifts, seven days and they weren’t excited about it. Today, if you went to work there, the only way you get into that night shift, if you have 15 years experience, you want to get to the day shift, you have to have like 20 years experience, because those are the premium shifts, not just for the brain department for the entire site. Does that mean senior most people work there? No, the union president works there. But I guess he’s now moved over. But it wasn’t when we did the change works on on that shift. But they’re very senior people working Monday through Friday. But if whatever you want, you can pick the choice, right. And of course, with the union, there’s some seniority rules. So you got to wait for an opening, whatever. But that’s pretty traditional union or non union site, right? But if you give people different choices, then they can fit something in that fits in with their family and social life. Right, which is exactly what will stop turnover. The other thing I find critical is we have a great success up in Massachusetts, there’s a client of mine, they have a it’s a medical device plant near the beach, right? So they can hire people in the wintertime. But in the summertime, when demand goes up, everybody gets a job at the beach. Why? Because it’s a better guess a better job. So last year, they were late. They came to us with turnovers. 200% then 200% turnover. I can remember like 10 years ago companies going I have 20% turnover, you gotta save me how can I have a company with 20% turnover? Did a 20% turnover is like Yeah, yeah. So these guys have 200% turnover, they can’t keep people there. We go in and survey the people turns out the plant is mostly Dominican, right? Mostly Dominica Fikile figure in Massachusetts, right. And so we built a schedule that fit in with our culture, which had some fixed days off, but it went from a five day week to a seven day week schedule. We, you know, it was like, oh my god, we’re listening to the employees. I know that senior management down in the Carolinas was like, What do you guys do in their corporate is calling up? What do you can’t go to seven days a week, you can’t keep up? Are you there five days a week, you have nobody in the plant? Well, we luckily we had a strong HR manager, we made the change. Today at that plant. This past summer, when everybody went to the beach, the only people they had to hire were replacements who retired. Right? Once they filled it all the schedules. It’s like a total win. And we listened to the people we designed to schedule and the things we fixed were exactly what you were talking about the flexibility, predictability, and they had the days off is important. But those two things mattered more than anything else. We didn’t give somebody

Damon Pistulka 27:54
a schedule for six months. And they know it, and they can give it to their family. And they can plan around it plan vacations around it, plan doctor’s appointments around it, plan your kids, a, you know, conferences, everything that it works, and then give them the flexibility if something comes up to schedule with, you know, to swap with with somebody else doing the same thing. Your life your Pilates

Frank Pereira 28:18
currently, that’s it. And the other one I find is, you know, overtime is a big thing for people. We talked about that earlier. You know, it’s unfortunate, it’s almost like a it’s like an addiction, right? It’s like almost like smoking.

Curt Anderson 28:28
Crack, right? I mean, what do you say, right?

Frank Pereira 28:30
Once you get on it, you can’t get off it. There’s no way right. So one of the problems with overtime is we got the overtime hogs and we got the non hogs right there two different people I want overtime, you don’t. One of the problems with most plants that come into the ConAgra plants I was working at everybody’s working 12 555 days a week, 12 hours. And by the way, we’re gonna have to Saturdays, and those Saturdays were all coming to work guys. Well, if you guys don’t want to overtime, and I do, I’m happy, but you’re not right with it. So we can’t, I can’t work your overtime because I’m working at the same time. But we do have one of these rotating day off or some sort of opportunities where I get a Tuesday off. And now I’m an overtime hub. I’ll take that Tuesday, and I’ll work it but you get the Tuesday off to do whatever you want. And if I work more overtime, you work less so now I’m happier. And you’re happier, again, building schedules that make sense for people and give people options.

Curt Anderson 29:21
So let’s unpack that for a minute, Frank. Man, this was a great I mean, look at the clock. All right. So guys, if you’re just joining us here at me and we’re having a phenomenal conversation, we’re here with Frank Navy veteran war hero, he is scheduling a superstar in a three points, three circles. We’re talking about the needs, desires and safety. That’s the sweet spot of creating scheduling success, Frank. So what I’d like to take a deep dive in whether you know one of the who’s who fortune 500 companies that you’re working with, or that 50 person Chemical Company, let’s talk I’m going to talk about either resistance or people that may or might not be on board. Okay, so I love what you’re saying like, you know, hey, we’re going to take a deep dive or do and research, we’re surveying, we’re asking folks on the floor, I’m going to ask the person that just started last week, and understanding their needs. So when you define that, hey, this seems like the best. What do you How did how do you guys at Coleman handle it? We’re either maybe sea level, or the executives are pushing back or resistant, or the situation you just described eight 80% are happy with the schedule, but how do we put out the fire with the other 20 that just aren’t happy with this change? I’ve been here for 30 years. I’m like doing things Monday through Friday. It’s all my grandpa did it. So I did it. You know, I’m not you know, how do you handle resistance, whether at the sea level on the floor, chair that a little bit with you? Okay, different

Frank Pereira 30:38
couple of different animals out there. And really, I think our biggest success has been change management. You know, we’re good with math and good with people. But change management is the hardest part of the process. So we don’t spend five years doing change, it’s got to be quick, you got to go with when the iron is hot, typical change for us is about 12 weeks long, right? And then while serving employees getting them involved, if you wait a year, people get lost, right? Yep, we do have some some companies that long term has strategies, but that’s pretty rare. Most of the times it’s pretty quick, stuck with the management side of the house. The number one people ask me, Why do projects fail management resolve? By far? If they if the person who hires us to work in there is not committed to the change this smokescreen, it’s not going by? And what are things my job is do is I go in there and I find out is this a real change. Because if you’re if you just want us to be a smokescreen, or to do something I’m not interested, right, I’m only interested and that means commitment to move forward. Sometimes a little harder, if corporate says, Hey, this worked great at this chemical plant, let’s send you to another one. And now that does, and the team there feels like we’re being foisted on them, right? That can be a hard change, you got to you got to make sure that they understand it’s their project, and we’ve got to work with them. That’s always a hard relationship to go ahead and build for the consulting team to go ahead and make sure that, you know, find out what the problem is. And let’s if you really believe these are problems, then I’ve got to get them to really believe we’re going to change

managers who want a tube, the thing in the end, always, those are always a tough to, you know, to kind of throw the project under the bus, in the end, always a tough one. I throw union leadership in there, right? union leadership often is very good at doing change. If they’re not, and they’re open about it, at least that’s good. But every once in a while I get somebody, one of my first projects was a Goodyear Tire plant where the vice president used our project to become president, and he threw his buddy under the bus. And today that plants closed, a lot of it was because of that union, and a lot because of that guy. So I’m not going to say any names, but it was unbelievable. To watch that happen. from an employee perspective, not everybody’s gonna get what they like, right, right. Think about, you know, when Ronald Reagan won the landslide, he hit like 60%. That means 40% were unhappy. I mean, every once in a while, get a project 92%, you know, voted for the solution at the end, that’s great. And we spent a lot of time getting to it, because we don’t just say, you know, here’s a and here’s b, they actually build a and they build B and then they choose between the two. Right? And I’ve been in plants where people have buttons, you know, we want this one and we want to pick solution a pick Solution B and that, you know, we our process at the end is to give the employees the final choice. Right? In this final choice gives you the flexibility, predictability and everything you need. This one does it this meets the business needs. This one does do this meets health and safety. This does to Now let the employees do the pick. Right. And that’s the way we do the process. And at the end, we’re explaining both options to the employees. And if 70% Pick this and 30% Pick this, at least these guys knew how we got there. Right. And it’s probably not too far off from what they wanted anyway. Because you know, it’s all gray areas, right? Yeah. So and maybe it fixed Yeah, I didn’t get the rotation I wanted. I wanted the seven day break. I’ve only got a three day break. But I did get the flexibility piece or I got the predictability piece. So that’s kind of how we how we get there. And employees usually pretty good. You know, there’s always somebody’s upset, right? We call them there’s every plant has a couple of these people we call them affectionately, the buttheads, right. Everybody’s got some buttheads and a butthead is the guy that you know, with the first meeting I have stands up on the soapbox and yells at me and tells me something. By the fourth meeting, I already know he’s gonna stand up on the on the soapbox. You know, I’m like, Alright, Jerry, what do you got to say? Right? And he just That guy doesn’t actually care what schedule it is. He just wants to stand up on the soapbox right to be heard. Right? Yeah, wants to be heard. And so. So what we want to do, though, is focus on getting something that makes sense for everybody. And then we share that, you know, think it’s really, really open. We share results all the time. So I share. When we serve everybody. We take all the information that people gave us. So for example, this plan I’m working in, they gave me a really verbose and a lot to write everything they write down on a piece of paper, we type up and we give back to everybody we take out any extra It is in any people’s names. You know, when you’re there, and you do get here, some crazy things. But if you’re there, you know, I know Jerry said, this is Terry says to me in the break room every day, but there’s no name on it, right? And it’s amazing what people will tell you if you listen. And it’s not just what they say, but also the data. Okay? That’s how many people want it the big break, how do you one of the short break one of the 10 hours ship one of the eight hours, we get that information out to everybody share it, and they see how we build the solutions in the process, nothing’s hidden. And usually what I tell people is, you know, if I work with 100 people in a plant, look, 100 of you are smarter than me and my other consultants, it’s two of us, I don’t care how smart we are, there’s 100 102 of us together is smarter. Tell me what the solutions are. And often we can find kernels from what people tell us to help build a solution because in the end, it’s theirs. It’s not Coleman’s or the chemical companies, it’s, it’s yours. It’s what you guys are going to work on. And I mean, for me, the success really is at the My favorite part is going back to the clients afterwards. And I can’t tell how many stories I’ve gone to back to a client six months a year later, we do a re survey the employees or sometimes I’ll just do a company last week come in and do a check or something, you know, whatever. What’s going on. And the stories I have are rambling. Can I tell what No,

Curt Anderson 36:15
no, no. You’re a great storyteller.

Unknown Speaker 36:19
Yeah. So I give

Frank Pereira 36:20
you a couple of one. Probably my favorite one is I was working at this cell phone plan in Monterrey, Mexico, with my partner and we were down there. We changed schedules. And they had this schedule where half the plant worked all every weekend. And we changed the schedule. So everybody shared on the weekends. When I walked in six months later, and it was mostly women. A lot of grandmas older women working putting the cell phones together. I walked in, you would have thought I was Mick Jagger. It was they left their positions and they came and they grabbed me and they’re hugging me. And they’re saying things in Spanish to Spanish my first language to Spanish to me, you know. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you before you came here, I was dead to my grandchildren. I never saw them. Now they spend every other weekend with with their grandmother. I have grandchildren, they have a grandmother, and it just and tears coming out of their eyes, which is unbelievable. You know, people they knew what was coming. Somebody baked us like a little cake. I just, it’s like unbelievable stories you hear from people. I was at a I went into a manufacturer in Columbus. And there we put an eight day break in once every seven weeks. And they have this rotation it’s mostly 12 hour shifts actually 12 Any, it’s pretty interesting schedule fits in with this, this group. So they asked me to come in and I go into the warehouse and I open the door and I look and also I see this forklift on the other side of the warehouse and this guy looks at me and his eyes go big. And he jumps in the forklift and he drives straight out, right. Billy, I mean, I’m from Jersey, I know that he’s gonna run me over right outside of the forklift. And I can see he’s just as he reaches to his back pocket. Knife or gun. I’m dead, right? And I run out of here. What am I supposed to do? And he pulls out like his wallet. He has one of these wallets. It goes like the pictures go to tu tu tu tu tu tu. And he’s got all these pictures. And he can’t even speak. He’s so excited. He’s like Frank Frank, I got my first ad break. And I, you know, I, I took my kids sharking off of Cape Hatteras luck. And he showed me pictures of him and his kid fishing. And he’s so excited. Because he never would have been able to do that. Before I got there. He was working at least six days a week and usually working at least one Sunday. Just and here’s a guy now that just is so excited. And that translates to everything he does, right? He’s excited with the company he makes, he helps turnover. He works hard. He wants the company to succeed. I mean, it’s just, it’s a huge win win from a business perspective, certainly an employee perspective, from a health perspective, he’s healthier. And to me, I feel like God because that could be, you know, my family’s all shift workers. That’s my cousin. Right? That’s right. And before, what did I do other than just kind of unlock the ability for them to change, right, unlock the ability for them to go ahead and do something different. And it’s hard. I mean, I’ve had another client that it’s a glass plant in Pennsylvania. And they had talked to Dr. Coleman like 15 years ago, and they were convinced they were going to change schedules. But you know what, we can do it ourselves, right? We can, we don’t need these consultants. So for 12 years, every other year, they went through a process where they had a team development option, and they would vote on it every year it failed. 12 years in or both, I guess six times over 12 years. plant managers probably calls me up goes, Frank. All right. I’m done. You’re coming in here to fix this. Right. And so luckily, I got a chance to do that project. And I went there and that’s why we got 92% of the people to vote the scheduling where they couldn’t get 50% We got 92% Why? Because I didn’t develop it in some holds that what do you guys think about this, right? I said here’s Tell me, do you want to work a lot of days in a row or fewer days in a row? Well, I want to see the schedule. No, no, no, just tell me that piece. Do you want eight hour shifts? Or I want to learn these little things that are important. Yeah. And I’m gonna build it from there, right? Kind of, as opposed to saying, here’s the answer, pick this one or this one, right, which was always negative. At the end of that project, I, there’s a local health club, and the guy who was the kind of elite employees was a member of the health club. So we ended up having this giant party at the Elks Club, which I guess a bunch of the employees represent. I could not buy a drink for myself, they had to drive me back to my hotel. And it was, it was the spouses that wanted to talk to me. Yeah, it’s because they were excited about, hey, I’m gonna see my cousin, my husband’s gonna be horrible, and why school, kids are gonna have this. They were so excited about it. They want to talk about aspects of how great it was working. It was such an exciting project to see that and see people actually change. You know, every once awhile, have somebody come up to me and say, you know,

thanks, changing schedules, you saved my marriage. I mean, what’s that worth? Wow. Right? And that’s the kind of stuff that you work in six or seven days a week, you know, you’re either you don’t like your wife, or you know, our husband. Or it’s, it’s a hard thing to do. Not to say people don’t make it work. But wow, if I can get people to tell me what fits in with their lifestyles, and we can make that go together. I mean, I’m sorry, I’m rambling. No.

Curt Anderson 41:24
Oh, my God. I’m going, Frank. That was that was magic. Yeah. All right. Damon, I know, Frank on our show. So it’s lunchtime here and eastern time zone. So like, you know, I like to say we’re going to just take a little moment of silence. We’re just going to savor what you just dropped that bomb that you just dropped on us. So there’s so much to unpack right there. Yeah. Alright, first off, I want to share this if you’re under the age of 30 years old, he said a name Mick Jagger, please google it. He was

where I saw the stones live in 1980. Something and so my hero, Mick Jagger. So thank you for the Mick Jagger reference. But if you’re under 30, you might have to you might. There’s a lot to unpack here. And so I’m gonna I’m going to pull up a couple of comments. Yeah, love how you help them build your own solution by listening. Diane, building balance and employees lives is huge. To be able to present in your family’s lives is so impactful to do to be successful with employment is a dream to many a reason why women leave the workforce workforce to raise children, because they can’t find the balance. I’d say this is just what a great conversation, Frank, couple of things I want to unpack right here. Okay. First off, when you think about, you know, your super powers what you guys I mean, what an admirable service that you provide to your clients, to your employees, you know, at the Elks club, as you know, this gentleman, I just pictured this guy driving up to you on a forklift, you know, just look at the lives that you’re changing. And just, you know, again, from the time I met you to this, you know, as you know, this is not my wheelhouse, this a little bit new for me, you’re really, you’re selling a couple of things, in my opinion, you know, like, you’re selling trust, you’re coming into this company like this, you know, after 12 years, they felt like, we need help. We can’t do this on our own. Frank, could you come in and help us and look at the trust that they had in you, that when you come in, you change, it’s just by looking at things differently? That they’re just so close to it? They just, they just can’t see it? I mean, is that I mean, that’s what Coleman smalls is like, you sell trust, right? You saw trust, efficiency, efficiency of time, improvement of lives. I mean, like, look at what you guys are doing for the market?

Frank Pereira 43:43
It is it a lot of it is the trees in the forest, right, you can’t see the forest because you’re so far inside the trees, but trust is a you know, a big thing. You know, I one thing I did learn at the Naval Academy is about integrity, right? And there is no like half truth. There’s no Half Lie. To me.

Curt Anderson 44:02
You’re good. You’re good.

Frank Pereira 44:05
And there’s it’s all about being honest with you. And so we tell them things and we show them stuff or they’ll give us information when when they give us something back every once in a while somebody will write something really squirrely. And they’re like, these guys will never type this up and send it back. And oh, yeah, we do. Right? We’re just we’re honest. We’re just going to let’s let’s do it. So you have to kind of earn that trust a little bit in the process. It doesn’t happen upfront. You know, I like to think people I know people are really from Missouri, right? We’re all show me people right? Here. All right, so jersey, it’s all in Long Island. Well, it’s all you got to show them. If you say hey, I’m going to do this and you keep showing them they can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The hardest part about change is actually taking having people figure out how to step in that dark room. You know, because it’s the devil that I know is better than the devil? I don’t know, that’s a treating the angel, I don’t know, worse than the devil I know. And so there’s always fear, you know, what are you trying to do? You know, the company is trying to take some money from us or whatever it is, once you get through that and explain it, you know, you just got to, you have to make that connection with people, you know, any good change requires connection. And I’m blessed. Luckily, I don’t do as many projects because I, you know, I tend to be the guy doing things like this and getting around working with the with executives and selling the next one. But I’m blessed to work with a really bunch of great consultants that have they believe what I do. They’re smarter than I am. And they, they believe what I do, as far as we’re doing good change. And we talk about this. We’d like live and breathe schedules, which is sort of funny, right? The stories matter and affecting people’s lives matter. And I think that’s, that’s important.

Curt Anderson 45:53
So I’m going off script for a second here. Frank, I want to go back to your Navy career. And you talk about I think you said the name was Admiral Lyons do it because the other big takeaway for me today, that trust and how you’re changing lives, and number two leadership, it takes leadership to earn that trust, right. And so again, you know, sure, like your navy experience, maybe the mentors, if I have that name, correct. Admiral Lyons, how does your navy experience and like, how do you, you know, you come in as a leader, and helping again, whether the executives folks in the C suite, or folks on the floor, union shop, whatever, talk about like your leader, you know, see if there’s somebody new, getting that that person I didn’t know who Mick Jagger was Shame on them, but say they’re, you know, starting out their career, maybe they’re in their 20s or 30s. And, you know, they would look up to a guy like you are right this moment, they’re having an event, a mentoring moment, with a guy with your acumen, your experience, your expertise, your passion, you know, what would you share for that younger person on on any leadership tips? How they can take, have success like this, to bet

Frank Pereira 46:53
a lot to a lot there. I think that I think the first thing is you got to find someone to work for. You got to find somebody that really can push you not somebody that’s nice to you and makes takes coddles you, right, because one thing about John Lyons, he wasn’t nice to me. But he was actually took care of me and taught me when when I say nine, wasn’t it you know, I don’t care if you got to go to sleep, I don’t care if your wife’s waiting on the pier, you got to get this done. It’s not a choice, right? And, and so he really pushed the people that push you the hardest, you learn from, you know, that whole gang is kind of mature, it’s getting these communities, Nietzsche, that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. It’s those moments that make you stronger, and attaching yourself to a leader that can push you that far, if you haven’t been pushed that far, if you’ve been coddled the whole time, Jack Welch used to say, he doesn’t want people that always succeed, you got to fail. You got to have somebody that pushes you up against the wall, because we learn from our failures. We don’t learn from our victories, right? It’s easy when victory is easy. It’s wins. Yeah, how do you pick yourself up and do that? And I think I would, you have to go find those people, if they’re not in your life, you know, if your boss is really easy to you got to push them up, maybe can push your boss be harder on you, right? Because you’ve got to be, you have to learn that about yourself. Because life is not easy. We learn that, you know, at home, kids are not easy as we raise kids, you know, as, as we go through all the, you know, the different parts of growing up. I’d also turn to when I look at, like leadership, I get a lot by reading. Right. And it’s amazing what you learn from, you know, different people like I like General Petraeus, I know he ended up getting knocked out from from the Gulf War. And, you know, in listening to what he had to say, Colin Powell, his view on leadership, and it matters in leadership is not a military thing. Only. It’s, you know, Jack Welch, an amazing leader who ran GE for many years. You don’t have to just be in the military. I mean, I, I think one of the greatest leaders right now you gotta be careful about this is the Pope, right? Where the Pope, not the current one, but the one before we talked about the reverse pyramid, right, where the leader doesn’t sit on the top of the pyramid, the pyramid rests on the leader, right? And your job is to work on right servant leadership, right? Serve the people above you, and do whatever you can to make their lives easier because you take care of them. They’ll take care of you. So those are enough to be Catholic, read the Pope’s thing. Right? But it’s it’s definitely interesting talking about servant leadership, and hear what people have to say. To me, that’s what I what I think is important. And then just honesty, integrity, right? You got to care about what you’re doing. If you don’t care about what you’re doing. Find a new job. Yeah. Yep. I’m not sure if that helped you there i current Oh, that was awesome.

Curt Anderson 49:36
You know, again, a great, you know, appreciate everybody out there. Thank you for your service in the Navy. And of course, Diane learning from failures, best learning, you know, available. So, Frank, this is, man I’d like we ran over time. I appreciate it. I just I’m just captivated by this conversation. This is just a master class. And Damon this is a topic that we have not covered. We don’t typically go here This was such an honor and privilege to connect with Frank. So again, guys, we’re here with Frank Pereira, Navy veteran and just you know what an amazing man, you want to follow him on here on LinkedIn you want to connect with, check out his website, Coleman Consulting Group, and he is in just north of San Francisco. We’re just here in beautiful mountain biking out his way, Frank, just share with any folks, you know anywhere else that they can connect with you or any other words of wisdom before we close off the date.

Frank Pereira 50:26
So our website is actually Coleman dash consulting.com is our website. And that’s great place to connect or Becco is social media Queen definitely takes care of us out there. I’m always happy to come talk to people about anything, get on the phone. And we’ll we’ll talk about your whether there’s a project there for or not, I love talking. If I can make your life a little bit better. Give us a call set up some time, and I’d be happy to talk to you. Awesome. I really do want to thank to you guys. By the way this is I wasn’t sure what to expect the live. This is you guys are great. And I go to Seattle next weekend. I’m thinking of going to Seattle next weekend. There. Yeah,

Curt Anderson 51:03
you can absolutely join us. And so what I’m going to do is I’m grabbing your website real quick. And I’m going to drop it right into the chat box for everybody. Just to to hop in there and tell you again, you guys have a lot of great information there. I’ve become friends with Rebecca through this time. And as you said, Frank, she is an absolute Rockstar. Great on social media very passionate. And what’s great, you know, and before you before I let you go just talk about your team real quick. Again, we talked about our dear buddy Ron Higgs, I’ve had the honor and privilege of meeting Rebecca just talked about like the talent and a seasoned veterans that you have on your team that are out here changing lives.

Frank Pereira 51:40
Sure, a lot of ex Navy vets, I actually laugh because I try and hire from the Naval Academy. But they people, there’s a kind of hidden group that knows us at about the five or six year point, if you’re thinking about getting out, we certainly like those people, we have a lot of ex Navy nukes or a lot of Submariners on that one. But we do have a couple army people and we even have a Marine. And we’ve come in two flavors, our core group, over a dozen of us as employees. And our then we have like the CEO X CEO of Marvin windows, we’ve got to add Senior VP for Miller Coors that will come in depending on the project will bring that kind of experience. We do all our projects typically teams to just so you can see two people were housed here is our corporate office, you’re looking at my office and it stretches back over there. But this is where we bill and do marketing and Rebecca’s offices kind of down over there. But really, we’re all over the country today. So we’re living in that dispersed group. So we have people in Florida, Texas is our second biggest area, Georgia because we we we want our people out there so they can get close to the clients and be close and that’s who we are. I’m blessed like I say to work with amazing group of people and awesome

Curt Anderson 52:58
yeah, I’d say man what a great career what a blessing and what you know and you know, do you think your wife on a regular basis for pointing out that one ad in San Francisco

Frank Pereira 53:09
we’ve been married a long time nothing makes me happy that’s it you know she’s so

Curt Anderson 53:13
that’s a great story. So I guess we’ll wind down Frank I’d love every second of this man took tons of notes today. On replay please connect with Frank, man just do yourself a favor. Just go back and just kind of just listen to us. Yeah, especially for those of you whether you’re on a you know Management Supervisor, you’re on track to become a manager or supervisor. You’re an entrepreneur and you if you know if you have three employees and whether they’re remote or in your office by the resist golden nuggets, hear from Frank on how to just be that servant leader. What a masterclasses was Frank so do Thank you. God bless you. We appreciate you. And we just wish you continued continued success. Thank you for your service. Thank you how you provide for veterans a great place of employment and you know even with an army need now you guys maybe during the Army Navy game, maybe you’re on separate sides, but I admire that you’ve been hired as some of the army guys as well. So

Frank Pereira 54:06
you got it that’s our equal opportunity employer

Curt Anderson 54:10
hires the army guys right just to make them feel welcome. So hey, we’re gonna close out the program today. So Frank, thank you my friend appreciate you guys go out there have an amazing incredible week boy, we talked about integrity today. We talked about just doing the right thing servant leadership and inspirate boy what an inspiring theme and any last parting thoughts you have my friend on this? What a great jam session

Unknown Speaker 54:32
this I’m not topping this one. I’m just going out being good. We’re gonna do what I can do, man.

Curt Anderson 54:38
We’re just gonna awesome. We’re gonna close out. Hey, just anybody out there. Damon’s got faces a business on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yeah, break. You might have to come back and join Daymond on faces of business to keep this party going. I know you’ve gotten a cold Donnelly tomorrow, I believe we have a great jam session. I’m going to be coming to you guys live from the Alaska Manufacturing Extension Partnership on Friday. So So Damon we have a great little session down for that and so guys have a great week Frank hang out with us one second and be someone’s inspiration just like Frank was for us today just go out there be someone’s inspiration and we will see you soon thank you all right and