Front Office Harmony

I was walking out of a restaurant after eating lunch and ran into a dealership general manager who asked me if I had a minute to talk.  I said I did and while he ate lunch we talked and he asked me to help him find a new manager for his collision center.  Told him it wasn't really that easy, there just aren't many good shop managers looking for work and it might be better to try and fix what you have.  He shrugged and said he had tried everything but it seem like the shop was in a downhill spiral.  I asked him if he minded if I went by and looked around?  He said that would be fine and he would catch up with me there after he ate.  I went by and saw he had a small front office that consisted of the shop manager and a receptionist.  As we were talking a tech came in and asked the manager a question and the receptionist answered it.  So I continued to watch the interaction in the office, talked with the manager and during the conversation the receptionist interupted on several occasions to put her two cents in.  I then walked out to the shop and talked to the techs and asked how often the receptionist answers for the manager, "All the time was the answer".  It was clear to me that changing the manager would not solve the problem. The GM came back. I talked with him and said I thought the issue with the shop was in the front office.  That the disharmony between the manager and the receptionist was whittling away at the effective management of the shop.  I offered a solution of developing job descriptions for each of the two positions and creating a process to promote focus on the specific tasks of each job descriptions.  I guess the reason I am relaying this is sometimes what we think is the problem really isn't the true issue.  In this picture changing the manager probably would not have given the GM the solution he was looking for, and for the price of an average collision repair a consultant can look at the whole picture and really see what is happening.  An outside view will look past the trees of the forest your are sitting in, find what is causing the decay much faster and more effectively and create solutions that will last. 

Before you make any changes, call a consultant!