8 minute read
THE BUSINESS OF PARKING
A Matter of Perspective
By Julius E. Rhodes, SPHR
AS WE ENTER THE LAST MONTH OF THE FIRST QUARTER OF 2021, I hope each of us has had an opportunity to reflect on what this new year brought us after the dump-
ster fire that was 2020, and I hope the remainder of this year greets you and your loved ones with great favor. This month, let’s talk about communication—specifically, the plethora of information around “handling difficult conversations or communications.” What I am about to share goes against the conventional wisdom and that’s a good thing, because if you follow the crowd you usually wind up in a place you don’t want to be. Divergent viewpoints are good.
I see communication in the same vein as money: None of us has all the money we want (with want distinguished from need). Communication is the same in that no matter how much we get, we always want more. The ability to communicate effectively is essential to building long-term, mutually beneficial and trusting relationships. I’m not saying we have to be great orators like Kennedy, King, or Gandhi, but we do need to be able to deliver our message in a manner that resonates with our intended target.
The Growth Mindset
All communication is potentially difficult, especially if we enter the conversation with a fixed versus a growth mindset. How many of you have been in a performance review, either as the giver or receiver? How many of you felt a certain amount of anxiety, even when the news you were giving or expected to receive was positive? Performance reviews are a classic example of how even a positive exchange can generate myriad feelings and cause anxiety. You never know when a curveball might occur.
Another example: How many of you have had an occasion when you just didn’t feel like working out? This has happened to me on more than one occasion. However, my efforts on those days were as good if not better than the days I wanted to work out. I didn’t go to a default position of allowing my potentially negative thoughts to become a detriment to my exercise routine. Instead, I took the perspective that this was an opportunity to grow and achieve a goal, and not allow the negative attributes to take over. I took a growth mindset over a fixed mindset and I may have started slow, but once I got going, I ended up ahead.
A Communications Process
So, what does all this have to do with handling difficult conversations or communications? The process we must take is the same, regardless of how we view our impending exchanges (positive or negative). There is a process we need to follow to maximize our ability to connect with others: 1. Always have a plan of what we want to communicate. It helps us value the time spent by both parties. 2.Having a plan is great, but understanding what counters you may need to employ is essential. Rarely do things go the way we plan, especially when we are engaging with another individual
with their own frame of reference. 3.Make it personal. People want to know you will treat them as people and not just recite prepared remarks. Make the communication conversational and a real dialogue. 4.People always want to know the dreaded WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). Show the benefits for everyone involved.
Deliver your information in manageable chunks. If we share a long string of information all at once, it will be forgotten. We must be able to identify what the person we are speaking to can handle at one time—know your audience.
Remember this; it’s OK to feel as you feel but it’s not OK to expect others to feel as you feel. We have to go beneath the surface to get at the real depth of what someone may feel about an issue. And we do this by communicating in an open, transparent, and trusting manner that emphasizes our desire to see everyone take a growth mindset, which leads to mutually beneficial outcomes. ◆
JULIUS E. RHODES, SPHR, is founder and principal of the mpr group and author of BRAND: YOU Personal Branding for Success in Life and Business. He can be reached at jrhodes@mprgroup. info or 773.548.8037.
Business Intelligence Tools Offer a Path to a Data-driven Culture
By Chris Lechner, CAPP
DATA-DRIVEN DECISION MAKING IS CRITICAL to any efficient operation. We cannot understand our current operations without looking at the underlying facts on the ground. This is particularly important when we are steering in new directions. Data is all around us and generated by every system we use; too often, it is under-analyzed or not analyzed at all. Barriers to analysis include technical skill, fear of the unknown, and lack of a data-driven culture.
Business Intelligence (BI) tools address these problems by lowering the skill level required to access data and by putting it into more people’s hands. These tools require process and people to be successful, but the dividends can be enormous. UCLA has adopted this technology to provide real-time, actionable insights to staff, automate processes, and lower the skill level required to interact with data to unleash its power to make better decisions.
A Data-driven Approach
Data-driven decisions have been part of operations for many years, but achieving a consistently data-driven approach is difficult. Operations across parking and mobility face fundamental challenges to analyzing data because there are many systems involved: permit management, pay stations, occupancy, and citation issuance just to name a few. These systems typically include reports or dashboards within each one, but what happens when you need to answer questions that involve multiple systems? For example, how does the citation rate in an area affect payment compliance? Typically, this kind of analysis is one-off, difficult to replicate, and requires a great deal of skill in Excel.
By entering the back end of systems, data gurus are able to quickly access information and deliver insight through oneoff or canned reports—even across multiple systems. UCLA Commuter and Parking services has invested in these highly skilled analysts and programmers to bridge information gaps. In fiscal 2019-2020, reports written by them were run 9,814 times, showing a huge demand for data but limited ways to access it. Because report writing tools require specialized skill and programming knowledge, only these few could interact with data directly. This has meant that despite many efforts to close them, gaps persisted and most staff members were still unable to interact with system data in its raw form.
BI tools lower the skill level required to interact with and access the underlying data. By closing skill gaps, these tools enable exploratory data analysis, automation of routine data exchanges—think emailing a report of new permit
holders each Monday—and allow for cross-system comparison without the need to export. Further, these systems allow for analysis to be easily repeated and published to peers for upto-the-minute information about operations from one screen. Standing up these platforms does require IT effort and investment in staff training but the benefits are significant.
The Results
UCLA deployed Tableau as the BI tool of choice for Commuter and Parking Services in early 2020. Since then, there have been many successes; analysts have reallocated 660 report writing hours, a space-counting process automation has saved 125 labor hours annually and more than 1,400 pieces of paper, and more than 80 dashboards have been deployed.
Perhaps the biggest impact has come from providing more people access to data. Staff members have been granted the ability to directly explore data in and across source systems without needing to possess advanced querying skills or make requests. These staff members can now explore their systems and learn about their operations independently. BI technology has improved efficiency, reduced waste, empowered staff, and produced a culture of data-driven decision making—gone are the days of going with your gut.
As operations become more and more digital with a new app every day, making sense of the pile of information is more critical than ever. The old ways of interacting with data are costly, keep information in the hands of the few, and prevent consistently data-driven decisions. BI tools offer a path forward to tackling the data issues presented to parking and mobility organizations. Using them has been key to creating a data-driven culture at UCLA Commuter and Parking Services, resulting in automated processes, expanded use of data to make decisions, information in the hands of those closest to the work, and ultimately a more efficient operation. ◆
CHRIS LECHNER, CAPP, is assistant director for data and strategy with UCLA Commuter and Parking Services. He can be reached at clechner@ts.ucla.edu.
EXPERIENCE, RELIABILITY, COST EFFECTIVENESS
MeyparUSA, innovative Parking Access and Revenue Control Systems manufacturer. We provide complete solutions tailored to your needs, with local support and complete service in the US. Every kind of parking facility imaginable, office buildings, hospitals, airports, mixeduse buildings, and high-volume lots. Everything in one place, we manufacture all of our hardware, and design and implement all of our software and firmware, including our on-cloud solution, Nexus. We seek to streamline and optimize control of your parking facility, its management, productivity, and security. Our differentiation and competitive advantages enable you to improve the level of service, while exploring new business opportunities.
Ask about our new touchless solutions.
MEYPAR USA Corp. 21755 I45, Building 11, Suite D · 77388 Spring, Texas Tel.: +1 346-220-4619 (Sales) www. meypar-usa.com · info@meypar-usa.com *Dealer territories available, call to inquire!
