Wheel guns, oil stains, and a whiteboard

As I stepped into my local garage this morning, something had changed.

It still smells like oil and the radio is trying to drown out the rattling wheel guns.

But as he mentioned on my last visit, the former owner had given his son the keys to the shop. This kid in his mid-twenties was now in charge of the family empire, and the 5 mechanics they employed.

So far, I’ve only spotted two things the changed.

The first one is obvious: a new name on the wall. But the second one? Only a PM geek would notice.

There’s a whiteboard on the wall between his desk and the coffee machine. Fortunately, he was helping someone else which gave me a few minutes to study his new system.

You see, this whiteboard was a textbook kanban board. If you’re too new-school for that, think of it as your grandpa’s offline Trello board.

On the left, he had a column with “backlog”.

In the column were about a dozen magnetic cards with license plate numbers. Then there were 5 boxes, named after the 5 mechanics.

Each mechanic had two license plates assigned to him. The top one was “in progress”, followed by the expected time they’d complete that car. The second one was the next car to work on.

And on the right?

You guessed it. “Done.” A stack of license plates of finished jobs.

The goal for each day?

Move all cards from left to right. That’s all there’s to it.

As I stood there waiting, one of the mechanics came in. He ripped off his “in progress” card and put it in the “Done” column. He put the car key and documents in the green box, moved his “up next” card to in progress, grabbed the keys, and was off.

It took all of 10 seconds.

No “hey boss, which one shall I…?”.

Most customers wouldn’t notice, but I could watch a well-oiled machine like this all day.

Once finished with the previous customer, the owner noticed I was looking at the board and asked what I thought about it.

“This would make mister Toyota proud,” I said.

You should have seen his smile…

He explained that while his dad ran the shop, it was chaos. (Trust me, I noticed). He had worked in a large dealership as an apprentice mechanic, and they had a similar system - albeit digital.

He joked that this was taking the shop from the 50’s to the 90’s, and that a digital version would be too big of a shock. “But who knows what I have on that wall when you come for your next service!”.

He grabbed my car key, wrote my license plate number on a fresh magnetic card, and pointed at the board.

“You can guess what happens next, right?”

As I walked out with a smile, I’ve been thinking about this guy all morning.

I’m sure this shop is in great hands. Second, I’m almost excited for something to break on my car, just to see his progress.

And finally, imagine the value of that one idea.

I have no idea how much higher their productivity is, but I’ll bet he earned that whiteboard back on the first day.

Imagine implementing something like that in one of your projects for a second… It’s not that sexy new PM tool. That’s a shiny object, distracting you from the real problem.

It starts with process and people, and you support that with tools. The simpler, the better.

This is a perfect example of that.

He showed me that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel or jump on the latest AI fad. All it takes for your project to go from good to great and get the recognition you deserve is one proven idea you can apply.

Which is where I can help.

I’ve tried every single PM trick under the sun, and made every possible mistake on your behalf. I’ve bundled all the best ideas I’ve found in an easy-to-consume course chock full of templates and real-world examples, that you can go through in a single evening.

On Thursday, I’m opening the doors for 100 new project managers looking for my project leadership playbook and finding their equivalent idea of the whiteboard.

First come, first serve.

If you’d like to know more and be the first one to know when the doors open, put yourself on the waitlist with a single click.

Talk soon,
Jasper