Capability or Capacity?

Thank you for reading and for your ongoing support, ladies, and gentlemen! As a result, I've also extended to YouTube! In addition to these articles, starting next Tuesday, I'll be going live every Tuesday with more insights, perspectives, and practical ways to help you repair your relationship with operators and begin transforming your culture.

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To subscribe to that channel, click here, and to receive an email or text message reminder,?simply fill out this form. I guarantee I'll never try to sell you anything; it's just a method for us to stay connected as we move beyond blogging and into workshops, seminars, and other forms of media.

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Things are rapidly changing, and I don't want you to be left out! I’m excited to share we are relaunching the?Gosupir.com?platform tomorrow! In addition to simply being a place to connect with bus operators, it's also a place to drop off assignments. Any leftover runs or assignments you have post pick, you can simply “drop them off” in our post-run section. We then work internally and externally through media and advertising to connect operators to that run!?

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One of the most pressing modern-day difficulties facing our sector and its infrastructure, in my opinion, is the lack of transparency between drivers and organizations.?I do not believe that it is one particular party's fault but rather a circumstantial result of decades of not adjusting our industry to fit the needs of the people we want to work here. The world changed while we left our bus in “park”.?Jim Rohn says that failure is not a single event, instead, it is a few errors repeated every day

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The world’s moving and we’re running behind schedule. See what I did there? lol, My vision for the future is an industry centered on relationships and influence rather than authority and micromanagement, and the new Gosupir.com is the first domino in a growing list that I hope will accomplish that.

When I think about changes, and learning to look at things differently, it always brings me back to this story about a gentleman who used to be a master gardener. At a certain point in time, his garden was one of the best around, it had many fruitful plants. He also had much more productive crops than other gardeners.

However, his planters began to crack and dirt began to flow out. Something happened. He had never really had this problem before, as he would often say to himself, I’ve been doing this for 30+ years and have never had pots constantly crack and wear down like this. He was baffled as to why this was happening. He was using the most up-to-date water, the most up-to-date seed even bought a brand new light to warm his plants better.

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He would try everything to fix the planters so he could once grow plants the way they use to when he had more success.?All the while, plants aren't growing for him, and he's losing money. Ouch!?Even after spending thousands on various consultants and advisors, no results were achieved. He even hired various third-party contractors to run his garden for him.

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?Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do to stop his containers from breaking, no matter how many times he tried. No matter how hard he tried, his pots would keep on cracking and leaking even more dirt. In no time, his garden was in ruins, and some planters had even broken to oblivion. The garden he has once known was now a shell of itself. The same garden that use to help many people across the nation, is now barely recognizable.

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?In this process, he got a really bad reputation, so customers had stopped believing in his product because it wasn't the plants they were used to. These plants appeared to be wilting and dejected as if they were sad.?They didn't look cared for, they didn't look nurtured. He simply couldn't understand why this was happening. He didn't change anything in his routine, or processes. For the most part, he had kept things the same for the better part of three decades with no problems at all.

?All of this because of a planter? Not the plant, but the pot? *Allen Iverson practice voice*

Then he remembered that he had switched to a different type of seed. It was the only one the store had in stock at the time. However, he was promised the same plant, despite the fact that the seed was constructed a little differently.

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After discovering this, he storms into his local department store and screams at a clerk!! You told me this seed would help me grow my plants, but since I’ve been using them I’ve been having nothing but problems. Finally, he demanded that the clerk give him the seed that he had previously used.

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The clerk replied Sir, we no longer carry those seeds.?

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He then inquired as to why this specific variety of seed was no longer available.

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With grace and sophistication, the sales rep shared that. With the enhancements and evolutions of today's society, the manufacturer saw fit to modify the formula to construct a seed that would function better in today’s climate vs the climate of the past.

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The clerk would go on to explain that, just because the outcome is the same, doesn't mean the inner workings are. The final product may look the same, however, that does not mean that the formula to create said product–is.?

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In my friend's focus on his plants, he overlooked what may have been impacting the root. While plants and even flowers are visible on the outside, true magic happens on the inside of the pot. What we can't see, has the most impact on what we do see.

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When the ingredients of the seed changed by way of the manufacture, my friend would now need a pot that could accommodate?these seeds.?Not seeds in general, but?these seeds.

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He'd have to do the one thing he never imagined he'd have to do to preserve his garden: replace his planter. Wisdom would lead me to presume he would eventually understand. It was never about the seeds themself, but rather the environment in which they grew. The planter was just the vehicle.

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In an industry that's built on various vehicles, we should grow to understand that just because one vessel can get us here, doesn't mean it will get us there.?Sometimes you have to switch vehicles to get to the destination.?Planners like to call this a transfer.

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Collectively we need to move to a future in which we create an environment that can grow the people that are behind the wheel, not just when they are behind the wheel.?

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Whenever I hear this story, it reminds me of where we are as an industry. Still trying to grow new plants, with old principles, old foundations, old ways of thinking, and old pots.

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?In the Bible, Matthew 9:17 Jesus himself talks about this! How cool is that! In a conversation with John’s disciples, Jesus says that “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the old skins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine is stored in new wineskins so that both are preserved.”(NLT)

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This is what the gardener was experiencing. Money didn't solve his issue, nor did his attempts to go back to old “wineskins”.

Sometimes in life, God wants to pour in new things, new ideas, new visions, new techniques, and new realities, but we do not have the?capacity?because we’re so consumed with the way of old. Which ultimately takes up to much space, so what ends up happening is whenever God tries to pour in something new,?the wineskin will burst. Destroying the wineskin and wasting the wine. I believe that the moral of this parable was to illustrate that if 2 parties cannot work together, both will ultimately lose.

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If life has proven anything to me, it is that where you are, is not where you are supposed to stay. I’ve come to discover that the way we overcome the driver shortage is simply by thinking about transportation differently. Romans 12:2 puts it like this, be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

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Here’s another way to look at it, when you look at things a bit different, things look a bit different.

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I do believe that better days are ahead in the world of driver shortages and staffing, however, it will come when drivers and providers learn to finally work together, rather than putting our own agendas first. This includes everyone from the politicians to the unions, even myself as I had been guilty of it as well. Being trained to view the job through my own personal gains, as opposed to what the job actually is–an opportunity to utilize my skill, to make someone else life easier.