When Jerry Vogl from Cogent Analytics ask me to write a Letter of Recommendation, I thought that would be the least I could do for him.
We brought Cogent in to do a complete analysis of the company. That process alone was very informative. We had our finances in check, however our efficiency rate had been decreasing. We hired Cogent to help with the morale of our employees, improve our incentive plan and help our leaders understand how to manage the employees working under them. We were skeptical at first on how someone would be able to coach someone to change after doing something for so long. Jerry reduced that skepticism.
As we began to grow, our leadership on the jobs changed and we were going about it the wrong way. Our leaders were not leading anymore. The employees under the leaders were doing what they thought was the correct way and were not obeying the leaders. Jerry came in and immediately started to develop an incentive program that the leaders could use as a tool to do their job. Of course there was a fair amount of resistance because no one likes change and everyone was being held accountable (From the top right on down to the bottom). As the weeks went on, the buy in by the team was starting to take place. Confidence grew in the team as Jerry coached the leaders. Jerry had a tremendous way of bringing the best out of everyone. With Jerry’s persistence and our team accepting the change, we are on our way back to running jobs the way they should be ran. With Leaders managing the jobs and the workers doing the work instead of the workers trying to manage the jobs and the leaders working on the job.
We realize that we have a long way to go yet, for this process to be instilled as the norm, but we feel we are on the right track. Now it is up to us to make sure that everyone continues to stay the course and continue to improve.
I would recommend Cogent to anyone that wants to improve their business and increase profit.
From the Entire Staff at Side x Side Construction, “Thank You” Cogent and especially Jerry.
Don Schneider
Brian Koehler
