Mark Hendricks 19:57
Well, the new job actually doesn’t start until the 10th, but I can give you a little bit of what I expect when I go in there. Since it is a care facility, the responsibilities, the responsibilities change a little bit, obviously, we, in facilities, you want to give a safe, pleasant environment for everyone to come in and operate in. But I think in a care facility that even goes a little further, because we’re talking about the elderly, who need a little bit of a little bit more special care. So I can see that being a little different than than the Google environment. Because I think they’re going to, it’s going to require a little bit more hands on interaction with with the actual clients or residents in this case demo that we had at Google, I think more of it will be directed towards that, rather than just hitting the machine and making machine work, it’s going to be, well, this time, some people let’s make sure they’re comfortable, that’s have more interaction with them. That’s one thing I see. And again, it’s a much smaller facility. So I think it will be a little bit easier to manage than what I’m used to. So,
Greg Owens 21:10
hey, yeah, I think, um, because we’ve, we’ve done some, quite a bit of painting for healthcare facilities, we haven’t done any this year at all. And I think, you know, I think they’re keeping these kinds of trades away, and like postponing for sure, and that makes sense. Um, but what I, what I’ve also noticed is that it’s a, there’s a lot more emotions involved, because it’s residents and people’s homes, and they’re, you know, they’re there 24, seven, and a lot of ways and so they, you know, there’s definitely a lot more emotions around it. Although, I mean, at Google, there could be their 20 472, but for different reasons.
Mark Hendricks 21:48
Yeah, and, you know, I, I see, not only with the residents, because there’s going to be emotion involved, but also the the families that have their parents, or uncles, or aunts, or whoever it may be in that facility, they need to be 100% confident and what we’re doing on the facility side as well. So I can see more interaction than maybe I’m used to, you know, yeah, used to having my team that I need to direct and manage now, it’s going to be a little different because it’s the residence.
Greg Owens 22:21
Right. I just, I drove by a place in San Francisco the other day, and, and I could see that families were sitting outside the glass like Windows, right and interacting with their, their grandmother and or somebody, you know, on the other side, I was like, Oh, my gosh, that’s so
Mark Hendricks 22:42
interesting. And my parents are, are in their 80s. And they’re, they’re practicing social distancing with me. I don’t know if it’s my personality or what but but it’s a different world out there. You know, and being younger, I’m not as concerned for my own health. But being eight years old, I think you have a different perspective on things. And so,
Greg Owens 23:04
yeah, yeah. Although Katrina here just got married, and my mom came out for that wedding. And Katrina, his grandmother, and I was surprised to see that she was like, like, you know, as the wine came out, she dropped down her defenses that
Katrina Stevenson 23:25
she was foreign and they got closer.
Mark Hendricks 23:30
And then that’s how we want it to be right.
Greg Owens 23:34
Right. And and and now it’s like, more than like, three weeks later, or 20 days late after and everybody’s good. So it’s fine.
Mark Hendricks 23:44
No harm actually had a full full on wedding and everything. That’s awesome.
Katrina Stevenson 23:48
Yeah, yeah. masks and all we are very face shields. sanitizer. Yeah, we, we we had we had someone tech check everyone’s temperature upon arrival. I tried to be as covid safe as possible. And it knock on wood paid off, I guess.
Mark Hendricks 24:08
So far, so good.
Katrina Stevenson 24:10
Everyone’s great. rooms. Good. Everyone’s good
Mark Hendricks 24:14
thing. And congratulations, by the way. Thank you.
Katrina Stevenson 24:17
Thank you. It’s so so surreal.
Greg Owens 24:19
And it’s like completely scaled down to from what it was going to be in the springtime. Right. And, and I’m sure that’s like, that’s, that’s that’s happened to just a tremendous amount of kinds of, it’s just mind boggling how many businesses This is affected and how many lives this is affected, right? And so many different ways. What do you see going forward, like, like, you know, we’re going into winter now here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it’s getting colder and people are like going inside any sort of predictions on like people going back to the offices and that kind of thing. What have you What have you been seeing?
Mark Hendricks 24:57
Well, I know because I show up before Friends that worked out on the Google campus? I don’t think they’re going and I’m not 100% sure, but I think I heard sometime in June of 2021. Obviously, not all businesses can can work from home. But I think that the preponderance of the businesses where their employees can work from home, they’re gonna keep them at home. Right? I know that I know, some regional managers who are working from home, they’re not even going in the office, obviously, they need to start taking trips to visit the different regions that they’re responsible for. And that’s I’m seeing that start to have a little bit more of the people are so very hesitant to travel on the hesitant to go into the office. I think that my former employer Kitchell, I think they just went back recently. So and again, they’re doing a social distancing, they’re wearing their masks are doing all the things that everyone is, everyone else is doing it, they’ve been asked to do. No one wants to risk anything. They don’t, you know, and I get that. So they’re, they’re being very, very cautious about their approach.
Greg Owens 26:05
Yeah, even we just had our first as a painting company, we just had our first in person sort of management meeting, you know, outside of Pete’s coffee and social distance with mass on but it was a good feel, right. Like it was it was good to have be able to come together a little bit. And, and zoom zooms been wonderful. But it’s also it’s got its limitations there too, in some ways.
Mark Hendricks 26:29
And I’ve been interviewing with zoom, so it’s,
Katrina Stevenson 26:33
Oh, man.
Mark Hendricks 26:34
So this is this is working out perfect. Even there’s something though, about being in the room being present, it’s it. You can read people a little bit better. Personally versus obviously so.
Greg Owens 26:51
Right. Right, right. Yeah, we only get you only get the body language from the head and shoulders area, right? It’s hard to get the rest of it into the picture there.
Mark Hendricks 27:02
They really even dress.
Greg Owens 27:05
Right? Yeah, um, any any tools or things that you find invaluable in your job like that you like to highlight?
Mark Hendricks 27:19
Yeah, I’m a big believer in procedures, hmm. If you don’t have the proper procedure, to do something that it’s gonna end up getting, getting screwed up, you may be able to, to get it fixed for momentarily, but you need a procedure need to follow the procedure, primarily, just to stay safe, safety’s got to be job one, and then everything else is after that. So I’m a big believer in procedures. I’ve spent a lot of time creating procedures and reviewing procedures. And my time, I hate to keep referring back to the time at Google. But that’s where most of my experiences but with my team at Google day, he’s one of them understood what they were supposed to be doing in any given situation. And we had a hardcopy as well as an electronic copy. And if that didn’t suffice, my phone was on 24. Seven, for them to call me. And so we follow procedure, we made sure that things were done. I think that’s the number one tool is having the procedures and having the training and retraining, because you forget things and you just kind of go by rote. So I think training and procedures are to the most important things as far as creating a team and making sure everyone’s on the same page. Right? I’m not sure if that was what you were looking for with the answer. If you’re looking for a specific mechanical tool,
Greg Owens 28:40
know, anything that like things that are helpful out there. And I agree, like we’re always working on what what what, you know, okay, something broke down here. And what’s, what’s the procedure that we need to fix? So it doesn’t happen again, right? That’s such a great philosophy. Where did you Where did you pick that up? Is that from their time in construction or your time at Google more?
Or?
Mark Hendricks 29:04
I’ve always kind of been that way. When I was in construction, it was what is what is the best quickest way to get something done? Especially I worked a lot of peace work. You get paid for the work you do, right. And so I’ve always been was that? Oh, what is?
Katrina Stevenson 29:24
What is peace work?
Mark Hendricks 29:25
Peace work is, for example, you will be hanging sheetrock in an apartment building or an apartment and somebody along the line says, okay, that’ll take you 12 hours. So if it takes you 13 hours, you get paid 12 if it takes you 11 hours, then you then you made money, right?
Katrina Stevenson 29:43
I see.
Mark Hendricks 29:44
You get paid for what they say it’s worth, regardless of how long it took you. So I’ve always kind of been that way as far as looking at looking at a situation and maybe finding a better way to do it. But on the Google campus, I saw that it was needed. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the Google side. This is my team didn’t have a set booking procedures. Everyone kind of knew what was supposed to happen. But it was all disjointed. Oh, yeah, he knows how to do that, oh, we’ll go get them because we need them. Right. And so. So that’s, that’s when I really started to write down procedures and make sure everyone was on board with them.
Greg Owens 30:27
Well, and you started this off by saying that when you started working there, they said, create the role right away. So they gave you that sort of that autonomy? That’s sort of like, okay, what’s what, how can you make this more efficient and effective and better?
Mark Hendricks 30:42
And, and that’s what Google’s always looking for. The next big thing, how can we improve? So yeah,
Greg Owens 30:51
the new and the new iterations constant constant,
Mark Hendricks 30:55
I can’t think of a better place to break in. As far as facilities goes, because it was a huge learning experience. Right? I was very fortunate
Greg Owens 31:06
and standout moments that really like like emergencies, or things like that. So with that many square feet must have been something that really comes up.
Mark Hendricks 31:16
Yeah, I can’t go into a whole lot of detail. But and I’m gonna probably get some of the information a little bit messed up because it was, within a couple of months after I took over the role as manager, the team, there was a fire in one of the buildings it was on, it was on the third floor. And the fire system dumped probably 20,000 30,000 gallons of water. So all that water went all the way down. This happened on a Friday night about 11pm. I went out there responded with the rest of my team, once we were cleared to go into the building 11pm, Friday, all that water in that building. Monday morning, there were only two displaced Googlers we had everything we had everything done, except for one small section that still needed to update by the by that Wednesday was 100% done like it has never happened. That’s what we did. It was it was incredible to see it was incredible to watch. And I walked out of the building with at the time, he’s no longer there, but the director of Google operations. And I looked at him and I said, I cannot believe we got this all done like that. And he looked me square in the eye. And he said, That’s to be expected. And then we had then we had a lessons learned meeting. And we found ways where we couldn’t even improved on that. So that was a standout moment, not only the fact that we responded so well, but the fact that let’s see how we can improve that. And so
Greg Owens 32:56
sort of at the briefing, you did a debriefing of that event to see like, hey, if something like this happens in the future, how do we make this even more effective and efficient going forward?
Mark Hendricks 33:06
Yeah, absolutely. There’s always room for improvement. And I think I’m getting back to what I said about being very fortunate to have worked there for so long. That’s something you learn here. You just, you meant to learn that somewhere else. You just figured, wow, we did a great job and move on. Yeah, you did a great job. But here’s some areas where we could have improved. Right, right. And it’s not criticism. It’s just improving.
Greg Owens 33:31
Yeah, no. And then so speaking, speaking of improvement, like,
what,
what what do you say to people like coming into becoming a facilities manager and how to be to be like, skills that you think they need to acquire? Or? I know, you said, You got your master’s degree in facilities on what,
Mark Hendricks 33:53
actually my master’s is in US history. Because whenever when I was teaching, I was teaching economics, history, and early civilizations. So it doesn’t really doesn’t really translate into facilities except for the fact that I had all those students who I needed to manage and teach.
Greg Owens 34:16
Yeah, well, and you know, if you don’t learn if you don’t learn history, it’s gonna repeat itself. Right. And there’s a lot of a lot of buildings that don’t exist anymore.
Mark Hendricks 34:26
Absolutely true. But getting back to the original question, I’m sorry. If you can repeat it.
Greg Owens 34:32
Yeah, just things that you like, how to improve as a facilities manager or like to new people that are coming into it. What What should they be looking at? What kind of skills Derrick should acquire because like, you know, back in the old days, a long time ago, you actually needed to have more hands on knowledge. And these days, that’s not necessarily true. Right. And so what what do you see that people like me out there
Mark Hendricks 35:00
First of all, if I were to do it over again, I would have spent more time as far as the construction industry and more time on h fac, and electrical. Um, I wish I had more knowledge of that. I’m fortunate that I’ve worked with some really good people who are who were able to communicate with me and teach me. So that didn’t sound like a complete goal. When I was telling people, I wanted to know what was going on. That being said, You don’t necessarily need to be the subject matter experts. But you need to hire subject matter experts, as a facility manager, you need to have complete confidence in the people that are that you’re in trusting to do their job. And that doesn’t mean everyone always does the right thing all the time. But that’s when you step in as a manager and make sure it gets corrected. You need to trust your team need to train your team. And you need to have an open mind. You cannot go in there thinking you know everything. It’ll bite you every time I think the more adamant I’ve been about something, the more wrong I get. So you need to have an open mind. And it doesn’t help to have some really good people working with you. So
Greg Owens 36:08
I believe that
Mark Hendricks 36:10
I think I got that backwards. It doesn’t hurt to have some really good people working for you. So but yeah,
Greg Owens 36:16
no, I think I think that’s true on my on my end, like the more I’ve learned about our industry painting, being a painting contractor, being a general contractor, that kind of thing, the more like, there’s, there’s just so much more to learn. Right. And and it’s always evolving. It’s always changing, you know, and we’ve got to sort of keep evolving and changing with those things.
Mark Hendricks 36:37
Exactly. Exactly. You got to be fluid,
Greg Owens 36:40
right? No, that’s great. Well, this has been wonderful to talk with you and to get get to know you a little bit better and look forward to hearing more stories about your new your new position and that kind of thing going forward.
Mark Hendricks 36:57
So I’m looking forward to it. Yeah. Right.
Greg Owens 37:03
If people wanted to find out more about you, what’s the best place that they can contact you at? or LinkedIn or anything like that?
Mark Hendricks 37:12
I’m online. I have linked down and I don’t know about my email going out. Um, I get a lot of emails, but
Greg Owens 37:20
no, LinkedIn is good. I think that’s like a safe like intermediary step.
Mark Hendricks 37:26
Thank you. Yeah, yeah, LinkedIn, I’m on LinkedIn.
Greg Owens 37:30
All right. Thank you for taking the time with Mark Hendricks they
Mark Hendricks 37:33
should give me the opportunity
Greg Owens 37:36
to shine. All right, and this is the Watching Paint Dry podcast. Thank you.
Outro 37:51
Thanks for listening to the Watching Paint Dry podcast. We’ll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.