Life Lessons

One of the greatest joy's in life is teaching your child lessons about life. I've been blessed to see his little eyes sparkle as he discovered art. I taught him to swing a bat. Catch a short pass. Make a basket. Last week I had to teach him how to mourn.

With the passing of his dear grandmother, Karen Suanne Pack, my little boy had to learn what it was like to loose someone very dear to his heart. She died in a fatal auto accident last Monday night and we spent the week working through the grieving process.

My prayer for all of you is that you cherish the moments you have with love ones, realizing that at any time God can call them home.

Life Lessons

One of the greatest joy's in life is teaching your child lessons about life. I've been blessed to see his little eyes sparkle as he discovered art. I taught him to swing a bat. Catch a short pass. Make a basket. Last week I had to teach him how to mourn.

With the passing of his dear grandmother, Karen Suanne Pack, my little boy had to learn what it was like to loose someone very dear to his heart. She died in a fatal auto accident last Monday night and we spent the week working through the grieving process.

My prayer for all of you is that you cherish the moments you have with love ones, realizing that at any time God can call them home.

Words

I sometimes think we fail to recognize the power of words. Words flow freely from our lips. Words splash across the pages of memos, emails, and training documents. Words are everywhere, but I think, sometimes we take a line of sequenced letters for granted.

Yesterday, someone told me they are sometimes confused with our document management "language." This someone is a very intelligent and well-respected member of our team. She told me when she goes to conferences or speaks with the "experts" big words float indiscriminately without regard to the listeners understanding. I've noticed a lot of this word arrogance lately. It seems like the more technical knowledge we gain the more temptation we have to use words as way of propping up our confidence. Other times, we innocently speak a speical language forgetting the speed of knowledge absorption often lags behind.

Twenty years ago our pool of words were stationary in time. New words entered the vernacular slowly, and we had time to learn their meaning. Today, words pour into conversations from every direction. It's hard for even the most intelligent to keep up.

Words may show a man's wit, but actions his meaning. [Benjamin Franklin]

Sixth grade is where my love for words began. My admiration coincided with a failing grade on a vocabulary test. My father helped me find this love during a parental tirade that included some R-rated words shared at high volumes. Since then, I've paid special attention to words. Unfortunately, just when I think I've attained a new level of word mastery; a new word enters my world. Some new arrivals include Spiff, Sudoku, Ghostriding, Grey Literature, or my favorite new word iPhone.

The power of words can move our industry or bog us down in mire of complexity. For those of us on the edge of technology, it is important that build an awareness for the words we push into conversations. Words can create vision, clarity, and focus or words can lead us down a path of confusion, ambiguity, and irrelevance.

Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
[Unknown]

To vs With

I'm currently working on a leadership program for our company and was researching the topic when I found a great article from the Dallas Morning News on The Container Store. The story explores how the company is wrapped around selling "time and efficiency." Their CEO explains that in order to succeed they must also have employees that are experts in "time and efficiency." Two traits that are very rare to find.

Leadership is not something that you do to someone, but with someone. —Melissa Reiff

Their strategy? Hire the best, provide them training, and communicate through servant leadership. Everyone says that right? Sounds like they take it a bit more serious than their competitors. They only hire 6% of applicants. They invest 241 hours of training in the first year in comparison to eight for the rest of their industry. They train their leaders the importance of training and open communication-very open. Why?

With all the knockoffs and discounters, the only way for The Container Store to thrive was by have service so far beyond the competition that customers would either never want to leave, or always come back. That's a lot of happy closets.

The hole problem

People don't want a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.
Theodore Levitt, Harvard Professor

Too often we sell the benefits of the product, forgeting the reason the customer actually wants the product. Sometimes we need to shut up and listen for the pain. Ease the pain and you sell the product. WIN/WIN

The Open Business Model

In 2000, Proctor & Gamble had to make a choice. For a century they had the most powerful Research and Development department in product history. Everything was developed internally. But during the late 90's they started to loose money and had to do something to turnaround the company. New CEO A.G. Lafley decided to look for new ideas from external sources.

In Henry W. Chesbrough's book Open Business Models, he describes how successful inward-looking companies must look outside themselves in order to maintain innovation in the new marketplace. The term is the “open source” business model, or the "open" business model. At first, this seems like an expensive venture— hiring consultants, vendors, outside companies. At times true, but for most companies it can merely involve including an intertwining of customer, marketplace observation, and frontline employee feedback in your development. (I mention frontline employee, because often they are "closed" from your normal business planning.)

They key is listening and learning how to disseminate the information into relevant information. In future blogs, we'll look at some methods to work in an open source marketplace.

Greener grass and your most valuable asset

I know it's a cliche we've heard for years, but a look into the future reminds us the importance of retaining great employees. The U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that "our economy will create 10 million more workers in 2010 our labor force can provide." That's a lot of green grass on the other side! Basically, if you have superior skills you should be able to keep a very good job. This will create a competitive marketplace for the best employees to work in our companies.

As technology and customer relationships become more complex, the need for a top quality employee is even more critical. From my personal experience I find that an "A" employee provides me 120-200% more value than an average "C" employee.

"How many assets do you have in your business that will be more valuable in 10 years? 20 years?

Often, we only think of "skilled" employees as doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, and other highly educated "professionals." From my travels around the country, I can see that an exceptional CAD operator or Customer Service person is just as important to a reprographics company as a scientist is to a pharmaceutical company. I believe our I.T. employees will be especially important to protect since their opportunities in other industries will be endless. (Just make sure you find the right one!)

Employee turnover will become far more hazardous to your company in the near future as the labor crunch intensifies. The best employees will have 10 million more shades of greener grass to admire.