Creatives

In the last few weeks I have been amazed at the creative powers of many of our friends, as well as people across the entire world.  Now, I'm not really talking about people who make the really big discoveries, like curing polio, or cancer, whenever that happens.  Those people and their discoveries are phenomenal in their own right, no question, but I am talking about the creative people who are around us every single day.  The woodworker, the welder, the writer, the photographer -  these and so many others take normal situations and change them or see the incredible in them.  If you want to know what this looks like, take a look at Pinterest or a website like Wood Whisperer.  People are doing some amazing things.

This is one of the things I love the most about what I get to do each day for a living.  I live in a state where people figure out how to do things with a more "hands on" approach than other places.  We have our share of engineers, designers, and draftsmen, but I am continually amazed at how many times I visit a customer and they are upgrading a product in the shop.  This isn't necessarily through computer assisted design (which we do use) but through the tried and tested method of fitting something and then seeing if it works.  One of my favorite examples of this was during a visit to GE Commercial Credit a few years ago.  They had a machine that they lovingly called "The Rubber Band Machine."  This piece of equipment sliced all of the edges off an envelope, discard the envelope itself and orient the contents of the letter in an exact pattern.  Pretty amazing, right?  Well, the amazing part was that when the people there were talking about the machine, they admitted it had been created because someone wanted a machine to cut the end off an envelope.  The rest developed over time and with ingenuity as they continued to say, "Well, if it can do that, can it ..."?  What they ended up with was a machine that could do everything.

As I said above, I get to meet these people every day, and with almost no exceptions, they are the most down-to-earth, grounded folks I have ever known.  I remember meeting a man who developed a filtering system that would separate nearly anything, and the reason he had done it was because everyone told him there was nothing on the market that could do this.  He needed to accomplish this task, so he went after it and in the end had a system others couldn't believe worked.  Earlier this week, I had the chance to go to Iowa State and listen to some young creatives talking about their passion and what they were going to do with it.  Their plans were bold and audacious and I believe many of them will accomplish these plans.  In the middle of this comes the challenge that I have to take to heart, and if you are in my age group, you may want to listen as well.

I have reached an age where I have come to believe that I know what will work and what won't.  This is based upon years of trial and error and watching others succeed and fail.  And, I have a strong enough belief in myself that I really think that I know.  Yet really, in this time in which we are living - with all of the creative people and resources around us, there is no limit other than that which we set for ourselves.  I know this intellectually, however knowing this in my gut is sometimes completely different.  This is the challenge.  I have to stop myself from being the one who crushes new ideas and potential by telling some of these younger people that what they are trying to do will not succeed.  In the presentations I saw earlier this week, there are a couple of ideas that I don't think stand a chance of surviving, but there was a time when I probably would not have believed broadband Internet would exist in most homes or that you could carry computers around in your hand.  I am still a child of a time when a computer filled an entire room and was so hot that you could not be in that same room.  That wasn't so very long ago, either.

So my challenge, and I would invite you to join me if you can, is to support new ideas when we see them.  In meetings I will not be the one who says, "That won't work."  I will be the one who encourages new approaches and suggests that we should take a look.  Often times, if an idea is given some room and time to bloom, it will do just that.  There are so many people right now with fantastic and creative ideas that just need a chance to get going.  Let's do what we can to help these folks along.  Who knows, one of them may help to solve world hunger or global warming.

Everybody keep after it.  We need the new ideas and the willingness to chase them.

Digital Hermit

With all of the press about the NSA listening to all of our conversations or reading all of our emails, it struck me earlier this week that it might be really easy to proclaim that you were going to be a "digital hermit," living off the grid.  This would be reminiscent of the movie "Enemy of the State." The main character had in fact, learned to live in a manner in which he left absolutely no electronic footprint.  At the same time I was thinking about this, I ran into an article about an area in West Virginia, Virginia, and a piece of Maryland called the "United States National Radio Quiet Zone."  This is an area of the US, that due to the work at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory has been declared as an area with no high power transmitters and makes such things as cell phones and wi-fi connectivity a thing of another world.  You can still find a phone booth here since this technology is ultra-modern for its residents.  So, this area would be much closer to the idea of being off the grid than anything we know today.  Maybe the answer is to move to that part of the US.

But hang on.  Wait just a minute.  This would mean that I wouldn't be able to have multiple computers in my home all networked with Wi-fi.  It would mean that I couldn't have a smart phone, or even moving back a generation or two, a cell phone of any kind.  No on-line banking, no texting, no instant messaging, no cars with spark plugs.  Okay, this is just more than I can think about.  On top of that, my generation is only somewhat connected whereas I am sure that if I talked to my children about this concept, they would just quit breathing.  These are all things we have come to take for granted and thinking about going backward is probably not something most of us want to do.  I know it isn't really something that I want to do.  I don't need to hear again the sound of AOL booting up to send a message over a network that is tens of times slower than the phone I carry today.

I have a tendency to long for the simplicity of the past until I stop to think about all of the convenience that comes with the way that our world is today.  I think about the times as a child when I could lay on a hillside and watch clouds go by, enjoying the time for hours. I remember that in my hometown I could be gone all day long and nobody would think about it.  Would I like to have these things back to be part of my life, or my kid's lives today?  Absolutely, but, like so many things, there is a trade-off.  As I watched Andrew and Megan grow up, it amazed me at the size of their world compared to the one I grew up in.  They had friends from all over the world and had lived in six places before they reached high school.  Where I had not flown anywhere until I was in college, my children had flown enough that Megan could tell me that she liked the First Class seats because they were more comfortable.  They had been to Disney World twice. My first trip was with them on their first time.  All sorts of differences that came with time.

I guess that where I am right now is that I value all of the wonderful things of the past, and I also love the things that are in the here and now.  I have wonderful memories of times and of friends that I had the privilege of knowing from before we started to school until after we graduated.  But at the same time, when I left for college, even though I was going to a small university, I was headed to a place that had more people than the community I had grown up in.  Long and short of it, there are pluses and minuses to everything.  I know that my children are more worldly at their age than I was then and I know that they have drug me along the road of "modern," sometimes screaming and kicking.  I must say that I appreciate the help.

Oh, a few last things worth remembering: the snow was always much deeper, and it was a 10 mile walk uphill to school when I was a child and I am sure that this was real and not just the way that I remember it. 

Well, off I go to wrap gifts with Rotary so some kids will have a better holiday.

Have a great week.

Launched

As many of you know, I love the author, Seth Godin.  His words have helped me think through a lot of different situations over the years and given me moments to really stop and think about what I was doing.  I believe he has helped me to be a better leader in my professional life and now, I think that he may be one of the factors that is helping me to move forward in my personal life.  

One thing Seth talks about time and time again is that you have to "ship."  This means that you have to gather your courage and take whatever it is that you have done and put it out there for the world to see.  Honestly, it has been the encouragement of some of you, and the idea of shipping that got me to write this blog in the first place.  I had thought about it sometimes, even taken a crack or two at writing something, but I had never found the courage to put what I had done out there for the world to see, and honestly, to critique.  And then, on April 7, 2011, I was able to find the courage to actually publish the first of these blogs.  If you go back and look at what I thought this would be early on, we have traveled a great distance from that, but I am still putting myself out there, and you are still reading what I have to write.  Thanks so much for that.

 

Well, again with encouragement from all of you, I am jumping to a completely new level.  I have opened an Etsy store to let people know what is available from Jim's Toybox Woodworking.  So, to use Seth's verbage, I have shipped.  I have told you that I have actually produced something and I am holding it out for public scrutiny.  Just writing the sentence causes me to be just a little queasy.  

In the middle of all of this, I keep thinking about the television commercial talking about big changes later in life.  Well, this is certainly one for me.  I ask that you support me in this venture and if you know of anyone who might be interested in the work that I do at the Toybox, let them know about all of this.  Along the same lines, if you need, or know someone who needs something built to their specifications, remember that I am out here working on the weekends and in the evenings - making sawdust and beautiful finished products.  

Ditch Digger

Sometimes we have a tendency to forget the things that we were programmed with as kids, and then along comes something that smacks us right in the face.  This was the case this week with a note I found while going through some other things.  Some of you may recognize the handwriting, some may not, but this was my mom's penmanship. She wrote this little note about career and kept this on the wall behind her desk. I suspect this gave her something to think about during those times her career wasn't all she wanted it to be.  I read this and then I remembered words my father said to me on more than one occasion.  He told me that he would rather have me be a good ditch digger than a lousy attorney.  Obviously, I ended up as neither of those, but I think that the meaning is something I have tried to carry, sometimes more successfully than at other times.  As an example, I remember going to my ten year class reunion and found myself almost apologizing for what I was doing for a career.  Looking back on it now, that career provided a good living and let me live comfortably within my means. What more can any of us ask?

Tuesday was a long day here, work did not go well and I left in foul humor - just ask Sara or anyone that I interacted with.  If you check with my team, they will tell you that there was some residual left by the time I arrived at our Wednesday morning meeting.  To finish Tuesday off, on her way home from class, the truck Sara was driving stopped working and wouldn't restart.  The good part was that she was safe, the bad part was that we ended up sitting at a Casey's for about an hour waiting a tow truck to take it to Jack's so that it could get fixed the next day. 

That isn't the point of the story. In the middle of all of this, I met a person who was a true joy. His name was Kenny, and he was the driver that the folks at Crow Towing sent to take care of us.  He was the consummate professional, showing the same care for a Ford F150 with almost 160K miles that he would have shown with a just-off-the-showroom-floor Corvette.  All the time that he was doing the work, he also communicated with me as to what he was doing and why, and how things had changed over the years in his business.  I can tell you for sure that if I had needed brain surgery, I would have gone someplace else, but to take care of our truck, you could not have found better care or someone more helpful. 

In dealing with Kenny and our truck, I was reminded of a man who worked with me at Payless Cashways on Hickman Road a bunch of years ago.  His name was Jack.  He came to work as a yard/warehouse person and struggled with the concept of staying busy.  Early in his time there, if he didn't have something to do, he would just stand, or lean, against a bunk of lumber.  I remember working with him repeatedly, helping him understand that there is always something to do, and when people see you standing around, they wonder what value you bring to the organization.  Jack became a very good employee, and a nice person just to be around.  I remember the day he came to tell me that he had gotten another job, a better job in his eyes.  He was going to work at Iowa Methodist as a janitor.  He was the happiest person I had ever seen, and I would almost bet he is still there today. 

I know there are times that I haven't necessarily been happy with what I was doing. There have also been times I wasn't proud of what I was doing. But in hindsight, I do believe that focusing on the career/job and doing the best I could has always been the thing that made it possible for my family to do everything we wanted to do.  I remember my boss telling me one day that if I focused on the current job, and did the best that I could possibly do, the next job would always take care of itself.  Thus far, I've found that to be true. I've watched others who were always chasing the big career and could never quite get there.  I guess that whatever you are, whether it is a lawyer or baker, carpenter or author, sales guy or CFO; being productive, effective, and happy are the real important things.  It helps carry us through the hard times, along with some of the tremendous people that we get to meet along the way.

So, I will go to work tomorrow and remember the words that my mom thought were important enough to put over her desk.

Grandma

I am a story teller, so some of you may have already heard this, in fact all of you might have, but at the risk of boring you, I am going to tell it again.  In 1976, at the celebration of her 70th year, my Grandmother announced that she had reached a point in her life where she no longer needed to hold anything back and she could be totally honest with people.  I remember thinking at the time that I had never thought of her as someone that held back. On the contrary, I found her to be extremely open with her thoughts; having very little filter.  She was never hurtful.  Actually she was very kind, but she was also quite direct, at least that was my experience as her grandson.  As we approach holidays, her words come back to me and I am struck by the notion that it must be something in the DNA of the clan, as even though I am far from turning 70, I think that I have hit the point of not holding back, sometimes to the chagrin of others.  So, I feel compelled to say a few things.

For all of you who are friends or family, thank you for sticking with me through everything life has thrown my way.  I am sure there are times I have been way too direct, and not known that I should circle back and correct the comments.  I spent a great deal of time thinking that having the "truth" on your side was an absolute defense for anything that might come at you.  I now realize this isn't always the case.  Sometimes there are things that are more important than being right and having everyone know it.  There are people's feelings to think about and the game we are in - life - is long term, not just for today.

For all of the engineers and developers in the world, thank you for all that you do.  There are times I think that I was born in the wrong part of the century and would have been better placed in the part of the century where steam was still king and large industry was the way of the world.  I was having lunch with a friend the other day and there was a show playing on the History channel behind him and it was all that I could do to stay engaged in the conversation.  I can be such a nerd that way.  But, even after all of that, when I look at the things we have today, and things that are coming our way, I am so thankful for all of the smart people who have figured out how to do things.  We live in an amazing world that continues to change at breakneck speed.

For all in the medical world, thank you for helping myself and my family to have a healthier lifestyle.  Once again, I believe we are living in an amazing time.  Medical advances are advancing at such a rate that often times diseases and situations which would have been deadly only a few years ago can now be managed for years, if not decades.  When I was born, some friends of my parents had a child born with cystic fibrosis. At that time, the average life expectancy was only a few years, but she lived into her 40s because of medical advances.  Today the average life expectancy of a person with this disease is 37.  That is a drastic change.  Keep up the good work, stay out there ahead of us.  We need you to do your job so that we can live our lives in the best ways possible.

Finally, thanks to all of the teachers and the teaching institutions.  There are times that I become frustrated with the world of education and I worry that we are not turning out thinkers, but rather people who will just take their place in society to do what they have been told to do.  But when I stop and actually listen to some of the things that education accomplishes at a time we keep taking funding away from them, it is pretty amazing.  You do not have to listen very hard, or go very far, to find a story of a teacher using their own money to buy supplies for their classroom because the school  district does not have the funding to take care of the basic needs of the classroom.  Thanks for all you do.

So, with all that I have to give thanks for, and the time seems right to do exactly this, I finish where I began, with my grandmother.  Where she decided that the time had come to be more open and honest with her feelings, I think that the time has come where I have become more cautious with what I think and feel, and how I express all of that.  So I am going forward more careful than before, or at least I am going to try.  We will see how that goes.

Happy Thanksgiving

Vapor Lock

If you don't believe that we are creatures of habit, put yourself in a situation that you have been in a hundred times, and change one important thing.

Two weeks ago, I went to my Rotary meeting, just like I do virtually every Friday morning, thinking that things were normal. In the blink of an eye, it became apparent that things were different.  What happened?  We started the meeting just like we always do with the ringing of a bell.  Everyone stood and as the president asked us to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, hands were raised to hearts in the way that we have all done for the bulk of our lives. As the first word came out of our collective mouth, it happened ... NO FLAG!  Now what should we do?  Well, as indicated by the silence, we had absolutely no idea.  Fortunately, the president had the presence of mind to tell us that we would go ahead and recite the Pledge without a flag.  We did just fine after that.

Like many things, this was really no big deal, but my mind became fascinated by how programed we really are in our daily lives.  Want proof?  When you get dressed in the morning, which sock do you put on first?  When you brush your teeth, do you brush the left or the right side first?  When you answer the phone, are the words out of your mouth typically the same?  If you can easily answer these questions, you are programmed.  These are all examples, and there are thousands more, of the things we have come to do as habit.

As we look across our world on a daily basis, I think this type of behavior is more common than we really think, or even recognize.  When I was at Drake, we had a situation that really pointed this out to me.  One of the years I was a Resident Assistant, we had two incoming freshman women who were from two regions of the world. Their countries were sworn enemies.  This would have been the equivalent of having members of both the Hatfield and the McCoy families living under the same roof.  Early on, tensions were really high. No one knew exactly how this should be handled.  And then, over time, an amazing thing happened.  Because of the environment that our hall provided, these two women got to know each other, and at some level even came to understand each other.  Because there had been such strong emotion around it at the beginning, I think they actually listened to each other more than they would have in a regular situation. Then, as time passed, they became friends, and in the end, they really had no sense for why their families and countries despised each other so much.  They found the way to overcome the programming that had happened with them and the generations that had come before them.  It was wonderful to watch this happen as an outsider.

I was raised in what I consider a special family. Those that know us might just laugh at that statement.  My father was a polio victim as a child and walked with a cane his entire life.  Many of those who were around him considered it a handicap, or referred to him as a "cripple," but I was fortunate enough to have this help me in the way I look at people.  I was programmed differently than most.  I have never been enamored with the current trend or programming the world wanted to press upon me. I have always been this way. I am sure there are times when it has frustrated the dickens out of my family when as they wanted to follow the more popular route and I wasn't willing to be swayed.  But I look with pride, at the decisions that Andrew and Megan have made regarding friends and who they would support.  Some of the programming that came to me from the way I grew up has moved on to my children, and I hope that serves them well.

I realize that with more years, I have gotten a bit "crustier." I find that it is much easier to allow the world's programming come to the top and cause me to judge people and situations in specific ways without looking at the entire picture.  As I stood there, saying the Pledge of Allegiance without a flag, I thought about all of the assumptions I allow to come to bear and all of the times that I think about people in a certain way for an unknown reason.  I thought back to the mid 70's when I watched two women from around the world get to know each other as people, not as members of two different societies.  As we finished the words together two weeks ago, I found myself taking a different pledge: to renew the fight against things that attempt to program me in ways I don't necessarily approve.  All of this happened in the course of a minute or two on one single morning with a group of rather confused business men.

So, tomorrow just to prove that I am working on the things that I am talking about, I will put on my right sock first.

"Bye" Day

It may not come as a surprise to most of you and to others, here's the deal - I'm not much of a sports guy.  It is really just not that important to me.  I will watch a football game on occasion, or maybe one or two of the World Series games, or use the Super Bowl as a reason to have a party, but that is about the extent of it.  In the sports arena, my interests go to the more unusual, less seldom covered like luge, curling, and in the arena of motor sports, drag racing and tractor pulling.  Obviously I have sports tastes that run just slightly to the obscure.

But, there is one sports tradition that I like - the idea of a "bye."  In conversation with colleagues, I will occasionally hear that a team had a bye on a given week.  In thinking about this, I went to the dictionary and found this: A bye is a "situation in which a player or team is allowed to go forward to the next level in a competition without having to play against and defeat an opponent" (Merriam-Webster).  Well, obviously, what I needed last Sunday was a bye.  I needed to be able to go forward to the next day without defeating the current day.  So, I slept -  the deep and refreshing sleep of multiple naps throughout the day.  Every time that I thought I would get up and get going, another round of sleep would descend on me.  It was glorious and is something that only happens to me a couple of times a year.  This was one of my two.

As each of us go through lives that are so busy with all of the things we have to accomplish in a day, a week, a month, or a year, the thing that we tend to squeeze out is sleep.  And as we do that, it continues to get more and more difficult to do things that we need to do, much less the things we like to do.  There have been times when I've been in the shop, wanting to accomplish something and have been too tired to think clearly enough to be safe.  Because of the great mentors and instructors from my past, I have learned and believe that if you are not sure of your ability to focus, don't turn on the machine.  Another area that I have a problem with is falling asleep when driving.  My grandfather, who was an over the road driver most of his life, always told us that when you are tired, you should pull over and sleep, even if you are only a mile from home. There are all sorts of studies out there about the ills of sleep deprivation. It is absolutely critical that we rest enough on a regular basis that we can be safe and productive.

So, although I should get better sleep at night, I don't seem to be able to do that. This means that once in a while, I collapse like I did last Sunday. Fortunately, I had a very productive day on Saturday, so it didn't feel quite as bad.  I had gotten seven or eight cutting boards through several processes. When they are completed, they will either become Christmas presents or will be donated to organizations for holiday fund-raisers.  I worked on the landscaping project that Sara has me doing and actually made forward progress. I even cleaned the Toybox so wasn't embarrassing, which was terrific, because one of my best friends stopped by for some adult conversation.  Thanks Russell, that was wonderful.  All in all, a pretty successful day, and at the end, I had dinner with Sara and Megan at Rube's Steakhouse.  It is phenomenal to watch a college student get the chance to have really good quality beef.  In other words, I had a good day, got a lot done, and had a great dinner. All in all, Saturday was a success.

And now, in the words of Paul Harvey, "for the rest of the story." After all of the sleep that I had during the day on Sunday - maybe 5 or 6 individual naps, do you think that I could actually go to sleep on Sunday evening?  Short answer here is NO.  So, everything I hadn't done during the day, that could be done at night without waking Sara, I did Sunday evening and Monday morning.  At the end of it, I don't think that I got any more sleep than I would have, and I got just as much work completed.  But even so, I felt as though I had "won" by taking some time for no good reason, just for myself.  I would encourage everyone to declare a "bye" day once in a while, even if you immediately pay the time back.

It is one of those things that is just good for the soul and we all need those once in a while.  Happy napping to all of you.

Measure once - Cut twice ... Darn

We have all heard the old adage: Measure Twice-Cut Once. 

Last weekend I managed to create the perfect example of what goes wrong when you don't follow this. Fortunately the drawer box I built was too long so I was able to remove, rebuild, and get it fixed before anyone else saw it  That isn't necessarily always the case however.  If you walk onto job sites or into shops anywhere, you will find pieces that look like they have been made for a specific reason, but are in the scrap pile/bin.  Typically, they are undersized.  When I was still doing light construction for myself, family and friends, I referred to these as "pattern pieces."  These were mistakes that let me get it right the second time.

As I worked on fixing the drawer box and thought about it, I realized that this happens to me less than it used to and I wondered why.  As I really stopped and thought about it, I realized that this most often happened when I worked without a plan.  In the case I described above, I knew roughly what I wanted and I had the space that the unit would need to fit within.  So I started cutting parts and assembling the box.  Everything went together nicely, and resulted in a well fitting drawer unit, right up to the minute were the drawer stuck out of the back of the unit.  That wouldn't work.  So, as I usually do, I shouted obscenities for a moment, then walked away from it for a week.  I guess that I hoped when I looked at it again it would have miraculously corrected itself.  No such luck.

While this is a really good lesson for the shop, there is a much bigger application for the rest of my life.  Just like in the shop, when I fly by the seat of my pants, I am much more likely to make a mistake and have to do things over again.  Maybe it's because I believe that I am capable of figuring things out as I go along. That works sometimes, but often times falls short.  I need to stop and take the time to plan so I don't waste precious resources that I am using on any given project.  In the shop, this is most notably hardwood lumber and plywood products, but in the non-shop world, there are even more precious commodities.  When I fail to plan in the "real world" I have a tendency to waste other's time and talents. These resources are generally in short supply and should be used in the most conservative manner possible.  In times when we are asked to do more and more with less and less, the planning process needs to be the most critical component in any activity.  I knew this when I worked in a very large company, but now that I work in a smaller organization, I have forgotten some of this.  We have the ability to get the right people in the room quickly and make a good decision to move us forward that sometimes I forget how important planning is.

Now that I've thought about this, my tendency is to circle back to the place I have always been the most comfortable.  When faced with a challenge, I need to stop and consider the best way to tackle it.  When I was little and did this, my mom referred to me as "lazy." Even though those words still echo in my ears, I know this is the smart way to do things. 

Stop and plan - plan to an absurdly finite end.  Plan down to the least little thing.  If there are 305 steps to a project,  make sure that each one is planned. Know what each step is and in what order it will occur.  And when this is finished, go back through it all again.  Make sure that all of the contingencies and possibilities and anything that can go wrong is considered. 

When I can truly answer that I have planned to that level, then I can move forward, using the plan as a road map to success.  Not just a guess, but truly a plan, that if followed, has a great likelihood of success.  This means using all of the tools that are available, and constantly looking for new tools to use and new ways to think about doing things.  In the end, more projects and and pieces in the shop will be completed well because I have gone through all of the right steps and spent time thinking about where things could go wrong,

And ... I will end up with less "pattern pieces."

Up In the Air

 Last week business took me to the city of Las Vegas.  There are many other locations I would rather spend time in, but as all of you know, I love watching people, and that is a great place to do that.  So, I did just that and had a great time.  The reason I was there was for a convention - the biggest for our industry in the United States. As would be expected, vendors pulled out all of the stops, making sure their booths were impressive and offers were breath taking.  I know that my purchasing team came back with a bunch of really good information that will help us to be stronger as we move forward.

Although all of that is important, it pales in insignificance to the story I want to tell you today.  Although I have lost quite a bit of weight in the last year, and my daughter calls me " The New Travel-size Dad," folding into an airplane seat is not something I do easily.  I never look forward to the experience and I have a tendency to just shut down once I am in an airplane, hoping it will be over soon.  That was certainly the approach I took on the way out, all 275+ pounds of me in a center seat. That was the approach I had intended to use on the way back.  I was seated in seat 37A, a window seat in the last row of the plane.  What I got to witness there was truly inspirational.  After we were all boarded, but before the doors closed, one of the flight attendants came back to our part of the plane.  She approached a young man who was sitting two rows ahead of me and told him there was a person in First Class who wanted to give him their seat.  The young man was a soldier, and the person up front wanted to do something special for him.  Although very gracious, the young man declined. It was just a moment in time passing before me, but one that brought tears to my eyes.

The rest of the flight passed quite differently than I originally expected. I was overwhelmed with a flood of thoughts and emotions.  My first thoughts were about the fact that I had been in the last group that not only had draft cards but that also had draft numbers.  For those of you too young to know, these numbers told you what order you would be called to service in any given year.  They were 1-365 and pulled once a year, then the Selective Service would start notifying people based on the number.  People with the birth date picked as number one would go first, then number two and so on.  In the years of the Viet Nam conflict they generally got about half way through the year.  The year that I would have been eligible for the draft, I was number eight.  I would have gone, but that was the year they stopped the draft.

Those thoughts drew up memories of those years when young men returned from military service and were defamed and spit on for their part in a war nobody believed in. But they had been called to serve and die for their country. I am thankful that military service has come to be a good career path for many and I am glad neither of my children was forced to serve.

There are other members of my extended family who have serve. I am proud of each of them, and I realize that I've probably never told any of them.  On that flight, I thought about Veteran's Day and the older people who served and are honored on that singular day of the year.  All of these thoughts poured into my mind during that flight, triggered by the generosity and of someone in first class and the grace of a young soldier in coach.

So I came home from Vegas, not thinking at all about the show, or business, or any of the things that had been so important just a few hours before.  I came home thinking of the men and women who are willing to put on the uniform of our country and stand in harm's way to protect each of us and the liberties we sometimes take for granted.

Wow, all of this from a plane ride.  If that were not enough, when I got off the plane, at the bottom of the escalator was the young man's entire family, signs in hand and tears in their eyes because he had come home to them.

This weekend, remember our military and what they do for each of us, and if there are military members in your family, tell them thanks.  Have a great weekend.

Time

This last week has been a whirlwind.  Although I typically get up early in the morning, this week I've had to get up, AND get going every day.  In the middle of all of this, I could not help but think more about time as a concept, than I usually do.  I was reminded of the 2011 movie "In Time."  The basic premise of this movie was a future state in which time had become currency, making "time" the way people are paid, and the way that people buy things.  In a strange way, I guess that is really the way things are for us today, with the things that we do either adding to or depleting the time reserve we have.  The movie has a visible timer that tells each person how long they have. While we don't have that, we do know that when we are out of time, we cease to exist.

Wow, I have to tell you that for an old woodworker from Southeast Iowa that was pretty deep.  I had to stop and get a cup of coffee.  But now, fully armed with something to drink, I can move forward again.

I remember someone telling me there is research which indicates that the speed we experience time actually does change over our life span.  When we are young, everything is new and as we create new memories that makes the experience go slower.  This really seems to make some sense to me. I remember summers when I was young that seemed to go on forever.  I remember wishing that we could go back to school because I hadn't seen my friends in such a long time.  Time really did seem to go slower.  The research goes on to indicate that in the middle part of our lives memories compress since we are generally doing the same thing over and over (like work) and that there are fewer new memories being created.  The mind "speeds" through this, giving us the illusion that time is going faster.  As with early memories, I can remember sitting on the porch at a friend's house in Kansas City talking about the fact that I felt like I had lost the 1980's and part of the 1990's.  Very quickly and intelligently, Barb pointed out to me that I was busy working on a career, and quite honestly, trying to save a company.  We failed, just by the way.

At this point, we come to the problem part of this whole theory about time and the speed at which we experience it.  The theory goes on to hold out that as we reach a more mature age, somehow the mind "knows" that we are getting closer to the end of our lives. It focuses more on the things that are happening as though each experience might be the last time that we are doing it.  So....what to do with this?  I know that as I think about this last week, there are only a handful of things that had enough impact to be truly memorable, even now, just a few days later.  I really think that the thing that I need to add to my To-Do list is to spend more time focusing on the things that I do as if they are the last time I might do them.

When we lived in Kansas City, we had an acquaintance who had been on a boat going around the Cape of Good Hope when the boat capsized.  At that point, Bill truly believed that he might be at the end of his life.  Fortunately, the boat righted itself and they completed the trip safely.  One thing I remember about Bill is that he was a great story teller. When he told stories, it was almost as if he were reliving it.  I wonder now if this is because he always felt that he had truly been given a second chance at life.

I am not sure about this, but I am picking up the gauntlet. I want to make sure my mind knows that I want to be fully engaged all of the time, and that I want to remember everything.  So, when we are around each other in the next few days and months, and I seem to be concentrating more than usual ... I am.  I am going to work diligently on filing away more memories and discarding fewer of them.  My goal is to have fewer whirlwind weeks and more memorable experiences.  

Have a great weekend.

How Did We Survive?

In the last week, I read something about safety for our children. It was about swing seats or children's toys, I am not sure which and it struck me that we are lucky our civilization survived.  I mean, think about it, we had Giant Slides and monkey bars, and swing seats made out of boards.  On top of all of that, many of us remember when seat belts weren't even an option in cars and "car seats" for infants actually hung over the back of the seat and had a steering wheel for the child to play with.  We shouldn't have survived any of this.  I want to make sure that nobody misunderstands me here: I am all for children, and all of us being safe, but sometimes you have to wonder if we haven't crossed the line between safe and silly.  I have to admit, some of the most joyous times we had as children were in the wild games of chase on the monkey bars, and yes, often someone ended up in tears from a fall, but I do not remember a serious injury.

My generation used to be able to have fun with two tin cans and a piece of string.  Do kids still play telephone?  Now, I have to admit that there were probably some things that we did that would not be considered smart at this point, and were probably really questionable then.  Some of the things that fall under this category are bottle rocket fights, shooting each other with BB guns (but not from close range) and of course, what about Lawn Darts?  Who would ever think that throwing a weighted, pointed piece of steel into the air and waiting for it to come back down wasn't a good idea?  You have to wonder when they pitched that one at the toy company, who was thinking on that day.  In fact, I have to admit that I have never even seen a set of lawn darts in a garage sale.  This is probably a pretty good indication there was universal consensus that these were a bad idea.

So where am I going today?  Last week I celebrated the birthday of my daughter, which means I no longer have teenagers in the family.  In the midst of this change it struck me that as diligently as we try to protect our children from all of the lawn darts of the world, we still have to send them out there to be on their own.  I had to ask myself if by protecting them in every way that I could, had I really prepared them for the world that they are going in to.  When we went into the world, we knew that a sharpened piece of steel thrown into the air would come back in a manner that could really hurt.  I hope that all of the children we have raised know that.  When I worked for Drake, I remember listening to the VP of Academics speaking to a group of parents at a Freshman orientation.  He had been asked how Drake could assure that this parent's pride and joy would not come to Drake and embrace all sorts of radical ideas.  I remember being glad that I didn't have to answer the question.  But in truly admirable fashion, he explained that if the parents had been educators, and not just providers, they had nothing to worry about and the children attending Drake would grow to be productive members of our society.  I also remember watching parents ask themselves that exact question as though it was not something they had ever considered.

At this point, I believe that I have been an educator for my children and that they are prepared to go out into the world and do great things.  But at the same time, I wonder if they may have missed out on some of the adventures of life because Sara and I were so busy keeping them safe.  There is no doubt that we did the job the best way that we knew how, but still at the end we send them out to tackle the world on their own.  I know they will do great, but over two decades of programming, I will continue to worry about both of them.  I doubt that this is any different than our parents felt, sending us off to cope with the world and worrying about us the whole time.  Time will tell.  In the midst of this though, look out if I ever have grandchildren.  We are going to do all sorts of activities that will get me labeled as the "fun" grandparent.  So...beware.

On the Toybox front, I actually opened an Etsy store this week.  There is only one item out there, yet but it would be my intention to increase my offering over time. It will be fun to let people see what I can make and what kind of quality I believe in.  Heck, maybe somewhere along the line I may even sell something.  Who knows.  Find me at http://www.etsy.com/shop/ToyboxWoodworking.

Replicator

If you have ever watched any of the Star Trek episodes, I believe you will be able to relate to what I want to talk about today.  The topic for conversation today is the replicator.  I remember watching as one of the members of the Star Trek crew would want something and simply enter a code on this piece of equipment and whatever they wanted appeared, as if by magic.  At the time, I believed this happened simply out of the clear blue, but as I have done a bit of research, the replicator was loosely based upon transporter technology, "storing" raw materials in a digital format for later use to form the items the crew wanted and needed.  Well, I think that the time of the replicator is at hand.

I have watched the world of 3-D printing for the last three years or so, waiting for the time that these printers cross the point where they could be afforded by the individual.  I think it is close.  Now, for a couple of thousand dollars you can own a 3-D printer.  I remember buying the first home laser printer for about seven hundred dollars and thought that was expensive at the time.  Maybe in another year or so, 3-D technology will finally be to that point and I will consider it affordable.  It is interesting to begin watching all of the infrastructure come on line to support this new technology.  In the last month I have seen libraries of 3-D renderings released to the Internet. UPS has announced they intend to have printers in all of their store front locations.  This is all amazing, but let me tell you the story that put me over the edge.  I was at a Product Show in Omaha last week.  We were there to talk about the things that we do - fasteners and hydraulic fittings.  The show was slow, as the weather was nice and it seemed that people had made different decisions with what they wanted to do with their day.  In the middle of all of this, gentleman who was older (older than me), come up and start talking to us.  Then he showed us what he was doing.  He had run a fix-it shop for many years, and now he'd purchased a 3-D printer to see what kind of business he could create with that - a true entrepreneur.

When I lived in Lees Summit, an acquaintance whose business was making signs for trucks made a nice living and was very happy with what he was doing.  Then one day, a salesman came in selling water-jet cutting machines - computer controlled machines that use a tremendously high pressure jet of water and abrasive to cut anything from paper to steel.  Tim was not doing anything like this at the time, but he saw the opportunity to build an entirely new business around this technology, and was not afraid to take the risk. He spent the money to try a new venture.  Tim has gone on to build a very prosperous business around the technology, doing work for many in the area and for some of the largest contractors of high tech equipment in the country.  Good for him.

These new technologies will continue to present themselves, and those who are willing to do what Tim did - to go ahead and 'pull the trigger' on a new venture even if they are unsure that it will work - will succeed.  Maybe not all of the time, but they will have more wins than failures.  This has to be the challenge and the marching orders for all of us.  I used to look at my grandfather and know that he had a tremendous sense for the new ideas that were going to take off.  I remember thinking that if he would just jump on one of his ideas it would be amazing what he could accomplish.  I have fallen into that trap before, and we all have to break out of it now.  When we see something that we know is the next good idea, we have to have the courage of our convictions and go for it.  We will not always be successful, but we will certainly be more successful than by doing nothing.  So, maybe not 3-D printing, but the time is now to get my Etsy website up and selling something.  Look for me out there.  It is time to make something happen.

And at the same time, I am going to continue to find all that I can find about emerging technologies to try to decide what the next big thing will be.  And when I do, I will probably talk about it here, so you should stay tuned.  Think about the things that we talk about here and decide which one is right for you.  Keep looking to the stars, think about the next big thing, and then talk about it.  If it is not the perfect idea for you, it may be for one of the group that you call your friends, and that is pretty cool too.

Keep looking.

Resilience

This word has seemed to come up again and again this last week in everything I have touched.  It actually began with nature itself and branched out from there.  As we had endured the "dog days of summer" and watched things get dryer and browner, I found that I was obsessing over the weather and its possible outcome.  I'm sure that I was not unlike many others in this.  The thing that I had forgotten was the unbelievable way nature can recover when given a chance.  No more than two days after the first good soaking rain we had in the last two months, I was walking JC, our dog, and was amazed to see small white flowers poking up through one of the pastures we walk past.  Admittedly, they were probably just weeds, but I was struck at how quickly nature comes back and proves that it is ready to grow again.  Absolutely astounding.  I talked to JC about it, but found that she was not as amazed as I was.

Later that week, I was invited to a day of activities and review with one of our regular customers.  They have this meeting once a year for their employees and suppliers.  Much of the meeting is about the past year and the goals of the company going forward, but one of the things they always do is bring in an outside speaker. The speaker typically doesn't come with a message about their specific business, but brings a motivational message.  The year's speaker was Charlie Wittmack.  If you've not heard of him, you should learn more about the man.  He is an extreme triathlete with several very prestigious accomplishments to his name.  Although his story is amazing, that wasn't what truly moved me.  I listened as he described the number of times he failed, or came to the point of quitting, and was able to reach down inside himself and find what it took to continue, or try again.  One of the things that Charlie said to us was that he knew each of us would be able to climb Mt Everest if it was something we decided to do.  Hmm, I'm not sure what I think about that, but Charlie truly portrays resilience.

Most of you know that I have two amazing kids.....not unlike most other parents, but when I think about this word, it really applies to both.  Andrew continues to come up against changes and decisions that come from leaving college and entering adulthood.  In his world, these are big and it has been interesting to watch the way he has handled things and the energy that some of them have sapped from him.  On the other hand, Meg has faced being back in school, leaving a world she loved this summer (at camp) and regaining a full understanding of what college is.  Additionally, she is taking a very full offering of classes and work this year.  The need for resilience is huge.  On top of that, as she continues to work through all of the medical challenges, she wonders why it takes so much sleep.  Being resilient takes effort.

Of course, as I've been thinking about all of this, it has really brought me to question the way we go through our daily lives, and what type of resilience we carry within.  Some time ago, I had a really good conversation with a friend about will power, and whether or not will power was something that wears out.  We came to the conclusion that it is.  Consider dieting - it always seems that you have a great deal of will power at the beginning, and then with time, willpower tends to wane, making it harder and harder to lose weight.  I think that resilience may work the same way. With a really high need to be resilient, the amount you have available gets 'used up.' leaving less ability to come back from challenges.  However, I also believe that if the world gives us a chance,  we can rebuild the amount of resilience we have in our reservoir.  So, the challenge then becomes to get through the tough times and take a breather to rebuild when we get to the other side.  Nothing really new here, but everything I encountered last week brought me to this realization.

At the Toybox, things are really filling up. After all of the items that I completed while off work, the list of work to be done has been refilled.  It is time to get started on holiday gifts for family, and in the last year or so I have been asked for gifts for organizations I support to use as fund raisers.  Additionally, after getting the chest of drawers, Sara has decided she needs a set of drawers next to her writing desk.  There are also a couple of very exciting projects coming up, but as one of them will be a gift to a life long friend, I am going to speak about it very carefully.  Anyway, lots of panel products and lumber to be purchased in the next few months.  This is exciting stuff.  We will have to see if I can stay in front of all of it.

Have a great week.  Tell me what you plan to create as gifts for your friends and family for the holidays.  Get busy, they're just around the corner.

Peaches

Several weeks ago, I had a thought about a blog that I needed to write about the Dog Days of summer, but now that we are either in them, or through them, the idea really doesn't move me.  But at the same time, we had a bag of peaches show up in the refrigerator last week and those brought back a flood of memories that I decided that I really needed to share. So, here goes.

When I was young (a long, long time ago) my grandparents were very important and very involved in my life.  My father died when I was not yet ten and because mom still needed to work to support us, we spent a lot of time with Grandma and Grandpa.  My grandmother was a wonderful person, but those stories are for another day,  Today I want to tell you about my grandfather.  He was a man who that had only an elementary education, and I remember that he cried at the thought of one of his grandchildren going to college.  However, he was one of the smartest, most hard working people that I ever knew.  Not only did he work for the Keokuk County roads department as the rock foreman, his passion was horses - training and showing them. Rare was the time that we had less than fifteen head around the place that they lived.  This was always a combination of those that he was training and those that either belonged to him or to one of his grandchildren.

About forty miles from where we lived, there was a community that hosted a horse sale one Monday each month.  This community was in the heart of Amish country in Iowa, so the number of horses going through this sale was significant.  The thing that we had learned years before however was that you should never buy a horse from an Amish man.  If they were selling the horse, either they were too old to work or something was really wrong with them.  The event was amazing, though.  Many of you may remember things like this, and for those of you who don't, these were the closest thing to the village bazaar you would see.  Merchants and individuals alike showed up to sell their goods and wares in any and all manners possible.  This was the thing that made this particular day so memorable to me.

Up until this point in my life, I thought that peaches were something that came in a can, bright yellow and smooth, packed in heavy syrup.  What else could they be?  I had never seen them in any other manner.  Well, that day there was a merchant there selling fresh peaches. Grandpa decided that we should buy some to take home so that Grandma could make a pie or something.  He bought half a lug from the gentleman which is twelve and a half pounds, or about twenty-five peaches.  To my surprise, they were not bright and yellow, and, they were kind of fuzzy.  I wasn't really sure what to think about this, but, Grandpa told me that it would be alright, so I went ahead and tried one.

Now ... fast forward to getting home at the end of that day.  When we walked into the house, carrying our spoils as though back from a conquest, there were exactly three peaches left.  We had, in fact, eaten the rest of them throughout the day and on the way home.  When we told Grandma that we had bought them for her to make pies or something with, the look on her face was quizzical.  It took a bit of time for us to admit to her that we had eaten about 22 peaches that day.  At that point, the laughter was nearly hysterical.

This memory has to be the better part of 45 years old now, but each and every time I bite into a peach, I remember the day, the time with Grandpa, and the amazed look on my Grandma's face when she figured out what we had done.  I know that things such as smell or taste are powerful memory triggers.  I have read this time and again over the years, but when something like this happens, it really drives the point home.  My family will tell you that I can become a complete basket case over a movie or even a television commercial if they use the right music and I can remember people that I have not thought of in years simply by walking through a mall and experiencing the fragrances people wear.

I have no idea how we would ever capture any of these things, but if you are like me, you certainly know them when they present themselves.  Stop and enjoy, or at least process the things that act as memory triggers for you.  They are a door to a part of your own history that only opens for you once in a while, but when it does, typically the memories are powerful and as fresh as if they had occurred this morning.

Stay-cation

Like many of you, I look forward with anticipation to our family vacations. We like to get away, see something new, and have times we will never forget with family and friends. We had one of those earlier this summer, visiting my sister in Maine and celebrating time with Jaye and Karen.  Today I am coming to the end of a week that although very different, feels much the same in regards to how time was spent.  This week I had a stay-cation - a time off from work - and the farthest I got from home was the Toybox.  The week was great and although I got a lot of things done, I also discovered how many things there are needing to be completed.

I spent a great deal of time in the Toybox.  The number of projects I completed was incredible. Well, at least I was impressed.  I finished the maple and cherry four drawer chest I have been working on for Sara.  This is a piece to compliment the cherry and maple armoire in our master bedroom.  I used medium stained cherry and tiger maple for the drawer and door fronts and birds eye maple for the carcass.  There is a lot going on with this piece, but I really like the end result.  The other thing I like is that I can see that I have improved my woodworking skills since I finished the original piece.  Things just look better this time.  Some of that could also come from having my shop set up the way I want it, and having all of my equipment "zeroed," so that cuts are the same off any of the equipment.  Anyway, I was very pleased with the results.

Still in the category of work for others, I also finished a trivet for our friends in Kansas City that will be given as a host/hostess gift next weekend (B&V, if you are reading, act like it is a surprise), and I finished two shelves that my god daughter Kristin needs for her studio.  I still need to install them, but at least the construction is complete.

Not bad for a week.  But those are the things I completed for others. While working on those projects, I also completed a storage and charging station for the tools I use on the most regular basis (thanks to Wood Magazine for the idea) as well as a storage rack for my saw blades.

     

The saw blade storage station was built from scrap, so all of the dividers are not yet in place.  I will cut those when more left over pieces show up as I move forward.  So, all in all, I completed three projects for others and two for myself. I also managed to get in a couple of days of just being a sloth at home.  This activity is so-named when Andrew was so lethargic during a summer trip that his aunts compared him to a sloth.  Well, that was me for a day or so this week.  Not bad overall however for getting things done this week.

Maybe the most interesting part for me though was what I learned about myself.  I always believed that I worked most effectively in the shop if I started one project, work that project completely to the end, and then start on another.  I've worked that way for years, but it certainly wasn't what I did this week.  This week I worked on one project and thought about, or worked on parts of three or four other things.  This is typically the way that I function at work.  It seems obvious, but the best part of this is that when I got stuck on one project, as typically happens somewhere in the middle, rather than having the project languish and wait, I simply moved to something else while I cyphered on how to move the first project forward.  In the end, I am sure that I got more done during the week than I would have in any other typical week.  What a great stay-cation.

As the week comes to an end and I prepare to head back to work and discover things I should have been involved in that happened while I was gone, I find that even at a more mature age, I can continue to learn about how I think and how I approach that things that are ahead of me.  I have always said that I believe that we are life-time learners, learning every day of our lives, but this week truly pointed it out to me.  I learned this week that it is generally better for me to have several things to juggle, rather than just having one project in front of me.  At work I am much happier when busy than when things are slow, but it works better in my personal life as well.

Alright, stay-cation is over and now back to work. Do you take stay-cations? What things do you like to do?

Embrace the stay-cation.

Near Misses

Last week something wonderful happened.  I stopped at Hy-Vee for a quick grocery run.  I was on my phone, with headphones in place, when I heard someone call my name.  I was totally surprised to look up and see my cousin.  I knew she had moved back to this area in the last couple of years, and yes, I intended to get hold of her mother and get an address or contact information, but I'd been remiss and failed to do any of this.  But right there, standing in front of me, she was loading groceries into her vehicle at Hy-Vee - MY Hy-Vee.

We stood in the parking lot for quite some time, catching up on what was going on and what we had each missed out on.  We discovered that for the last several months ... even years, we lived within four blocks or so of each other.  Our community is not a large community, certainly not a Dallas or a New York, but we had been able for some time now to live this close to each other and not know it.  I was totally amazed.  I gave her my contact information and we parted, truly hoping that we will reach out and do something together, reconnecting to a childhood relationship that we had lost for years.

After we parted, I thought more about the situation and the experience.  The experience was wonderful, but the situation was nearly more than I could wrap my head around.  For the last couple of years, my cousin and I had lived within moments of each other.  How many times had we both been grocery shopping, maybe only an aisle apart, or possibly even passing in the same aisle but too lost in our own thoughts to recognize who was around us.  Did we use the same dry cleaner?  Did we both go to El Mariachi to eat, possibly on the same evening?  This was slightly overwhelming, but not yet mind blowing.  Then I thought about people we pass within feet of every day. Are they someone we knew from an earlier time in our lives, but don't recognize?

In my adult working life, we have moved several times.  I think the count now stands at six times.  In each of those moves, we were introduced to different people we came to know as acquaintances.  These are the folks that you wave at or talk to at church or at Target when you are shopping.  They are the people who bring life and interest to what could be very disheartening; moving from one city to another to do a job.  I have always been lucky as typically this is something that Sara does much better than I.  Then the time comes to move on, and there are a bunch of people you leave behind and really think about only occasionally, maybe at Christmas when you send out cards.  But maybe, just maybe, some of them move too, and you end up close to each other again. If you knew this, you might share time and activities with them again.

On top of this, there is the group of people you spent the first part of your life with, in pre-school, elementary, middle and high school; as well as all of the activities that you took part of in those days.  And college, or trade school, or the military.  All of these folks you have known that were part of your circle and then moved on to other circles.  Wow.  Now it becomes mind-blowing.  At any given moment, people from our past are more than likely nearby, in another aisle of the same store, eating at the same restaurant, using the same dry cleaner and we don't realize who they are.

In the middle of all of this introspection, someone mentioned to me that this is why Facebook is so powerful and pervasive in my age group.  It is a way for all of us to find each other again.  All you need is a name and a little bit of information and you can often either find the person you are looking for, or get connected to someone who knows that person.  This is the connection we are looking for.  The next challenge is to find ways to reconnect with them and stay connected.  This has been difficult for me.  I seem to ebb and flow around this, doing really well for a while, then going the other way and once again, losing people.

I believe in the concept of “Six Degrees of Separation” -  that we are all interconnected by less than six introductions from everyone in the world.  I need to keep refreshing those connections so I don’t discover that I have been missing them at the grocery store.  It continues to astound me what hard work being an adult is.  I really hope that I get it all figured out soon.

Why

It seems interesting that I would be spending time thinking about this today.  I remember when my children were little, it was my most dreaded question.  It came at me time and time again, almost seeming as though it would have no end.  And now, as an adult, managing other adults, I wish that I would hear it more often.  As we go through our day - handling all the things that get thrown at us, we continually make the best decisions we know how to make. I believe that if those around us would be willing to ask 'why' when they do not understand, we would make better decisions and be more open to fuller understanding.

Let me give you an example.  At one point in my life I worked for a gentleman, let’s call him Rich, who believed that the best way to get to the truth was to ask 'why' seven times.  He would ask you a question and regardless of your response, his next question would be why.  This would continue for seven rounds, and honestly, by the time that you got to the last one, anything that was artificial had been stripped away.  Even more important in this process, however, was the fact that you quickly decided you didn't want to go through this process very often and immediately gave him the answer you would give at the end of the seven whys.

It struck me in the last couple of days that I would like to figure out how to get the folks that I work with to ask why that many times.  As we go along doing our jobs, there are times that folks really don’t get the 'why' of what they are doing, they only get the message that they need to do something.  If we all did a better job of asking the question, and even more importantly, answering the 'why,' we would all be much more effective.  We would actually be rowing the boat in the same direction rather than in circles because we know why.

I decided to test my theory today.  I gave a presentation not unlike many that I have done for this group in the past, but today, I tried to give more information about why we are doing things, rather than just what we needed to do.  It was really interesting to watch the group.  They were more engaged actually asked more questions than usual.

On Wednesday of this week I had a chance to listen to Billy Taylor from Goodyear.  He has the distinction of turning more Goodyear plants around than anyone else.  And he is a very simple, straightforward man, and his assertions are just as simple: 1) people want to know what the goal is, 2) they want to know why, and 3) they want to be listened to.  Some of us would have a tendency to say “duh," who doesn't get that?  The truth of the matter is that although everyone understands this, few are capable of incorporating it into their typical day and the way they interact with their team.  As I listened to Billy, it struck me that he would be able to work with practically any team, whether business or sports, and be successful.  The flip side is that it should make each of us ask if we are being that way, the right way with those that we are around.  It certainly made me think about it.

I have another acquaintance who sits on an Executive Roundtable with me. He states that he manages nobody, he only supports people.  And although I have always understood what he was talking about, it means more to me today.

So I think back to when my kids were asking 'why' a MILLION times, and I know now that I should have gloried in each one of those questions.  Even if asked one hundred times, I should have answered.  I will do this differently going forward, and if I ever have grandchildren, they will know everything that they want to.  If they ask why, I will answer.  And in the meantime, I will do everything to encourage those around me to ask why, and when they don’t ask, I will work to fill in the blanks and give the why information for them.  This is my commitment going forward.

On a completely separate note, a new pinball machine comes to the Toybox this weekend.  It was a machine that sat in my Uncle Chuck and Aunt Pat’s basement and the family has honored me by asking if I would give it a new home.  I absolutely will, with a huge smile on my face.  But, this may mean that some other important stuff at the Toybox doesn't get done quite so quickly. If you are waiting for projects to be complete, it may take a little longer.

Everyone talks about 'gamers'  today. In the analog age, we were pinball junkies - some of us even pinball wizards.  Names change - behaviors don’t.  Have a great weekend.

Heartbeat

Living in the center of Iowa, I have the opportunity to take a unique look at the rest of the country and the local economy.  We have two major Interstates that cross the nation, moving people and products from coast to coast and border to border.  I spend quite a bit of time traveling both I-35 and I-80 for my work, and the things I learn from this are amazing.  I know that the same is true in your area; you just have to stop and look around.

In 2008/2009, when the economy turned against us for a while, I began noticing that all of a sudden there was significantly less truck traffic on the roads.  I remember talking to people about it and nobody thought too much of it.  In 2010, before anyone started to talk about a recovery, truck traffic started to pick back up and on the Interstates, you could feel that things were changing.  What is moving on any given day and which way it is moving is a real litmus test of the things going on in the country.  Let me give you some examples.

The other day I was traveling north on I-35.  Stretched out in front of me were 4-5 trucks from Hulcher Services.  If you don't know this company, they handle all sorts of rail issues, such as derailments, spills, track damage, etc.  They have quite unique equipment and once you have seen their trucks; you will always know who they are.  So, based upon the fact that they were heading north with several trucks, I knew there was a derailment somewhere in that direction.  This may be something that we hear about on the news, or it may be something that happened in a switch yard, but based on what I saw, something big happened.  This is one kind of information that our transportation system gives us.

A couple of weeks ago, I was coming home from Iowa City when I started passing really nice Harley Davidson trucks.  After seeing the third or fourth, I wondered what was going on.  It did not take long to figure out that the Sturgis Bike Rally was starting the next week and all of this hardware was going to that show.  We began to see a large increase in motorcycle traffic heading north and west.  Then in the week following, we saw a similar increase going south and east.  These are the kind of things that I think of when I say that the Interstate system is like the heartbeat of the country.

The last example that I will give is one that I never did get to the bottom of.  A couple of years ago for about two months, I watched truckload after truckload of timbers heading across the Midwest, mostly heading north.  They were probably 6 inches square and 20 feet long, not new timbers by any means, but had obviously been used before.  Although the number of loads was staggering, I was never able to figure out what they were being used for, or where they were going.  If you have any ideas, shoot me a note.  I am still interested.

As you can tell, I am always interested in the things that go on around me and what you can learn or infer from them.  Honestly, my biggest frustration is not knowing what is inside all of the trucks that have no real information on the outside of them.  Are they hauling something to or from Roswell?  Is it truckload after truckload of printed transcripts of every cell phone call ever made?  What is in all of those trucks?  Mostly mundane things I am sure, but I want to know.

Ok, enough of that for the day - other interesting things have happened this week.  First, my daughter returned home from camp this week and it is wonderful to have her around.  The laughter and the stories echoing through our house have been wonderful.  Andrew and Lyndsey are coming up to go to the State Fair and had get here fast …they are missing out on all the fun.  Last night Megan and I sat at the State Fair playing a new game: “Real or Not.”  The basis of the game is to find someone wearing boots and then decide if they wear them on a daily basis or if it is just something they put on for the Fair.  It may sound strange, but we had a great time just sitting, watching people, and deciding.

One final item of note this week; the Toybox has become the proud owner of a twelve foot stepladder.  This came from my brother-n-law Neil and is certainly appreciated.  It will let me put things higher on the walls in the Toybox and I am sure will be borrowed on occasion by friends and acquaintances.  Pretty nice addition to the tool arsenal out there.

Well, have a great week and get out there to see what is moving this week.  You never know what you may find.

Rant and Rave

Ok, brace yourself.  I really have a bee in my bonnet today.  And I am going to share.  Last Saturday, I stopped at “My Subway” for breakfast.  This is the location that I frequent, not necessarily because they are the closest, but because they treat me as a person, and maybe even like a friend.  Anyway, the young lady who typically takes care of my sandwich on Saturday morning was working and we started talking about the kind of week we were just finishing.  I admitted that mine had been a long one, but that there had been a lot of good in the week.  I was more than willing to call it a success.

When I asked how her week had been, my Subway buddy told me that she had been forced to deal with a very difficult customer earlier in the week.  This customer had actually complimented her on her customer service, and then went on to tell her that based upon the fact that she had piercings, she should not even work in “this part of town.”  Really? Why do people have to be like this?

Those of you who know me casually are probably not surprised by the fact that I have no piercings or tattoos.  Additionally, it isn't something I ever thought would be a good idea for me.  Maybe the pain of the creation is part of what stops me - I don’t know.  But I will not judge those who make the decision to turn their bodies into a canvas for self expression.  After all, for those of you who know me very well, you know that I spent much of my college years with a pony tail down my back.  That was rebellion in its own way in a time when men’s hair fashions had gone back to being shorter.  So I say, let others be themselves.  What is that ole expression, “Live and let live”?  Seems like a good way to proceed to me.  And as for my Subway buddy, I glory in her decision to change her appearance through piercings.  Good for her if it makes her happy.

Ok, enough of the rant.  Let’s get on to the rave.  I will begin by telling you that my Aunt Pat passed away this week.  Probably not where you thought I would start.  She was a great person and I am thankful to have known her and to have been related to her.  When my dad died, and later my mom, both she and Uncle Chuck stepped in and supported my sister and me in every way they could possibly find.  When you think of what family is supposed to be, Aunt Pat comes to the top of the list for me.

My sister, Jaye, wanted to come back to Iowa for the funeral.  She lives in Maine, and the time was short enough that planning was nearly impossible.  In searching for reasonable airfare, she had finally reached a point where she decided she wouldn't be able to attend.  At this point the person who really deserves recognition entered the picture.  She's known him for years because of another lifelong friend and honestly, Jaye thinks of David as part of her family.  Before she could make a final decision, David offered to use some of his airline miles to get Jaye to her aunt’s funeral.  I cannot even put in words how wonderful this action on his part was.  I know that Jaye will try to find the words to say thank you, and she will probably fall short.  This is one of the nicest things I have ever known a person to do.

So why can't the world be more like David, and less like the “piercing police”?  There are so many times that common courtesy and caring would go so far, and often those attributes are just not present in the time or the situation.

This week a friend sent me an article that really dovetails in what I have been talking about.  An author named George Saunders gave a speech (click for the link) to graduates of Syracuse University and he has some incredible things to say. It is a little longer than the things I usually read, but it held my attention all the way to the end.  When you are done, ask yourself who the ELLEN is or was  in your life.  I know that in my case there are actually a couple. I also know that in recent years I have worked to be kinder, but there are still failures of kindness in my background, and probably will be in my future, but I am committed to limiting them.  Have a wonderful weekend.