Handshake Is a Promise

This has been a busy week with a lot of things going on and in the middle of it all, I've had some trouble focusing. But the other day I had one of those moments that really helps to bring your head back to the place it needs to be.  We've been working to purchase and open a new facility in the northern part of Iowa.  This has been ongoing for a number of months, but we are now getting to the point that it is real.  The transaction will happen and there will be a new facility to manage and sell from.  This is just great in my opinion since increased geography is one of the ways you can really grow a business.  This week was my first opportunity to go up and see the facility and meet the gentlemen we are buying the property from.  Just incidentally, they would also like to end up being customers of ours, so the day had a lot of great potential in it.

So, my thoughts today come from a trip to Hampton, Iowa as well as fond memories of the community I grew up in, and have in so many ways grown much too far from.  We got to town about noon I wasn't the only person who thought this was a great chance for lunch.  We drove around the square, with the obligatory county seat court house in the center and found nothing that looked like a great place to eat.  Collectively, the guys that I was with decided we should go back to the Honk 'N' Hollar. We had passed it on the way to the square.  This building, although bigger, reminded me of the Tastee-Freez in Sigourney.  The ceilings were low and although it had been there a long time, every effort had been made to take good care of it.  There were probably 20 vehicles in the parking lot - 80% pickups.  We fit right in.  Upon entry, we were greeted with a friendly voice that told us we could sit anywhere.  The folks that were there were a mix of married couples and groups who seemed as though they worked together and had come to lunch.  Although I was truly tempted by the Hot Beef sandwich - the special of the day, I went with the tenderloin, which was tremendous.  Add fries and you can hardly ask for a better meal.  The person taking care of us paid attention to what we needed, and chatted with us as if she had known us for years.  All part of the community charm. I will always be glad to return whenever I'm in town.

Following lunch, we found our way to the location that we are buying.  The current owners are still operating their business there while they get their new space ready to go.  It was obvious that they had a lot going on and were quite busy, but four of them dropped everything to take time with us. It was a chance to discuss not only the building and what was going on with it but how we can work toward the future to do more together.  It was a very easy, genuine meeting and within five minutes it felt as if we had known them for a lifetime.  And that experience brought me to the title of today's thoughts.

I am very fortunate to live in the Midwest, and more specifically Iowa.  You might have heard about the concept of a "handshake and a promise."  Well, here it is just a little different.  What I've known my entire life is that the way these people interact with each other - a handshake IS a promise.  When we deal with each other and agree on something and at the end of the conversation everyone exchanges handshakes, there may have just as well been some type of legal document signed.  What was just agreed to is what will happen.  That is the way that it is. 

As I thought about this driving back to Des Moines, it struck me that this is one of the things that I love the most about living here.  A person living and doing business here will say what they are going to do and then stand behind it, without question.  This has always been the way I like to interact with others. Even when there have been times I was disappointed because of the way others acted, I will still do everything in my power to continue to live my life this way.

We had a very interesting speaker at Rotary this morning, talking about Young Professionals.  It is going to take a while for me to process some of this, and it is possible that I may ruffle a few feathers but I feel that I must comment, so look forward to that next week.  Have a great weekend, do something with those you care about and try to make the world a better place for yourself and for others.

One Person

Can one person make a difference?  I am sure each of you have asked yourself this at some point in your lives. It has been one of the things circling around in my head this week.  On top of that comes an additional question.  Is the effectiveness of the individual molded by the group they are a part of?  Well, let's take a crack at this.  I have always believed and still believe that a single person can make a difference, and I suspect we can all cite examples we've read about or heard about.  But I am talking about regular people who change the world through their words and activities.  Let me give you an example.

In 1977, I was working at my hometown Municipal Pool during my college summer break and we had a problem.  It was a dry summer following a dry spring and the amount of water the city had on hand was so low that there was a concern about being able to fight a fire if we had one.  So, the city fathers told me that we would keep the pool open as long as the water level was safe.  When evaporation took the water level down to the point it would no longer be safe for people to get in and out of the pool, we were to close until such time as the water shortage corrected itself.  Ok, I had my marching orders and knew what I needed to do.  Then came Mr Green. 

The day came when I had to make the decision to close the pool. At the end of that day, after the pool was closed, a knock came at the door.  I answered and in came Mr Green.  He ran the local rendering company and was not anyone I had ever met before.  He came inside and called me "Mr Martin."  I was 20 or 21 years old at the time and having that honorific applied to me was a bit startling.  He talked to me about the fact that the pool was the only fun that his children had in the summer and asked if I could keep the pool open as long as possible.  That question changed the way I looked at the situation.  After he left, I decided I would go to the pool in the middle of the night and take the water that I needed to keep running.  I did exactly that and it took three weeks before Harold Woods, the Superintendent of Water, figured out what I had been doing. I came out of the bath house one morning before we opened and Harold was standing beside the pool. He looked up at me and said, "It's amazing how this water quit evaporating, isn't it!" All I could say was "Uh huh." But by that time the crisis was past and we continued operating the rest of the summer.  One person, Mr Green, changed a great deal of the summer for a bunch of kids in Iowa. 

I think this same thing still happens, only the power of the communication tools that we have at our disposal puts the entire planet within our reach.  With a little work, it is now possible to reach out to almost anyone and have a conversation.  The catch to this is that this seems to give people a "right" to comment on anything.  This commenting is not the thing that I am talking about.  If Mr Green had put an editorial in the local newspaper, with his same thoughts and concerns, I guarantee I would have been much more likely to stand by the direction that I had originally been given.  But he didn't.  He came and had a conversation with me - one on one.  I know that having this level of intimacy across the Internet world is difficult, but I actually believe that it is still possible.  For me, I just need to decide what is important and then figure out how to reach out to the right person,  I don't need to just go out and "blast" my thoughts everywhere about a topic.  I need to be more selective in the way that I reach out.

Regarding the second part of question at the beginning of this blog, I truly believe that individual ideas and performance can without question be affected by the group of people that surround the person.  I recently finished a book called, "The Checklist Manifesto."  Someday I'd like to spend a little more time sharing some of the ideas and thoughts I took from it, but there was one thing that clearly resounded with me. A team has a better chance to be perfect, with all of the right answers, and all of the best ideas than any of the individuals in that team would be able to do on their own.  This is really something to stop and consider.  I believe we all recognize that a strong team will come up with better answers than an individual, but I for one, have to admit that working with a team is way down on my list of things I want to do.  I prefer to figure things out by myself and then gather a team to help with next steps.  This book tells me that I will be able to come up with better ideas with quicker and more impacting results if I turn that thought process on its head and get the team involved sooner.  There are good examples where this works very well: like airline crews, firefighters, and medical teams.  I guess I will have to give this some additional thought.

I think that is enough for today, but I still have a great ice cream story that illustrates how one person can change things.  One of these days I will work it in. If you want to know the story early, reach out to me, one on one, and I will be more than happy to share.