Zero

I went to work for Payless Cashways in 1983 as a trainee in the yard. I spent the next several months working like I had never worked in my life and sweating like never before. By the beginning of the next Spring, I had moved into the store and was taking on responsibilities of running the store and making purchasing decisions. I remember it as if it were yesterday - ordering the Seasonal goods. This was when all of the purchase orders were manual and had to be filled out by hand, one at a time.  I remember that when all was said and done, I added up what I had purchased and I had cut purchase orders for in excess of a quarter of a million dollars.  I went home that night and did not sleep, wondering if I had made good decisions. After all, that was more money than I could even think about. Sleep was, well you might say, elusive that night. The next morning I went in to talk to my manager. I wanted him to look over the decisions I'd made and tell me if they looked right. He did one of the greatest things for me that anyone has ever done. He asked me if I had made the best decisions that I could make. When I told him that I haed, he suggested that there was nothing more to do but to wait and see how things sold. He communicated to me that he believed in me.

Several months later, I remember my District Manager telling me that business decisions were really all the same, it was just about the number of zeros that were included. His point was that whether you were making a $250 decision, or one that valued at $250,000, the decision process and the thought that you put into it should be the same. I must tell you that in the years since then, I have found that is really the truth. I remember agonizing over that first quarter of a million dollar decision, and then I remember later, still working for Payless, when the decision I made was for a great deal more, but we actually saved a quarter of a million dollars. That was a time when the company was $1.54 billion dollars in revenues.  It is all about the zeros.

As I finally get solidly into a new job, I am reminded of this again. It is great to be back on the Operations side of the business where it is truly possible to make things better. In the first several months that I was here, I continued to do repair after repair that all seemed to be about $4000 each.  I know that's a lot of money, but if you remove some zeros, you can think about them as being less, 400 or 40.  The easy thing in the Operational arena is that as long as you are sure the people you are talking to have the same desire and direction as it all just needs to happen. We have slowly worked our way through all of the things we needed to fix and now the real fun starts. We start doing things that will make the enterprise more efficient and more profitable. We are looking forward and spending amounts that have a whole lot more zeros in them, but we can now look at the amount of time it takes to pay off the investment.

Investment, not expense. I love that distinction as it is all about moving forward, not just paying for the past.  Hmm... I should probably think about that in my personal life too.

Looking back at what I have written, it strikes me that once again I've landed on a recurring theme of mine. It is the little things that make the difference. As you think about what I have talked about today, you can't really find a smaller thing than a zero, But, when you add them to the back of other real numbers, they have the effect of moving the number by a degree of order. $200 with just a few added zeros becomes $2,000,000.

I think that this is applicable in our lives as well. So often, when we really need something from a friend, it will be the smallest of things, the personal equivalent of a zero. But the way that it works is as a magnifier, making the result greater than you could ever imagine. And with that, come the ripples that affect those around the person you are doing something for. The other thing to remember about the ripples is that they go places that you will never see from the original act that caused them.

So, remember: sometimes the big things aren't as large as you initially imagine. They are easily taken care of by treating them like smaller issues. And small things sometimes have larger results than you could ever imagine.

Have a great day.

Pavlov

I am never exactly sure how much I remember from most of the classes that I took in High School, but I'm sure I learned about the Pavlovian response during those years. This was the idea that after you associated a stimulus with a particular biological response, you could create that same response with the new stimulus. This was also sometimes called classic conditioning. The experiment I remember was training dogs to salivate with the ringing of a bell. The bell replaced the presentation of food that would naturally cause the reaction of salivating. We are all subject to this, and there are times that it is worse than others. Ironically enough, for me it has always been about the ringing of a bell, the bell that comes from our phone. Okay, I guess that talking about a bell on my phone may date me somewhat. Maybe this is about the sound of a ring tone instead in these days that we live.  

I have an uncle that I've spent most of my adult life in this type of situation with. I knew that if I answered the phone, and it was his voice on the other end of the call, it was bad news. A death in the family, an illness, or any number of just basically bad pieces of news. This was bad enough in the early years that I was out of school and living on my own, but since caller id, it has taken on a whole new level. Now, I don't even need to answer the phone, I can simply look at the display and know what is coming. Fortunately in the last few years he has also called several times with good news, so my conditioning has softened somewhat. The other thing that makes me laugh is that this is also the way my mother was. She and I finally agreed that she wouldn't give me bad news on the phone. Which ensured there was that joyous period of time when I got all of the bad news the minute that I walked in the door at home. Not sure which was better.

Today, I found out that a person I know received bad news about their child. There is going to be a long road for them to get this child back to health. I know where they are right now, and so do many of you. When you are at the start of something that you hope and pray will come out good, but you aren't sure that it will, everything is large and overwhelming. That is where this father finds himself today.  And I guarantee that over the coming months and years, as his family works their way through this, any phone call will cause absolute panic: what is wrong? What do we need to do? Can I help? All questions that they will ask over and over again. I hope for this person, and for all of you that are going through this, that you have a great outcome at the other end of the journey.

As I think about this and the way we react as parents, siblings, or just friends, it is natural for us to tense as the phone rings when we're in the middle of an emotion-filled situation. But the great part is that when it is finally over, the time comes when you realize the phone no longer causes panic. You return to a point where you look forward to phone calls from those you love again. Conversations return to the things that happened in a day, or a week that they want to share because you are important in their life. It is about the joy of sharing and celebrating. It makes me smile just thinking about it.

My thoughts go out today to this person I talked about here, and all of you that find yourself in a bad situation with family or friends, where you know that when the phone rings it's probably not good news. I hope for you that time passes and things get better ... that you get to a point where the ringing of the phone is something to be celebrated because you know that there will be good news or a great story on the other end of the call. After all, that is what should come across the phone most of  the time ... good news.

Have a great day.  Thinking good thoughts for you here.

Time

I spent  time at the Toybox yesterday. It was glorious. The only downside was that it is actually clean out there. That just seems wrong, but at the moment, I am between projects. I completed a couple of Adirondack chairs for some friends a few weeks ago. Last week I completed a Giant Jenga set and a set of really large dice so they can play Yard Yahtzee at Camp Foster. Now I'm back to the roll top desk that I'm working on for myself.  Although many of the pieces were already cut out, so much time has passed that it was kind of like starting all over. I really needed to figure out exactly where I was, but I got that done. Now this project will move forward, unless I get busy with something that I need to complete for somebody else.

Anyway, as I was taking a break, the HUD sign that came off the house we owned north of the Drake area caught my attention. This was doubly fascinating as I had been past that house a week or so ago and saw that it was for sale. I actually called the agent and discovered that the house had sold very quickly. The agent had been fascinated to know that I had once been an owner and wanted to talk about its history. For any of you that remember us living there, I'm including a link to the Zillow page so you can look through the pictures of the house now, as opposed to the memories you may have of it.  As you will see, the current owner is much more in favor of carpet than I have ever been, always preferring hard surfaces, given the choice.  Also, they redid the kitchen again, and it all looks very nice.  If you remember it when I lived there, check it out here.

As I was wandering this strange set of memories, all triggered simply by the sign that had been in front of the house when we bought it, I started to think about memories in a more global way. As I begin to get older, read as "older," not old, memories are very interesting. In many cases, I have much better memories of the things I did as a child than the things I did last week. Fortunately, items like pictures and old bits of paper and souvenirs help me remember some things. On the other hand, there are parts of my life that are really just a blank. I find this troubling.

At this point, I thought about an article by Hugh Howey that I read last week. It was sent to me by a friend who tries to make sure I read things that keep me thinking. For your consideration, here is a link to the article. I would really recommend this as something to read and consider. In the article, he writes about going to the beach and how long it took to get there when he was a child vs. the amount of time that it took when he was in high school. I don't know about you, but that makes a lot of sense. I remember it seemed like forever between the end of one school year and the beginning of the next. I can remember spending an entire day one summer lying in a hay field watching the clouds go by. If I could know the truth, it was probably 15 minutes, but looking back, it seemed like a whole day. I was still making new memories in those days.

I had the opportunity to talk with my son and his wife over the weekend with this on my mind. I asked if they remembered anything about last Monday. Andrew told me that he had gone to work, but that was all that he could actually remember. In the conversation, they have clearly hit the part of life that is "wash and repeat." They are going through the steps, accomplishing the things that they need to get done, but honestly it is like those times when you finish a car trip and cannot remember parts of the trip. They are functioning just fine and doing all of the right things, but they are no longer making new memories. Their mind is just moving them forward. And this, if you wondered, is why people always tell you that time goes faster as you get older. Relatively, I think that it does. We are no longer making new memories - we are living in what we know.

I have to ask myself what I am going to do with all of this. I think that I will always agonize a little over the years I didn't do enough living every day, but over and above all of that, I think that I am going to spend a lot more time thinking about all of the individual opportunities that present themselves in a day.  And with each of those, I am going to work more diligently to say "YES" to as many as possible and start making new and different memories. I have no idea if I will make any difference at all, but it sure seems to me to at least be worth a try.

Give it some thought and see if you are willing to try too. Yes?