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.