Might as well ...

A few years ago, I wrote a blogpost entitled "Tripod" about how a friend believed that the ability to have fun was like a three legged stool.  In order to make the stool stand (have fun) you needed to have creativity, spontaneity, and a positive cash flow.

This last weekend, I met a group of gentlemen who taught me the next verse: "Might as well ..."

Last Friday through Sunday, I had the good fortune to attend a weekend of training around the woodworking skills.  Weekend with Wood was sponsored by Wood magazine and the venue was at Meredith Corporation. I'm not sure of the final numbers, but it seemed as though there were about 500 people in attendance  We had the opportunity to enroll in six different classes with instructors and professionals brought in to help us learn or hone our skills.

Tommy Mac, the host of Rough Cut Woodworking on PBS, spoke after Saturday night's dinner.  The food and presentation were all great, but the group of men I ended up sitting with made the evening so much more fun.  This "gang" of guys were from Michigan and it was obvious that they have known each other for a lifetime.  In the group there is a doctor, and artist, a contractor, and an engineer.  One of the group had won, as a door prize, a week at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking, probably a $750 value without travel. While they were sitting at dinner, these men decided that it was unacceptable for one to go to this class without the others.  It made perfect sense. I'd already discovered that the four of them came to the event together in a motor home that one of them owned.

Then came the problem.  One of the four announced there was no way he could afford the piece of equipment that he had purchased at the event AND go to the woodworking school.  Just for clarity, what he had purchased was a Wood-Mizer - a portable gas powered band saw. It allows someone to turn logs into lumber and they probably costs in excess of $20,000.

The response from the group?  "Might as well ..."

Now, this is where I had to jump in and ask questions.  It was obvious that they all knew exactly what had just been said, but as an outsider, I was baffled.  The group explained to me that if ever, as a group, there was a real question as to if they should do something, it always came down to this phrase.  In their own shorthand they were saying that life is too short to not do the things that bring you joy and happiness.

It is so interesting that I had landed with this group, because in my own way, that's why I was at the event. When I had first seen advertising for the weekend, I'd thought how great the weekend would be. But because I always have trouble with the "cash flow" part of the tripod, I'd decided that I would not do it. Then, many different things happened and people pushed me to go. I also had a little cash come in that wasn't completely spoken for. Without even realizing it, I had landed at "Might as well ..." and ended up at the event to meet the guys who were able to explain it all to me.  Is it not just amazing the way the universe works sometimes?

Okay, just a little more about the weekend and the overall serendipity of it all.  First, I am still nowhere close to attempting to build chairs.  They are just too tough and have way too many angles to them.  Additionally, you have to come up with a way to scoop out the seat to make them really comfortable.  Beyond that, however, I learned all sorts of new tablesaw and bandsaw techniques. I even came to believe that I should look at a SawStop brand saw somewhere along the line.  And with all of the giveaways that Meredith Corporation had for us, at the end of the day I had received more than I paid out for the event.  Wow, just wow.

So, for any of you who are woodworkers, you need to go back and find out information about this year's event and then plan to be there next year.  You will not regret it.

Give Me a Number

As many of you know, I spent a couple of decades working for Payless Cashways.  For those of you that don't know what Payless was (it's been a while now), it was a retail lumber company that competed with Lowe's, Home Depot, & Menards.  At this point, I guess that I should say "tried to compete", but that's another story.  Anyway, I had the privilege of working with one of the finest group of leaders that I've ever seen assembled.  The group that I am speaking of was the store managers in the Midwest region.  This group was energetic, smart, and driven to succeed - all of the attributes that really differentiate good leaders from those who are challenged to be the best.

When I worked with this group, I had an opportunity to learn a lesson that I've never forgotten.  It came from our Regional VP.  At one point he told me that if he wanted results from our group, all he needed to do was figure out how to attach a number to whatever project we were working on and then generate a list showing how we all did.  From that point forward, all that he needed to do was sit back and watch the fun.  This was long before the days of discussions about metrics and driving the business through the numbers. Dave knew instinctively that this would work with the group in front of him.  And wow, did it.  Whether we were looking at the number of credit cards that we put in customers' hands, or the footage of woven wire fence that we sold, we would compete to be at the top of the list.  On the other end, we would do darn near anything to stay off the bottom of the list.

I have discovered that this works on virtually everything.  Here are a couple of examples.  About 18 months ago I decided to get serious about losing weight ... again.  But this time, as part of what I was doing, charting my progress became part of the ritual.  At this point I have lost over 17% of the weight I began with and I will tell you that one of the reasons that I was able to do it was because each and every day, I want to see the number on the chart get better.  I know that there are some people that this would not motivate, but for me it is a big thing.

When it comes to motivating others, I ran across a great example just last week.  Many of you know that one of the organizations that my family supports YESS (Youth Emergency Service & Shelter).  They are a great organization - taking care of kids who really need help.  Each year their largest fund raiser is an event that will occur this weekend.  They take several (45,000) small rubber ducks and float them down a body of water.  The winning duck, or actually their owner, wins prizes.  Anyway, back to the important part of the story.  All of these rubber ducks need to have numbered tags placed on the bottom of them.  For the second year, DMB Supply agreed to tag ducks at our location.  Last year we tagged 5,000 ducks and it took about three and a half hours.  This year, we tagged 6,000 ducks and we did it in only two hours.  What was the difference?  We had a baseline from last year.  We knew what we had been able to do and everyone jumped in to make it better this year.  And of course, I was in the middle, acting like a cheerleader, letting everyone know how we were doing.  Next year who knows; maybe 8,000 in two and a half hours or 10,000 in three?  We will have to see.

I really enjoy the fact that we are living in a time that there can be numbers attached to virtually everything.  Weight loss, ducks tagged, the list is virtually limitless.  But one of the things that is so important in this is that there needs to be someone that makes hitting the number important, and probably even more-so, makes everyone know that doing it is possible.  This really helps to bring the best to the top in almost all groups of people.

Management textbooks used to talk a lot about Theory X & Theory Y.  Although I do not remember which is which, one of them asserted that people were generally good and would try to do their best.  The other believed that people generally had to be pushed to get them to do anything.  It was the proverbial stick vs. carrot argument.  Do you lead a person to the right place, or do you have to drive them there.  I clearly believe that it is about leading them there.  That is how Dave managed the group of Payless store managers. Last week when we were tagging ducks, it was all about talking to people about what they could do.  Give them a graph that shows where they are and show them what direction "better" is, and I know they will rise to the occasion.  If you don't work this way, try it, you may be surprised. If you do, keep after it.

Equilibrium

It often seems to me as though we pass from one thing to another: young to old, untrained to knowledgeable, helpful to headstrong, just to name a few.  Over the past few weeks I've thought about this a lot, particularly with a view to the physical world around us. I don't believe that this is really true. Rather than moving from one part of life to another, I believe that the things we consider the building blocks of who and what we are, we exist in equilibrium, flowing back and forth between various states.  Let me give you some examples.

Consider knowledge, or intelligence. This seems to change on a daily basis.  We start at a given point, and if we are lucky and pay attention, we have the opportunity to learn something.  Through this activity, we move along the continuum toward the "more knowledgeable" end of the spectrum.  However, if we don't watch very carefully, we relax and the rest of the world sneaks up behind us, slowly moving us back down the continuum away from the place we struggled to achieve.  This can happen over an entire lifetime.  We struggle to move forward, then slowly but surely, if we aren't watching, the world overtakes us again.  Staying ahead is really hard work.

I have another example.  As children, we fought and struggled to become adults. As parents of children, we watch that same struggle happen and it can be really difficult to watch our own children through awkward ages and the trials that young life throws at them.  Slowly they fight their way, moving the equilibrium from child to adult.  Then as adults, we find out something amazing.  We discover that if there is enough pressure put on us, all we want to do is to run home to our parents and be treated as children again.  My father died in 1965 and my mother in 1978, and there are still times that all I want is one of them to take care of everything I face.  This happens when my equilibrium is pushed all of the way to the child side.  As adults, we do the thing that we have been taught to do; we start clawing our way back to the adult side, because that is what is expected of us.

Maybe you have spent time processing on all of this, but it was a new thought for me, and has been really helpful in the last several weeks. It has helped me come to understand that there are times when everyone, myself included, are more ready to take on the challenges of the world and there are times when everyone just wants to lie down and be done.  When we see that in those around us, that we know and love, it is up to us to help them move back to a place that is better for them.  To move across the continuum to find a new equilibrium that is a better, healthier place.  And when we are in a bad place, it is important that we recognize it and let those who are willing to help, do so.  We can rarely do it by ourselves.

Okay, so much for the serious side.  Now, on to the fun.

How many of you remember the game Plinko, from the TV show "The Price is Right"?

I had a request from YESS (Youth and Emergency Shelter Services) to build a Plinko board as part of their marketing for the Duck Derby on May 5.  I wasn't really sure what I was getting into when I started, but I have to tell you that I am proud of the way that it came together.  And the feedback is that the kids absolutely love using this at their events.

The Duck Derby is a great event and a really good place to spend a spring day.  It is also a really good place to spend a little money. All of the funds go toward programs for children who could really use the help.  There will be a flock of ducks in the running that represent my family and I hope that some of your ducks will be running with them.  And, if you are at a YESS event in the next couple of weeks and you see a Plinko board with big yellow duck sticker, tell them that you know the guy who built it.  You'll find my name on the back.

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.

Sisyphus

Okay, prepare yourself to go places today that you would never expect to go with me ... off into mythology.  In the last couple of weeks I had someone tell me they felt like the guy who pushed the rock up the hill every day.  This guy was Sisyphus.  Yes, I had to look it up.  Sisyphus was sentenced by the gods to push a rock up a mountain all day, only to have the rock roll back down the mountain at night.  Then he would start over again the next day.  The article I read also talked about this being a metaphor for working in futile jobs in factories and offices.  Hum, there is something to think about.

As I rolled (no pun intended) this idea around in my head, I had several thoughts.  First, I understand that it could feel like any of us were pushing a rock uphill all day long.  The person I work most closely with, Carolyn, would tell you that just this week I melted down about having to repeat the same thing over and over.  The context was something we had dealt with in the past, I had counted as finished, and the issue was coming up AGAIN.  My rock.  As I think about this in hindsight, without the emotion of the moment, I realize that if we only had to do things one time, we would quickly come to a point when we were no longer necessary.  I never want that time to come.

The second thing that I think about is the idea of "futile jobs in factories and offices."  I just can't make sense of this.  I have been in and out of factories and distribution facilities for the better part of my adult life, and without doubt, I have not seen any jobs I consider to be futile.  I have seen jobs that I wouldn't want to do, but I've always been amazed that the people doing the jobs were happy and felt as though they added value to the overall enterprise.  After all, isn't that what we are all looking for?  I know that at the end of the day when I am asked how my day went, I want to be able to say that I had a good day, and that I actually accomplished something that helped the company. The other important thing is that on the day that I help my company, I also typically help myself because I personally am seen as having value.

A final thought in all of this is around the rock itself.  If you can embrace the idea of pushing a rock uphill all day, I might ask you to consider whether the rock is always the same.  I think that the day the person talked to me about this, their rock had been pretty big for several days.  But in my case, that isn't always true.  There are days the rock is smaller or lighter, and there are even days when the mountain is not as steep.  There are days when I go home from work and don't feel that I accomplished much at all and there are days that I feel like I got a lot done.  That is just the way that it works for me.  When I worked in retail, one of the people I worked for used to ask at the end of the day if we served more customers or angered more that day.  How big was the rock?

I know that it is different for all of us, but I always think about the fact that I get to fight another day. I got through even the worst days and get to play again.  This is a pretty big deal for me.  There are times that I get home and all Sara wants to do is to stay away from me for a while, but, I get to start over again the next day. Each day starts fresh as I have made no mistakes and all that lays in front of me is what the day will bring.  I know that I will deal with the 'rock' for the day, but I still have the potential for a good day.

Ok, just to finish today, this was a good week.  I finally got to my lumber supplier and picked up some alder hardwood and matching sheet goods.  This will let me start on a roll top desk that I have been wanting to build for my office at the Toybox and maybe a set of shelves that will go in Andrew's room in the basement.  I'm kind of excited as I have spent almost no time at the Toybox in the last several weeks.  This is totally unacceptable and needs to be rectified NOW.

Have a great weekend.

Interest in the Ditch

Last week I was driving to the Toybox when I saw a child's swimming pool laying in the ditch.  It was wrecked, folded in half, basically destroyed.  Even with all of that, I found myself thinking about what I could do with this.  Now, why would my mind go there?  It struck me that I have been trained this way all of my life.

One of the earliest memories that I have of my father is driving through the country looking for corn.  Yes, in Iowa.  This was a time when corn was picked and stored still on the cob rather than shelled the way that it is now and corn was moved in much smaller wagons than today as well.  Because of this, and because most farmers wanted to maximize the amount that they hauled, many times you would find ears of corn that had spilled off the top of wagons.  We would drive around the back roads during harvest time looking for these "finds."  When we came upon some, dad would stop the car and I would jump out and recover the ears of corn.  We would then take them home, shell them by hand and put the corn in a barrel that we kept in the shop.  We used this to feed the birds through the winter.  This worked great since whole corn is really well liked by Cardinals and these were the birds that dad liked to see the most.  Fast forward thirty plus years and these are some of Sara's favorite birds as well.  Anyway, this was my first experience with looking for things that had been lost along the road.  I still remember the excitement of jumping out to get those ears of corn, feeling the exhilaration of getting something in that manner.

What dad and I did though was nothing compared to years later with my grandfather.  Grandpa Art was the rock foreman for Keokuk County here in Iowa and he drove all of the back roads of the county all of the time.  Doing this, and keeping his eyes open, allowed him to see many things that had either been lost, or cast off into the grader ditches around the county.  Over the years that I rode with him in the truck, there were several times I remember jumping out to reclaim something that had found its way to the side of the road, but there was one time that was beyond belief.  One Saturday morning, Grandpa told me to grab a handsaw and jump in the pickup with him.  I thought nothing of it.  We drove out of town and after some time, we stopped on the side of the road.  In the ditch was an old horse-drawn dirt slip.  This was a piece of equipment used to move dirt on construction projects before there were bulldozers. 

Although all of this is interesting, the most amazing part was that there was a tree growing up through the handle of the slip.  This was no obstacle for my grandfather.  After all, that's why we brought the saw. So, down into the ditch I went, saw in hand to cut the tree out. This was accomplished in short order and we pulled the slip out of the ditch, loaded it into the pickup, and took it home. This was reclaiming or picking, depending on what word you want to use, long before it became popular.  Of course there was a plan with what we were going for it.  We planned to repaint it, put it in the front yard, fill it with dirt and Grandma would plant flowers in it.

I am not sure what year this was, but my feeling was that I was in my early teens.  Let's call that 1970, just for argument's sake.  Thirty years later, when we cleaned up the place after my grandmother passed away; there behind the garage, right where Grandpa and I had put it, was the highway dirt slip.  It was amazing to me then, and it continues to be to me today, how quickly three decades can pass.  I think the other thing that it really helped to teach me, was that at any point in time you need to have some "starter" projects.  You should always have several things around that you intend to get to, so that on any given day, depending on the way you feel, there is a project to work on.  If you don't have some extra projects and you don't want to work on the one you have, you will never get anything done.

Well, all in all, at the time it was a great plan, even though it never happened.  It is interesting, though, as I look around my Toybox I see several items that came from the ditches.  The first you would see if you visit is the heavy yellow drop cords I use.  These started as a 100' cord in the back of someone's pickup, but when Andrew and I found it in the middle of the highway it was in several pieces.  We cut the pieces to length, put new ends on and they now serve me throughout the shop.  Needless to say, I continue to drive and watch my surroundings, because you never know what you will find. 

As I think back, I guess I can thank both my father and my grandfather for teaching me this skill.  For this, I am thankful.  You should try it too.