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?

Travel

I remember when I was offered the first job that would involve travel.  It was a magical moment, reminiscent of getting something back from Battle Creek, Michigan. You know, the place where all the stuff from the back of the cereal  boxes came from. Anyway, I remember having this wonderful idea of what a job with travel would be like: seeing new cities, experiencing food, culture, different people.

Then came the reality. I was responsible for conducting on-campus interviews for Payless Cashways on college campuses in the western half of the United States. At the one year mark, or there about, I remember being in a motel in Provo, Utah. I woke up that morning, opened the drapes, and had absolutely no idea what town I was in. In order to figure it out, I actually had to go to my briefcase and look at my plane ticket to see where I was. That was the morning when it struck me that what I had really seen in the past year were airports, motels, and college campuses. And guess what? They all look very much alike. That was also the day I asked the person I worked for to get me off the road. Thankfully he did.

Time passed and again, I found myself in a job with travel. At that time, I was in Store Operations, and we were trying to make sure that we saw each of 154 stores at least once every six months.  So, we were traveling a lot. It was different that time in that I was spending time with operators and walking stores. Never did a day go by that I did not learn something or have the opportunity to teach something. It was exciting, but the travel took its toll.

So, once again, I asked to get off the road and again, my boss said okay. This time the thing that pushed it over the edge was that I had been on a flight that had an aborted takeoff. And I was on a flight that had been required to "punch back out" from a landing attempt because there was sosmeone else on the runway. And... these two things happened on the same week.  Just too much.

If you have someone in your life that has traveled a lot, and you talk to them over dinner or drinks, you will find out that they have a lot of interesting stories about the way travel goes.  And if you are lucky enough to get two people like this in the same room at the same time, they will be like two old fighter pilots, trying to tell the biggest, best story.

But today, flying home from Maine, I think I may win. In LaGuardia, on a Delta flight, after we had pushed back from the jetway and were just starting to get ready to taxi, the announcement came overhead that we had too many people on the flight. We had more people on the plane than we had seats. Really?? How exactly does that happen? Anyway, back to the gate we went and two people left the plane. After all of the paperwork, and I am sure some finger pointing, we were back on our way, about an hour late. You may think that is the amazing part, but no. The next thing that happened was the part blew me away. On a three-hour flight that was now an hour late, the pilot came on the intercom and announced that he would make up the time in the air. An hour? All I can think is that warp speed is now deployed.

So, if airlines can get us there in half the time, why don't they?

Have great travels out there. Okay, I am off my soapbox now. I might have spent too much time in airline terminals this week, way too much time. Oh, by the way, he made up all of the time except for three minutes.

Karma

I don't know if you ever watched it or not, but there used to be a show on television called "My Name is Earl."  Now, in my opinion, this show would have had to move a LONG way to have ever become mainstream, but like so many other things in my life, if you put it at the right time of the day, I watch it.  That usually means sometime between 3 and 5 am when I'm having my daily sleep sabbatical.

Anyway, the premise behind the show was that Earl had done a lot of bad things in his life, and after an event that changed him, was working his way back through his life, correcting as many of these injustices as  possible. He talked about karma as if it were a true force of nature, one to be realized and recognized at every turn.

I am not to the place that Earl was with his worship of karma. Rather, I love to watch people either do something unexpected or something to pay it forward. I absolutely love stories about people in the Starbucks line paying for the person behind them, and the process continuing for hours after it started.

I find myself actually looking for opportunities to do something nice for someone I don't know. Of course there are a lot of them. Every now and then, one really makes you smile. Yesterday was one of them. We'd gone to breakfast at a place we had never tried before. Breakfast was incredible, but there was an item on the menu that I wondered about - bread pudding French toast.

So check this out: they make bread pudding from their leftover sticky buns, let it cool, slice it, batter it, and cook it as French toast. After asking questions, even though we were finished eating, we had  to try it. I placed an order for the table.

In the time between ordering it and having it arrive, I heard two older ladies talking at the next table.  Now, the reason I had even thought about trying this was that they had been asking questions about it all through breakfast. Anyway, they finally decided to try it themselves. When they ordered, I heard the waitress tell them that they had just sold their last serving for the day. Of course, I knew that serving was coming to us. There was only one thing to do. I asked our waitress if she would please charge the order to us, but split it between us and the next table. After all, we all just wanted to try it.

When the waitress delivered the half order to the other table, you could tell immediately that the ladies were pleased and amazed. In some small way we helped make their day brighter and maybe, just maybe, we started a chain reaction of one person helping another person for no real reason other than it was the right thing to do. And if not, it sure made me feel good. Helped to brighten a day that was already pretty darn good.

So, next time you are sitting in that line at Starbucks, think about buying coffee for the next person in line, or help someone with a door, or help someone carrying a heavy load. You will be amazed how good it makes you feel.  Have a great day.

Morning

I know that I've talked about this before, but I love mornings. This is the time of the day I like best because, honestly, I haven't screwed anything up yet. In the morning, a day is perfect, without the imperfections that litter the rest of the day as I begin to do things and make decisions. Admittedly, this time doesn't always last very long, but there are always at least a few minutes of this feeling.  But that isn't really what I am talking about today.

The morning that I am talking about is the way that the day itself, and the world around you, actually stretches and yawns as a way to get started. If you've never thought about this, stop and take a moment one of these days and really listen to the world. This has to be in the quiet time just as the day is getting started. Here are some of the things I've seen or heard in the last few days.

Driving to Weekend with Wood last Friday morning. I had already been in to work to get a couple of things done. I had a cup of coffee (one of my signature morning activities) and was in the heart of downtown. Two separate times, women crossed the street in front of me, carrying large satchels.  Both were dressed professionally, both were wearing running shoes of one type or another. These women were on their way to work, traveling at least some of the way on foot. This may have been from a parking structure, or maybe from their home. Both were going to get to work and change into whatever they needed to wear for the rest of the day. They may have even been carrying their lunch in the bag as well. I had to slow down my morning while waiting for them to cross in front of me and it was a quiet moment for all of us as the day was beginning. Just people trying to live their lives, and get their day started. Sometimes I think that I need to be more aware of the fact that this is what people are doing, just trying to live their lives.

Different day, different place. As is often the case, I was up early. As part of that I got to listen to the house come awake. Slowly, almost cautiously, there started to be the little sounds of a day starting. The squeak of a bed as someone started rolling around to wake up; the long sigh from another - stretching and getting all of the body parts moving; sometimes even the sound of the house as weight came to bear on places that it hadn't all night. I love this little symphony that plays out at the beginning of the day. And that is only inside the house. Open a window, or go outside and listen to what the rest of the world is doing. It always helps me to know that there is something more going on than what happens in my little corner.

Okay, that is probably about as philosophic as I ever get and definitely enough for today. Take the time, even if you aren't a morning person, to try at least to embrace the morning once. You may actually find something there to like.

Control

I guess I need to admit something and this is probably a pretty good forum for me to do it in. I think I may be a bit of a control freak. No, wait a minute. Let's think about this and think about what those of you that know me would say about that. I think you're right. As long as I'm in control, I really don't have any type of control issue.

There it is, all that I really need is to be solidly in control.

But wait, there are situations, rare though they may be when you con't be in control, or as was said in the movie Days of Thunder, "Control is an illusion."

Okay, now I'm back to this being an issue. When we come to those times that we are truly in the hands of others, such as going in for the "procedure" that occurs after we are fifty years old, (yeah you all know exactly what I mean), I think the control freak in all of us shows up. But, truly for some of us, it's more pronounced than that.

Some people think that I drive a lot of the time when we go to events because I love driving. The truth is I don't really love to drive, but rather, I want to make sure that if a decision needs to be made in a split second, I don't need to confer with anyone. I may not always make the best decision, but I know that I will make a decision and be willing to stand behind it, win or lose.

Many years ago, I went through some testing with the team that I worked with. When all of the results came back, we gathered in large groups to discuss the results. The discussions revolved around how we could work together more effectively, knowing how each of us reacted in given situations. I don't remember all of the dimensions, but I one of the measures was "Assertiveness." In this particular area, I actually got the highest score possible.

As we were going through the results, our Regional VP, Dave Krumbholtz for you old Payless folk, looked at my results and said, "Aw Martin, you aren't assertive." He was absolutely serious. He didn't see me that way. The funny part was that the rest of my team was sitting there, giving him all the verbal and nonverbal cues that I actually was. At the end of the discussion, Dave had decided that I was a "closet assertive."

Maybe that's the way I am in control. Maybe I'm a "closet control freak." If there is a chance to be in control, I will take it, but if there's no need for anyone to be in control, I'm okay with that, too. After all, that's kind of the way the assertiveness thing worked out: if someone needed to take charge, I would and could be assertive, but if there was no need, I was fine with it.

Hum... very interesting, maybe I don't have a control issue. Thoughts?