Stretch

I've had a great week in so many ways. A lot of projects moved forward, and  obstacles overcome, but as I consider the week as a whole, what I really thought about was stretching. This isn't really something that often comes to mind for someone in my age range when thinking about their occupation.  I think more often than not, when people reach a certain age, they settle in and very effectively accomplish their work for the rest of their lives. They do it without a great deal of innovative or new thought and without a great deal of change. I remember hearing that in the scientific community, almost to a discovery, all of the big things are discovered by those under 45 years of age. When I read this the first time, I remember not really believing it. I think maybe I am closer now.

This last year gave me the opportunity to start stretching again and now I am watching someone close to me do the same thing. In both situations it was due to a change in employment. As any of us begin something new, we are deluged with a constant stream of things that even if we "knew" them in a different environment, the differences of companies and individuals makes the whole idea seem alien.  With time and repetition we stretch and adapt and make these strange and alien activities part of what we know and what we can accomplish.

Sara started a new job and she has been in the throes of learning new processes and procedures. Finally, by the end of last week she had confidence in what she was doing. One of her teammates even mentioned that she was moving around the office and getting things done with a great deal more confidence. I believe her confidence came as a result of the stretching.

When we watch younger people and children, we often see this phenomenon very clearly. We even talk about "growing pains." You may remember, if you had boys, times when the growth experienced overnight was actually painful and would wake them up from a sound sleep. This is probably the most extreme case of this type of growth and change. We also get the opportunity to watch this through the educational process, most specifically when we have our children in college. They tend to go in with one idea, or thought, and at the end of the experience, they have changed the plan several times. All we can hope is they have something they will be able to use as they move forward. I've watched my daughter do this, starting with a degree in Biology and now as she moves to a degree program in Biochemistry. This came as she discovered her love for chemistry and her disappointment when she came to her final chemistry class. Her stretch came as she discovered a need to change majors so she could continue exploring through more chemistry classes. Interesting, huh?

Those of you who know me know I am committed to lifetime learning. I believe we continue to learn from the first day of our lives to the last. The thing I've found out about myself is there are times you may still be learning something, but the rate at which this happens is less than what we should expect of ourselves. When this happened to me in the past, I filled time with activities far from appropriate to get me moving forward again. One of the classic things I do is shop on Amazon and Ebay way too much. I developed whole collections of things which I sold later because I wasn't stretching, I was bored. So in order to not let this happen again, I am developing a personal list of things I will fill time with when I am not stretching. Hopefully, this will be a combination of things to move me forward at work and things which will just make me a better person. One of these items will be learning to weld. This is undoubtedly something which improves my life away from work, not at work.

As I end this thought today, I challenge you to ask yourself if you are continuing to stretch?  Whatever your answer, then you need to ask if you really want to.  Based on those two answers, decide what to do with this going forward. I hope you find answers which help you to find joy in your day to day world.

Have a great week.

Rolodex

Yesterday was a good day. It was a good day for a lot of reasons, but for the purpose of this post, I'm going to try to corral my thoughts around one issue.

I don't respond well to "cold calls." I know everyone has to do them, and I've had people I'm responsible for make a great many of them, but I generally don't have time to talk to people when they show up without prior planning.

A couple of weeks ago, a vendor show up in out of the blue, and I wasn't actually in the office. He left information, and honestly, I was never going to do a thing with it. Then he did something smart. He sent an email telling me he was going to be in Des Moines this week and asked if I had any time to meet with him. Now, although I can ignore a "cold call" with the best of them, if someone appropriately asks for time, I can't tell that person no.  So, I scheduled the meeting.

The time came for the meeting and Ryan from Kraft Tank in Kansas City did the next smart thing. He arrived exactly on time. Not a great deal early, and not a minute late. He had now cleared the next hurdle with me. He respected my time. I invited him into my office and rather than attempt to engage in a great deal of meaningless small talk, he introduced himself and went about the purpose of his meeting. He started telling me about the company he works for and what they may be able to do for me. Okay, really? He just hit the trifecta of making a call on me, and honestly I think on a great deal of other people.

Since we'd reached the point where I actually cared about this person and what he had to say, the whole tenor of the meeting changed. I stopped the meeting and asked my fuel manager, Seth, and to join us so we could talk about some of the trailers we use in our over-the-road operation. We also had the chance to talk about a piece of equipment that we might want to sell. All of a sudden, there is the possibility now of  entering into a  transaction with Kraft for that trailer.

Then the most interesting part of the conversation happened. I started talking with him about who he knew in Kansas City and almost immediately discovered he'd worked with a couple of people in the MHC/Kenworth organization I'd really enjoyed when I worked in that market - Todd and Larry. I could almost feel Seth rolling his eyes as this conversation took off.

Seth is just beginning to truly embrace the power of a network. I have always cultivated a strong network, clear back to the days of using a Rolodex. Whenever I left a company, the one thing they most often wanted from me was my Rolodex - all of the contacts and information therein. I guess they cared about me, but they really cared about all of that info.

Anyway, after Ryan from Kraft Tank left, I felt the need to go one step further. I picked up the phone and called Todd just to catch up. It had probably been the better part of a decade since we talked, but as so often happens, the conversation took off just as though we had spoken yesterday. He even laughingly told me he'd told a "Jim Martin" story in just the last couple of weeks. Todd has done well in his career - now a Vice President with MHC/Kenworth. It was really nice to talk with him again.

I know we all realize the power in the contacts we have - the network that we've fostered, but the manner the world is interconnected is sometimes even beyond our ability to really understand. I have friends who believe I'm more connected than they are. I don't for a minute think this is true.  But maybe I've been more willing, deliberate, successful at identifying the many ways I'm connected to others.

Like I told Seth the other day as he was trying to decide if he should go to a networking event, "Get in there and figure out how you know these people."  It will do you good, and honestly, it is just fascinating to find out how connected you are.

You should try it too.  Have a great week.

Bravery

Let's talk about the most important things first today. My scraper is found. I knew it would be. I knew it was just misplaced and not lost. Of course, it was in a place where I had looked ten times before - between the pages of the plans for my roll top desk. Even though I'd picked the sheets up and rattled them, the scraper had not fallen out.  But it did, and now all is good.

Except. Now my favorite tape measure is missing. What is going on here?

I'm not sure if you are in the right age group to either remember yourself, or to have children or grandchildren that watched an animated movie called "The Borrowers." The premise of the movie was that there was a race of small people who lived in the walls of our houses and offices. They borrowed things from us to be able to make their lives work. Hmm, maybe I have "Borrowers" living at the Toybox?  No, there has to be a more logical explanation, like I dropped the tape measure and knocked it under something and haven't found it yet.  Yes, that has to be it.

I titled today's thoughts "Bravery," but this isn't the type of bravery we hear about in the press or we see in extraordinary situations. The bravery that I am thinking about today is the type that allows a person to stand up and be the person they want to be.

When I think of this, I think of my Grandma Jo. I know I've told you this before, but the story bears retelling.  In 1992, we went to Sigourney to see Grandma. She was solidly in her eighties at the time. While we were there she announced that she had come to a time when she was no longer going to pull any punches.  he was going to tell people exactly what she thought, all of the time. This was a women that had been an over-the-road trucker in the 1940s - she was one of a very few women on the road. She worked in the Keokuk County Engineer's Office for a number of years and when you talked to the engineers that worked there, they would all tell you that although she didn't have a degree, she could understand and work on everything that they did.  She and Grandpa ran multiple businesses in Sigourney, often times with Grandma running the business and Grandpa on the road. In short, she was a walking, talking example of bravery every single day.

Last weekend all of this came back to me in a very real way. Friends of ours invited us to ride the Boone and Scenic Valley Railroad for their dinner train on Saturday. In the event that you ever have a chance to do this, take the opportunity. It is really a great way to spend the evening. Good food and company, riding through the Iowa countryside on a train. To some, this may not be as much fun, but if you know anything about me, I am a train nut. I am the person that sees a train coming and slows down to get caught at the crossing so I can watch it pass.

On at least two different occasions I have filled out paperwork to volunteer at the B&SV railroad. In both cases I did the work and took time to explain that I really wanted to help in the shop - rebuilding and improving cars and locomotives.  Also, in both cases, the only information that I ever got back was an invitation to help with the crowds during the Christmas season and when Thomas the Tank Engine was there. This is not what I wanted at all. So as I was standing there the other night, I thought that maybe I should fill out the form one more time, even knowing that the outcome would probably be an invitation to help take care of crowds of people. No thank you.

But wait, I thought. The people who could get me to the right place were probably right here in this building, right now. Rather than just fussing about what happened in the past, I walked into the office and introduced myself. I told them that I was a woodworker and was in search of a way I could use my skills to help the railroad. I told them that that I had tried to volunteer before, unsuccessfully. And then a gentleman stepped forward and introduced himself as the President of the B&SVRR. He told me that he knew exactly who I needed to be introduced to and that he would make sure my information got to that person. He explained the way that they deal with people volunteering and why I had the past experience that I did. It was nice to talk with him and in giving him my business card, I felt that I really will be contacted this time. Maybe I have finally reached the point that my Grandma reached - deciding that I have nothing to lose and that I should just charge ahead. We will have to see if this is a change in my demeanor, or just what I needed to do at this moment in time.

A couple of things worth noting as well this week.

The desk I'm working on at the Toybox is beginning to look like a desk.

And I can hardly wait for my daughter to come home from working at Camp Foster.

The Iowa State Fair is about to begin.  Even though my family and friends aren't coming into town for the fair this year, I will be there, you can certainly count on that.

Misplaced

The strangest thing happened at the shop last week. I have a small bench scraaper that had truly become an item I use in a lot of ways, and all of a sudden, it is just not there. This caused a great search to take place, and before all was done, I had cleaned the shop and put all of the tools back where they belonged, but to no avail - the bench scraper has not shown itself. Now, I have another one just like it and there is no real sentimental value to this scraper, but I don't know about you - it drives me crazy when I can't find something like that.

I come from a family that had a very solid philosophy about this kind of thing. Mom taught us, from the earliest that I can remember that nothing is ever lost, it is just misplaced. This was not just a passing comment on something we couldn't find, it was a call to arms to leave no stone unturned and find whatever it was. I have to give you the best example. Sometime in the mid 1970s, probably 1975 as we were getting ready to have my high school graduation, we took all of the drapery in the house down to have it professionally cleaned. This was no small feat.  After taking it down, we removed all of the drapery hooks and put them somewhere that "we would be sure to remember." We took the drapes in, had the cleaning done, brought them home, and went to put them back up.  And to our surprise - no drapery hooks. We tore the house apart. After several days of searching, mom gave up and bought new hooks.

Now, fast forward, like 13 years. Mom died in February of 1988. When my sister and I were cleaning out the house, in the drawer that had always been known as the junk drawer, clear in the back in a couple of plastic bags, we found the misplaced drapery hooks. Jaye and I didn't say a word, we just started to laugh. And, at a time we needed a good laugh, it continued until we both had tears in our eyes.

That day, the universe had shown us the truth of Mom's words - nothing is ever lost, it is just misplaced. We also found out that at the most high stress times of our lives, things like this will happen to give you a moment to release some of the pressure that you are under. After all, it was just drapery hooks, but at one point they had driven us all crazy, and at another time they were almost cathartic, giving us a much needed release.

So - my bench scraper - it will show up sometime and will hopefully happen when I really need it, or when I need to be able to laugh about where I put it. I say that because I'm sure that wherever it is, I put it there to ensure I wouldn't lose it and would be able to remember where I put it. So much for that thought. I also know that there are things in your life that are currently missing/misplaced. Maybe it is a picture, or a newspaper article, or all of your stained glass tools. There is a reason and a place they have landed and it is just a matter of figuring it all out. By the way, if I loaned/gave my stained glass tools to you, please let me know. My cousin, Julie, has been good enough to give me hers, but I am really curious as to where mine went. One of those other things that is just hanging out there for me.

As for other happenings in the Toybox, I delivered a couple of chairs to Andrew and Lyndsey last week. Although I know they will add more furniture to their deck as they go forward, they really look good there now. And I have finally gotten back to a project that is just for me. I am working on an Alder and Maple roll top desk that I am very excited about. It will reside in the Toybox, but I have always wanted to see if I was good enough to make this project. Since the days up at the lumberyard, sitting in Pug's chair at his roll top desk, I have always wanted one. Well, that is about to come true.

Have a great weekend.

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?