Two great lessons
In 1995 i joined an effort to re-engineer the major business processes of the company. We had teams for customer service, sales & marketing, operations, pricing ... all working to find means to catalyze efficiency and effectiveness. I was on the team looking to re-engineer customer processes.
One day my colleague and friend, Bob Ehlers, approached me and gave me an education on this amazing thing called Mosaic which was a pathway to this amazing thing called the internet. Bob and I quickly decided that our company, APL, needed to become the first shipping company in the world to offer its services on this internet.We didn't really know what that meant but we felt it was important.
The leader of the re-engineering effort was a dynamic, young VP by the name of Mike Diaz. Mike had the ability to fire up a room just by walking into it. But he moved at a thousand miles a minute and Bob and i worried about whether we could get his attention on this whacky idea, let alone be able to articulate it.
Mike Diaz was traveling so Bob and I decided we needed to get his attention when he got back to his workspace. We wrote up a mock newspaper article with a bold headline "APL becomes first shipping company to offer its services on the internet!".
Mike came back from his trip, saw the article taped to his credenza and called us over. We were five minutes into explaining what we wanted to do (mind you, this was early, early internet days) and Mike asked us how much it would cost and how long it would take. We told him what we thought.
Mike's response: "I will give you twice that but I want it in half the time; and I want to be briefed on this every week by the two of you."
Message received? "Run with it. Its a risk, but I trust you and I'm in it with you!"
I learned two great lessons from Mike during those days:
Show your people that you believe in them and take risks with them. None of us knew if our idea would amount to anything and I am convinced that Mike agreed for two reasons. Firstly, because he saw something in the idea that appealed to him, and secondly, he was looking to motivate two young employees who were excited about an idea.
Time matters. Challenge yourself to implement quickly and efficiently. Great ideas are implemented because they are expected to deliver great returns; great novel ideas only have so much time before your competition replicates them - so time matters.
One day my colleague and friend, Bob Ehlers, approached me and gave me an education on this amazing thing called Mosaic which was a pathway to this amazing thing called the internet. Bob and I quickly decided that our company, APL, needed to become the first shipping company in the world to offer its services on this internet.We didn't really know what that meant but we felt it was important.
The leader of the re-engineering effort was a dynamic, young VP by the name of Mike Diaz. Mike had the ability to fire up a room just by walking into it. But he moved at a thousand miles a minute and Bob and i worried about whether we could get his attention on this whacky idea, let alone be able to articulate it.
Mike Diaz was traveling so Bob and I decided we needed to get his attention when he got back to his workspace. We wrote up a mock newspaper article with a bold headline "APL becomes first shipping company to offer its services on the internet!".
Mike came back from his trip, saw the article taped to his credenza and called us over. We were five minutes into explaining what we wanted to do (mind you, this was early, early internet days) and Mike asked us how much it would cost and how long it would take. We told him what we thought.
Mike's response: "I will give you twice that but I want it in half the time; and I want to be briefed on this every week by the two of you."
Message received? "Run with it. Its a risk, but I trust you and I'm in it with you!"
I learned two great lessons from Mike during those days:
Show your people that you believe in them and take risks with them. None of us knew if our idea would amount to anything and I am convinced that Mike agreed for two reasons. Firstly, because he saw something in the idea that appealed to him, and secondly, he was looking to motivate two young employees who were excited about an idea.
Time matters. Challenge yourself to implement quickly and efficiently. Great ideas are implemented because they are expected to deliver great returns; great novel ideas only have so much time before your competition replicates them - so time matters.
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