This summer we traveled to France. We spent 3 days around Paris, a week in a medieval village in the south of France called St. Ambroix, and a week in Sancerre. We rented a car and got to drive the highway in one direction and drove through all the smaller roads coming back. We didn’t have a GPS in our rental car and it felt quaint to attempt all that foreign driving with a map and a conversation. We drove through hundreds of roundabouts and our policy was to keep going around until we knew which way to go. We twirled around quite a few traffic circles on our journey. One of the threads of conversation that wove through this vacation, was the concept of “France–the brand” and how it compared to France–the reality. In North America, the concept of France and French products act very similarly to an upscale brand. If something is from France, it is guaranteed to be expensive, potentially hand-crafted, and new and cutting edge from a design perspective–innovative. France, the brand products might also center around fairly expensive European style food. In other cases, the word french is added to something ordinary to make it sound upscale. Some examples of how “French” is used to make a product more upscale would be French roast, French vanilla, French press, French toast, and of course French fries. France has nothing to do with producing coffee, vanilla, fries, or bodum coffee pots, but the word “French” gives them a little something special in their branding. Apparently before it was called “French toast” it was called German toast–apparently in previous centuries the German brand used to be more popular than it is today. Now, French is chic. French lavender is another example. Apparently French lavender is a variety native to Spain–maybe North Americans aren’t the only ones who use the word “French” to make their products more marketable. We found France, the country to be so different than France, the brand....
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What’s the difference between maintenance and progress in business? When I’m doing the day-to-day operations of my business, I’m just maintaining. If I step outside of the day-to-day and develop a vision of how to make the business better, then I am making progress. The same is true at my house and in my garden. Sometimes I am making the property “better.” Occasionally we add something new or improve the property in some way. This year I added some lovely flower boxes in all the windows. One year we installed a larger hot water heater so we stopped running out of hot water. Sometimes we don’t do anything to make the property better–like the year we went on sabbatical and didn’t do all the little projects we usually do to make our home feel good. But aren’t most of the tasks maintenance, really? If we spend a year without doing any big projects, even if I continue fixing or improving routine things, then the paint will be a year older, things will be a little more worn. No big projects mean the house looks older and older, it just doesn’t stay the same. I believe a similar reality applies to leadership and people development in organizations, too. Taking a year away from developing people doesn’t leave you where you were, it takes you backward–just a little. Skills become a little less current, the dialogue in the organization gets a little more stale, and people have a little more distance from company values and purpose. Having learning projects engages staff, channels their energy, and keeps them moving forward. I know the philosophy for many in this economic downturn has been “all hands on deck.” Focus has been on sales and marketing, and on bringing in as much business as possible. I hope the time has come to look around to see how to tend to the people in the organization. How can their development support the bottom line? What are the projects your house needs...
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The firmly-held Montessori principles, and the fact that they work, have resulted in a strong “Montessori brand” that has not only endured the exile of its creator and several wars, but has remained constant through changing societal attitudes towards children and education.
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I just spent 10 days in Texas with my 98-year old grandfather, Bubba. “Bubba?” you ask. Yes,that’s what we call him. It’s a nickname he got many years ago when his sister couldn’t say brother. I was in Texas because Bubba recently spent some time in the hospital and I needed to visit him and the rest of the family.
Since we were eating out a lot I got to have some pretty tasty Texas-style food. The Tex Mex Chile Rellenos and BBQ brisket were good, but by far my favourite–for culinary and sentimental reasons–was a nifty little corn tortilla sandwich called a “Chihuahua.”
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I imagine this post may not sit well with the liberals, but it has been swirling around in my head for a while now and I wanted to capture it. I think minimum wage is one of the major problems getting in the way of economic recovery. I believe our recovery will happen, but I think this one construct is challenging the market’s ability to correct. When we have minimum wage, it contributes to the culture of those who have a job and those who don’t–the have/have not culture of employment. When a huge market of unemployed people exist, minimum wage starts to create a very strange economy. The only way to get a job with minimum wage in place is to compete with everyone else in the marketplace. I just posted a 10 hour per week cleaning position and I have gotten over 30 responses. The poor, the unskilled, and those who don’t have a great skill at presenting themselves, or those who don’t speak English well are competing with everyone else that the marketplace has pushed out of other higher paying jobs. As someone who occasionally employs people (or at least hires some help in my life), I can see that the quality of applicants is pretty high. So those who are competing for jobs have to hit a certain threshold in terms of skill. Those who don’t fit that threshold are screwed. If they can’t compete in the marketplace then they are forced to look for income some other way. They could start some kind of business where they can discount their services–many business owners make less than minimum wage or fail completely in the first 3 years. Alternatively, they can stay on public assistance. As a business owner, why shouldn’t I get a price break when I hire someone when there is a competitive marketplace for jobs? I would be able to hire someone quicker at a lower rate as I am rebuilding my business after taking a hit in the...
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On Saturday night my family and I went to a dinner show in town. It seemed like a good activity for the family, and we were pretty excited. The ticket price included a family-friendly meal and child care during
the show, which was a must-have for the twin 3-year-olds. We made our reservations and showed up on time.
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