Know when to say, When.

Knowing when to say “When” is a highly undervalued trait.  I encountered this reality earlier in the week while travelling from Cleveland back home to Saint Louis.  If you paid any attention to the weather then you were aware of the major winter storm system which hit the Great Lakes region pretty hard.  Freezing temperatures and snow made for the perfect storm for winter driving.

I made the trip from Cleveland to Columbus, Ohio in just less than three hours and at speeds of roughly 45 to 50 mph.  That posed a serious delay to my trip and there was no way I would make it home in the normal nine hours.  After watching two cars spin out and hit the highway median, I decided that it was time to stop and seek shelter for the night.  Thankfully a Days Inn was right at the exit which presented my last chance to bail from the highway before becoming entangled in the ensuing traffic jam (brought to us courtesy of the two drivers who chose to do 65 in the slush and snow).  I rested overnight and struck out for home by 9:00 A.M. (I almost wrote 0900, but figured most readers would be lost on the meridian time reference).  My decision to stop fighting the storm and wait it out overnight graced me with clear roads capable of 60 mph travel.  Along my route I counted 14 over-turned or otherwise disabled tractor-trailers, and a handful of passenger vehicles abandoned on the side of the highway or in the grassy medians.  It looked like a war zone!

That’s when it struck me; all of those drivers were presented with the same problem and opportunity that I was.  However, they chose to bravely (or fool heartedly) press on with the challenge.  Now, no doubt, many hundreds of other drivers safely made the trip, but it is worth taking the time to weigh the options that were available and the methods chosen to deal with the problem.  Such decision making can similarly affect our results while tackling challenges at work.  Often, we rush ourselves to resolve problems quickly so that we can continue focusing with daily business.  As a result, we often miss solid opportunities to refresh our minds, step back, and view the problem from alternate perspectives.  Over the years, I’ve watched groups of supervisors pool their ideas and attack a problem head on, which is admirable in its own rite, only to see a resolution severely lacking in solid root cause and course of action analysis.  The motive was simple: Just fix the problem!  The motive should always be: What is causing the problem, and how do we prevent it from occurring?  The answer is not always found in a quick fix.  I’m talking PDCA or DMAIC principals here (do a little research on those terms).

For another perspective, I use to tell my teams about the Lumberjack.  In days of old, a company clearing woodlands in the northwestern states hired a new lumberjack.  On his first day he cleared 50 trees!  The second day, he cleared 40.  By the fifth day he barely cleared 10 trees.  As the management scratched their heads wondering what happened to the stellar lumberjack they had hired, it never occurred to them that he never took time to sharpen his axe.  As he continued to plug away at the challenge of falling as many trees as possible, his axe dulled and became ineffective.  Like that lumberjack, we must at times remove ourselves from the problem at hand in order to sharpen our axes (euphemism for our minds, in case you missed the connection). 

As a leader, such ability to know when to say when and approach a plaguing issue in a new manner is vital at maintaining the morale of your team.  So, off we go to the grinding stone!

Will post again soon. I've been travelling again.

Managing the Survival Fund

Logic would mandate that there is no better way to gauge your preparedness for an emergency then actually experiencing said emergency.  (It worked well for BP and the whole gulf oil spill crisis, right?).  While my emergency action plan did not have to account for any environmental impact on walruses (research BP's plan and you'll get that), it did have to account for supplementing my expected unemployment benefits.  Allow me to expound that point: plan to supplement your unemployment rather than planning to live off your survival fund and you can extend the solvency of the fund.  Thankfully I had a very good idea that unemployment would be a strong potential in the near future, and I was able to save the equivalent of four months of expenses with another four months locked up in 180-day CDs. 

From the time that I starting prepping the survival fund, I knew that I would not be able to maintain the expenses commensurate with my current lifestyle.  The Country Club membership and the yacht payments both got placed on hold.  Okay I don't live that kind of life, but I have plenty of expenses that cannot be justified if the income is drying up.  That raises a novel idea: Stop spending money! (I really wish I could scream that loud enough for Washington to hear).

I had to plan to survive on $1,200 a month and whatever supplemental amount would be required from my survival fund in order to cover mandatory expenses: utilities, rent, car payments, cell phone, internet access (bet you thought that would be cut, but how else would I conduct my research and job search?).  With rent accounting for roughly 50% of the UE benefits and the car payments taking up another 40%, I quickly figured the leftover amount would not comfortably cover the remaining expenses.  Enter Plan A: the Survival Fund.  I am now in Week 8 and have just made my second withdraw from the fund.  I've been able to hold off this long by reducing spending on unnecessary items and placing memberships with monthly recurring charges on hold.  I really feel for those who are caught by surprise with UE and don't have a survival fund in place.  Generally they turn to Plan B: charge everything to the credit card.  I have used the credit card for major expenses that have popped up, and send a small payment monthly to keep them happy, but I wouldn't advise the credit card as a primary means of survival.  I would much rather survive the winter wearing a sweater in the apartment with the heat turned down then, try to resurrect my credit score once the employment situation is rectified.

So do I live like a church-mouse?  Heck no!  I'm just frugal (I said frugal, not cheap!) with my money and try to plan all of my errands into one trip rather than multiple trips during the day.  And wouldn't you know it, Christmas decided to pop up right in the midst of UE!  No way the nieces and nephews are going to be left out of my budgeting.

A final point to raise and it's purely a personal budgetary decision, but I caution to not stop your tithing.  Certainly reduce in order to align with your new temporary income level, but do not skip out on this important responsibility.  There are plenty of people in more dire situations than you, no matter your situation, and we are called to support those charities that help the neediest of our communities.  Always remember how far the poor widow's two coins went in the Kingdom of Heaven (read it Luke 21:1-4).

Rewriting the resume.

A few posts back I promised a review of my resume critiques.  If you are very proud of, or attached to your resume, then you had better grow some thick skin when you present your resume for a critique.  The common, initial review that you can expect: "You're resume fails to sell your most important qualities."  (Wow! That person on the other end of the email in that city 2,000 miles away REALLY knows you!).  Of course they feel it fails to sell you, they're in business to convince you that your resume is weak and that you need their services to clean it up and make it marketable.  Regardless what decision you make, remember that you are dealing with sales people and a little research on your own first may be helpful.  If you've read my previous posts, you may now be calling me on the fact that I recently paid for a resume rewrite.  Yes, I did.  I stated my reasons clearly and I chose the service that I felt offered the best results.

My experiences with resumes is limited to the Operations/Logistics field.  Other fields certainly have a different audience and resumes targeting those fields would have their own style demands.  But one guiding point is constant across all of the fields: You must sell yourself.  In today's market, a resume that simply tells an employer what you were responsible for doing doesn't do the trick.  Your resume must demonstrate what you did that helped the bottom line for your company.  I wrote about quantifying your results previously and this is where all of that comes into play.

Styles vary and their effectiveness varies as well.  A general point, keep the overall style simple, if a resume is too busy it may be received negatively; though a Marketing type may appreciate the extra effort.  A standard rule of thumb for style nowadays is as follows.  Three sections: an executive summary of who you are and what you can do; a key skills section listing areas of expertise (this is primarily for the computer scanner's benefit); and the employment summary section.

Finally, be careful of headings in boxes within your resume (title sections, etc). These can often cause formatting issues when uploading on a company's website.