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Thoughts from an Industry Leader

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Thoughts from an Industry Leader.

Today’s post is a from a guest blogger, Steve Day. Each Friday, you will see a new post here from our guest blogger. He will be offering his thoughts and ideas for four weeks. We are thrilled to have his reflections here.

Experience is invaluable. The Thoughts of a Respected Leader in the Industry.

Four years ago, I decided that I would officially retire on January 1, 2020.  I immediately began my planning for a successful transition to my successor.  That went quite well.  My successor is definitely an upgrade and that is how it should be.  I also started planning for a fun and exciting first year of retirement in 2020 which would include quite a bit of travel.  As the Yiddish saying goes, “Man plans, God laughs”.

My good friend, Ron Slee, has become worried that my brain will turn to mush in the time of Covid-19. Unless, of course, I keep active, and so he has asked me to write an article for his blog.  It’s really for my own good. Hopefully my experience will be invaluable to you.

I thought that I might write about something important that I did not focus on enough until way too late in my career.  Training is at, or near, the top of my list of things I knew were important but did not focus on early enough.  Some of the things I am going to talk about in the coming weeks are probably obvious and some of them require effort and assets that we are often unwilling to allocate.  I think training is a particularly appropriate topic right now because it might be getting ignored a bit now during the time of Covid-19 budgeting.

This brief post serves to introduce you all to Steve Day. Please look for his wisdom every Friday.

For more information about training, please visit our website at learningwithoutscars.org

We Have Been Here Before

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We Have Been Here Before

Over the past two decades we have confronted three separate events that changed how we looked at our businesses.

In 1999/2000 we faced the Y2K problem. Our business systems were designed without sufficient foresight and we needed to make comprehensive changes swiftly and effectively. We did.

In 2008 we dealt with the Financial Crisis. Our markets for equipment dropped, depending on location, up to 50%. We had to adapt our businesses to survive in this harsh new reality. We did.

Now in 2020 we are confronted with a Worldwide Health Crisis. The Covid-19 problem. I have no doubt we will overcome this crisis as well.

The leadership in the USA, federal, state and local, have acted decisively and comprehensively. Think about everything that has been done.

  • We shut our borders down, first to China and now to the European Union. This kept out people who, unknowingly or not, carried the virus. We kept them out.
  • We identified the high-risk individuals. We quarantined them.
  • We designed a test for this specific virus once we received the biology from China.
  • We modified lab testing and established a nation-wide testing protocol.
  • We created drive through capabilities to conduct this testing in convenient locations.
  • We now are testing dozens of drugs to find a cure for the virus.
  • We have passed emergency legislation in the senate to assist affected people and businesses.
  • We have declared a state of emergency in nearly ten different states.

Private and public businesses have acted as well. This situation is extremely fluid and changes daily nearly everywhere, if not hourly. This is when we need sensible, thoughtful, calm and strong leadership. Can we count you in that group?

The Time is Now.