The ridiculousness of the McDonald’s Ice Cream machine and dip cone disasters curl a 50 principle into my conscience.  What is a 50 principle?  It is one of the 50 mantra’s I have used to run business.  This one?  “When your customer comes to you with a mess, don’t hand them toilet paper. Fix it!”  Our government could learn from that one, but that is another issue all together.

A large hospital struggled with failing nurse support equipment for the computer communication systems.  Two color printers were constantly failing.  The light pen driven tabletop consoles blipped constantly.  The team assigned were going from station to station taking one piece out and bringing “repaired spares” to the nurses stations.  Nurses were lived.  Doctors were known to slam the equipment against the wall. And the repair techs hated their jobs.  The vendor doing the repairs was making a fortune.

The area had just been assigned to me.  It was early days for personal computers and IT took months to create a simple app.  I needed a tracking system to do some analysis and so created my own using a home dual floppy computer and a copy of dbase.  Only the oldest of managers and home computers will understand what I just wrote.  But here’s the gist.  My team and I invented a paper driven, quick solution system to analyze patterns.  Immediately, we began to record ever interaction with every piece of equipment and every result.  Second principle: Inspect what you expect.  Expect what you inspect.  Third Principle: Blue sheet every problem and idea.  Document for later analysis.

After a month of analysis, we found that printers only lasted an average of six days at the nurses stations and some stations had averages closer to 3 days.  Drilling down into the data and tapping the brains of the techs, a few amazing discoveries were made.
1. The most common problem was static electricity causing paper dust to get into the light sensors on the printers, which caused the mechanisms to jam and damage. Solution:  Issue the techs air cans to blow out the dust.  Result: Average went to 10 days between failures (MTBF - mean time between failure for you engineering geeks.) 

2. Printers returned from the repair bay lasted half the time as those repaired in place between failures.  Solution:  Quit moving the equipment from station to repair bay.  The movement was causing more problems than they had originally.  Fix in place if at all possible.  Result: MTBF went to 20 days.

3. The vendor repair tech was too slow to my liking.  Solution:  Turn these simple repairs over to internal techs, use the vendor for parts only.  Result:  Repair times went from 10 days to one day.  MTBF went to 30 days.  Cost reduced by hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.  Vendor was not happy, but nurses began buying gifts for the techs.  My staff received raises and all expenses of the area were paid in cost savings.

4. The equipment used a proprietary black box converter to operate in conjunction with the main computer system.  This prevented us from acquiring more current equipment that was more reliable.  Solution:  Hire a brain to create our own “white box” converter for the simple algorithms and purchase new more reliably designed printers.  Result: $300,000 in immediate savings in the purchase versus using the vendor supplied equipment and MTBF of 6 months.  WOWZA!  Techs were available to work on other issues.

All of this was done using the simplest of brain versus machine.  No one was trained in LEAN principles, though I recommend that training.  Just good ol’ common sense love the customer, love the product, love the team persistence along with the 50 principles.

Manage Well: An Eclectic Manager's Guide To Excellence by Philip Larson https://www.amazon.com/dp/1499503121/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_NMJBZQFM8ZASJQ1S6B6Z via @amazon (31 of the 50 principles)

Psalm 16:7 I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel;
My heart also instructs me in the night seasons.
The hidden man of the heart decides most actions. Among the mental health solutions most recommended for depression, anxiety, PTSD, and both process and substance addictions is a regimen named CBT.  CBT stands for Cognitive (Thinking) Behavior Therapy. Address your thoughts and your actions will follow.  Follow with your actions. You are what you think. You become that on which you mull and meditate.  Your actions come from the inner man, the heart, the soul, the mind, the will, and the emotions.
Character Guides Profit
The product of business is profit.  Profit is a good thing unless it is the only thing.  Why do I want to profit?  Have I built a character base to guide my gain? Two good friends come to mind.  Both are wealthy.  Both focus all gain/profit on expanding the kingdom. Yes, they live fulfilled lives, but not over spending lives.  The amounts they give to kingdom works and benevolence is outstanding as a percentage of profits. Another, “Christian”, friend spends his profits on himself.  He travels extensively and posts all over Facebook of his travels and love for family.  His gain is his gain. He shares some of the wealth, but his focus that he shares is himself first and God when convenient.
The first two friends fulfill this proverb of the seventh verse. First, they bless the Lord not just with words, but action.   They recognize that God gave them wisdom and access to wealth.  In gratefulness, they give back and bless Him and His work.  Second, they are extremely prayerful men.  They take everything to heart.  They are persistent disciples of Christ and run their businesses with compassion and Christian disciplines.  Their hearts (mind, will, and emotions) are guided even when they sleep and especially in hard times (night seasons).  They do not become a different person under pressure because their heart is secured to His heart.
Character Guides People
The product of a community organization is people.  Whether you are the Salvation Army or a church or the local women’s shelter, you are focused on people.  You need finances, but that is not your product.  The same questions apply.  Why do I want to touch people? Have I built a character base to guide community gain?  A conversation with the mayor of a community we reach revealed his heart. We spent hours discussing how to develop the hearts of the people in the community alongside all the economic growth and infrastructure changes.  Discussions with other community leaders takes the same direction, but not all.  Some want to tear down old houses to “clean out the rats” or “take away places for crime”.  Others want to tear down old houses to deliver kinder, gentler neighborhoods and encourage growth.   There is a difference of heart.
Character Comes in the Night
Struggles reveal the deep meditations of the heart. Profits will be challenged.  Our people touch will be challenged.  At those moments, we go back to character built in other moments to make our decisions.
Character is built by quieting our fears with faith.
Character is built by quickening our faith in the face of risk.
Character is built by quickness to turn to God when nothing seems solid.
Character is built by quietly meditating on His wisdom in His Word when all is well and our thoughts are clear.
Character is built in the inner man to be exposed by the outer man of actions.
A few years ago, my wife and I had major decisions to make concerning our future contributions to profit and people.  For days, we locked ourselves in prayer.  Intense hours were spent reading scriptures and prayerfully considering our future lives.  Each option in front of us had risks and gains.  Today as I look back, the choice was made from a life of handling risks and gains in God’s grace not just the few days of prayer.  Our impact is many fold what it had been.  Our finances are nowhere near where they were, but our people impact is exploded. Deep character is built in the night.


Phil , thethinkdirector

In my cup collection is one of annual cups for AFPRESS, a concept company extension of a larger insurance corporation. The cup and the year were titled Breaking Barriers. Other executives mocked us openly. The venture was not popular because it challenged the norm, it threatened mediocrity. And of course, because it worked. A small group of staff written off as failures went on to grow from falling to $4.5mm worth of retail digital print publishing in a falling industry. Indeed, they broke many barriers of customer service, production, quality, and quantity. Barriers mostly are mental impositions created by small vision. They can be broken.
Oh, the reason I wrote this article? I've been working with some pastors on getting that plateau busting in motion. As part of that, I put together a quick starter that takes about 30 minutes MINISTRY METRIC MATRIX OF GROWTH. The MMM is FREEEE. I like pastors. I like local churches.
Throughout my menagerie room are similar cups and momentos. Consider the "Year of The Plan" for C.R. Anthony corporation where we shocked the courts and pulled a company out of chapter 11 bankruptcy in 18 months and became profitable and lithe. That was a fun set of barriers to break. Then there is the "Best Place to Work in IT" award from ComputerWorld, where our director team led in outstanding recognition. A great memory was leading alongside others in a pastoral team to see a plateued non-profit move from 1500 membership to 5500 membership and move from being 99% white to completely multi-cultural where no one racial heritage was 51%.
That non-profit/church breakthrough took 3 years. In fact most breakthroughs in which I've participated took about 3 years. Whether it was retail, insurance, non-profit, or healthcare, the breakthroughs have a pattern. My fourth major book, STUMBLING INTO MIRACLES outlines personal progressions involved in those breakthroughs. It will take you to see many individual barrier breakthroughs that we see today in SOLUM working with folks struggling through the I've HAAAAD It! Hopelessness, anger, addiction, abuse, anxiety, and depression are horried barriers. Developing a systematic workshop to apply to those has been a great and fulfilling journey. It isn't a book, but a personnally mentored workshop. But then the other three, TIME TO LEAD (community and culture), BY GRACE (churches) , and MANAGE WELL (corporate departments and entrepreneurial efforts) all have similar themes. Breaking barriers is not easy, but it has some commonalities in personal life and business and community endeavors. And if you are a person of prayer TRANSFORMER'S PRAYER is a good quick place to start.
So, why write so much about barrier breaking transformation? Why help others? Why take on giants instead of just living mundane? Because it can be done and you can do it. We are working on a huge barrier now that we have broken in one place and want to extend to many. It only took a few years to break the barrier, but now we are looking to break nationwide. SOLUM is the flagship of that breakthrough.
Are you ready for the commonalities? No matter the industry or endeavor, I've found a few.

1. Inventory What Is. Too often we apply change before we apply understanding. Covey tells us, "Seek first to understand before you seek to be understood." Yes. Even better seek first to understand before you seek to pose a solution. You may be totally off base in what you know. A production group was off target by 14 hours a day. They were supposed to hit target at 7am daily and were hitting at 9pm. What a mess. Inventory and a little sorting and structuring took out the excess and put production on target consistently.
2. Determine the objective in measureable terms. How often I 've gone into a corporate fix to find out the owners did not have a clear objective for the team attempting to perform the impossible task of hitting an invisible and moving target. Pshaw! Quit treating people that way. Get deep. Figure out the target and make it clear to everyone involved. Even in church work, we figured out the key metrics both tangible and intangible and watched them as they helped us reach our greater goal.
3. Inspect what you expect. Expect what you inspect. As you apply small changes implement tracking tools that require little effort. People spending time on tracking tools are not spending time on what they are attempting to accomplish. One team set impossible objectives for production and celebrated as percentages were clicked off on the way to the top goal that they did reach.
4. Enjoy the journey. Celebrate milestones. A team of printers had a great time when a customer, who had expressed disdain openly, awarded them a big party when they reached 100% of the customer's business with joy. Cool, huh! My wife bought me a white cap with 100 on it. The naysayers just grumbled, but we celebrated.

That's it. You can go read a book full of other markers and information by selecting any of those referenced or change your life by following the I've HAAAAD It! link. But working on these four major attention items will get you in quick and reliable motion.
Keep your eye peeled as we break through national barriers. Better than that, break through your own. If you'd like, I'd be happy to do a one-one coaching session with you for personal barrier breaking. I'm not free. But I'm good. No brag. Just fact.
Oh, the reason I wrote this article? I've been working with some pastors on getting that plateau busting in motion. As part of that, I put together a quick starter that takes about 30 minutes MINISTRY METRIC MATRIX OF GROWTH. The MMM is FREEEE. I like pastors. I like local churches.
Phil Larson, thethinkdirector [email protected] 405.494.0637 Schedule a 30 minute FREEEEE breakthrough interview.