Leisa Fox

Life in Dream Space (Part 2)

Last week I wrote about a presentation given by Dr. Lowell Catlett , Regent’s Professor and Dean of the College of Agriculture and Home Economics at New Mexico State University at CIPCO’s Annual Meeting.  He effectively described the world’s migration from poverty to middle class and its ramifications.  Ultimately what has happened is a life lived in Dream Space.  A place where carbon credits, organic foods and cellophane wrapped hay are commonplace.  Here is more from his presentation:

1. Dream Space people are weird. . . There are now 50 million square feet of green roof office space in the US. 2 ½ million are in downtown Chicago.  The next generation of farmers may just need to figure out how to raise crops 50 stories in the air!
2. In Dream Space people afford what they want.  They’ve never had to save because they were never attached to poverty.  Did you know that there are more horses in America today than there were 150 years ago?  We’re not using them for transportation, people!  They’re PETS!
3. As I mentioned,  my generation  - I guess I’m an Xer, and the Boomers have never faced poverty.  We are making 75% more than our parents did – even adjusted for inflation. . . Oh and the kicker – we stand to inherit $17 trillion from our parents! – That’s right – with a T!  Go ahead and spend! 
4. A farmer in Grand Island was asked to define his highest cash crop.  His answer – women with SUV’s.  Huh?  Yep.  He raises hay.  Mostly he sells the hay to women who feed the hay to their “pet” horses that are ridden an average of TWICE a year.  The women don’t like the residual sticks stuck to the carpet in the back of their SUV’s, so this innovative farmer decided to wrap them in cellophane.  Guess what?  A $4.00 bail of hay when wrapped in cellophane can become a $10 bail of hay!  Cash crop?  Women with SUV’s.  Now that’s life in Dream Space, folks.
5. 40% of Americans today have a second home.  That’s with an average of $71k household income!  (People afford what they want to afford in Dream Space!) 

Bottom line – Identify, Create and Deliver products and services people want. . . They will find a way to buy them!  Regardless of any threat of recession, sub-prime blow up, or $171 billion war, innovation is the answer!

Life in Dream Space

Solving the Workforce Crisis – TOGETHER

A friend of mine spent his Saturday judging high school communications presentations.  He was floored at the poor performance of the supposed “best in class” group.  They were unrehearsed, lacked confidence and at the end of the day came across as inarticulate.  GREAT.  This is the best we have?!  His anger wasn’t directed at the students.  It was directed at the teachers.  I liked his analogy – “These teachers are shepherding, not leading these kids.”  That brings me to the follow up to my last blog.  Is there anything going right in this state surrounding the development of a skilled workforce?

I say yes!!  I have seen more examples of great innovation in education in the last two years than I can report in one blog.  What I’d like to do though is encapsulate the best three.  (Maybe I’ll get to expound at a later date!)

Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Technology Corridor’s Workforce Business Services:  The Corridor has developed a plethora of exciting programs designed to serve the area’s workforce issues.  They include:

·         Skills Advantage – over 90 businesses in the area have agreed to endorse the Skills Advantage worker certification program.  It communicates the necessary skills to gain employment and tests for them.  Once the test has been taken by the applicant, remedial training is offered to improve areas such as:  Locating Information, Applied Math and Reading for Information. 

·         Workplace Learning Connection – connects students’ career interests to nearly 200 occupations in area businesses.  Students observe and explore real-life work and learn about future opportunities through job shadowing, practicum  and intern programs.  Elementary students learn about important skills such as listening, following directions and attendance.

Project Lead the Way – Project Lead The Way Inc. (PLTW) is a national program forming partnerships among Public Schools, Higher Education Institutions and the Private Sector to increase the quantity and quality of engineers and engineering technologists graduating from our education system. First developed in the 1980’s by Richard Blais who was then chairman of the Technology Department of an upstate New York school district, PLTW is now offered in over 60 schools in Iowa and has just received support from Culver’s administration to create additional funding for the program.  I witnessed the impact this program is having first-hand when I audited the PLTW class in Muscatine last year.  These were some of the most passionate, driven kids I’d ever met.  They not only knew they wanted to be engineers, but new exactly what type of engineer and where they wanted to work! 

Vermeer University – Leaders at Vermeer have developed a teacher’s program whereby area teachers come to their campus for 6 weeks to attend Vermeer University.  During the six weeks, the teachers are paid comparably to their teaching salary to spend time in each of Vermeer’s departments to learn about great manufacturing careers available within the company.  They are part of lean events, the HR department, the marketing department, the engineering department, etc.  The teachers love the opportunity and leave with a broader understanding of not only careers within Vermeer, but manufacturing careers in general.  The teachers are positioned to go back to the class room with a reason to finish your math!

All in all, there are some great examples to which we should pay attention and possibly replicate.  If we do, we’ll make strides in cracking this workforce nut.

Let’s Solve this Workforce Crisis – TOGETHER

I’ve spent the better part of 18 months talking to Iowa business leaders, educators and state employees about Iowa’s “workforce crisis”.  I was asked to do some due diligence for ABI in identifying the opportunity that exists in bringing a Manufacturing Career Awareness Campaign to Iowa.  The program is called Dream It Do It.  Several surrounding states have adopted the program and are seeing SOME success.  When I began the process, I started asking business leaders across the state, “How’s your workforce?”  I got varying answers but at the end of the day, the consensus was, “it could be better.”  There seem to be some very basic challenges that will take some creative problem solving . . . things like:

·         Kids today are “entitled”.  They come into a job interview with a list of requirements they expect the employer to meet as a contingent of employment.  What happened to paying dues???

·         Applicants are desperately lacking in math skills.  A local central Iowa employer told me that they had developed a 5^th grade level test that included a lot of math and reading for information as a pre-hire assessment tool.  Because the failure rate was so high they had to stop using it. . . Now, math was never my forte, but I looked at the test and found it easy!  Frightening!

·         Dislocated workers possess outdated, irrelevant and non-applicable skills.  Sometimes success breeds mediocrity.  There are VERY FEW Iowa companies that don’t proactively train their employees to keep skills sharp and relevant.  Although this is an exception to the rule, it happens and lowers the curve for the entire state. 

·          There’s a 4 year degree or bust mentality. . . Now I’ve talked to several frustrated business leaders, community college representatives and even some young people who talk about the structure of Iowa’s education system pushing its kids to 4 year institutions. . . I, of course, naively blamed the K-12 educators for this. . . Not anymore.  After having multiple conversations with those teachers, I have learned that there is a fundamental flaw in k-12 curriculum that creates the natural path into four year institutions.  Iowa’s Tests of Basic Skills start measuring and preparing for that four year path in second grade.  Every teacher I have talked to would prefer their students be happy and productive rather than forced into a career path that doesn’t fit.

·         I can’t find qualified workers – IF the applicants pass the drug test – and I hear horror stories upwards of 50%  failure rates – they are completely unmotivated, undisciplined and place NO importance on showing up on time if they show up at all.

·         It’s impossible to recruit into the manufacturing industry.  Manufacturing HAS gotten a bad rap.  With companies like Maytag and Rubbermaid sucking jobs out of Iowa faster than you can say unemployment it’s easy to understand why the general public sees manufacturing as a volatile, unstable career.  The good news is, for every Maytag there is a Shine Bros, for every Rubbermaid there is a Vermeer.

Now that we know the issues, stay tuned to my next blog to find out some great solutions forward thinking Iowa leaders have come up with.  If we’re nothing else here in Iowa, we’re innovators.  When great minds come together, great things happen.  I think the perfect storm is looming that will result in a strategic, systemic process to create fantastic career paths for any Iowan wanting one!

Build it and they will come? Really?

I’m not so sure.  So, my friend and colleague here at ABI, Wade Den Hartog, has been telling me for two years now, “we need to blog.  In the very near future it will be THE way to communicate with our members.”  To that I responded, “really?  I’ve never even read a blog, let alone written one.”  Of course Wade’s been writing blogs for years now.

If you know me, you know that I’m not really that bright, so I often look to others for guidance.  So I started asking around.   “Do you blog?”, I’d say.  Oftentimes they’d say yes.  Others would say, “no, but I read three or four a day.”  Again, I replied, “really?”  Subsequently I started reading some random blogs.  (Especially during the caucuses.)  It is kind of fun, I have to admit.

Now that I’d identified the fact that, yes, this is a solid form of communication and yes we should be doing it, I had to identify the “blogger”.  So – I pitched the idea to my boss, Mike Ralston.  Now I adore this man, but “cutting edge” isn’t a phrase I’d use to describe him.  He still doesn’t own a PDA. . .

Next stop – John Gilliland.  John is our Senior Lobbyist and many sister organizations across the country use blogging as a valuable public policy advocacy tool.  Now, I’m not going to say by how much, but John is even older than I am.  In fact, he would NOT be considered a Young Professional.  He was quick to state that he just doesn’t have time. . .

WHO NOW?!  You guessed it – that’d be me!  Now Wade assured me that it would be easy. . . I agree, it is, all but coming up with the weekly (or bi-weekly, tri-weekly in my case) topics.  That’s rough.  I’ve been doing this for about three months now and it’s only gotten harder.

In the last year, ABI has created an Advisory Council whose mission is to identify, develop and deliver programming that will help ABI members become more successful.  Two of those council members stepped up right away and offered to serve as ABI bloggers.  As of the first of this year, you are now able to receive valuable information on the most cutting edge Environmental Issues by reading Jim Pray’s Blog.  Jim is Chair of BrownWinick’s Environmental Pracitce that includes both consulting and litigation.  In his first blog he talks about 2008’s environmental Hot Spots.  Because ABI has an incredibly involved and progressive Environmental Public Policy Committee, I expect this to be a very heavily visited and valuable blog.  (Much more so than my ramblings.)

The other brave soul who committed to the blogging task is Jessie Stefanski.  Jessie is a Risk Improvement export with EMC Insurance.  EMC is one of the foremost resources in all areas of Loss Control and Risk Management Consulting.  Jessie will be gleaning information from EMC’s Risk Improvement area to help all Iowa companies create safer workplaces.  Like ABI’s Environmental Committee, our Workplace and Product Safety Committee is always looking for great resources and are themselves a great resource.

Our hope is to create dialogues that result in best-practices sharing, provide resources that complement their current operation and link ABI members together so that they are able to easily communicate with one another.  Stay tuned.  As the year progresses, ABI hopes to launch several other blogs in various areas of discipline that we hope will be of help to you and your organization.

A Smart Person Never Hesitates to Steal a Good Idea

As you may or may not know, ABI began a series of events over a year ago called “Solutions Tours”.  These events are all very similar in format – there are three to four panelists, a moderator and an audience.  The panelists are asked to share real life examples of how their companies have solved a certain problem.  In the past we’ve hosted “Solutions Tours” on topics such as “Process Improvement”, Health Care Costs, Employee Drug Testing, Recruiting and Retaining Employees, etc.  Yesterday the panelists were asked to share their philosophies and experiences surrounding safety in the workplace.
 

Over 25 people - all connected in some way, shape or form to safety and risk management within their respective organizations gathered in Storm Lake.  The first thing that struck me was the camaraderie of the group.  Even though most of them were meeting for the first time, I sensed that they were kindred spirits because they felt one another’s pain.  Before I go any further in my diatribe, I’d like to get to the meat of the discussion so that others can learn from the incredible expertise that I witnessed yesterday.  The following will be what I perceived as the “best tidbits” from the event.  I am hopeful that those who attended yesterday will contribute their two cents in order to paint the full picture.

Kevin Welch with Demco was our first presenter.  Click here to download the presentation. 

·         Safety Saves Money - He showed us these pictures and explained that a woman in their plant, by using an Australian hair pin instead of a custom cotter pin in this component, saved Demco $25,000 in less than a half hour!  That doesn’t include the repetitive motion injuries and bruised hands that have been prevented because of the change!

·         Promoting Safety in the Workforce – Owner/Supervisor/Manager carries around $5 gift certificates to local restaurants.  Said person performs unsafe acts such as wearing jewelry, climbing unsafely, not wearing safety gear, etc.  The first employee to identify the unsafe behavior gets the gift certificate.  Every once in a while they trow in a $20 or $50 gift certificate to keep things interesting. Cool.

·         Creating Safety Experts – Pick two employees to talk about the “safety topic of the month”.  Give them access to the appropriate materials and pay them to study that safety topic to present to all employees at the safety meeting the next month.  Suddenly you have two people who are champions for that safety issue!

·         Creating Safe Work Stations –This is a photo taken of a workstation at Demco.  Can you identify the four safety issues represented in this picture?  The first person who identified it was given the opportunity to “pick a prize” out of the prize vault (a collection of promotional items provided by vendors and customers).

David Larson – Hagie Manufacturing

·         Proof is in the Numbers – With 30 years of health and safety expertise to brag about – (now there’s a resource!) Dave has helped the Hagie team achieve OSHA’s World Class status by helping their team drive OSHA recordables from 10.4 to 1.6 and their lost time from 6.5 to .6!  Now that’s improvement! 

·         Voluntary Protection Program – unbeknownst to me, OSHA has a program for extremely progressive companies to take ownership of safety and health within their workforce.  As its name conveys, it is completely voluntary, but extremely helpful in its consultation services and the results are tremendous.

·         Use OSHA and IOSH as a resource.  If a company is in consultation, enforcement stays at the door. 

Chris Murphy – EMC Insurance

·         IOSH’s focus for 2008 – Funding is up.  They are adding 8 inspectors which almost doubles the number of inspectors in the field.  Expect a visit, especially if your organization experiences: A fatality, Multiple Hospitalizations, or A High Incident Rate.  They are concentrating on amputations, construction falls, Electrical NFPA 70E, Excavation Safety and Residential Roofing

·         Insurance companies don’t “jack rates”.  They are “elevated in an appropriate manner.  J

Steve Kieffer, TrueNorth Companies

·         Take ownership of the safety of your subcontractors.  In Iowa workers compensation claims are fairly consistent.  There is control in the cost of the injuries.  To the contrary, however, there is no limit to the amount a subcontract might sue you for if they are injured in your facility.  As uncomfortable as it might be, require them to hold to the same safety measures you demand of your own employees. 

·         Use your Near-misses as learning opportunities – Document these events and discuss them with your employees.  Use them as opportunities to avoid future incidents.

At the end of the day, as is the case with most of these events, we learned as much from the attendees as we did the panelists.  Gary Colvin, Plant Manager for Proliant in Lytton talked about his Safety Meetings.  Two months after Gary started at the plant, he was given the honor of a tag-team visit by both OSHA and the Boiler Inspector.  It was the next month that he decided to be proactive with his plant’s safety and began monthly safety meetings.  Since their inception in 1993, the plant has seen productivity in the plant double and safety remains tantamount.

Thanks to our great presenters, the attendees and Iowa Central Community College for hosting us!  Remember, a smart person never hesitates to steal a good idea! 

I am thankful for...

As is the usual tradition, I am sure that I’ll get the opportunity on Thanksgiving to state what I’m most thankful for.  I doubt that I’ll bring this up there, but truly, in my business life, I am thankful for great members.

Last week I got an email from a random HR person from the east coast.  She wondered if we knew of anyone in the Ames area that performed employee drug testing.  Now, I could have done my usual Google search and been done with it, but you never know when something is going to come back on you.  What if I recommended something that got lousy results?  SO, I emailed two of my favorite members in the Ames area, Matt Bendler with Sauer Danfoss and Mike Biegger with Barilla.  Within 15 minutes I had two responses to forward to aforementioned Random HR Person that included not only name and phone number, but also testimonials as to their effectiveness. . . COOL!

We have those types of resources all over the state.  I think of Meg Ruzek, HR Director for Brownell’s in Montezuma.  WHAT A GEM!  In a market where health care costs seem to rise at a quantum clip, she’s put together HSA’s and wellness programs that have actually saved her company money!  Great thing is, she’s saved money for the employees, too!  What a great innovative company that just seems to do things right!  When someone complains to me that they would like to do an HSA but don’t know where to start, I say, “you need to talk to Meg”.  She probably doesn’t want to know how many folks I’ve sent her way!!

Now, I understand that Matt, Mike and Meg would help anyone if they got the call directly.  I suppose the challenge would be knowledge of who to contact in each community.  Then the challenge would be – who’s doing things right???  We at ABI are blessed to have access to and knowledge of countless experts with countless resources.    I look at the ABI Directory and see the individuals behind those company names and know that we’re doing all right in Iowa.  So along with my family, my friends, and all the other great things in my life, I’m thankful for 1300 great members I get to call colleagues.

ABI Convention Planning Underway

I know it doesn’t seem like it, but ABI’s Annual Convention is just around the corner.  The convention committee is assembled and planning is well underway.

Resoundingly, the response from members as to the desired subject matter for Convention in Coralville June 10 – 12 was General Leadership/Management topics.  With that in mind, we are soliciting recommendations from ABI members who have seen great speakers, or might have access to outstanding presentations that would benefit our audience.  Of course, the Convention will include local Iowa celebrities, ABI Board Members and University of Iowa Leadership, but if you have suggestions, please contact me at 515-235-0575 or email to Leisa Fox.

We had a great “test drive” of the facility during our Manufacturing and Environmental Conference two weeks ago.  The Coralville Marriott is beautiful.  Top-of-of-the-line technology, the most comfortable bedding in Iowa and gorgeous interiors will greet us upon arrival.  To guarantee your room, please call 1-319-688-4000. In addition to the fabulous facility, ABI Convention attendees will have the pleasure of enjoying one of the most bustling cities in our great state.  From Blue Top Ridge for golf to Kinnick Stadium for dinner and tours of downtown Iowa City to boot, the event is sure to have something for everyone! 

Our sponsorship opportunities are also available and we encourage you to secure them now.  With an expected attendance of over 500 attendees, this is a great opportunity to showcase your products and services to the greatest business leaders in the state.  We’d love to customize your sponsorship to best fit your needs.  Call Heather Iburg today to start planning at 515-235-0572. 

Thanks to great leadership from Kirk Tyler, ABI Board Chair, Janel Tyler and Cyndi Harmeyer-Fisher, Convention Co-Chairs and the entire ABI Convention Committee, this will be an unforgettable affair that you can’t afford to miss.  Get it on your calendar today!

Just Get It Done!

ABI Membership – What’s in it for me?

Very few people today join any organization or stand together for a cause that doesn’t somehow directly benefit them.  When I say directly, I mean an immediate tangible return on an investment.  One of my favorite ABI members is Adam Steen.  He and his company Transition Capital Management joined ABI just over a year ago.  Unlike some ABI members, he didn’t come to us with his hand out wondering when he’d see a return on his membership investment. . . and believe me, the desired return is different for almost every member.  He came to me and said, “I want to join ABI.  Tell me how I can best serve your organization.” 

Throughout the year, I have called on Adam to speak at various events, to serve on committees and most importantly to work with ABI members I think would benefit from his company’s services.  There are many other members who are just as dedicated and critical to ABI’s survival that I wholeheartedly thank the Lord for every day!  Without their spirit of service, our organization would wither away into oblivion.  The old adage my mom taught me, “you get what you give”, couldn’t be more accurate than with ABI membership.

We here at ABI don’t do a very good job of identifying opportunities for service to all our members.  If you are interested in making an impact not only in our Association, but in this great state of Iowa, please contact me and I’ll get you connected.

Public Policy Committees – these groups help ABI build its public policy agenda so that our lobbyists are strategic and focused when they fight their battles at the Capital every day during session.  If you are interested in service on these committees, please contact John Gilliland.  The committees include:

Advisory Council – This group of professional services organizations is responsible for all ABI programming and events.  Representatives from each of the Council Companies meet monthly to plan, build and direct the events that our members have declared as important and necessary to the success of their organization.  There is a sizable sponsorship fee associated with this Council.  If you are interested in learning more, please contact me at lfox@iowaabi.org.