As you may remember from several months ago, I worked in schools for most of my professional life. There are two things that working in schools did not provide: freedom and a financial incentive to excel. In fact excellence in a bureaucratic world usually just leads to bigger, more challenging jobs, and increasing levels of frustration.
When I went in to administration I was usually given the job of managing special programs. What that means is I managed state and federal programs for underprivileged kids, kids with disabilities, English learners, etc. All of these programs had major compliance regulations, required tons of reports, and usually had fairly good-sized budgets. When you wanted to spend money, you had to make sure the item you wanted to purchase was in your school plan and that your school plan had been approved by the school site council and the local board of education. Then you had to do your research and locate an approved source and if the purchase was big enough you had to get several bids and select the lowest one that could fulfill the job. After all that was complete, you sat down and wrote out your purchase orders, attached all of your documentation, took it to get it signed by the principal and then sent it to the district office to get signed by three or more additional layers of bureaucracy. And then you waited. After you got done waiting, you waited some more.
Fast forward to September 2013. We are finally moving out of the SchiitHole. I hated that place. Claustrophobic. Loud. No matter how many times I swept and mopped it was never clean. Then after Ten Thumbs did his work there were almost no right angles. The doors were crooked, the ductwork was crooked, the sink in the bathroom was crooked, even the toilet leaned to the left. The floor was uneven and sticky (no hardener in the epoxy). The SchiitBox was amazing. 26-foot ceilings, giant windows in the warehouse, skylights, air conditioning, a giant roll-up door- I was in heaven. Except it was my job to move us in to the new place, get the utilities turned on, get it organized and outfitted. There was no school plan, no multiple bidders, and although Jason was great when I needed to bounce ideas, his advertising business was getting busy again and he and Mike were busy getting ready for Rocky Mountain. So I started working 14-hour days and I got us moved. Jesse, Tony, Bill, and Laura all worked their butts off to get us moved. I have probably spent about $100,000 in the last year on furniture, racks, equipment, security, contractors, and electrical and Jason hasn't said no or criticized anything I've done getting the shop going. It is a hell of a lot of freedom and a lot of responsibility. In school if I got it wrong I had five other signatures and a school council to share the blame. Here it is only me.
In schools if you do a really great job, they usually reward you with more work. The new work is usually more difficult and more frustrating. If you are efficient it means you have more time to work on projects or to cover discipline for another administrator because they have a deadline coming up. If you are a good teacher you get rewarded with advanced classes that require more preparation and grading time or you get the really difficult students which means more frustration, preparation, and usually meetings to discuss academic deficiencies. What you don't get is more money. So when we changed our pay system and Jason told me I was going to get paid salary and a then a bonus for every item shipped I didn't know what to make of it. Then I saw the light. If I did a good job I got more money. If I did an amazing job I got even more money. That sounded like a great idea. It was about this same time that I started ordering parts and working with our board house. So I made the decision that we were never going to run out of product again, ever. I've kept our backorders to a minimum, that has gotten harder with the bigger product line. I've even taken my self away from the fun work (sound checks, assembly, order packing) because other people can do those things. I can move the company farther by focusing on order processing, purchasing, preparing kits, interacting with vendors, and fixing production glitches. I expect that at some point I will have to leave some of those things behind so I can focus on our next challenges. That doesn't mean I still don't grab a screwdriver or a tape gun when needed. While Jason and the team were at RMAF, I spent three afternoons programming Modis so the night shift would have something to build. Those were nice and easy afternoons. Sometimes I miss the early days when all I had to worry about was processing orders and putting things in boxes.
Between the freedom and financial motivation it has been a very different and exciting place to work. It helps that we have a no ******** allowed policy in the shop. The atmosphere is positive and upbeat. Jason and Mike are the best bosses I've ever had. They trust me to do my job. I trust the people who work for me to do their jobs too.
So, I and the President and the CEO and the head of Engineering began a series of high-level meetings, presentations, plans, justifications, etc. to convince the appropriate customer VPs that we had no choice, and right after New Years we opened a brand new manufacturing center across the bridge in Hayward, CA. Not as nice an address, but for the same cost we got nearly twice the space, the big deal customers were satisfied, and on we go. It's just not as much fun sitting in that office when I visit since my new view is of some other company's parking lot instead of a beautiful lagoon off the SF Bay.
