Nearly 50% of adult Americans make one or more resolutions at the onslaught of a new year. And they break them. In any case, physiologists assert that making resolutions is a healthy practice and that making resolutions is useful. People who make thoughtful explicit resolutions are TEN times more likely to reach their goals than people who don't make specific resolutions. We’re going to make a few here. We as a company are quite resolute in the way we conduct our business so ours is a short and sweet list.
1) Live Our Promise 24/7/365
At the heart of our identity is the phrase “we’re here to help you” which is articulated in our company promise and is in fact the essence of why we are here. It is not a slogan – It is a tagline that speaks about our company, but more importantly about the people that work here. Our Agents use the tagline “we’re here to help you” to help communicate what we stand for and to convey a universally embraced assurance to people that are in need of assistance.
“We’re here to help you” is our promise that as a customer you will be completely satisfied, as a client we will help you grow your business, and as a company Trase Miller will be a great place to work.
2) Double Down
A gambling/blackjack term, “double down” describes a strategy for players who are confident of the strength of their hand whereby they can choose to double their bid. Of course we know this is a circa 2010 corporate buzzword but we’re going to use it anyway because we mean it and we’re doing it. This week we welcomed a new Director of Customer Care, Perry Terronez. Perry was a supervisor at Trase Miller many years ago but most recently he was at SITEL where he was the Process Improvement Project Manager focusing (via Six Sigma) on improvements of the overall call center experience for both SITEL’s employees & their clients. Perry has held management positions at Conoco Phillips, Omni Air transport & AT&T where he has been an analyst, Director of Business Development and National Distribution Sales Manager. We are delighted to welcome Perry back and hold his return out as just one example of doubling our bets in 2013.
3) Think Big and Creatively – Act Humbly
Our third 2013 resolution is important as a fast growing company. And we are resolute about the way it cascades through our fast growing organization. Growth can be painful but less so if all team members think big and creatively but act humbly.
Next week, the Leadership team meets in Tulsa to carefully review 2013 plans and ponder the years beyond. The tone of our executive planning meetings is an interesting mash-up; supportive, analytical, serious, playful, direct and respectful. In the meetings we think big and creatively with each other but always act humbly toward each other. Our Leadership team is a close knit group that communicates often and openly about business issues of today and the future of our company. Our General Manager, Frank Silzer has much to do with our culture and by the way, this week marked Frank’s 30th anniversary with parent company JFM Enterprises. Congratulations, Frank ~ Our clarity of purpose is sustained by your leadership. We all strive to be like Frank in the way we think and act. Big and creative but humble…
As 2012 comes to a close we all do our best to slide into the holiday weeks in good spirits. What helps many of us here make “spirits bright” is a reflection back on the year. James Lord Pierpont wrote a song back in 1857 that is synonymous with Christmas. If you stop and listen to the lyrics, you realize that the sleigh ride J.L.P. writes about is much like the year we had here at Trase Miller.
In the last verse, we are instructed to choose a fast horse, to pick up some new people and to take off at full speed. No – really, this is true. http://www.jingle-bells-lyrics.com/
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Now the ground is white
Go it while you're young,
Take the girls tonight
and sing this sleighing song;
Just get a bobtailed bay
Two forty as his speed
Hitch him to an open sleigh
And crack! You’ll take the lead. |
Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way.
Oh! what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh.
Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way;
Oh! what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh. |
So yes it’s true – We kicked off 2012 with a fast (faster) horse. We moved to a new building. We invested in some new equipment and technologies. And we modified some policies and procedures to accommodate a changing workforce. There’s more but those are a few highlights. Special thanks to our IT Leader John Coles for giving leadership and for helping to pick a faster horse.
Our biggest 2012 story (and accomplishment) was all about people and picking up new people. This was mostly driven by clients whose business was growing and by adding some new clients to our roster. It’s not a small thing because we recruit and select very carefully. We hired well over 100 new people in 2012; so our HR and L and D teams worked double overtime most of the year. Special thanks to Sarah Adair who leads those teams and made it all happen.
We took off at full speed in early 2012 and we had little time to rest the entire year. Vacations were constantly being put on hold, business travel schedules were rigorous and we began running out of space in our main operations center. Intense describes our overall 2012 pace and intense describes the energy put forth by Debbie Greene. Special thanks to Debbie for her leadership and dedication!
And to everyone that works here – Oh what fun it was to ride. Thanks for making this a great place to work and thanks for a fantastic effort in 2012 24/7/365.
Today American’s go skipping into the three day weekend which acts as a trigger point to the start of summer for many. It’s the same this year as last but the world has changed in a year in many ways - -
- Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres (combined) have more Twitter followers than the populations of Ireland, Norway, or Panama.
- In the last year YouTube global daily views went up 50% to a whopping 3 billion views per day. “That’s the equivalent of nearly half the world’s population watching a YouTube video each day, or every U.S. resident watching at least nine videos a day.” (According to YouTube)
We ran into a great blog entitled “The Internet Changes Everything — Except Four Things” which talks about how things have changed and how things have stayed the same in the Internet age. According to the author, in many ways the world stays the same - -
“…telecoms are capturing most of the wealth being generated from the Internet. For all the new world hype, the old world has a major role to play. And sometimes focusing on what is not changing help us figure out how to best master changes. We still need to find, delight, and excite customers. We need business models that pay people fairly for their work. Businesses must make a credible case to government that they act in the public interest. And the best asset for mastering change is still that old classic: leadership.
The point of delighting and exciting customers is exactly the reason we get out of bed each day so this article really resonates with us. We love the Internet and all the trappings of Twitter and You Tube but nothing will ever replace the basic human need of live/personal contact with other humans. We’re here to delight and excite 24/7/365.