October 27, 2009

A couple hours ago I was trying to write a new e-mail, and I got an error message that said "Out of memory or system resources. Close some windows or programs and try again." I'm sure that Bill Gates & Microsoft was not intending any sort of philosophical message, but I received one anyway.

Today our lives are full of clutter. We try to use technology to help organize that clutter, but as often as not, technology contributes as much to clutter as it removes. How many different accounts do you have online? One for work, another for home. Facebook. LinkedIn. Banks. Professional Associations.

As Engineers, we are no strangers to technology either. I just got a new iPhone, and I love it. As I noted last month, we have started using Revit to model buildings in 3D (our first project is just about complete, and we are about to start two more). We implemented a product called Newforma earlier this year to better manage e-mails, submittals, RFIs, and file transfers (it's been great software!). We use ArchiOffice for time management and invoicing (good tool too). And we are upgrading our phone systems to enable better communication inside and outside the company.

But for all these tools, it still sometimes seems too cluttered. If we are not careful, we can become "out of memory" or "out of system resources"

The answer? "Close some windows." Remove some clutter. "Close some programs." Slow down. "Try again." Be persistent.

So at a business level, how do we "close some windows", strip it all down, and decide what we are all about? In my view, it comes down to the values that we bring to the business, and how we incorporate them into the business.

At this time of year, we spend some time looking back over the past year, and seeing how we have stacked up against what we hoped to do. And we look ahead to where we want to go. And the guidepost for this discussion is our values. It has been my experience that when times are tough, your values become much more clear. And with 2008 & 2009 being such challenging years to the economy, many may have found that their values were different than they thought they were. For instance, I'm certain that the value of "security" has moved up in importance for many people over the last 2 years.

So how did the sys-tek values fare over the past year? We had reformulated them in mid-2008, and it turns out we did a good job of defining them at that time. I believe they have helped us make better decisions this year than we might have made without having them defined in front of us. Here is a brief summary:

• Follow Through - We think one thing that sets sys-tek apart is our ability to follow through on a task, a project, a commitment. Sometimes a company can find that hard to do when a project is under water, and every hour spent is another hour lost. But when we were faced with this (rare) issue over the past year, we maintained our commitment because we simply cannot walk away from a project that doesn't work.
• Family - We recently had a fun night at Lucky Strike Bowling in the Power and Light District - our employees and their significant others. It was a fun family night. Our families are the primary reason we work. This respect for family is why we have maintained paying 100% of health insurance costs for our employees. And in a year where health care has been front and center in politics, we know how unusual this benefit is for our employees.
• Growth - Because of our dedicated and supportive client base, we've been able to maintain a consistent staff level this year. In fact, we feel like we have developed and grown our staff talent by adding key people with a wide array of skills. And what has been very exciting to me has been our staff's willingness to bring in vendors frequently to continually build their knowledge base. It is a great feeling to know that I have a staff that is very interested in its development and growth.
• Honor - For me, honor is sometimes most visible in what we don't do. When faced with decisions to replace / upgrade staff, we did so in a way that respected the dignity of our employees. We could have just thrown low performing people out the door, but instead we worked with them to find a new home. Honor was also important to us as we supported our mentor Ray Pittman as his wife of 50 years departed him earlier this month.

I suppose this article has been a little scatter-shot, but that is how it goes sometimes when I am thinking philosophically. I suppose if I can find a philosophical moment in a Microsoft error message, my life is pretty good. Just so long as there aren't too many "philosophical moments" in my work day...

-Damian Gerstner

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