Greg's Right FIT #438

Quick notes to help you grow your business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week. 

In this issue: 

- Thoughts on Preparation
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Thoughts on Preparation

• If you can imagine it, you can prep for it. And not just for crises. The trick is to keep preparations for future events at a medium to high level of abstraction. Until something happens, no action is required. 
• My favorite consulting project contingency planning tool is getting agreement that staff will resist change, and making plans to react accordingly. Saying, "I won't believe what they say about you, if you don't believe what they say about me. Let's check in regularly," is a good step toward success.
• Plans aren't meant to be one-off events. They need to be revisited. (I say this while looking at my aging severe weather preparation snack supplies)
• If you are preparing for the worst, are you hoping for the best? After insurance is in place, buying a lottery ticket is ok.

Being Human - Training

"Never send a human to do a machine's job" – Agent Smith

I spent the weekend with my dad and asked for some clarification on how he ended up in Denver. I knew he grew up there, but he went into the Marines and spent a lot of time in southern California before coming back to the mile-high city. He talked about coming home to take of his father, and finding his career via an unusual referral: his grandmother's room renter. 

It seems that the big company he went to work for, NCR (#83 in the Fortune 100 at the time), had a college/training center in Denver. There were hundreds of trainees going through the programs, some of which lasted 8 months, and one of the students rented a room from his grandma. One thing led to another, and he started a 30-year career at NCR. 

I thought about this all week. 8-month training programs. An entire campus dedicated to training company employees. By the time I was aware of my dad going to work, there was only one training center left, in Dayton, OH. He went for 2-4 weeks, every other year or so, to be trained on the new machines NCR produced. 

I happened to run a computer training center and we trained people on the descendants of NCR's technology, like Microsoft and Cisco networking, but a number of our students were training themselves. It wasn't uncommon for a student to pay their own way through the class, getting reimbursed once they passed a certification test. A far cry from traveling to another city for 8 months and being trained by in-house trainers. 

Today, most of the training my company provided can be found online. On demand, as needed. The future may be a whisper agent knowing what needs to be done and telling the employee what to do next. No one required to spend any time in a classroom. 

A little like Agent Smith jumping into whatever body is nearby to get a job done. With fewer guns, of course. 

Random Stuff

It's Memorial Day weekend in the USA. The start of summer in the Midwest USA. We've been working through stormy weather, battling hungry bunnies in the garden, and planning summer fun. It's the perfect time for taking a minute to think of the armed forces members who have died in service, re-reading "Dulce et Decorum Est," thinking about "How to Hide an Empire," and listening to Jason Isbell sing "Decoration Day." 

I know the song is only loosely related, but man, it's good. Almost makes me wish I were part of a crazy generational family feud.

I know what you're thinking, it's not too late. We'll see how the weekend goes!