Light Minds Think Alike : worklife

Good Humor Man

john.kuehl — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:31:00 GMT

Is it the 95-degree heat, or did I just see Fred riding a bike down the hallway? And was the bike rigged with a freezer full of ice cream bars and a string of bells? And, was he dressed like the Good Humor Man?

The CUBS and Teamwork in ETC Service

mmeskill — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:35:00 GMT

There is a yearly ritual that takes place in the ETC Service Department. It usually happens in late February and involves a great deal of planning, coordination and teamwork. The event: Trying to buy home game tickets for Chicago Cubs Baseball games. (Yes I know, we live in Middleton, WI)

Lisa Chapiewsky has been the Field Service Coordinator for ETC Inc for about 9 years and she is a rabid Cubs fan. For those of you that do not know, the Field Service Coordinator is the one person behind the scenes in Field Service that holds the fate of all installation and field service work in their hands. If you have a new ETC system and need to get it up and running, Lisa is the one that finds the right person for the job. I had the pleasure of being the one to hire Lisa back in 2000 and have missed the opportunity over the last 4 years to be involved in her quest to obtain Cubs tickets.

So how it works: On the morning of February 20th, Lisa shows up at work in her Cubs sweatshirt and a stack of paperwork. This paperwork details all her preferences for game days and seating areas. At around 9:00 am she solicits everyone in the Service department to log onto the ticket page for the Cubs. You basically log into a ‘waiting room’ and hope that the system randomly selects you to buy tickets. Over my first 3-years of doing this I never got to the screen to buy a ticket but was surprised to be the first person in the department to get in once selection started at 10:00 am CST. (I got in at 10:20). I was in a discussion with Matt Kerr from Phone Support when the window opened. I stopped talking mid-sentence, ran to my door and yelled “Lisa, I’m in!”…At this point Lisa runs over with paperwork and credit card in hand. She goes though the screens and gets tickets. She then logs me back into the waiting room. During the day you randomly hear people yelling “Lisa, I’m in!” followed by Lisa running through the department with her credit card.

This year seemed to be quite good as she got all her tickets by 1:00 pm. I was lucky enough to get into the system a second time and felt happy to be helping a former employee and current friend.

It’s all about the Teamwork!

Jetlagged and in Middleton for the week...Mike Meskill

Town Square for the Holidays

john.kuehl — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:14:00 GMT

Town Square has gone through its annual holiday transformation, thanks to a lot of talent and work by many ETC staff-slash-set designers. The big guy (not Fred, the OTHER big guy) is even part of the installation.

These cell phone pictures don't really do the whole thing justice - more difficult to see the snowy rooftops, which is my personal favorite part - but the scene is a jolly one, and I make sure to come to work through the front door these days.

Happy Holidays!

Another ETC innovation reaches retirement

john.kuehl — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The recent arrival of a new automated coffee machine in the Finance/Sales/Marketing kitchen has brought delicious dark roast coffee to many - and the end of an era for one.

With the fancy schmancy new coffee dispenser, the brew-your-own lineup of coffee pots has been put away. And, with no responsibility falling on the taker of the last cup to make a new pot, the ETC Coffee Cam, symbol of justice and respect, has been disassembled.

Rest in peace, little buddy.

I Don't Want to be a Downer...

mmeskill — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:08:00 GMT

It seems like there is always a good bit of talk about what a fun place ETC is to work but last night I was lying awake in bed obsessing over a number of different issue I need to deal with and felt that someone should address the fact that we do real work here J Now I’m defiantly of the belief that ETC is a great place to work but it is still work.

One must keep in mind that for everyone of us sometimes crazy theatre people that work in customer facing departments, there are countless others that are doing the day-to-day labor that actually leads to products getting shipped to customers. Remember, in real terms ETC is a manufacturing company. I often find myself envying these individuals in the ability to come to work, complete a quality task, and then go home with the feeling of a job well done. When I was a Factory Field Technician, I had that feeling on a regular basis as I spent the majority of my time installing new ETC Lighting Systems and was rewarded with a happy new ‘end user’ at the end of my efforts. Or I got to fly into a city in the 11^th hour, do some magic and save the day; usually with the assistance of a much smarter Phone Support Technician who did not get to see the smiling customers face or get the free beer after the show.

Now, as a manager of 10 years, I endeavor to ensure that the cogs in the machine run smooth for any employee or customer I come in contact with. Although I find the task enjoyable and rewarding, it is does not give the same degree of daily or weekly satisfaction I once had and thus it seems more like work and therefore less fun.

Then there are the fights and arguments that are the opposite of fun. Fights you say? Arguments? Well yes, but in the: ‘We all want to go for Chinese buffet but spend so much time debating which is the best place that we use up our lunch hour and have to order in pizza’ kind of way. Meaning that the people I work with are so committed to finding the best way to things that we often fight about what the absolute best course of action is and on the service side I have seen it spin out of control…always to the benefit of the customer. For example: A call might come into Phone Support and it is decided to that a RMA should be issued. A coffee break 10 minutes later leads to discussion about the problem and a manger decides that a new unit should be sent. Then a second manager is consulted and believes that a Field Tech should first be sent to site to investigate the problem. Now the fun begins. The cheapest thing would be to send a loaner and issue an RMA. Sending new equipment or a service tech to site is expensive. So we fight about the best way to resolve the issue and eventually end up sending new equipment and a service tech and some extra parts that we think maybe will be needed.

Finally there is the guilt that makes working in service at ETC un-fun. You see, I was raised Catholic but joined the Unitarian church 7 years ago…but I still suffer from “Catholic Guilt”. I also suffer from “Service Guilt”. Service Guilt happens when despite your best efforts and intentions you outright fail to fix the customers problems. In the case above, the best decision might have been to send a loaner and issue a RMA. But then the loaner does not work when it shows up at site. You send a service technician to investigate and the problem is with the loaner. You do a quick-turnaround on the repair and send it back right away. It breaks again 4 days later. You send a whole new unit. It shows up with a broken GM fader. These things happen and they are beyond my control but I end up with an extreme sense of guilt that I have just put some TD at the local community theatre through the worst service experience of their life. It is not a fun job on that day.

In the last month I have: Had a picnic for all my German employees at my house, gone to the ETC Inc Summer picnic in my Lederhosen, gone to the ETC GmbH Summer picnic on a large hill overlooking a beautiful valley, went to a ETC Professional Services potluck, and had countless after work outings with coworkers who are also loyal friends. Yes, there is the unhappy getting up and going to work every day thing but God help me, I love it so.

Mike’s Three and a Half Years in Europe

mmeskill — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:33:00 GMT

After three and a half years of living and working in Europe I have only come to grasp one thing with absolute certainty: Europe is not the U.S.A. and the European Union is not a single market place. Granted, it is very nice to have a single currency in the form of the EURO.

In my case, I left a nice comfortable job as the Field Service Manager with the ETC Mother-ship in Middleton, WI for the diverse, multi-level working environment of Europe. In principle the general idea of my job is the same as when I worked in Middleton: Provide the highest level of customer service and exceed the expectations of customers. But ETC’s European companies are small organizations when compared to our U.S. Headquarters. Because of this, working in Europe tends to remind me of the ETC I started at as an intern in 1995. Everyone is doing everything and anything to get the job done. Now this is not to say that employees in the U.S. are not doing what it takes to meet our customers’ needs but there is a distinct advantage to the economies of scale that a larger organization can offer in terms of available resources. I have no doubt that some of you believe that the large size of ETC often makes it more difficult to work with but I can give you my personal insurance that every time I’m in the U.S. I hear conversations about how to improve the customer experience. It remains an overriding force that drives the company forward. As a matter of fact, I have often said that as soon as I feel ETC has stopped caring, that it would be time for me to leave. So far I’m planning on retiring from here.

In the U.S. I had the luxury of sitting in my office and focusing on the needs of customers and ASC’s (Authorized Service Providers). Sure I was involved with ‘other stuff’ but in the end I just had my little piece of the service puzzle. Work in Europe is nowhere near so compartmentalized. I get to move freely between service, shipping, customs and duties, projects, and finance, all on levels that I would never have been exposed to in the U.S. And this hold true for almost all the employees here. We run around and stick our fingers in the holes of the dam and pray we do not run out of fingers. It is maddening….but at the same time; I never go home at the end of the day feeling that I did not accomplish anything!

Weighing Progress in Pounds

john.kuehl — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:49:00 GMT

Figured it was worth explaining what Isaac (and some of the rest of the summer help) was REALLY doing with those big stacks of paper in a previously-posted photo.

There's a group of interns helping ETC to scan an estimated three million pages of systems documents as part of a larger effort to be more paperless around the office. The result of the work so far? Well, in part, a whole lotta staples.

At press time, the students so far have plucked, tugged and maneuvered over a pound-and-a-half of staples from hard copy pages, creating what looks like a combination of your grandpa's old "swear jar" and the tip jars found in sandwich shops and cafes on college campuses nationwide. By the time the project is done - which probably won't be by the end of summer, despite the efficiency of Team Winter Garden - the weight of the remnant staples is expected to near 40 pounds. Just how efficient has the group been? Consider: recent calculations show that each student is scanning 2,773 pages and over 300Mb of data per day. Wow.

The good news is that about four percent of the way through the project, they're still smiling. What dedication!

More thanks to Karen E. (not pictured) for contributing her photos and research to this story.

Mike to Write Blog Posts

mmeskill — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:15:00 GMT

I spent just over four years in the United States NAVY as a Fire Control Technician. (Like missile firing not the hot red flames and smoke type of fire). It did not take me long to learn that the word NAVY was actually an acronym for Never Again Volunteer Yourself. But in the world of ETC you do not need to volunteer, you just need to show a little interest in any project that David Lincecum is involved with and you will quickly find yourself doing stuff you thought was kind of neat but were glad that others were working on. This is how I find myself writing a ‘Light Minds’ blog on the ETC forum. How it went down…mostly:

From: Mike Meskill
Sent: Wed 6/18/2008 3:05 PM
To: David Lincecum
Subject: Who are the special people?

David, who are the special people that actually get to create blogs? Am I special? Wait…don’t answer that. I have been thinking about an EU perspective but want to ensure I / we can stay committed to the task. I would see me / us sending things to you for review before posting. {I / we; me / us meaning that I would have the permission to post but would get inputs from ETC Ltd and GmbH}

25 hours latter:

From: John Kuehl
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2008 3:53 PM
To: David North; Joe Kirschling; Mike Meskill
Cc: David Lincecum
Subject: welcome, new blog contributors

Each of you have been identified or self-identified as new contributors to our group blog, "Light Minds Think Alike", or, "Light Minds". I went ahead and gave you all the necessary permissions to begin posting.

So here I am adding my first post to this blog and with the help of the employees of ETC GmbH in Germany and ETC Ltd in the UK I hope to provide some interesting and timely updates.

Sincerely, (American English)

Cheers! (British English)

mit freundlichen Grüβen, (German)

Mike Meskill

European Service Manager, ETC

Summer Help Arrives at ETC

john.kuehl — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:14:00 GMT

Summer has arrived, and with it, waves of interns and LTEs and other part-timers have descended on the ETC campus in Middleton. They're helping out in all kinds of ways, across all areas of the company. And, universally, they all seem like they're here to really work.

Here's a pictorial look at just a few of them, caught in the action during their early days at ETC. All photos taken by Karen E., an intern in Marketing (coincidentally, not pictured).

Ashten B., a repeat offseason helper in the Broadway Deli.

Isaac K., obviously working with a lot of paper, and doing a stellar job of it.

Chris G., helping to keep the ETC grounds looking their best. (Chris' iPod noticeably absent from this photo.)

John G., who makes training videos for Ion when he's not busy trying to break them.

Lily S., part of a duo that will be helping ETC spec and create a video studio in the near future.

Doesn't Apply to ETC

john.kuehl — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:30:00 GMT

I may work in a cubicle here, but it definitely doesn't feel like this. I think somebody must have been weary of this chart when our building was designed. Hence the many common areas, conference rooms with windows, the deli, the picnic blankets......

SNAP! Are you focusing on the right things?

john.kuehl — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:02:00 GMT

Any Harvard Business Review readers in the audience today? Before I started working at ETC, I wouldn't have raised my hand and wouldn't have felt like I was missing anything relevant to me. Now, after reading through a few issues passed on to me by a coworker, I've done a 180. It is good stuff.

One recent article, "The New Leader's Guide to Diagnosing the Business" (February, 2008), had a bunch of great insights that really have broad application to things beyond trying to run the most profitable company possible. Notably, a little chart that goes by the name SNAP, or, Segments Needs and Performance.

What it's meant to do is provide a tool for assessing how well your company is meeting the needs of the consumers you're trying to reach. Here's a completely imaginary (honestly) example of one I sketched out:

Each column represents a market need - a need for quality, a good price, customer service, selection. Each of those needs carries a certain weight with your consumers. In my chart, the taller bar equals greater importance to the consumer. After taking some measure to determine your company's performance, you plot that performance over the bars for each need. Add in a plot of your competitor's performance, and the result is brilliant in its stark truth and graphic simplicity.

If you trust the data that went into the chart, what you have is a clear assessment of your performance - and also, arguably, the validity of all business decisions made - up to this point in time. Customers care about service; did you invest resources in providing it? Your competitors are competing mostly on price at the expense of other needs; is it working for them? You're way over-delivering on selection relative to its reported importance; is that extra effort worth it?

Staring right back at you is a report that either tells you, "Props, dude, you really nailed this and your customers probably love you for it", or, "Boy did YOU miss the mark" (or, I suppose, something in between). I think the emphasis on the SNAP chart in this HBR article was pretty clearly on the attributes of a particular product or service, but the concept could apply is so many other areas.

For example, it's not just about WHAT you're trying to provide to your customers, but HOW you're marketing it to them. Hypothetically: should you spend tens of thousands of dollars on print ads when your market stopped reading trade rags about two years ago? Should you pour money into interactive when your audience has signed up for as many email newsletters as they've won Olympic medals?

***

It is almost criminally easy to lose track of priorities. As fast as time passes, with a few misguided days or decisions you can pretty quickly lose sight of where you started and what you were trying to accomplish to begin with. Similarly, as fast as time passes, you can pretty quickly get stuck doing "what we've always done" without realizing your customers had really been hoping for you to evolve along with them for the past 10 years.

For me, taking a SNAP look at the way we spend our days and comparing that to how we'd like to or should spend them is powerful stuff. And this isn't a hokey motivational speech telling you to just chase you dreams - sometimes what we should be doing isn't at all what we'd like to be doing, but that doesn't mean we can ignore the former. I see it as more of an exercise in taking time to chart progress, and to look for achievable ways of staying on a desired course.

I suppose it's the intersection of those two paths - the want and the should - that makes for a happy and productive individual, or a successful company. I'm being truthful when I say that I have no idea if ETC has done assessments like this and what the results were if we did. But I think it's something I'd like to look into.

Wildwood Energy--It's getting wild!

sterry — Thu, 15 May 2008 00:20:00 GMT

David talked about our gearing up for Lightfair and the exciting new products that we'll be showing there. Back in the R&D department, those products are known by their code name: Wildwood.

The R&D and Manufacturing teams are in "total immersion mode" getting these products completed and ready to ship. And what a lot of products there are! Unlike Unison, and even Sensor, which grew over time to a full product portfolio, our marketing brethren have (correctly) decreed that the new architectural line must hit the ground running. That means the full portfolio, almost two hundred products, all at once! Between you and me, we've never done quite such a huge thing before, but we're all excited about making it happen.

Back in R&D, people are starting to run. New tall nails are popping up every day, and the development teams are hammering them down. It's definitely New Product Whack-a-Mole. And the new system in beta-test is running the lights in my office, so blinking lights will mean a bug report. That might actually be pretty entertaining! So far, so good, however.

You can see for yourself just how big the new architectural product portfolio is at Lightfair in Vegas.

Dave & Company Keep Outdoing Themselves

john.kuehl — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:34:00 GMT

Over the past handful of days the Broadway Deli in Town Square has featured an impressive run of lunch cuisine, including grilled hamburgers (like, actually grilled, by Dave) on May 6, teriyaki chicken sandwiches on May 12, and a double-whammy of baked potato bar (all the toppings you could want, and all for under $2.50!) and BBQ beef ribs today. I hear steak sandwiches are coming soon, and I haven't even mentioned the seemingly bottomless supply of fresh strawberries that have graced the salad bar all spring. Incredible! I planned to take pictures of the ribs today, but they were cleaned out before I made my way downstairs with the camera.

I've been reading about the theoretical impacts of both positive and negative morale on productivity lately, and I'm going to go ahead and say that having the Broadway Deli (which is, essentially, the ETC version of your basic corporate cafeteria) makes for lots of good positive morale. Like the rest of Town Square, it features an appropriately-styled "storefront", which only adds to its natural, downtown street cafe feel. I love how you can't get through the salad line without having at least two casual conversations with people you probably never otherwise see in your daily work, and if you go at peak time, you needn't be surprised to hear Kelly, Mary or Missy talking friendly smack to a customer (usually Bill) getting picky or indecisive with his lunch order. I especially love how Dave keeps trying to find new ways to keep the masses happy, like trying a new supplier of chocolate chip cookies because he thought they used better quality chocolate in the chips. Now, that's a guy who cares about his job - and probably knows it's about much more than just food service.

There was a brief time I lamented our office's lack of walking-distance proximity to restaurants (I think there are exactly zero), but I am now a Broadway Deli devotee, and I don't think I'm alone! Something tells me Fred hoped and wanted this to happen when this new building was conceived a few years back, and that they would agree with what Brad Bird, Academy Award-winning director at Pixar, had to say recently about morale:

"If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale."

Thankfully, mine does, right down to the food.

Hello Again...

dlincecum — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:13:00 GMT

Hello everyone! Long time, No blog.

Maybe you were a reader of my blog during 2006 and 2007? Well – if you were you probably noticed it fall apart after LDI 2007. I cracked under the pressure!

But we have re-worked our approach now and I am glad to be taking part in a new blog format. BTW - if you subscribed to email updates of my old Blog - you need to subscribe again to this one.

What’s on my mind? Well – I am watching our company mobilize heavily for Light Fair at the end of the month. This will be a big show– YES there will be new products (more on that prior to the show) – and it is a big effort here at ETC. Joe Bokelman and Bryan Palmer are only seen moving from place to place – very little down time. We have a trade show booth build going on in the wood shop, first run products being built for the show, beta product being installed to run the lighting in our offices at ETC, brochures in development, and web features being built.

A lot goes in to launching a product and it is bringing out the craziness in some of us. Fred was spotted installing a video camera to monitor the coffee pots in the kitchen near finance. Why? He is completely fed up with people draining the coffee and not making more! He is so fed up that he installed a video monitor and camera to remind you that you are being watched! Is this even legal?

I know this seems crazy. That's because we are a little crazy.

This most disturbing thing about the coffee cam is the images that it has captured.

You cannot believe what people are doing to the coffee each day.

Pretty hi-res stills off that camera huh?

Clearly, the coffee cam is affecting productivity at ETC.

So – come and see us at LightFair. And if you can’t make it watch it all unfold here on the blog and our site. We will do our best to keep you updated.

I’m glad to be back talking to you again. I hope it will be a conversation – and I am interested in what you want me to write about. So please chime in and make some suggestions.

Internet Philosophy

john.kuehl — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:49:00 GMT

We were shooting some video yesterday for a web project, and found ourselves struggling to produce a smooth teleprompter effect with a projected view of a standard word processing application. If only there were free online teleprompter services...

A few Google searches later, and we were rolling with cueprompter.com. A great, easy to use, free tool if you ever find yourself wanting to hack together a teleprompter setup. It sure solved our problems, and helped the shoot run much more smoothly.

As Joe Bokelman, our Architectural Market Manager, put so succinctly, "Necessity is the mother of invention...or of finding free stuff on the Internet."