Lessons from the Olympics

 Michael Phelps a Metaphor for Life…             and how organizations avoid the same fate

   Michael Phelps, with 19 Olympic medals—the most ever one by a single competitor—is arguably the greatest Olympian ever.  Phelps’ Olympic swimming career spans three Olympics, 12 years of his 27 year life. 

   Sadly, the London Games have shown that while still a world-class athlete, Phelps isn’t the swimmer who dazzled viewers in Beijing 4 years ago.  His finish in the butterfly Tuesday of this week exposed him as vulnerable in the event he had won at two previous games.  He led for most of the race but was edged out for the gold by South African Chad le Close by just 0.05 seconds.

   At just 27 years old, Phelps is retiring from competition; there are younger swimmers who are now in the limelight.  In an event like swimming, the speed, strength and endurance required to win favors the young.

   Michael Phelps, retiring from competition, will soon focus on coaching the next generation.  This is the way of life for individuals: The young have the energy for competition--speed and strength—the older have the perspective and wisdom earned by experience. 

  While this dynamic plays out with individuals, organizations avoid the loss of competitive edge by a constant process of reinvigoration and reinvention.  Reinvigorated with young, eager, upwardly mobile talent and reinvented by dynamically responding to changes in the marketplace.  Organizations can, by these processes, be (unlike Olympic athletes) perpetually competitive.   

   But, only if there is an organizational culture that promotes reinvigoration and reinvention: Providing an environment that offers continuous opportunities to grow and learn through frequent changes in roles, responsibilities and projects as well as the strategic vision to change as change dictates. Reinvigoration is the realm of the young and eager; reinvention is the realm of the experienced and wise.

   LaserShip is invigorating.  Our offices pulsate with the energy provided by the many young and eager-for-opportunity individuals who have found their way to LaserShip.  As with our past—and deeply ingrained in our culture—many will quickly rise to leadership roles.  25 years ago, the energy came from drivers recruited into dispatch roles.  Today, the entry level jobs are often freight coordinators who rise to lead, supervise and manage processes and people.  They bring with them the energy to perform, the eagerness to learn and the yearning to belong and advance, thus reinvigorating us from the bottom up.

  LaserShip is inventing.  We continually reinvent ourselves:  Seeing the future of delivery and moving in that direction; spotting new technologies and introducing them to our systems; creating new processes and incorporating them into our procedures; searching our improvements and adapting them to our purposes.

   Michael Phelps has a future; it is just not in competitive swimming.  That is the way of life. 

   LaserShip has a future; it is in the business we have created and recreated.  That is the way of organizations that have created a self-perpetuating mechanism of reinvigoration and reinvention.      

Update: Michael Phelps displayed his professionalism, competitiveness, dedication and sportsmanship by winning additional in the 2012 Olympics making him the greatest Olympic champion of all time.

Honoring Milton Friedman

The Man Who Saved Capitalism

And How It Benefits All of Us

   The 100^th anniversary of the birth of Milton Friedman occurred this week.  You may have never heard of him (he died in 2006), but in the matter of economics and in defending the concept of free people and free markets Milton Friedman is a “rock star.” 

   Through his books and teaching, Friedman a professor at the University of Chicago, reinvigorated the world's faith in capitalism. He discovered, through rigorous science, that free markets work the best to distribute goods, services and wealth, and that we as individuals are best suited to making our own decisions.

   LaserShip has grown in the shadow of Milton Friedman and benefited from influence of his work in explaining and defending free markets and free people.  The success of starting and expanding a business is based on the choices of individuals: 

·       Individuals who freely risk and invest their money, time and effort (stakeholders)

·       Individuals making free choices to “sell’ their labor to whom they wish (employees)

·       Individuals who are free to choose with whom they wish to do business (customers)

 

Classic free market thinking, that Friedman expounded, serves and benefits all the individuals involved in transactions.  Each gives up something but gets something else that is valued more by the recipient: Profits, wages, services/products.

   Our concepts of customer service—pleasing the customer—and innovation that improves outcomes for all come out of Friedman’s explanation of free markets: By necessity, enterprises must focus on the needs of the customer.  Friedman once, humorously, put his thoughts on the subject of pleasing the customer this way:  “If you put the government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.”

  Innovation which advances life and living was, to Friedman, totally dependent on and required freely acting individuals working within a free market system:  “The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.” 

  Beyond all of these benefits, Friedman, perhaps most importantly, believed that the concepts of private property and free markets are what protected free individuals: That free markets (businesses free to enter or leave, produce what the consumer wants, innovate and change as customer demand dictates, keep the profits of their work) were intricately linked with free people (people free to choose where and how to live, where and how to work, what to save or consume).  To Friedman’s way of thinking—and this is important—there could not be one without the other.   

   “It is widely (and wrongly), Friedman wrote, “believed that politics and economics are separate and largely unconnected; that individual freedom is a political problem and material welfare an economic problem….”  However, “history suggests that (economic freedom) is a necessary condition for political freedom.” 

   Without free markets, Friedman reasoned, there is only coercion.  Free enterprise is what creates choices: Individuals making free choices as owners, employees or customers, as to how to invest, where to work or how to spend resources.  “Fundamentally,” said Friedman, “there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion…” or “the other is voluntary co-operation of individuals--the technique of the market place.”

   Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for 1976.  This marked the first sign of the intellectual comeback of free-market economics that had been losing academic, political and popular appeal. 

   In a recent tribute paid to Friedman, the years of 1980-2005 were described as "The Age of Milton Friedman," an era that "witnessed remarkable progress of mankind. As the world once again embraced Friedman’s free market policies, living standards rose sharply while life expectancy, educational attainment, and democracy improved and absolute poverty declined."

Our Higher Purpose

Does LaserShip Have a Higher Purpose?

Our higher purpose is not just what we do that is meaningful for others; it is what, in that process, we create for ourselves.

   Our work is often made up of three types of activities.

·       Moving packages around:  Many of us are involved in the actual physical movement of packages—planning where they are coming from and where they are going, unloading, sorting, routing, reloading and delivering.

·       Moving Information around:  Increasingly many of us move the information about the package movement from one place to another, with some value added.  This includes inputting, monitoring, reporting, explaining, communicating

·       Moving People around:  Directing people on how to sort or where, how and when to deliver. 

   We move packages, information and people around because of our purpose: Providing the final mile in a customer’s logistical supply chain.  We don’t do this for ourselves, we do this for others—and often one step further removed, for their customers.

   Is there a higher purpose in this?  Seeing the higher purpose in these activities can easily get lost    in the sheer volume of packages and details.  

   To see a higher purpose, it is necessary to take a higher level view.  Look at what we do not from our point of view, but from the perspectives of our customer’s and the recipient’s.  While often we are delivering seemingly ordinary household products and purchases, each and every one was saved and shopped for then eagerly selected and awaited.  For our business to business customers we are the final link between two businesses with their own purposes and missions, but one of which is to stay in business—keeping people employed--by having the necessary materials and products available. 

   There is another class of final mile deliveries that we regularly perform:  These are both routed and on-demand deliveries of critically needed pharmaceutical and life science supplies: Prescription drugs, blood supplies, organs for transplant, diagnostic samples and medical equipment.  Each of these deliveries touches someone, somewhere in a meaningful life extending or saving way.

   Even with all of this, there still exists, perhaps, a higher level of purpose.  Beyond the specifics of our deliveries and who we touch with them, at LaserShip we are creating something that we are all a part of, something that we all contribute to and benefit from:  LaserShip itself.

   Together, we are building a human growth machine. 

·                   A place that allows anyone wants to participate the opportunity to learn, grow and advance

·                    A place where everyone has an opportunity to excel

·                    A place that promotes pride, confidence, strength, security, and vitality

·                    A place to grow our skills, our careers our income

·                    A place to develop meaningful relationships

·                    A place of where we find strength in collaborative interactions

·                    A place where we learn how to support each other

·                    A place where each person’s voice adds to what we know and how we perform

·                    A place where the concept of “our mutual well-being” is known, shared and appreciated

·                    A place to share the joys of winning

·                    A place that endures but made stronger by each individual contribution

   Our higher purpose is not just what we do that is meaningful for others; it is what, in that process, we create for ourselves. 

   Our legacy is in ourselves and our organization.  Individually, we are made stronger by each challenge, more skilled with each task, more knowledgeable with each experience and more fulfilled with each collaborative interaction.  Organizationally, each day our combined efforts and results facilitate our growth which makes us more secure allowing us to advance our future investments and create even more opportunities:  Great, enduring and rewarding.