22 Apr Learning Along the Way
From One Generation to the Next | by Mark C. Cooke, Ph.D.
Twenty-two (22) years of working alongside my father, the founder of TMA, has provided some interesting lessons. Lessons, if I can be honest, tied to childhood memories as much as meetings with clients or boardroom debates. Separating father from mentor would never really have been possible. Not really desired, either, I guess. It just made it a little more interesting to consider what he was trying to convey, pulling apart habit from intention, and understanding the man as much as the method. Do not get me wrong, I am as much myself as I am a molded replica. We share some opinions, and we agree to disagree on others. We are both readers and try to learn in order to make the best decision. However, he is more Lee Iacocca, and I am more Jocko Willink. In a way, he is the more “experience and gut” leader, and I try to research, plan, and debate. All in all though, I owe him for my experiences and his time with me to teach, guide, cajole, joke, and, when he thought necessary, “redirect.” This article, then, is a few short lessons I have learned thus far. These are examples of the types of things I have taken away from our time together, and that we still use to guide our decisions today.
Quality by Design
The original tagline for TMA, “Quality by Design,” was used on everything: letterhead, business cards, website, proposal folders (when those existed), and everything TMA produced. No one ever talked about why it was there or what it meant, but you saw it all the time. It was not “Quality Always,” or “Quality First,” it was “Quality by Design.” It meant that you had to know, as an employee, that you had to be striving for excellence and that it had to be intentional, planned, and executed.
When I was a kid, and rushing around in the North Carolina summer heat to finish the yard work chores – and by rushing, I mean doing less than I was supposed to do, but enough that I hoped was passable – Dad would inevitably come around the side of the house and either signal he wanted to talk or just give me a “Mark Christopher…” You see, he was out doing chores too and he would pull off the grey yard gloves and wipe off some sweat before saying “If you are only going to do half the job, then don’t do it at all.”
I had a sneak peek, of sorts, into what he meant when he chose “Quality by Design.” Do it well, or do not bother doing it at all. There is no alternative.
Invest in Your Future
Throughout my young adult years, I would ask his opinion about personal financial decisions. Usually it would be something about a major investment like furniture (that stuff is expensive when you are first starting out). He would always go back to the same saying: “Mark Christopher, do you have the money for it? If you do, you know you can buy the good stuff once and have it for the rest of your life. You can buy the cheap stuff, but you are going to have to buy it ten times over.”
Two pieces of this need to be teased out. First, his advice, in personal life and in business, was never to buy anything on credit if it could be prevented. Avoid debt, and if you have to put off a purchase until you save a little more, just do it. You do not need it today. Sound advice when there are many avenues to follow that can deplete the coffers and leave you in a vulnerable financial position.
Second, and stemming from his Quality by Design lesson, was to do it right the first time. Avoid mistakes and take your time making decisions. Determine the better path even if it takes a little self-sacrifice and patience, that is the way we go.
Sustainable Growth
TMA has been around for forty-seven (47) years. I have been there for twenty-two (22) personally. That is a lot of time, and the goal has always been sustainable growth. No flashy doubling of revenues in a year. Rather, we have just been focused on growing slow and steady. If a big opportunity came along, it would be considered, and if it was not sustainable, we would always let it pass.
This is good business sense. It is low risk. Big opportunities require big capital, and not everything pays off. Which means that large growth is a gamble. For a small business owner a gamble can smell more like danger than opportunity.
You may be surprised to know that his main motivation was about people. Large opportunities may not always be sustainable, or they may be designed to be one-off projects that make money today but have no future. Either way, that would mean hiring people knowing you were going to fire them at some point soon. In my opinion, that was the part he could not stomach. It was not fair and it lacked moral correctness to offer someone a job that you knew would not exist in a year or two. I do not think anything could change that philosophy here now.
Welcoming Competition
Some people fear competition. It is true. Competition can have some bad effects. Usually it results in a “race to the bottom” where price is the main focus and companies are willing to sacrifice quality, employees, and culture to be the lowest. But I see it as an opportunity. It goes back to Quality by Design. Welcoming Competition forces you to be better, not just cheaper. Where do you put your resources, Invest in Your Future, and continue to gain Sustainable Growth?
In other words, competition inspires innovation. It keeps you on your toes and makes you grow and get creative. Honestly, competition becomes something of a compliment. There are people out there who want to do what we were doing yesterday. Out of the twenty-four (24) states we work in, let’s take a look at North Carolina. All of TMA’s competitors except for one (who is now out of business) were former TMA employees. The trick is how do you grow, transform, and keep current?
Dad hates to lose, but only when it is on quality. “Competition isn’t a bad thing,” he would say, followed by “We just have to show them why we are the better choice.” Fully adopted now, it is a part of our corporate identity that we should always be improving. The business phrase is “continuous improvement,” and I love the way that sounds.