Happy Thursday! We hope you’re having a great week. If we can be praying for you this week, please let us know. Also, we don’t say it all the time – but thank you for being part of our CK Daily family!
In This Issue: Lessons Learned: Don’t Expect What You Don’t Inspect | Cisco 3750X Series 24 Port Switch | FAQ: MDF vs IDF | News to Start Your Day
The CK Daily – Lessons Learned: Don’t Expect What You Don’t Inspect
Howdy! Craig here. In my last email, I mentioned that we suddenly had a significant drop in revenue. Not to kill the suspense, but due to a massive amount of backbreaking hard work from the entire team, coupled with the Lord’s favor, we climbed back to a profitable position and are seeing a lot of positive momentum from our many efforts over the last several months.
I have been writing about some of our “lessons learned” through this season and today I want to talk about knowing and watching your numbers.
There are many variations of the quote “People don’t do what you expect but what you inspect” which is attributed to Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. I have often heard and said “Don’t EXPECT what you don’t INSPECT” as well. Either way, the point is the same – people (including ourselves) do not just naturally and consistently work on the things that you deem to matter the most for the sake of moving the business forward. It is very easy for all of us to work on what is in front of us (the urgent vs the important) and wander off the reservation so to speak.
I was just thinking about how to express an idea and what came to me was a picture of a giant game of Jenga, but where each piece of wood is a process. If each process is carefully considered to be important to the well-being and stable growth of the organization and is well planned, documented, measured, and watched, it becomes a very stable piece of the Jenga tower. As you start with building processes for every operational component of the business you stack the game higher and higher. As pressures or distractions come at the staff, if the processes are meaningful, well documented, measured, and watched, it will be hard to knock the tower down – in fact, no piece (process) will be “removed” from the game at all if the staff is faithful to the processes.
One of our core values is “Build processes that don’t fail”. This is so important to me. I hate to have an issue occur without taking the time to understand what went wrong and “permanently fix the temporary problem” (one of my Craigisms). If I see that a process could have prevented an issue, I very much want that process to exist and be followed. For the most part, the entire CK team values this deeply as well – especially those who have been around a long time.
One of the things we came to learn over the past 5 months is that while we do have amazing operational processes and VAS (Visibility, Accountability, creating sustainability), we were heavily lacking in e-commerce and marketing processes and VAS. Looking back into the past we have had a variety of ways we have approached things but we have not consistently built sustainable processes. We have changed the game, the rules of the game, the things we measured or were concerned with, have gotten distracted by shiny things, have had a loss of momentum due to staff changes, and the list goes on. Due to this, our SEO, Adwords, on-site merchandising, and several other things suffered to the point of extremely poor performance or failure. That reminds me of an old SEO joke – Where is the best place to hide a dead body? Page two of Google. We were there – with all the dead bodies. Our SEO was terrible. No wonder our organic (non-paid) traffic was so terrible. So we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.
This is one of the many things that we have uncovered in the last several months that have contributed to the drop in revenue. There are others, but at the root of just about everything is the ability to know what you are aiming for, know what you believe will get you there, and then be disciplined and diligent to work on the right things to drive in that direction. This is for sure one of the areas we were weak. But, as you may have guessed, we have made significant strides to correct this, which has resulted in amazing priorities and focus since!
More to come…
Craig
Product Spotlights & Updates
Cisco 3750 X switches help maximize productivity by giving IT managers the tools to support enterprise applications and advanced traffic management. With an array of network modules and redundant power supply options available, these switches can be customized and scaled to support nearly any application.
Learning Center Article – FAQ: MDF vs IDF
In the world of IT, acronyms are everywhere. It can be hard to keep up, so sometimes, you need to break down the acronyms to solidify what they mean and why they matter. Applying that idea, today, we’re going to talk about MDF and IDF.
Today’s News to Start Your Day:
- McDonald’s has released its latest menu, which features a new wrap, three desserts and its first-ever food collaboration. Along with the two sweet treats, The fast food chain announced a partnership with the hot sauce manufacturer Frank’s RedHot, which is a fan favorite in the US, for its new McSpicy burger.
- Disney announced a $1.5 billion stake in Epic Games and plans to create a new “games and entertainment universe” together, building on Disney’s characters and stories, over several years.
- ESPN will launch its flagship direct-to-consumer streaming service in the fall of 2025.
- Disney is releasing an animated sequel to “Moana” this Thanksgiving.