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Happy Thursday!

(Here’s a fun one for you…November 19th is World Toilet Day! I will speak for all of us when I say that we are all thankful for this invention!)

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Just one week until Turkey Day! Someone on our team showed us this map today: Most Popular Thanksgiving Sides by State. I am loving how my favorite dishes are represented. We certainly love our mac and cheese in the south, don’t we? I have to say, I am a little worried about the people in Maine. Favorite dish: side salad. Apparently there is no mac and cheese (or stuffing like so many of the neighboring states enjoy) in Maine? Ha! 

What is your favorite Thanksgiving food? 

We’ve been working to collect some of our favorite recipes with you. Today I’m sharing this one, which came in from a customer. Thanks so much for sharing with us, Eva! 

Christin 

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Grandma Loper’s Buttermilk Coconut Cream Pie (Eva Arnold – Jacksonville, FL) 

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 11.19.2020

Thanksgiving Recipes? | PPE Update | VoIP Desk Phones | 5 Consequences of Victim Thinking | News to Start Your Day

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Happy Wednesday!

(November 18th is Mickey Mouse Day – as well as Mickey and Minnie’s birthdays – I guess if you are a Disney fan, this is a big day for you!)

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It’s Hump Day, friends! The week is halfway over, and we’re just one week away from the beginning of Thanksgiving celebrations. Those celebrations will look different for many people this year. I know it doesn’t feel like we’re nearing the end of the year here yet. The weather is still a bit warmer than usual, there’s still so much to do before the actual end of the year, and everything we do is just a bit unusual. 2020, you know? 

One of the things that seems to have the power to bring people together is good food. Time honored recipes that are passed down in families, little secrets to make this pie the best it can be or that pan of stuffing (dressing where I am from) taste just perfect. The comfort we feel eating familiar foods is a powerful tool of community and family. We were thinking it’d be neat to share some of that togetherness with you. 

I have a cookbook from my small hometown in south Georgia. It is compiled and sold by a group through the Methodist church there, and my mom bought me one for Christmas one year. I use it a few times a year, when I’m wanting that special nostalgic recipe from home. I know I can find my fifth grade teacher’s special punch recipe when I need it, a recipe (or three) for squash casserole from some of the best cooks I know, or Mrs. Sue’s pound cake recipe in those pages. Just flipping through and seeing the recipes and names of those who shared them brings up fond memories.  

So many of you have shared personal things with us since the beginning of this daily email journey. We are hoping you’ll now be willing to share your favorite family recipes. We’ll share them here in the email, add our own family recipes – some are even winners from our annual chili cookoff – and if we get enough, we’ll publish them all into an e-book to share with you all. A CK Community Cookbook, if you will.  

If you have a favorite recipe handy that you’d like to share now, just respond and give us the details. We’d love to include your name, city and state as well. We’re working on a link where you can submit them, so if you need a day or two to pull your food-splattered recipe card out (we want the good ones!), be on the lookout for that.  

Check out our first submission below! 

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 11.18.2020

Craig Update | Patterned Face Masks | GLC-T Modules | Thankful for Thankfulness | News to Start Your Day

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Happy Tuesday!

(November 17th is National Take a Hike Day / National Hiking Day. Hopefully, the weather is nice enough wherever you are to get out and take a hike.)

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Trivia time: Name that TV theme song, 90’s style: “Where in the world is … ” (answer) 

Someone asked earlier today, “where is Craig?” and this theme song immediately came to mind. Anyone else remember that show? I vaguely remember watching it, but I couldn’t really tell you much about the show. I think there was a board game and computer game, books too maybe? That tune sure is catchy though. I didn’t forget it!  

So while I cannot answer where in the world Carmen is tonight, I can tell you a little about what is going on with Craig. It actually ties nicely into telling you more about our business structure and some of the recent CK updates.  

As we’ve mentioned before, Craig took a sabbatical in the month of October. He worked some pretty crazy hours from March to August as I’m sure you all remember. That’s the time period when these emails started. In January of this year he had been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and is still working to get his symptoms under control. Part of that is going to be stress management and rest, something that he historically has not been practicing well. (He’s an all-in kind of guy.) In November he re-engaged with us internally in some meetings and is still here leading and guiding us, mostly giving us clarity around the vision. He’s still resting and doing more personal things too. That was the long answer to the question. The short answer is he’s here, just not on the “front lines” as he was before.  

We introduced you all to Chris McCoy, who is now the President of the CK business unit, earlier this month. A business unit, as we define it, is the Product, Marketing and Channels (sales) functions of a business. These are the revenue-generating, customer-facing pieces of a company. The vision Craig has had for our organization is that we would be an architect of a portfolio of many companies, companies that share the desire “to combine remarkable service, adaptive expertise, and frictionless shopping and logistics” to create “unparalleled customer experiences” (these quotes taken directly from our vision statement). CK is the prototype for this vision, and in order to get where we are going, Craig needed (and wanted) to not be the operational head of CK. He’s still the CEO around here, giving vision and, of course, making us laugh (and maybe roll our eyes occasionally, or maybe that’s just me, haha), but he has passed the baton to Chris for the management of the Three Pillars, as we call them, for CK.  

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 11.17.2020

Not As Planned | Goggle’s & Shoe Covers | Cat8 Ethernet | News to Start Your Day

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Happy Monday!

(November 16th is National Fast Food Day…that doesn’t sound like a very healthy holiday at all, but still sounds like a good one to celebrate! What’s your favorite fast food place to eat?)

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Happy Monday, everyone!

If any of you are like me this morning, you might be ready for another weekend. Lol! It ended up being a super busy weekend. I knew it was going to be that way for the first part of the weekend but I had planned on having a bit more relaxing second part…yeah, that didn’t work out so well. I am a planner. I like having things planned out and organized. If things are planned, then no matter how busy it is or what is going on I can relax, focus, and enjoy. It’s just the way I am wired.

As many of you know, on Friday and Saturday we did our year-end physical inventory at the CK warehouse. This was planned and I knew it was going to be some long hours of counting, hunting, walking, standing, and thinking. It was a very successful inventory count for us and it was even better to see some of the CK family/co-workers that I have not seen in person since March. Plus, there were some new faces I got to meet as well. It really was a great time for us as a business and for me personally. I have missed these people!

On Sunday, I had planned to get up go to church and serve at the two services. I lead a team in the Kids’ Ministry at my church that works with new families and getting all the kids signed in. With COVID, this, of course, has become a bit more cumbersome with temperature checks, assigned tickets, stickers, and cleaning, but it is still absolutely completely worth it to see the joy on the kids’ faces. This was planned.

After church, I ran home and changed clothes to head over to my parents’ house to help continue some remodeling in their new house and to pick up my dog that they had been keeping for me since I was at the warehouse most of the weekend for the inventory count. This was all planned.

What was not planned was what happened next. As my brother and I were working on one of the walls, my mom was sitting there watching us and I noticed she did not look well. She said that her head was hurting really, really bad. My mom hardly ever complains about being sick or being in pain, so when she said this it began to worry us a bit. She went and laid down, but started getting sick at her stomach. After about 30 mins of arguing with her about going and getting checked out at the hospital (she can be very stubborn…I get that from her), she finally said that she needed to go right then. Yep, this was not normal for mom. I grabbed my keys and helped get her to the car and I took her to the hospital. Thankfully their new house is only about 5 mins from there. My brother stayed behind to watch after my dad and my two cousins my parents have custody of. (Oh yeah, I didn’t mention that my dad fell and bruised his ribs the day before and mom had just taken him to the hospital on Saturday.) 

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 11.16.2020

CK Business Framework | PPE Product Update | The Versatile Rackmount Kit | News to Start Your Day

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Happy Friday…the 13th!

(November 13th is National Hug a Musician Day and World Kindness Day. Obviously this holiday was created before covid…no hugging…and we could all use a little more kindness in our lives after this year!)

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It’s Friday, y’all! Any fun weekend plans for you? I am looking forward to being home and having little to no plans at all. 

I wanted to continue walking through some of the framework we use to run CK and our corporate center functions. Remember yesterday we talked about the Plan > Build > Run model. Within the Plan role, we have a framework we call our Strategy Cascade. Each of our leaders who sit in a role that falls within the Plan function will be a part of meetings where we decide the current strategy for the business unit. 

Sitting at the top of the cascade is Objectives, then Initiatives, next is Rocks, and finally Tasks. Objectives are aspirational goals that fit in the 3-5 year time frame. Under that is Initiatives which are themes or goals that fall within a 1 year time frame. Each functional area of the business unit (Product, Marketing and Channel) will have Rocks that connect to these themes. Rocks are 1-3 month long projects and are either cross-functional or multi-tasked by nature. Lastly we have tasks which are 1-4 week to-do items. This structure came out of a desire to adopt a framework. We considered the Harnish method from Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, but we’d attempted it before and it still felt too heavy for our organization. We ended up adapting some things from Traction EOS and plan to implement more of the ideas there as it makes sense for us.  

If you’re part of a larger organization a framework like this is likely familiar to you. Small businesses and start-ups may feel overwhelmed by this sort of structure. We used to feel that way too! If you’re in a spot where you feel overwhelmed by a system like this, I want to encourage you that it is worth the investment of time. Having your people aligned, speaking the same language, planning and executing the same way, and working with clear accountabilities is so vital. I believe thinking about implementing a system is harder than just putting one foot in front of the other and walking it. Pick a system, move forward with it as far as you can/it makes sense, and know that it is okay to pick and choose what works best for you, your people, and your business.  

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 11.13.2020

Plan, Build, Run | 3-ply Masks | Keystone Surface Mount Box | Important Shipping Announcement | News to Start Your Day

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Happy Thursday!

Hey there, friends. It is now just two weeks until Thanksgiving. Can you smell the turkey cooking in the oven? I’m looking forward to some warm, delicious comfort food very soon. 

Since we’re working on our year-end planning and these things are top of mind, I thought it might be interesting to walk through some of the ideas that we use as guides in our business. I’ve mentioned before that at the center of our Core Values sits “Be a Model.” We want to be a model in everything we do, and that includes sharing some of our business practices with you all in hopes that it helps you in some way. 

First up: what we call the Value Creation Cycle. In each area of our business, we break down the roles into functions that align with the Plan > Build > Run model. The Plan function is responsible for developing strategies and (you guessed it) plans. The Build function takes those plans and converts them into products and/or recurring processes. Lastly you have the Run functions, that’s the repetitive operational things that actually get the work done. Each of these functions is vital, and the better each area can work together, the more efficient we become. Value is created by us being able to purposefully decide a direction, build out the products or processes needed, and then do the ongoing activities with excellence.  

I’m pretty sure I mentioned to you all that we use a marketing agency whom provides us with a fractional CMO and Marketing Manager. One of the reasons we were able to quickly hire and onboard the marketing agency was because of their organizational structure being aligned with our own. The marketing team is now one of my favorite examples of this Plan, Build, Run idea happening in our business. The CMO is Plan, the MM is Build, and the Technicians (graphic designers, email marketing agency, social media specialist) who do the work are Run. 

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 11.12.2020