For this month’s installment, we’ll look at two aphorisms from Richard Saunders:
“Observe all men, thy self most.” (August 1740)
“There are three things extreamly hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one self.” (January 1750)
In other words, we need to keep accurate records of volumes and costs. This is especially true in a production environment. We all want to improve ourselves and our operations. But you need to know where you are before you can make any changes.
Operations Management / Strategy / Postage Rates / Purchasing / Leadership / print / The Berkshire Company / learning / success / positive / inspiration / management / growth / strength / employees / Ben Franklin / professionalism
“Tho’ modesty is a virtue, bashfulness is a vice.” – Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1750
You should be proud of being a professional operations manager.
For decades, we’ve been told “print is dead” or “nobody mails anymore”. Yet, we’re still here. And there’s more of us than most people realize. The EMA Foundation for Paper-Based Communications tracks and identify trends in our industry. Their 2023 U.S. Mailing Industry Economic Job and Revenue Study revealed that the mailing industry (including print and design) accounts for 7.9 million jobs and contributes $1.9 trillion to the US economy. That’s more than the airlines, and almost as much as the oil and gas industry.
Too often, print and mail are seen as archaic professions. Negative articles have images of presses that have more in common with Gutenberg than today’s digital production models. Mail is portrayed as licking stamps for envelopes. In reality, print and mail are high-tech industries.
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Operations Management / Strategy / Leadership / print / The Berkshire Company / learning / success / positive / inspiration / management / growth / strength / employees / Ben Franklin / professionalism
“What one relishes, nourishes.” - Poor Richard's Almanack
The year 2025 marks the 250th anniversary of Ben Franklin being appointed Postmaster General by the Second Continental Congress. In 1753, Mr. Franklin had previously been appointed joint Postmaster General by King George III.
Before that, Franklin was a printer and author. Perhaps his most famous work was the yearly Poor Richard’s Almanack, under the pseudonym Richard Saunders. From 1732 to 1758, the pamphlet provided seasonal weather forecasts, puzzles and astronomical information.
What people remember are Franklin’s witty sayings passing along homespun wisdom. Most of us are familiar with: “A penny saved is a penny earned.” Or “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
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Operations Management / Strategy / Leadership / The Berkshire Company / learning / success / positive / inspiration / management / growth / strength / employees / Ben Franklin
"Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced. Even a proverb is no proverb until your life has illustrated it." - John Keats
Too often, successful executives are classified as being either innovative leaders or efficient managers. The innovative leader is defined as a visionary, a passionate idealist, and an inspirational thinker. On the other hand, the efficient leader is process-oriented, a student of Agile, or Total Quality Management (TQM), or a black belt disciple of Six Sigma. In reality, the successful person blends these seemingly opposite traits into inseparable qualities.
In his acclaimed book,On Becoming a Leader, Warren Bennis states, “The manager does things right; and the leader does the right thing.” He further differentiates the manager and the leader:
Operations Management / Strategy / Leadership / The Berkshire Company / reading / learning / success / positive / inspiration / management / strength
“Sorry, wrong cookie.” – Fortune Cookie
Many Sunday nights in my house begin with a call to the Wok and Roll restaurant. I’m a creature of habit, and I bet the manager writes down “Kung-Pao Chicken” as soon as she sees my telephone number on the Caller ID.
At the end of each meal, I indulge in another favorite habit, opening my fortune cookie. While I don’t believe that my future can be predicted by a random message placed in a mass-produced cookie, I still love those little notes.
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Operations Management / Strategy / Leadership / reading / success / positive / inspiration
Growing up, Sunday morning breakfasts were always special. Whoever woke up first – usually my mother – would fry up bacon in a cast iron skillet. Using the grease from the bacon, we would fry up our eggs in the same skillet. (I said the breakfasts were special, not healthy.)
Getting the chance to make breakfast was a rite of passage. One Sunday, I woke up early, and went down to the kitchen before anyone else. Excited, I heated up the skillet, got the bacon out of the refrigerator, and started cooking. A few minutes later, my mother came downstairs, gave me an amused smile, and asked if the coffee was ready. In my rush, I forgot about the coffee. So I lowered the heat on the bacon, and fired up the coffeemaker.
Operations Management / Leadership / learning / success / mentorship
Last month, the United States Postal Service (USPS) filed a notice in the Federal Register of their intent to update address standards for mailers. In addition to aligning the address database product cycle with other mailing products, the proposal calls for more frequent updating of mailing addresses. Effective July 1, 2021, the period for coding addresses for automation and carrier route mailings will be reduced from 90 days to 60 days before the mailing date.
This is a reasonable standard and should be embraced by business mailers.
United States Postal Service / Operations Management / USPS / U.S. Postal Service / address management
Before every play, a football team forms a huddle to call the next plan of action. In the best teams, players give feedback about what they’re seeing on the field, so the quarterback has the best information possible to make the right decision. When they break, everyone knows the objective, and their role in helping achieve that objective.
In businesses, teams should follow a similar pattern. At the start of each day, or shift, everyone on the team should come together for a briefing. We call this “the daily huddle”. It works for all types of organizations, and is especially helpful for print and mail operations.
Production inkjet presses. File-managed processing with job and piece level tracking. Seamless acceptance for full-service Intelligent Mail barcode mailings. Artificial intelligence extracting information from inbound paper documents.
Implementing just one of those solutions is a challenge. Taking advantage of the capabilities of those technologies requires transforming digital and production workflows. In most cases, print and mail professionals will need to venture far outside their comfort zones.
Operations Management / Technology / Strategy / USPS / Digital / U.S. Postal Service / Quality Control / mail
“True understanding comes from reflecting on your own experience. You are your own best teacher.” - Warren Bennis
Buyer’s remorse. Monday morning quarterbacking. Second-guessing.
Whatever you call it, we’ve all been guilty of wondering “what should I have done differently?” Especially when our plans don’t turn out as we expected. And if we aren’t careful, dwelling on our missteps can prevent us from succeeding in the present. And the future.
Reflection after something goes wrong is a good idea. We should analyze our mistakes, and determine how to prevent them from recurring. A good process is to write down what occurred, and what we were thinking as we made key decisions. In light of the actual outcome, we can uncover flaws in our methods and ensure that we don’t repeat our mistakes.
