From the President: What Kind of Personality Does Your Company Have?

– Don Capman

For the last couple of weeks I have been pondering or better yet procrastinating about the article I would write for this month’s Point of Saler. I always come up with a couple of ideas, and then I wrestle with them before making a final choice. Well, I was all ready to decide on a topic, when an event happened on Sunday the 7th of August that instantly changed my mind.

Erich Kaiser, Irakli Laliashvilli, and Ron Jenkins—all employees of J.D. Associates—decided to climb Mt. Monadnock in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. They set out on a picture-perfect day to take in some of the most beautiful sites in New England. Ron had not climbed Mt. Monadnock recently and, although he was 57 years old and his companions were both in their 20’s, Ron was fit, athletic and up for the challenge.

As they were hiking up the mountain, right above the tree line, things went terribly wrong. Ron collapsed and left 2 very courageous young men with the awesome task of trying to save his life. Erich managed to call the base lodge for help and both men performed CPR on Ron until help arrived. The emergency personnel from the mountain brought up a stretcher as quickly as they could and they carried that stretcher up the mountain to a waiting helicopter. The helicopter flew to the hospital in Keene, NH where Ron was pronounced dead. As you can imagine, everyone at J.D. Associates and all those who knew and worked with Ron are in a profound state of shock and grief. Monday morning the staff of J.D. Associates all gathered together to share our grief and pray for Ron, his wife Sheila and their daughter Sara.

Personally, this tragic event causes me to think of how blessed I am to work with so many wonderful employees. Too often we can look at the faults of our employees and not at the differences that make them unique human beings. When you think about it, our employees are like our families. In many instances, they spend more time with us than they do with their own families. We eat together, we work together, we laugh together, we squabble together, we grieve together, and we pray together. Isn’t that just like what families do?

Companies are just like people. They have personalities. All companies must be profitable to stay in business but in companies where profit is the over-riding concern and employee intimidation is the motivating factor, the personality of the company is usually hostile and angry. Who likes to do business with a hostile company? Where do I sign up? The less business the hostile company does, the more intimidating the management becomes, and so on and so on and so on. On the other hand, a company that has a “family feel” is one where common values are shared and intimidation has no place. A “family” company is a consumer-friendly company where people feel welcome, comfortable, want to come back and bring friends. Profits will follow.

My hope is that you will take a moment and use our tragedy to reflect on the personality of your company. Imagine that you are on the outside looking in. What are you seeing when you peek through that keyhole? Do you like or dislike what you see? There is always room for change in even the best of companies. Hey folks, we’re all in this together. Life is too short and our relationships are too important to mess it up.

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Several weeks ago, Ron was chosen for this month’s Employee Spotlight. Ron wrote the piece; he owns the words.

For those of you who had the pleasure of working with Ron and would like to sign his online memorial guestbook, click here.