January part 1

2012 is about 5 days old and what a start. Babette stranded the first day with her car somewhere between her place and the office. Monique on the 3rd day stumach problems, for a scan to the hospital. Angelique had a bad start coming in on Jan 2 with an exploded 'haircut' (lovely curls by the way) And today a storm is hitting the Netherlands. Well some people started at a different desk. As part of the plan implementing pre and after sales it was logical to 'redesign' the office. Everyone found a new spot by now. Only waiting for Petra to return from holiday. She made the big move from one side of the road to the other side. So what is keeping me busy? Currently working on a tool to reduce labour hours entering and reserving transport cost. Should help Andre in making his job more efficient and create hours for him to focus on more important customer transport issues. Second a program how to improve the win/win cooperation with distributors. The outcome will be presented in april during the sales EU Meeting. As well developing a tool to keep track how the actual turnover follows the forecast, especially for our core assortment. Yesterday evening an inspiring moment with Ali B (turn around what you don't want to do and make it positive. Ali B is a dutch artist with his roots in Morocco. Someone asked him "what do you think about Geert Wilders" His reply "If Geert is against discrimination, so am I. Let's team up and make our lives more sunny, he continued by telling us "If we all start being positive against people like Geert, Geert (the movement he stands for) will dissapear. Amen) At the end of the show he gave us a preview of the old song "Merck toch hoe sterck" in a new jacket. The magic words at my work are "Internal Branding". "Branding" is make people breathe the quote "packaging your brand". And YOUR stands for OUR customer. In modern society easier said then done. The process is facilitated by Embedding Company (Paul and Mariska) Very positive approach and people in my team and I learn a lot. As part of the programme we are setting goals and keeping notes in our logbook. The general idea of a logbook is to make colleagues aware of "what I do is important for my fellow worker and more important the customer who is paying the cheese on our sandwich" and secondly a tool to start working on improvements that will give us this feeling of being the world champion in doing it right the first time. So the second week started. Hmmmmmm, some nasty issues on my desk at the beginning of the week. Let's see if I can move people in the organisation to get problems fixed. Europe has gone back to work, France, UK, Germany and Austria colleagues finished their holidays. Email bombing started again.

I fully understand that we need email but sometimes I long to the old days of pigeons flying with messages bound to their leg, or people picking up the phone and take the time to discuss issues and at the same time get a better understanding of what is happening. Yes I am getting older. As a fact this year I will be turning 50. Halfway, and the best is yet to come.