Making PROGRESS

On November 3rd we closed the office for the day to celebrate our 2008 successes and discuss plans for 2009 (fiscal year end is Oct 31). The morning was an awesome and inspirational time of team building fun and competition that included many great laughs. Then, the afternoon was spent in informational meetings that began Diamond C's dynamic transition from closed-book to open-book management. To start the day, all of the office and management staff was divided into two teams, The Red and The Blue.
The first team event of the day was "The Bicycle Factory." Each team had to assemble a bicycle as quickly as possible. The first team to get their bike assembled and ride it (notice the size of the bikes) across the finish line won the event. The Blue Team came out victourious on this event (by a long shot).
After the bike assembly race, we improvised a bicycle relay race on the spot. Watching grown men ride these little bikes was quite entertaining and provided good competition. My advice: Be cautious of riding a bicycle assembled in under 10 minutes by a team of people... important parts like the seat and the handle bars may not be very secure!

The next event of the day was "Diamond C Family Fued." All of the participants of the day were polled the week before the 3rd to supply the answers to "The survey says..."
This picture is of Cody introducing "his family." It had to be one of the funniest moments of the day. A friendly handshake to start the competition that the Red Team dominated...

Following Family Fued, the teams had a Chant (which is slightly more masculine than "cheer") Competition. Each team took about 30 minutes to write and choreograph their chants. While the Red Team's chant included amazing stunts, the Blue Team's chant had a great message and was very well done. There was no clear winner.



The last planned competition of the day was Tug of War. One might say that the Red Team was "stacked," as they tugged the Blue Team across the line in just a few seconds.

After red versus blue, we mixed up the teams for another round of Tug of War, then we decided to have an all ladies round...

Again we improvised. The 30' Tug of War rope instantly became a 30' jump rope. Several people ran in, but we didn't manage to get more than two people in at any one time. It was a lot of fun.

This last picture is of my mom, Kim Crabb, jumping the rope. She was pretty good at it...



After all of these activites, we all went our for Pizza before returning to the office to begin meetings.

The meeting started with discussion of the company's Mission, Vision, and Plan-of-Action for 2009. This discussion was followed by a presentation of the company's financials, budgets for 2009, and profit sharing plans.

Overall, the purpose of the day was to clearly define the strategies of the company/team. This quote from famous entrepreneur Jack Stack summed up the day:

"There's a lesson here, and it's the foundation of everything I know and believe about business. People can accomplish almost anything if they have a common purpose, a higher goal, and they know what it is, and they're going after it. Everybody needs to be going somewhere. People need a destination, or they get lost. If they have one, however, and it's really their own, there's no telling what they can do. They can survive the darkest hours, beat the longest odds, scale the greatest heights."

November 3rd was a great day and a huge step for Diamond C. I thank the four ladies, Toni, Amy, Michele, and Paula, for helping me plan out the day.

Despite the tough trailer market, the Diamond C team is making progress each day. I thank all of the Diamond C staff for taking part in the progress!