The View

La Roya, also known as Coffee Rust fun­gus has moved from a minor irri­ta­tion in Latin America into a plague of mas­sive pro­por­tions. Why now? And, why at all? Without going all pseudo sci­en­tific, it would seem that the loom­ing threat of cli­mate change has finally shown itself and, as pre­dicted, cof­fee agri­cul­ture is the canary in the coalmine.

This is one of my pet phrases and it seems that a sur­pris­ing num­ber of folks have no idea what it means so, never let­ting a chance to be pedan­tic pass me by with­out a fight, I will explain it.

In England, before mod­ern sens­ing equip­ment, coalmin­ers used to take canaries in small cages down into the pits. Canaries are much more sen­si­tive to dan­ger­ous gases such as methane, a com­mon byprod­uct of coal. If the canary drops dead it is time to leave the mine, fast.

Coffee, par­tic­u­larly Arabica cof­fee, is very sen­si­tive to changes in its envi­ron­ment and grow­ing con­di­tions. When the trop­i­cal cli­matic con­di­tions started to change five or so years ago, the tem­per­a­ture started to go up and the usu­ally pre­dictable rain cycles began to be erratic. Coffee started to show the harm­ful effects.

In the thoughts of a few of us doom and gloom pre­dic­tors, the ques­tion was not whether the result­ing loss of yields would hap­pen, but rather how it would first man­i­fest itself. My money was on wide spread Borer Beetle infes­ta­tion (and in some respects that was cor­rect); but what seems to be killing the canary is Coffee Rust.

Coffee Rust seems so frag­ile and sim­ple but in the real world, it is the sin­gle most deadly cat­a­stro­phe Mother Nature can throw at cof­fee. It is a fun­gus, the least sophis­ti­cated of the higher orders of plants, but with a fierce will to sur­vive expelling bil­lions of spores into the wind and quickly spread­ing across a large area of cof­fee trees.

It has always been man­age­able, since the con­di­tions to sup­port Coffee Rust only occurred in small micro­cli­mate pock­ets. However last year con­di­tions across the Andean and Central American cof­fee regions all hit that tem­per­a­ture and rain sweet spot that La Roya loves so much.

The rea­son that Coffee Rust is such a fear­ful prob­lem is that once it hits a plant, it spreads rapidly unto the leaves block­ing the plants abil­ity to carry out pho­to­syn­the­sis. The leaves wither and drop pre­ma­turely, car­ry­ing the fun­gus to the leaf clut­ter below the tree. As new leaves form to replace the loss, the cof­fee rust reasserts itself upon the next rainy sea­son. Unlike other pests and dis­eases that can hit cof­fee, the dam­age is not lim­ited or selec­tive. It does not just wreck a few cher­ries, or shrivel a branch or two. Coffee Rust is homi­ci­dal and if left unchecked, depletes and may even­tu­ally kill the host tree. Use of expen­sive and poten­tially toxic fungi­cides as well as quar­an­tine and pre­emp­tive plant removal seem to be the prime defense against Coffee Rust. Eradication how­ever seems to not be pos­si­ble. And there is the prob­lem! By even the most con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mates, this cur­rent weather pat­tern is going to remain for at least the next year, which means that the poten­tial exists for a con­tin­u­ing destruc­tion of cof­fee plants. This poten­tially means total destruc­tion, not a tem­po­rary inconvenience.

Why does this mean destruc­tion? It is the “human fac­tor.” It does not mat­ter if the cur­rent weather pat­terns last for five years or five thou­sand years – let the sci­en­tists and politi­cians argue that out. From a prac­ti­cal aspect, once a farmer’s trees drop below a con­sis­tent min­i­mum yield to sup­port the fam­ily, the farm will cease to exist.

We face the prospect of hill­sides cov­ered with the skele­tal remains of cof­fee trees for as far as the eye can see. Sound apoc­a­lyp­tic, not really. Remember the American Elm, the Chestnut, and soon the Lodge Pole Pine forests of the Rocky Mountains? All were too spe­cial­ized and fell vic­tim to chang­ing conditions.

Within three years, farm­ers may be pulling out their cof­fee trees and replac­ing them with a new, more viable, agri­cul­tural, pas­toral, or real estate devel­op­ment enterprises.

It is sad that there is very lit­tle we can do. All the fuel-efficient cars and recy­cling pro­grams in the world – even if there was the polit­i­cal will to change today – can­not change this sit­u­a­tion quickly enough.

So are we sim­ply done? Well prob­a­bly not. There will still be cof­fee, albeit very expen­sive cof­fee and ulti­mately new vari­etals are com­ing on-line that are resis­tant to this plague. According to Peter Baker of CABI, the renowned sci­en­tific research insti­tute in London, “Resistant vari­etals are already avail­able. But many farm­ers haven’t planted them because spe­cialty roast­ers say the cup qual­ity is infe­rior. But some of them, like Castillo in Colombia for exam­ple, seem to have a pretty good cup pro­file.” Hopefully researchers will be proac­tive enough to also antic­i­pate the next plague com­ing down the pipeline – one can hope.

One thing is cer­tain how­ever. The world of cof­fee in Mexico, Central, and South America will look very dif­fer­ent than it does now. The Great American drought that cre­ated the dust bowl in the 1930’s ended for­ever the “40 acre and a mule” farm fam­ily in the USA and ush­ered in the era of cor­po­rate farm­ing. Corporate farm­ing is able to be more resilient to lose caused by weather or pests because the farms are so much more vast. A hail­storm can destroy 100 acres of wheat and barely effect the total farm yields on today’s agro-business farms

I pre­dict that the same will hap­pen in cof­fee. The small­holder farm will give way to the large cor­po­rate estate as big inter­na­tional money inter­ests pur­chase and con­sol­i­date the rav­aged lands once held by small fam­i­lies. Only big money will have the finan­cial oomph to invest what it will take to re-establish cof­fee pro­duc­tion in Latin America to the scale that it has been.

Is this a ter­ri­ble thing? I do not know – maybe, maybe not. It may be an inevitable and nat­ural pro­gres­sion that is only pre­cip­i­tated by La Roya. I hope though that I am wrong.

Kerri & Miles

Employment Law 2012 Review and the Employer Landmines to Avoid

2012 was a year of change, progress, digress, and a Presidential Election – all of which brought sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments in employ­ment law, espe­cially for employ­ers. Here are just a cou­ple of high­lights from 2012:

Social Media – Can Employees Really Say That About Us On-Line?
There are mil­lions of peo­ple on social media these days. If it be Facebook©, Twitter©, LinkedIn©, inter­net blogs – you name it. With all the social media avenues out there in cyber­space inevitably come employ­ees want­ing to vent and com­plain about their jobs. They com­plain about pay­checks, the salary they make, or they don’t like the way their employer han­dles the work­force. Once the employer gets wind of the inap­pro­pri­ate posts, the employer’s first instinct is to fire that employee. NOT SO FAST! Generally, under the National Labor Relations Act, employ­ees are allowed to con­gre­gate and dis­cuss their work­ing con­di­tions for mutual aid and pro­tec­tion free from employer retal­i­a­tion. Now the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”)(the gov­ern­men­tal agency that gen­er­ally pro­tects employ­ees’ rights to union­ize and have unions rep­re­sent them) says it does not mat­ter in what forum the employ­ees have their pow-wows. This is because the NLRB views social media as an appro­pri­ate forum to con­gre­gate and should not give the employ­ees any LESS pro­tec­tion, and essen­tially it just gives them more due to the power of social media in today’s soci­ety. The cur­rent deci­sions in 2012 com­ing down from the NLRB are very much pro-employee. The broader the pol­icy on restrict­ing the employ­ees’ con­duct in social media, the worse off the employer is. States are even get­ting involved with their own leg­is­la­tion, such as, as of Jan 1, 2013, it will be unlaw­ful in Illinois and other states for oper­a­tors to request pass­words and log in infor­ma­tion to access employ­ees’ per­sonal social media sites. Revising your social media poli­cies is a must and not an option!

Employee Background Checks – What Is Really Fair & Consistent Treatment In Hiring?
Background checks came into the employ­ment spot­light in 2012. Traditionally, employ­ers thought they could com­ply with dis­crim­i­na­tion laws by hav­ing blan­ket poli­cies that state, for exam­ple, no employee would get hired if they had a felony crim­i­nal con­vic­tion in the past 7 years. It is a con­sis­tent pol­icy and it treats every indi­vid­ual the same, right? Well, not accord­ing to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) (the gov­ern­men­tal agency that enforces fed­eral laws that make it ille­gal to dis­crim­i­nate against a job appli­cant or an employee because of an individual’s pro­tected class). The EEOC has recently fine-tuned its guid­ance on back­ground checks. The EEOC finds that these gen­eral poli­cies have a dis­crim­i­na­tory effect on African Americans and Hispanics because these two races have a higher sta­tis­tic of get­ting arrested and ulti­mately con­victed. Thus, employ­ers must go through an indi­vid­u­al­ized case-by-case assess­ment before they can dis­qual­ify appli­cants from posi­tions. This assess­ment includes, among other fac­tors, the nature and grav­ity of the crime; the time that has elapsed from when the crime was com­mit­ted; reha­bil­i­ta­tion efforts; and post-conviction employ­ment. State laws may also throw another layer of restric­tions that you should be aware of in the states you oper­ate. It makes good sense to have writ­ten guide­lines for those admin­is­tra­tors in your com­pany that per­form and ana­lyze such back­ground checks.

Wage & Hour Violations – To Pay Or Not To Pay, That Is The Question!
Employee-side attor­neys have made it a pri­or­ity in 2012 to sue com­pa­nies for wage and hour vio­la­tions, and it is not dying down. This could be for not pay­ing employ­ees min­i­mum wage; not cal­cu­lat­ing over­time pay cor­rectly; pay­ing them salary when they should be paid hourly; call­ing them an inde­pen­dent con­trac­tor when they are truly an employee; inap­pro­pri­ately deduct­ing from employ­ees’ pay­checks for short­ages, uni­forms or bro­ken com­pany equip­ment; or not giv­ing them their required meal or rest breaks – to just name a few. Unfortunately for employ­ers, they must stay abreast of not only fed­eral laws, but also dif­fer­ing state-specific laws that dic­tate how, when, where, why, etc. to pay employ­ees. Getting re-educated on these chang­ing laws should hap­pen sooner rather than later as hon­est mis­takes can hap­pen so eas­ily, yet cost your com­pany a lot of money in fees, penal­ties and interest.

Practice Tips
•    Review exist­ing writ­ten poli­cies for com­pli­ance, or cre­ate ones if your hand­book is defi­cient.
•    Train man­age­ment employ­ees as there can never be enough train­ing to ensure they are enforc­ing your poli­cies and prac­tices cor­rectly, con­sis­tently, and uni­formly.
•    Sign up for employ­ment labor blogs from law firms and state and fed­eral agen­cies! This is an easy and quick way to get news alerts on new laws.

What to watch out for in 2013? For those employ­ers who are non-unionized, the NLRB will con­tinue to make its pres­ence known in your work­force, if it be reject­ing your “at-will employ­ment” dis­claimers in hand­books and con­tracts, restrict­ing your social media prac­tices, or requir­ing the post­ing of the NLRB’s “Employee Rights Poster” that gives employ­ees guid­ance on how to union­ize (although this require­ment is cur­rently put on hold by a fed­eral court). Along the same lines, the NLRB is look­ing for a faster way employ­ees can get union­ized, which cuts down the time frame for employ­ers to cam­paign for man­age­ment. Lastly, health care reform is not going any­where. You should keep your eyes and ears open for new or revised man­dates to ensure your com­pany is fol­low­ing the right steps for com­pli­ance come January 1, 2014 – some manda­tory com­pli­ance has already started.

We rec­om­mend you con­tact your employ­ment coun­sel to ensure your poli­cies and prac­tices are tuned up, and you can also con­tact the author — an attor­ney with a focus on rep­re­sent­ing com­pa­nies on labor and employ­ment law issues since 2001.

Heather A. Bailey, Partner with SmithAmundsen LLC
Email: hbailey@salawus.com
Heather has emerged as a thought leader in the labor and employ­ment indus­try and is a fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to the Illinois Chamber of Commerce’s HR Advisory blog and the NAMA Quarterly In-Touch mag­a­zine for the vend­ing indus­try. NAMA Employment Layer.

Peanut Butter and Jelly

When a new café opens, there are a thou­sand things that need to be done, and the money just won’t stop pour­ing out. So many cafes open their doors at the first oppor­tu­nity, leav­ing many things unfin­ished, with you and your staff unprepared.

“You have one chance to make a first impression.”

As a café owner, it is impor­tant to ask the fol­low­ing ques­tions: When a cus­tomer walks into your store, how are they greeted?  Does your staff con­tinue work­ing with their heads down, ignor­ing the cus­tomer until they are at the counter ready to order, or do they intro­duce them­selves and your com­pany to this new cus­tomer? When the cus­tomer orders their drink, how con­fi­dent is your staff in the recipe they are fol­low­ing? Are your cus­tomers the guinea pigs for your staff that are mak­ing this drink for the first time?  Or has the staff prac­ticed these drinks many times before and are prepar­ing the drinks with con­fi­dence?  If there are no cus­tomers in the store, does your staff have check­lists to fol­low for pri­or­i­tiz­ing what needs to be done or do they stand around and talk while the bath­rooms are dirty and the creamer is empty? And what about when your staff leaves for the day? Do they feel as though they rep­re­sented you and them­selves well, or do they really have no idea what your busi­ness stands for?

You have one chance to make a first impres­sion, and the chances of this impres­sion being great are much improved when you open with a well-trained staff that has pro­ce­dures to fol­low and check­lists to imple­ment. While these items aren’t much fun to talk about, they really are what allow a busi­ness to grow and oper­ate efficiently.

Procedures and recipes are some­thing that a new busi­ness should be work­ing on weeks in advance of open­ing. Any time your staff pre­pares some­thing they should pre­pare it by fol­low­ing an exact recipe. I had a teacher in the 3^rd grade that had all of us write down the direc­tions for mak­ing a peanut but­ter and jelly sand­wich. While this sounds like a sim­ple task, the results were hilar­i­ous.  She fol­lowed all of our direc­tions to the T, and out of a class of twenty she ended up with just a few edi­ble sand­wiches.  Many of us never spec­i­fied to use a knife to spread the peanut but­ter or jelly, so she smeared it on with her hands. Others never even said to take the bread of the bag, so she spread peanut but­ter and jelly on the bag. While these may sound like extreme exam­ples, I am con­stantly shocked by the things my staff does when there are not explicit instruc­tions. For every recipe you cre­ate, give it to your staff and don’t say any­thing, just watch. Any time you see them strug­gle, you know you need to rewrite the directions.

Now, while you can write instruc­tions for most things, there will always be a few items that also require a skill in order to do the task prop­erly. For those items, you need to make sure that you allow your staff the time to develop those skills.  Steaming milk is a per­fect exam­ple; one can­not sim­ply read how to prop­erly steam milk. You need to begin by giv­ing your staff the proper train­ing and then you need to give them time to develop and per­fect that skill. They should not be prac­tic­ing these skills on pay­ing cus­tomers; oth­er­wise they will not be pay­ing cus­tomers for very long.

Other items you can write detailed instruc­tions for are check­lists (for exam­ple: open­ing, clos­ing, shift change, etc). Checklists are one of the most impor­tant things that a busi­ness can uti­lize for suc­cess.  Look at the big guys: Whether it is McDonalds or Starbucks, there is a check­list for every­thing. It allows for peo­ple to oper­ate with effi­ciency and ensure that every­thing gets done.  For instance, when your morn­ing crew comes in, do they remem­ber to put the creamer out or is it the first cus­tomer of the day who has to ask for it?  Does your clos­ing crew have a check­list that is orga­nized in the way in which they should work? Is it writ­ten in a way that pre­vents one per­son from sweep­ing before the other per­son has wiped down the coun­ters?  Do any of these lists even exist at all? You also want to write lists for when there are no cus­tomers in the store—for when the staff should be clean­ing up and get­ting ahead, rather than lean­ing on coun­ters and chat­ting about last night’s episode of The Real Housewives.

All of these ques­tions about what your staff believes and how they work relate to the impor­tant essen­tial that every busi­ness needs but many lack, and that is cul­ture.  What mes­sage is it that you are send­ing to your staff and what mes­sage are they send­ing to your cus­tomers?  While this may sound vague, try to think of it this way. If a cus­tomer was to order an espresso on ice, would you give it to them with­out ques­tion, or would you get into a lengthy explain about how espresso should not be served over ice? Or maybe you threaten to punch them in the groin because you believe that it is a sin to have espresso on ice! No mat­ter how you choose to respond or react in a sit­u­a­tion such as this, you have to ask your­self, how would my staff respond? The key here is have built a strong cul­ture in which your staff not only asks, “What Would the Boss Do?” but they actu­ally know the answer to that ques­tion and they do the same. This cre­ates a con­sis­tency among indi­vid­ual staff, across mul­ti­ple loca­tions, and through­out the busi­ness as a whole.

Looking back on the last few para­graphs, there are a lot of ques­tions. Hopefully, this will get you to think about how to both start and grow your busi­ness and what is nec­es­sary in order to take it to the next level. Does your staff know your recipe for a peanut but­ter and jelly sandwich?

Heather Perry, Director of Training & Consulting, Klatch Coffee Inc.
Heather has fif­teen years of expe­ri­ence in the cof­fee indus­try. She began her cof­fee career at the age of eleven by wash­ing dishes and sweep­ing floors in her parent’s cof­fee­house. By the age of fif­teen, Heather was work­ing behind the espresso machine and exper­i­ment­ing with dif­fer­ent drinks. Since her first shot of espresso, Heather has con­tin­ued to improve and hone her skills behind the bar. Heather holds many Barista titles includ­ing 2003 and 2007 U.S. Barista Champion, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Western Barista Champion, 2007–2010 Ultimate Barista Champion and fin­ished 2^nd in the World at World Championships in Tokyo. Heather grad­u­ated from Cal Poly Pomona with a degree in International Business and Marketing.

The State of the Industry as Related with Merchandising and Branding

As I write this arti­cle, sip­ping on a cof­fee at Bo’s Coffee in Makati city, Phillippeans, I sort my thoughts in order to answer the ques­tion, “How has mer­chan­dis­ing and brand­ing evolved in the cof­fee indus­try over the last decade?” It is a much tougher ques­tion to answer than it would seem because we have seen quite a few devel­op­ments within dif­fer­ent mar­ket segments.

The com­mon con­tribut­ing fac­tors that impacts behav­ior in brand man­age­ment and exe­cu­tion of retail mer­chan­dis­ing are typ­i­cally the size of the com­pany and the company’s unique posi­tion­ing within the local mar­ket. I’ve come to find that sell­ing the high­est vol­ume of mer­chan­dise is not the sole under­ly­ing dri­ver for most retailers.

Many retail­ers feel that if a cus­tomer is going to buy a prod­uct from their store that the cus­tomer should be out in the mar­ket­place adver­tis­ing the retailer’s brand. I feel that for even the strongest brands they should broaden their mer­chan­dise col­lec­tions to include designs with lifestyle dri­ven artwork.

The goals of retail mer­chan­dis­ing are var­i­ous. Most retail­ers sim­ply want to have their logo promi­nently dis­played on each item, stand­ing in per­fectly straight rows. Typically, the moti­vat­ing goals of these pro­grams are sim­ply to uni­formly dis­play logoed mer­chan­dise in order to enhance the ambiance of the store. Most com­pa­nies take a sta­tic approach when cre­at­ing mer­chan­dise for their brand, lean­ing solely on the cor­po­rate logo to deliver their mes­sage to their con­sumers. This tra­di­tional approach sum­ma­rizes the state of the indus­try as a whole. But there are some retail­ers that are start­ing to shift the trend.

In recent years we have seen many inde­pen­dent cof­fee retail­ers change their approach to cre­at­ing their mer­chan­dis­ing pro­gram. Rather than start­ing with the logo, they start with a design. They begin by select­ing lifestyle-driven art­work that cap­tures a core ele­ment of their cus­tomer base, then incor­po­rat­ing ele­ments of their logo into the design. These pro­grams are much more suc­cess­ful than tra­di­tional logoed mer­chan­dise pro­grams, because retail­ers focus on what speaks to the cus­tomer, rather than start­ing off with what’s best for the retailer.

Size, struc­ture and style weigh heav­ily in these deci­sions. Independent retail­ers are faced with chal­lenges of bud­get, space and large custom-run min­i­mums; fran­chisees are faced with a myr­iad of chal­lenges rang­ing from fran­chise guide­lines to rogue fran­chisees; and large retail­ers with more than ten loca­tions typ­i­cally have the most flex­i­bil­ity to cre­ate really fan­tas­tic com­pre­hen­sive mer­chan­dise assort­ments that change sea­son­ally. It is my impres­sion that the own­ers of those chains have the most fun.

Erez Toker, President of Vessel Drinkware

Letters to the Editor

Robusta

Last month The View focused on the move­ment to cer­tify some Robusta cof­fees as Specialty and to develop a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion cur­ricu­lum for train­ing “R Graders.” The edi­to­r­ial gen­er­ated quite a lot of inter­est and con­ver­sa­tion. Here are a cou­ple of let­ters we received on the sub­ject. We are glad the con­ver­sa­tion is started and continuing.

Grow or Fail: Considerations When Growing Your Roaster Business

Would I be stat­ing the obvi­ous in say­ing that grow­ing any busi­ness is chal­leng­ing? Probably – but prepar­ing for change can ease you in the right direction.

You’re learn­ing, grow­ing and chang­ing in real-time – at the speed of busi­ness. You get an order or a new cus­tomer that man­dates addi­tional help. Quick – what do you do? Scramble? Round up the usual help? Pull your husband/wife/partner away from what they’re doing? Call in the kids?

I’ve taken this road and here’s what I learned along the way.

1-     Document

I know – you’re going to put down this arti­cle right now and open up Word and write out exactly what needs to be done – right? No, I don’t think so. It’s unlikely you’ll do that now because you’re already stretched beyond rea­son. The best way I’ve found to do this is by start­ing a check­list – sim­ple – like this:
 

• Go to bean con­tainer and grab a large scoop.
• Review pick­ing order for ground or whole bean.
• Grab a hand­ful of 12 ounce bags.
• Grab labels for cur­rent coffees.
• Apply labels to as many bags as are needed for each order to be picked and packed.

2-     Train

Training is needed sim­ply because you can’t rely on your hus­band to do things the way you expect them to be done – how do you expect a high-school stu­dent or a tem­po­rary worker to “get” what you think is the ideal approach to mak­ing your busi­ness sing?
 

• Dedicate 15 min­utes to review­ing your check­list with your new trainee.
• Walk through the steps on the check­list your­self and show your trainee how you would do this packing.
• Talk about what you just did.
• Ask the trainee if they have any questions.
• Ask the trainee to do the same thing you just did.
• Review the steps and point out any errors/omissions/changes made to your trained process.

3-     Review

Everyone falls short in this depart­ment! There’s not enough time to do the work – much less review! Don’t kid your­self. Things hap­pen. Systems can be improved upon – even by some­one else! Get into this habit weekly – you’ll thank me later.

• Sit down with your charge.
• Ask them to fill in/write down any step that was missed in your writ­ten expla­na­tion of the pack­ing process you showed them this week. You can refer to the writ­ten check­list you gave them – hope­fully they’ve made some notes to themselves.
• Ask if there’s a way to improve upon this process.
• Add the idea or new step in writ­ing to the pack­ing process.
• Thank them for the input and pre­view upcom­ing processes you’d like to improve upon.
• End the meet­ing eye-to-eye with a handshake.

The inter­est­ing thing you’ll find is that moti­va­tion fol­lows action. It’s easy enough to learn to do stuff, but growth requires help – in the form of labor. People want to help but they need instruc­tion or they’ll start mak­ing it up so they can look busy. So, get busy and plan some training.

Training Philosophy

There’s a phi­los­o­phy behind this approach to busi­ness and rather than bore you with the details of my busi­ness life I’ll give you some ref­er­ence points, steps to take on the way to improved process man­age­ment, a guide­line and a cou­ple of adden­dums I’ve gath­ered along the way.

Most busi­nesses grow organ­i­cally – which can be good because busi­ness ide­ally is a learn­ing process. But, as Michael Gerber points out in his excel­lent book “The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It” you might fall into the cat­e­gory of a “tech­ni­cian” if you’re run­ning a busi­ness – although not nec­es­sar­ily a man­ager or an entrepreneur.

The basic premise of this book is based on the idea that you need to round out your edu­ca­tion as some­one run­ning a busi­ness and you also need to antic­i­pate work­ing on your busi­ness as opposed to in your business.

This idea antic­i­pates train­ing peo­ple – and that means writ­ing stuff down so train­ing can con­tinue to be passed on and your busi­ness can evolve and progress beyond your per­sonal lim­i­ta­tions – whether that’s time, money or any­thing else that might pre­vent the busi­ness from improving.

Pen & Paper

Using a piece of paper and a pen you can start to change the path of your oper­a­tion – and this doc­u­men­ta­tion process is no dif­fer­ent than what the Fortune 500 com­pa­nies do – except to the degree to which this work is done and the tech­nol­ogy employed to build, access, retain and share the documentation.

If you decide you want to fol­low this path you can count your­self lucky because tech­nol­ogy – espe­cially browser-based com­mu­ni­ca­tions have made this much eas­ier now. There are so many ways to doc­u­ment now that if an idea comes into your head you can jump out of the shower (that’s when ideas typ­i­cally come into my head) and enter it into a web-based pro­gram like Google Drive or some­thing more spe­cific like Touchstone, http://www.businessdesigncorp.com/touchstone.htm, which antic­i­pates the train­ing and review pieces as well.

Shadowing

Taking the time not only to train but to shadow has been my pref­er­ence over time. This sim­ple process of fol­low­ing some­one around for agreed-upon peri­ods of time allows for cap­tur­ing the steps needed for a vari­ety of processes and check­lists in fairly short order. But it’s just like shoot­ing a video – quite a lot of edit­ing is required after the shad­ow­ing occurs. This is usu­ally a good oppor­tu­nity and use for the weekly 15-minute review with who­ever you have recently shadowed.

Summary

The expe­ri­ence of work­ing with and train­ing some­one can be both grat­i­fy­ing and frus­trat­ing. One thing for sure is you’ll dis­cover your strengths and weak­nesses pretty quickly. I would con­sider a strength sus­pen­sion of judg­ment. Another per­sonal strength might be patience. The abil­ity to lis­ten seems to be a good virtue as well. And mea­sur­ing your com­ments in advance of offer­ing advice is often con­sid­ered valu­able in main­tain­ing good rela­tions (I learned that from my wife).

The Rule of 5

An oper­a­tion phi­los­o­phy that holds true for me is the “Rule of 5” which basi­cally says you can’t/shouldn’t/would be well-served to man­age no more than 5 peo­ple. That is to say don’t have more than 5 peo­ple report­ing directly to you as a man­ager. Why is that you may ask – because you can’t effec­tively doc­u­ment, train and review (see above) the work of more than 5 “report-to’s.” So, before you get your panties in a bunch and tell me about how many peo­ple you’ve man­aged over all the years you’ve been in busi­ness and how well your kids are behaved as a result of your par­ent­ing style let me qual­ify what I just stated:

1-     Manage – Management of processes, not peo­ple, is the route you take on the way to process improve­ment. You can be friendly and a nice per­son to work with – and your staff will be as well. But if you haven’t defined processes in a detailed enough way that your staff can do the work and ide­ally pivot on a dime when you’re not avail­able you’ve got prob­lems under the sur­face that will pop up more often than you can imagine.

2-     Effective – To be effec­tive you need to get work done now – while the cus­tomer is yours to have and to hold – ask­ing and answer­ing ques­tions and mov­ing things for­ward in real time. This requires doc­u­men­ta­tion, train­ing and review (see above). If some­one is wait­ing for your deci­sion and they’re on the phone or in front of a cus­tomer, the cus­tomer is going to get the hes­i­ta­tion dance: wild gyra­tions will occur ulti­mately end­ing in facts mis­con­strued, mis­un­der­stand­ings and the asso­ci­ated muti­lated bod­ies lying amok. You don’t want this.

3-     5 – 5 peo­ple – 1 meet­ing each week for train­ing; 1 meet­ing each week for review. Training occurs in real time on-the-job so you can move for­ward sat­is­fied with the fact that the per­son you trained will, ide­ally, improve on the sys­tem and the con­tin­ued doc­u­men­ta­tion of the sys­tem so they, NOT you, can train the next per­son to DO the work of the processes being learned and trained to.

4-     Quality – not quan­tity of processes improved upon. There’s quan­ti­ta­tive eas­ing (which I know absolutely noth­ing about!) and there’s qual­ity processes – which is the con­tin­ual regard for and atten­tion to the process of learn­ing and improv­ing what we do each day. Most peo­ple who own or run busi­nesses and/or depart­ments, myself included, try to accom­plish more than what they can do well. This means you’re spread too thin. If you’re not tak­ing the time to dig deeper, then, your sys­tems and your busi­ness will stag­nate, cor­rode, coag­u­late and just gen­er­ally go down­hill. We want to avoid this.

If you’d like to con­tact Karl for more infor­ma­tion, email him at karl.seidel@cablevey.com

Total Health Village

Contact Name: Dave Day

Website: www.GrowersFirst.org
Location: Honduras
Email Address: Info@growersfirst.org
Phone Number: 949−551−1085

Project Description

Total Health Village projects facil­i­tates self-empowerment so that com­mu­ni­ties are able to solve most of their own prob­lems. This pro­gram is remark­ably inno­v­a­tive because it does not relate to the com­mu­nity as a ser­vice provider, but rather as a facil­i­ta­tor that guides the com­mu­nity to iden­tify needs, ana­lyze their sit­u­a­tion, plan a response strat­egy, actively work with the CORP (Community’s Own Resource Persons) and engage in solv­ing their own problems.

Growers First Foundation has part­nered with MAP International (a med­ical assis­tance NGO) in devel­op­ing a thor­ough, inte­grated approach toward empow­er­ing the rural farm­ers that we serve. This joint ven­ture allows us the abil­ity to ana­lyze the capa­bil­i­ties and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of entire com­mu­ni­ties with a dynamic but sim­ple approach. The Ten Seed Technique (“TST”) is a com­plete, sys­tem­atic and scal­able means of track­ing and show­cas­ing the Growers First Foundation Traceable-Transformation model.
Both MAP International and Growers First have been on the ground in Honduras for sev­eral years.

Growers First Foundation envi­sions a world where every rural farmer and fam­ily in poverty, those strug­gling liv­ing on less than a dol­lar a day, are empow­ered to achieve food secu­rity, uni­ver­sal edu­ca­tion, envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity, health and well­ness, com­bined with a trans­for­ma­tive will­ing­ness to give back to their com­mu­ni­ties as a result of mov­ing beyond sub­sis­tence farm­ing. Growers First envi­sions all who work the land as empow­ered to join the global agri­cul­ture mar­ket in a sig­nif­i­cant way.

Who Benefits From This Project?

The La Germania I com­mu­nity is located 30 min­utes from Siguatapeque in the Sierra de Montecillos Mountains. The com­mu­nity is com­prised of Mestizo farm­ers, 80 per­cent of whom cul­ti­vate cof­fee as their liveli­hood, with 20 per­cent of the com­mu­nity liv­ing below the poverty line in hard con­di­tions. 60 per­cent of the com­mu­nity land is ded­i­cated for cof­fee crops (they also grow corn, beans, and a few other veg­eta­bles) and the major­ity of the cof­fee grown is of the Lempira vari­ety, which grows well in the sun.

In La Germania I, the whole fam­ily is involved in cof­fee farm­ing, which means that chil­dren often help in the fields. In addi­tion, edu­ca­tion beyond the sixth grade requires travel out­side the com­mu­nity, which is too expen­sive for most fam­i­lies. About 60% of the women are lit­er­ate and only 40% of the men.

La Germania I faces sev­eral chal­lenges, includ­ing lack of access to credit and to health care, fear of crime, hail­storms, dis­ease out­breaks, for­est fires, and fluc­tu­a­tions in the cof­fee mar­ket. In addi­tion, there is a need for fam­ily plan­ning ini­tia­tives, a cen­ter to col­lect cof­fee, clean sources of drink­ing water and electricity.

How Can I Help?

To help fully fund the Ten Seed Technique and Total Health vil­lage project in the La Germania I com­mu­nity, this project is bud­geted at $18,000 annual.

Please visit www.growersfirst.org click “Donate Today” then “Donate Now” and select “Total Health Village” under pro­gram destination

As an added bonus your tax deductable dona­tion will be matched up to $18,000 to help expand the grow­ing part­ner­ship with the farm­ers and their fam­i­lies of La Germania I along with expand­ing this project to one of the 21 other vil­lages that the Growers First Foundation serves.

You can also sign up for future trips to visit the cof­fee farm­ers that we serve by vis­it­ing the “Contact” page also at www.growersfirst.org and finally, help sup­port our farm­ers with the pur­chase of their roasted cof­fee at 
www.growersfirstcoffee.com

(If inter­ested in green cof­fee pur­chases then please con­tact us at info@growersfirst.org)

Impacting Coffee NGOs Worldwide

Contact Name: Darryl Blunk

Website: www.apffels.com
Location: Various Coffee Growing Countries
Email Address: darryl@apffels.com
Phone Number: 562−309−0447

Project Description

Apffels Fine Coffee has a rich his­tory in sup­port­ing not only our local com­mu­nity but also our industry’s efforts to sup­port our busi­ness part­ners in the cof­fee­lands. For years we’ve sup­ported the cof­fee NGOs, and have con­tributed what we could. But we wanted to do more and wanted to broaden our reach. Rather than just choos­ing a sin­gle NGO or two for a dona­tion, we wanted to engage our employ­ees and even our clients.

President and CEO, Darryl Blunk recalls being inspired to take the first step, “I was lis­ten­ing to the Marketplace show on pub­lic radio and the CEO of Patagonia was shar­ing how they started to give back and now he finds him­self help­ing oth­ers under­stand the strate­gic nature of their phil­an­thropy. I was struck by one com­ment, ‘It’s never per­fect, but just start.’ And so we have.”

Now using the Profits 4 Purpose soft­ware tool, we have a plat­form to intro­duce our employ­ees to ways to directly ben­e­fit cof­fee work­ers in ori­gin. We are orga­niz­ing Webcasts so that every­one in our com­pany gets a chance to meet rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the NGOs and learn how just a few dol­lars can make a huge impact on a cof­fee fam­ily. This per­sonal con­nec­tion will empower them to sup­port the causes that speak to their hearts. Profits 4 Purpose lets them go to our plat­form and donate directly to that cause.

The project will be broad­ened to include our clients and sur­round­ing com­mu­nity mem­bers as well. Afternoon cof­fee gath­er­ings will allow us to show­case our impact and hope­fully will inspire our guests to take action as well.

Who Benefits From This Project?

The most obvi­ous ben­e­fi­cia­ries from our project are those who receive ser­vices from the cof­fee NGOs. Our employ­ees will be bet­ter edu­cated on how we can make a dif­fer­ence in ori­gin in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent ways. Rather than Apffels Fine Coffees being the sole decider of what pro­grams we sup­port, each employee will have their per­sonal voice in mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. We are going to sup­port more NGOs and thus their clients than we could with our old way.

Apffels ben­e­fits too. Our already loyal employ­ees feel pride in our impact and their abil­ity to con­tribute to it. Including their input and par­tic­i­pa­tion, boosts employee morale.

It’s good for sales too. Social impact strength­ens a company’s integrity and cred­i­bil­ity. If busi­nesses help their com­mu­nity, in turn, the com­mu­nity will want to help the busi­nesses – it is a cycle from which every­one prof­its. According to research done by Cone Inc., 85% of Americans would rather do busi­ness with a com­pany that is cause-related, and 74% of peo­ple are more likely to rec­om­mend to oth­ers a com­pany that gives back to the community.

One final ben­e­fit is that Profits 4 Purpose pro­vides a sim­pli­fied sys­tem to man­age com­mu­nity involve­ment and mea­sure, track, and com­mu­ni­cate our social impact with their city. “For decades we’ve been sup­port­ing the John Tracy Clinic, founded by Spencer Tracy in LA, but nobody except the founder really knew about it,” explains Darryl Bunk. “Now we can share that story and count­less oth­ers like it.”

How Can I Help?

Join Apffels Fine Coffees in the effort to work together and col­lab­o­rate. If we join forces rather than work in indi­vid­ual silos, and if we engage our employ­ees and clients we can really make a difference.

“You may uncover poten­tially some­thing that you didn’t even know existed.” says Darryl. In the words that inspired him, giv­ing back has strate­gic sig­nif­i­cance, and your imple­men­ta­tion will never be per­fect, but just start! Start by con­tact­ing 
www.tracktheimpact.com.

No Good Deed 
Should Go Un-Published

If doing ‘good’ is good, then telling peo­ple must be good too right? – It is if you do it right. There is prob­a­bly no other indus­try that does as much to help its com­mu­ni­ties both domes­tic and abroad than the cof­fee indus­try. As a group, we spend mil­lions, if not bil­lions, of dol­lars giv­ing back in time, trea­sure, and talent.

What we do not do a lot of is brag­ging about our good deeds. Bragging or being boast­ful is frowned upon in most soci­eties. The cof­fee indus­try is no excep­tion. Nobody likes a per­son or a com­pany that tries to prove them­selves bet­ter than oth­ers because of their social activities.

This poses a prob­lem to those involved in cor­po­rate giv­ing. “How can I cel­e­brate the good deeds our com­pany does with­out seem­ing boast­ful, or worse, self-serving?” The solu­tion requires tricky choices.

A new indus­try is form­ing in the back­ground to assist those involved cor­po­rate giv­ing to make the tricky choices and nav­i­gat­ing the waters of cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­ity in the safest, most pos­i­tive way. A com­pany called Track the Impact invented a cloud-based appli­ca­tion called Profits 4 Purpose. Co-Founders Karen Cebreros and Lisa Lindgren put the sit­u­a­tion this way, “Businesses want­ing to make a dif­fer­ence in their com­mu­nity can excel their effort by part­ner­ing with non-profits. Social impact strength­ens a company’s integrity, cred­i­bil­ity and boosts employee morale. If busi­nesses help their com­mu­nity, in turn, the com­mu­nity will want to help the busi­nesses – it is a cycle from which every­one prof­its. According to research done by Cone Inc., 85% of Americans would rather do busi­ness with a com­pany that is cause-related, and 74% of peo­ple are more likely to rec­om­mend to oth­ers a com­pany that gives back to the com­mu­nity. Track the Impact pro­vides a sim­pli­fied sys­tem to man­age com­mu­nity involve­ment and empow­ers orga­ni­za­tions of all sizes to mea­sure, track, and com­mu­ni­cate their social impact with their city.”

As any­one involved in the cof­fee indus­try for over a few years will know, Karen Cebreros is one of the pio­neers of mak­ing a social impact through cof­fee. To have her as a part­ner with you to track your efforts in this regard brings instant cred­i­bil­ity to your com­pany. Her posi­tion on the topic is this, “Social respon­si­bil­ity is a cor­po­rate growth strat­egy. Social invest­ment will influ­ence and shape the future. Track the Impact lever­ages aware­ness, involve­ment, brand equity, and finan­cial con­tri­bu­tions. It’s a win-win for all of us.”

Coffee Companies are mak­ing good choices about help­ing the world and their com­mu­ni­ties. One good choice is to tie cor­po­rate giv­ing directly to the prod­uct you are sell­ing. This cre­ates a par­tic­i­pa­tory envi­ron­ment where your cus­tomers are also par­tic­i­pat­ing with you. A cou­ple of examples:

If you retail cof­fee, you can tie cer­tain eco­log­i­cal or social marks to your prod­uct such as Bird Friendly, Organic and Fair Trade. You can also sup­port orga­ni­za­tions through prod­uct sales that also help the indus­try such as Coffee Kids and Grounds for Health.

When your cor­po­rate giv­ing is done with cus­tomer par­tic­i­pa­tion, you don’t really have a dilemma about seem­ing boast­ful as your cus­tomers want to know all of the good being done. They feel per­son­ally tied to the sup­ported mark or pro­gram. The same holds true when a com­pany donates a por­tion of sales to help with local groups. If you sup­port the local home­less shel­ter or the Boys and Girls Club, your cus­tomers will want to sup­port you and par­tic­i­pate with you in the local giv­ing mak­ing it easy to share your good works.

Another good choice is to ask your employ­ees to vol­un­teer hours, on com­pany time or their own, in their com­mu­ni­ties. Or you can give them oppor­tu­ni­ties to par­tic­i­pate finan­cially by donat­ing money to a cause selected by the company.

The trick is how to track and share that work and dona­tions with oth­ers. There are always some skep­tics that will say you are only doing it to increase busi­ness; these peo­ple are irri­tat­ing but they might have a point. At the very least, they pose a ques­tion that you should be ask­ing as a cor­po­rate giver. “Why are we sup­port­ing this cause?” Somebody made a deci­sion at some time as to what to sup­port. In smaller orga­ni­za­tions, that per­son is easy to find. In a larger cor­po­ra­tion, there was a com­mit­tee some­where that made a choice. The choice should be fre­quently eval­u­ated to make sure the char­ity is still in line with the goals and ethics of your company.

A pos­si­ble answer to this ques­tion of “Why?” is ‘to sell more cof­fee and make more money.’ While it seems a bit super­fi­cial and shal­low, it takes a deeper under­stand­ing of what this means before it becomes an OK answer in the eyes of your cus­tomer. When you peel back the onion layer you see that by sup­port­ing this group you will be sell­ing more prod­uct. If you sell more you can give more. If you sell more, you may employ more. This is the deeper mean­ing of good deeds for profit. The per­son in charge of cor­po­rate giv­ing needs a tool to answer this ques­tion more del­i­cately. That is where a prod­uct like Profits 4 Purpose can help.

Large cor­po­ra­tions often have to employ a staff of peo­ple to man­age and track this cor­po­rate giv­ing. It is some­times required by cus­tomers, gov­ern­ment con­tracts, and the IRS to show detailed infor­ma­tion about your claims.

Just recently, the first cof­fee indus­try com­pany signed up with Track The Impact and started using Profits 4 Purpose. This for­ward think­ing com­pany is Apffels Coffee in Santa Fe Springs California. Their CEO, Darryl Blunk, said this about their par­tic­i­pa­tion, “In review­ing our Corporate Responsibility plan we were inspired by other lead­ers to act imme­di­ately rather than to stay on our cur­rent course. In addi­tion, we wanted to solid­ify and ingrain into our cul­ture, now and into the future, a vis­i­ble and engag­ing com­mit­ment towards leav­ing the world a bet­ter place. Profits 4 Purpose pro­vides this solu­tion and we are excited to embark upon this endeavor and encour­age oth­ers to join us.”

They are plan­ning to use the tool to meet cer­tain require­ments of the com­pany to record cor­po­rate giv­ing data, but they will also be using it as a por­tal that their cus­tomers can use to par­tic­i­pate more fully in the pro­grams sup­ported by Apffels. This will increase the social impact and build a stronger bond with their cus­tomers that choose to participate.

Our indus­try is full of givers. By orga­niz­ing, we can increase the foot­print of social pro­grams and as a result have a story we can tell to increase our busi­ness and prof­its. This is truly a win for all.

Rocky can be reached at rocky@INTLcoffeeConsulting.com

If Coffee People Ruled the Country…

Ask not what the cof­fee indus­try can do for you; ask what you can do for the cof­fee indus­try
John F. Reinhart

Have you ever pon­dered what it would be like if we ruled the coun­try? If you sim­ply put peo­ple from our indus­try, with our val­ues, in charge of con­gress and the White House, all of the right stuff would get done. (We should not be in charge of the Judiciary branch. We just shouldn’t!) The value sys­tem of most peo­ple I know from the indus­try pro­vides a basis for what would be a great plat­form as a polit­i­cal party. I pro­pose the fol­low­ing Planks for the Coffee Party platform:

1) Treat your con­stituents (cus­tomers) as if they have the abil­ity to make good deci­sions for them­selves and give them all the infor­ma­tion you can to help them. In the end it is their choice.
No one likes to be lec­tured to and no one likes to be treated like an idiot. In our indus­try we sup­ply a ton of infor­ma­tion and options so peo­ple can choose what is best for them. Educating our cus­tomers with facts about ori­gin, cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, envi­ron­men­tal impact, and trade prac­tices shed light on impor­tant top­ics to us. Your con­stituents will decide if it is impor­tant to them and thereby drive your busi­ness in a direc­tion set by them.

2) A thriv­ing Supply Chain equals a thriv­ing econ­omy.
Perhaps in no other indus­try will you find the rela­tion­ship from the con­sumer to the orig­i­nal raw mate­r­ial man­u­fac­turer more openly real­ized. We under­stand the impor­tance of build­ing rela­tion­ships with our trad­ing part­ners and ensur­ing that every­one in the sup­ply chain suc­ceeds. If we look for short-term gains at the expense of oth­ers we ulti­mately fail. A good rela­tion­ship is one where the hard work of all par­ties is cel­e­brated with higher con­sump­tion and even higher profit mar­gin. With that in play, economies not only here, but abroad ben­e­fit from the mature sup­ply chain relationship.

3) Stupid bureau­cracy is stu­pid: So Change It!
The neat thing about being a cof­fee per­son is the inher­ent need to spend as lit­tle time doing inane men­tal exer­cises over stuff that does not mat­ter in the long run, and get­ting back to run­ning our busi­nesses and mak­ing cof­fee a bet­ter prod­uct. When gov­ern­ment and NGO’s try to tell us what is best for the indus­try by mak­ing rules and reg­u­la­tions that ham­per a good sup­ply chain rela­tion­ship we are quick to push back. (If I were pres­i­dent I would elim­i­nate the need to do purge roasts before run­ning organic cof­fee because that is stu­pid. But that may just be me!)

4) Bring your pas­sion to the party but check your ego at the cloak­room.

With the excep­tion of trade shows, when we get together we focus on our com­mon goal of bet­ter­ing our prod­ucts, part­ners and our planet. We don’t sell and don’t want to be sold. We don’t allow lob­by­ists at our events. Very few logos are seen. What we do have is a deep pas­sion for rais­ing the tide for all ships. Sometimes those of us that have strong opin­ions on a topic get louder than may be needed but it comes from the heart. There are a few that enter the indus­try think­ing ‘they know it all and should tell us how to do things’ but they are usu­ally pulled aside and have the ‘your approach is not going to work’ talk.

5) We can always do bet­ter but that won’t stop us from act­ing now in the best way we can.

The major­ity of peo­ple in the cof­fee indus­try have ‘the entre­pre­neur­ial spirit’ whether they have started their own busi­ness yet or not. Even the mid-level exec­u­tives of our larger part­ners treat their depart­ments as cre­ative and thriv­ing busi­nesses. As entre­pre­neurs we know that stag­na­tion is death, as are fool­ish risks. We are more apt to be “Ready, Fire, Reload” than “Ready, Aim, Fire.” We have learned that small com­mit­tees made up of the cream of that topic will move things faster than try­ing to put as many opin­ions in the room as pos­si­ble for ‘thought diver­sity’. I would love to tell a con­gress­man that if you don’t have exper­tise in the topic, go away and do some­thing else where your tal­ents are needed.

6) A weak link breaks the chain. Support those that need it with edu­ca­tion.

We have all seen the signs for ‘GOURMET SPECIALTY COFFEE’ over a pot of macadamia nut fla­vored cof­fee that has been left on the burner of the gas sta­tion cof­feemaker for six hours. This is a tough beast to bat­tle. We have decided as a party to share indus­try knowl­edge through­out the entire sup­ply chain so that infor­ma­tion can make its way to our con­sumers as to why that gas sta­tions cof­fee actu­ally sucks. We under­stand that qual­ity is a truly sus­tain­able model for all. We will invite the owner of that gas sta­tion to one of our events so they can under­stand the error of their ways. If they do not choose to change we will com­pete against them until they have to make bet­ter cof­fee. This real­ity check applies to each mem­ber of the chain includ­ing farm labor, barista and each step in between.

7) We empha­size respon­si­bil­i­ties over rights and improve what needs to be improved.

We don’t need a gov­ern­ment agency to tell us that we should treat our cus­tomers, ven­dors, and employ­ees with dig­nity and respect. We trade fairly with­out hav­ing to be told. If one of us does not act in this appro­pri­ate man­ner we will call them out rather than cover them up. It just takes one idiot to tar­nish our party’s name so we will throw them under the bus if they won’t change. If we all take respon­si­bil­ity for our own actions we will be acknowl­edg­ing and sup­port­ing the rights of oth­ers. We as a party need to tell this story bet­ter to our con­sumers so we won’t need a ‘mark’ to prove our good works.

This is a fun con­cept and could go on and on. The bot­tom line is this: Our indus­try (party) is made up of bril­liant, kind, entre­pre­neur­ial, thought­ful busi­ness peo­ple. We would run the gov­ern­ment effi­ciently and treat each other with respect. We would get the impor­tant stuff done as quickly as needed and do it for the bet­ter­ment of all, not just our­selves. And we would have fun doing it, as we are all friends in this com­mon cause.