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Thank You,
I think it was a great 20th Anniversary Celebration this past weekend. I want to thank everyone that was able to attend and I hope you all had as wonderful of a time as I did. It was a little bittersweet for me celebrating such an important milestone in my life and the life of the company, but having to do it without my biggest cheerleader by my side. Also, I always try to make time to sit and visit with every Champion that attends our annual parties, but as usual I’m certain that I missed a handful of you this time. I promise to try to visit with you next time.
As I mentioned that night, we’ve tried to recap the growth and progress of the company in a couple of newsletters so far, the December 2020 issue for 20 Years and the November 2015 issue for 15 Years. I believe both issues paint a really good picture of our progress as a company, so if you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to check them out for some history of the company. At a bare minimum, hopefully you’ll checkout our Resilience and Growth Timeline and our Employee Development Timeline.
For those of you who were unable to attend the celebration, I want to share this short video that I played that evening touching some of my thoughts on Champion’s success and expressing my gratitude to all Champions, both past and present. And like I mentioned that evening, please remember that we take professional headshot photos at every Christmas party, so if the last photo we have of you is from when you hired on, please come join us this December and have an updated one taken.
There’s much more praise that I could share about so many of you, but please know that I appreciate everyone of you deeply and thank you each for being a part of the Champion team.
On a separate note, as we prepare to return to the offices, I wanted to share my experience with the vaccination. I recently received my second COVID-19 vaccination shot and am officially now fully vaccinated. While I admit it felt like I got punched in the arm both times by somebody with Brad’s strength, the second time felt like it was with a much smaller fist. I’ve heard all kinds of different experiences from aches and pains, redness and fever, and general tiredness, and while I make no assumptions or predictions on how it may affect anyone, I will say that unless you have a true medical reason to avoid it or religious beliefs against vaccines, I encourage you to bear the pain and/or discomfort of getting the vaccine in order to move us forward into the future. Ending the COVID-19 pandemic will end the negative impact it has had on education, the economy, health care, and countless other activities of a functioning society. If you haven’t already done so, please consider doing your part.
Thank You,
We used to camp.
When I was a kid, I remember going on weeklong camping trips with my parents and my brother, mostly to Percy Quinn State Park in McComb, MS. It wasn’t a long drive from New Orleans, but it felt like a whole other world. My dad took a flat A frame trailer and built the coolest camping rig that I’ve ever seen. It had a water tank, propane tank, oversized ice chest that was our ‘refrigerator’ for the week, and a giant bike rack in the front; a huge compartment for storage in the middle; and two doors that opened to a ‘kitchen’ in the back complete with drawers, cabinets, a working sink and a 3 burner stove if I’m remembering correctly. He’d secure the kitchen doors open all week by attaching a covered roof that he’d crafted from old tent poles and tarps. Even to this day, it seems like my dad can build anything from anything, a regular MacGyver. So we’d spend those weeks tent camping by a fire, fishing, biking, playing frisbee, board games and cards. I loved it. It was also the place where I learned to water ski and the first place that I saw the universe light up with a million stars so bright that it opened a whole new world perspective for me.
This summer I tried to build some of those same memories with my kids. While I’m pretty handy, I don’t come anywhere close to my dad’s construction or survival skills, so we tent camped in the backyard early in the summer and decided to rent an RV for the trip instead. Armed with my parents’ camping list we were pretty well prepared. And while I wasn’t quite ready to take the kids water skiing yet, we did just about everything else. The reason that I’m bringing all of this up is because it was something new that I tried, it expanded my comfort zone, required me to prepare for any possibility, and above all forced me to learn new skills. In general, I think the trip was a success, and while we were all glad to make it back to Casa de Hamer, the kids and other family members that live with us got the experience I was hoping for and I learned a whole lot along the way. I won’t go into details on the many different lessons, but let’s just say if you ever decide to go RVing, bring gloves.
So how does this relate? I think it is important to expand comfort zones, both as individuals and as a company. With regard to each person’s role at Champion, that means focusing on adding new skills and capabilities, so if you haven’t already, put your name in the hat for that portion of project that you can probably handle but just haven’t familiarized yourself with yet, or volunteer to actively participate in one of the many committees that exist or are starting to develop here at Champion. Step up to the plate, swing the bat. As a company, we are conscientiously working on clearly defining and communicating the career growth opportunities for all roles and expanding Champion’s capabilities into new service offerings, while continuing to refine what differentiates us from our competitors. All of this will have a positive impact.
While these are only a few examples of ways to expand our horizons, in the end, I’m certain that we will each discover that the hardest part in any future success will have been making the choice to step out of our comfort zone. It certainly has been for me.
Thank You,
As those of you who have taken part in the first session of our Collaborative Way training may remember, one of the building blocks of our company vision is to help get this world to a time at which all people and things co-exist in harmony, in which everyone contributes in some positive way for our continued prosperity, and for which I believe can best be achieved through abundance. However, in this growing world that absolutely means we must be more efficient with increasingly less energy and resources. Besides the role that our company plays in increasing the automation and productivity of this world, we each have a duty and responsibility to do our parts as individuals and families by using more resource efficient technologies and by reusing and recycling as much as we can. I’d like you all to take the time to read through the article on recycling below to see how you can play a part. And while the article highlights some programs available in Baton Rouge, LA (the location of both our headquarters and our largest automation office – by team count), it also includes links to help you find a way to recycle around all of our Champion locations.
On a related note, our customers are often pushing for efficiency as well, as in trying to get us to do more with less, and while I have yet to figure out how to recycle time, any ideas are certainly welcome. That in mind, you can rest assured that in addition to working on more tools to aid each of you, we are constantly looking for great people to add to the Champion team, so that we can meet the needs of our ever-increasing customer base. As always, thank you all for your hard work and dedication to Champion, and to its mission, vision, and core values. Together we can make the world a better place for everyone.
Thank You,
I’d always been a ‘knock on wood’ kind of person… In my October 2016 message, I discussed balance and one of my beliefs that life may knock you back down if you start flying too high. Then in my January 2017 message I wrote “2017 will be a great year!”. As most of you know, the unexpected passing of my wife Ceci a little over a month afterward hit me harder than anything in my life and part of me really felt like it was somehow my fault, that I somehow tempted fate with my words, that I should have knocked on wood. I spent the next year, going through every possible stage of grief and relying on my faith to keep me strong.
So, you can all probably imagine why I’ve had a tough time even trying to attempt writing anything positive, inspirational or thought provoking in the newsletter for the last 16 months. I’m not going to lie and say that I don’t wish every day, that Ceci was still alive and physically here with our family, but I can say that I believe I’m over the hardest part and that the whole family has become accustomed to our new normal. There are many others in our company who have experienced similar great loss in their lives, and I pray all of them have been able to find peace in knowing their loved ones walk alongside and share everything with them in their hearts. They are with us as long as we keep them here.
I’ve been trying very hard to get back to feeling like the guy who put ‘HIONLIF’ on his license plate, so instead of feeling sad or sorry for me, my children or anyone else who has suffered great loss, please try to see the other side of what I discussed in October 2016 – a silver lining to balance every tragedy. See us all as people who bounced back from the hardest thing life could throw their way, people who know that (good, bad, or ugly) everything happens for a reason, people who can take on any of life’s challenges without fear, people who no longer knock on wood.
Over the past year, it hasn’t just been me that has been regrouping and fortifying, Champion has been as well. We have the strongest team that we’ve ever had, we have the highest January to April revenue that we’ve ever had, and we are operating the closest between orgs that we ever have. Champion is ready for its next challenge – faster growth. But with faster growth, comes the same risk any time things are moving quickly, which is the potential to miss or skip important things. I’m asking you all to work even more safely and collaboratively with everyone (co-workers and clients) than you have in the past. It will take us all working together towards the same goal and being cognizant of the dangers of speed to keep our faster growth safe growth. We are aware that growth in sales requires growth in staff, so please be a part of our notification system if we are trying to do too much with too little, and call in reinforcements if you find yourself in need.
For the first time in a long time, I’m not fearful of making a bold positive statement – Champion and the entire Champion team are certain to achieve even greater success!
Thank You,
Happy New Year to all! I hope you celebrated the start of 2018 in good spirits with family and friends. As we take on a new year, many exciting new challenges and opportunities lie ahead.
I shared many of our goals and initiatives for 2018 with you at our company meeting in New Orleans, as well as the company’s vision to continue evolving while enjoying the benefits of working together instead of independently. This will not be an easy task. It will require everyone to invite and welcome changes as we continue to take steps forward this year and for years to follow. It will certainly require the entire Champion family’s hard work to create a unified company, so I ask for each of you to commit to working together to make a difference. We are excited to see how the pieces come together as we prepare for the near and distant future.
Champion’s outlook for 2018 looks strong. With many opportunities, goals and initiatives planned, it looks to be a very eventful year.
I hope that everyone has a safe and productive year as we progress into 2018.
Thank You,
2017. Something about that number just rings enthusiastically. Maybe it is the connotation of Lucky Number 7, or the memory of being 17 years old and enjoying the summer after high-school graduation and getting ready for those first days as an “adult” off at college away from the comforts and constraints of life at home with parents. But I think a lot of it has to do with the realization that 2016 with all its trials and tribulations locally, nationally and globally has finally come to a close, and it feels like the first clear day after a long storm washed away the mud and the muck in the streets. 2017 will be a great year!
I want to start this year off by giving thanks to everyone in my life – family, friends, and colleagues. You all make life exciting, intriguing, challenging (in a good way ☺), curious, and cheerful, and I’m extremely happy that you are all in my life. For 2017, I’m going to focus on getting back into the good physical shape I was in years past. To family and friends: I plan to spend more time enjoying your company and making great memories. And to my Champion family, along with your help, I plan to focus on two of our core values: improvement and excellence. For those of you who were at the year-end presentation during the Christmas party, you know of many of the developments that I’m referring to; for those who were unable to attend, we will be giving a recap of the presentation on January 27th.
I hope it is a safe, productive, and prosperous year for everyone. With that I hope you all spend a few moments reading the New Year’s Safety Checklist below to get the year off to a great start. I also hope you enjoy our first newsletter enhancement of the year with our new web format.
Thank You,
I like to think there is balance in the universe: a high to balance every low, a strength to balance every weakness, a joy to balance every sorrow, and a silver lining to balance every tragedy. It’s what gives me the strength to search for the bright side or lesson in every seemingly dark event or mistake in life, and the caution to tread lightly when things seem too good to be true, knowing that when things get too high they sometimes come crashing down. Many people have heard me say that I’m “High on Life,” but I have always tried to steer clear of getting too high on life for the reason just mentioned. Along the same lines, I think that a smartly controlled life leads to the most happy and productive life. So it should be no surprise that I, like many of us at Champion (being in the control business), love to see a well-tuned loop. By this I mean no large oscillations or spikes but rather a steady line that corrects quickly and smoothly when disrupted. It takes good reliable output and feedback to balance a control loop, and I believe the same is true in life.
Different people excel where others falter, but together, everyone’s strengths and weaknesses balance to highlight both the issues to be solved and the skills necessary to solve them, all the while moving society forward. Embracing these different strengths and weaknesses of each person is part of the reason that the United States has been successful all of these years. The fact is that every person excels in something, and the key to individual success comes down to identifying and promoting those qualities. For a company it is the same, but it involves promoting and combining the different strengths of each member to make the whole even stronger.
In a couple of my previous letters, I discussed some of the steps involved in “Doing Everything.” The first step was being around long enough to get everything done by living a healthy and safe life. The second step dealt with prioritization and timing, using techniques from the book Getting Things Done by David Allen and establishing the core values that influence all your decisions. The next steps that I want to discuss involve both balance and cohesion. By getting everyone on the same page, we can work more effectively with others to accomplish both individual and shared goals, which in turn means we can do more things. But being on the same page doesn’t mean everyone doing the same thing; it means everyone agreeing on the plan and contributing their strengths to the outcome.
By this time, the majority of all Champions have participated in the second training session of the Collaborative Way Principles. The two main focuses of that session were Listening Generously and Speaking Straight. Put together, they are the output and feedback in the control loop of life and can have a profound effect on the success of each person as an individual and on our company as a whole.
Understandably, each person has their own set of experiences that have shaped and defined their perspective on the world, and the only way to gain knowledge from their experience is to listen generously without filters and with the willingness to actually be influenced by their perspective. Listening generously is the only way to receive reliable feedback. Often times the people who feel like they don’t need the feedback are the ones who could benefit most from it. Similarly, speaking straight is the only reliable way to control outputs and give feedback. And while it is not a license to accuse or attack, speaking straight will bring any conflicts and barriers of progress to light so that they can be resolved in a positive way, both quickly and collaboratively.
For this reason, I want to encourage each of you to truly practice the skills of Listening Generously and Speaking Straight in your offices and throughout the organization. Every frustrating moment can become a forwarding moment if we handle them correctly. For those of you who believe in this process, I want to thank you deeply. If there are any of you who don’t yet believe this process can help move individuals and the company forward, then please try to speak straight about your thoughts. The rest of the management team and I commit that we will listen generously to your reasoning and see if we can come to a forwarding path that resolves any concerns you may have. I truly believe that together we can balance everyone’s strengths and perspectives to make the best cohesive team possible, which will in turn help us accomplish our vision of using technology to improve the lives of everyone who is working for a better life. Individually, it may help move some of your personal goals forward and get you one step closer to “Doing Everything.”
Thank You,
This month we are celebrating Mothers.
Loving mothers come in all types: birth mothers, stepmothers, foster mothers, godmothers, grand and great-grandmothers, mothers-in-law, as well as many others. They help mold each of their children until they can handle life on their own, and depending on the child, I’m sure their methods spanned the spectrum from a tight rein and firm hand, to a long line with plenty of room to grow and mess up. And certainly, loving mothers are always there to pick up their children when they fall and to help keep them on the right path.
My mother and father made it a point to share their experiences and answer our questions as best they could, but beyond putting in rules to keep us from getting seriously harmed or harming others, my brother and I were free to explore the world, emboldened to pursue our interests, and encouraged to learn from our many, many mistakes. The lessons learned from those mistakes were the ones that stuck the most!
Now as a father, I see all of the ways that my wife has become a wonderful mother to our children. Her craziness usually comes in the hustle and bustle of getting them dressed, fed, and off to school, bathed, brushed and into bed, and juggling everything in between – all of which I am very grateful and thankful for. But the wonderful part is how she hones their interests and helps them stay excited about life and learning.
I’m certain that every Champion in the company has many things to say about the wonderful mothers in their lives, and I encourage each of you to do just that when you celebrate with them this Mother’s Day – I know that I certainly will!
In this issue, we decided to spotlight several of our own Champion mothers who have experienced the joy and challenges of raising kids and juggling life, so I hope you all enjoy their memories and advice – and dads take notes, cause they have lots of good ideas. I want to thank all of our Champion mothers for being such awesome and amazing people. Lastly, on behalf of every Champion, I’d like to tell all of the loving mothers we have, that we truly love you and thank you for being in our lives.
Happy Mother’s Day,
It has been an amazing, dramatic, exciting, and rewarding 15 years for Champion Technology Services, Inc. and this issue is dedicated to all of the Champions who have helped build it into an outstanding company through the years. The articles encompass are our best attempt to share Champion’s journey from the beginning to the present and well into the future. But I have to say it was quite the challenge to squeeze fifteen amazing years and memories into as few pages as there are below. We reached out to many of our “long-timers” to tap their memories and help tell Champion’s story. You’ll see many of those folks’ wonderful quotes scattered throughout the issue, and I’d like to thank them all in advance for the memories, and apologize for not using all of their responses – we were trying to keep it under 30 pages ☺. Lastly, and while helping break up the issue, we’ve included piles and piles of pictures to help capture all the great people at Champion and events that we’ve all shared over the years.
I hope you all enjoy the journey and celebration below, as much as I have enjoyed living it. Here’s to looking back, and moving forward! Thank you Champions – stay awesome!
Thank You,
As I mentioned in my previous letter back in February, health and safety are critically important in allowing us to achieve our goals as individuals and as a company. At Champion, we have always been concerned with safety but have recently been putting a major focus on it, and everyone should have recently participated in a Safety Stand-Down meeting with your office. I want to reaffirm our commitment to the safety of each and every one of you and encourage you to read the Safety Commitment article later in this newsletter to remind you what your commitment to safety involves as well.
In this letter, I want to discuss prioritization and timing. There is a great book called Getting Things Done by David Allen which, if followed, will help you master the process of capturing the tasks in your life and continuing to move several things forward when you may otherwise feel overwhelmed or paralyzed in the face of “doing everything.” If you haven’t read it already, I strongly encourage you to make it the next book that you pick up to read (or download to read for those e-readers out there). A core component of the book’s message is the four Ds (Dump it, Do it, Delegate it, or Defer it). Do it is reserved for quick tasks that can be completed in two minutes or less. Depending on your role, you may or may not yet have others that can help out so that you can Delegate it, or even want to, but I’m almost certain that every last one of us has more than a few tasks in our pile that we own and would really like to stamp with Defer it. Sometimes something as simple as timing can have a large impact. Maybe scheduling a meeting one hour later could save an hour in traffic, scheduling a meeting when all of the necessary people are in the same location for another event could save you an entire trip, or waiting until you have three tasks that all require a walk to the printer and scanner could give you the extra time you need to complete some other tasks that are really important to you.
Where timing doesn’t help, prioritization does. There are several questions you can ask yourself when it comes to prioritization:
• Have you made a commitment? Can you renegotiate that commitment?
• Does this need to be done now? (Is there a hard deadline?)
• What are the consequences of missing a deadline (monetary, efficiency, respect, trust)?
• What is the benefit of getting it done on time (monetary, efficiency, respect, trust)?
• Can you handle/afford those consequences, or do you desire those benefits?
• What is the impact of completing this task? (Will four hours of process improvement now save me 50+ hours of repetitive tasks in the future, or will gaining a certain skill be very marketable in the future?)
• Does this need to be perfect, or can I make some significant progress to move it along?
• If I do this one task, will I fail to do five others?
• Will this task improve or be a detriment to my overall wellbeing? These are just some of the many different questions that can help with your decision.
Ultimately, the answers to your set of questions and where each task falls in comparison to other pending tasks on your list will determine what gets done next. So what determines your questions? The answer is your core values. This is the reason that everyone on the planet who actually has the ability to choose is doing what they are doing. Values lead to priorities, and priorities lead to choices. There are hundreds of values and infinite combinations which make each person unique and interesting. If you strongly disagree with someone’s life choices, it is highly likely that you strongly disagree with some of their core values as well. If you see someone as a role model or mentor, it is highly likely that you strongly agree with some of their core values.
As you hopefully all saw in the first session of the Collaborative Way training and may have heard me discuss in the past, as a company we have established Champion’s core values, which are: flexibility, improvement, health, commitment, balance, service, integrity, collaboration, and excellence. This has led to our vision to use our time and skills to improve the lives of everyone who is working for a better life. You probably already realized that you’ve had reasons for making the choices in life that have led to your current success, as well as the choices during all of the stumbles along the way. I encourage each of you to spend some time identifying 8 to 12 of your current personal core values (tons of lists on the internet), and make sure the questions derived from them are the ones that you want to guide your priorities, future decisions, and actions. Also, let those around you know where their tasks fall on your priority list and why. Perhaps it would become a higher priority for you if you had some other qualifying information from them. If they or their tasks are not a priority to you, they will know to look elsewhere for their needs. While the same holds true in both business and personal relationships, it is not typically the best decision in a service company. In general, committing and failing to come through is worse than being clear upfront and allowing others to adjust accordingly. Conversely, if you truly want people to come to you for their needs, make it clear to them that you want to be there for them, you can be there for them, and, above all, that you keep your commitments. Eventually, if your value to others exceeds your time to take care of all of their needs, one option is to help bring on and train others around you that are just as trustworthy and committed to the task as you, which if you desire, will then allow you to Delegate it. This simple mindset has helped Champion succeed and grow over the years, and I’m certain that it will help you do all that you want to do as well. I know this may not have been the formula to prioritization that you were expecting or looking for, but I hope that in some small way I help you to keep a handle on all of the things in life that are important to you.
Thank You,
Welcome to the inaugural issue of Champion’s company-wide newsletter, The Champion. We have created The Champion in response to Champion employees’ requests for a company newsletter to better connect all of our offices. We’ve previously considered a newsletter, but in the past, the need never quite out-weighed all of the other things happening at Champion. Both, the happenings and the idea of things out-weighing others will be discussed in this and future issues. As Champion continues to grow, it will be increasingly more important that we all stay connected as automation professionals and team members, and that is one of the main goals of this newsletter.
Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time around me knows that one of my favorite sayings is, “All good things in due time”, which is hard to conceive in this age of instant gratification and where the need for instantaneous information and support are what keep Champion and so many other businesses thriving. However, there are many issues, implications, challenges, and potential solutions surrounding providing things NOW.
I find that life is full of hopes, dreams, and desires about what we wish we were doing or what we want to do in the future. This is not because we’re unhappy with what we’ve accomplished in the past but because there is so much that we want to pack into a single lifetime, and we want to do it all while we still have the mind and energy to do so. I find this is true in both my personal life and in the life of Champion. For this reason, you can understand why I’ve put a lot of thought into this topic over the years, and I’d like to take you all through a summary of my thought process on how to best handle the desire or demand (depending on your perspective) of “doing everything”.
I think you would all agree that 1) everything can’t happen at the same time, and 2) it’s probably going to take a long time to accomplish everything that a person wants to do. Therefore, the most important priority in life and business is making sure that you’re going to be around long enough to do it all. So how do we address this top priority? Well, there are many ways, but most important is healthy and safe living with the goal of strength in mind and body.
What I mean by healthy living is eating right most of the time, exercising enough to burn off any of your culinary vices, and staying limber and strong enough to not break if you happen to fall. By safe living I mean not taking unnecessary risks which I find are usually the result of impatience or laziness (generally shortcuts). These could be things like texting and driving, not turning off circuits before working on them, carrying too much up or down stairs, handling sharp or splintery things without gloves, or using a make-shift ladder to change a light bulb or reach something high. The list of unsafe acts is miles long, and we’re constantly trying to address them in our safety manuals and meetings. We will also continue to address them in different issues of this newsletter.
I know that life can change in an instant no matter how much we protect against it, and I truly believe there is always some silver lining to those situations. However, in general, I think it is safe to say that chance favors the prepared. When it comes to Champion, I’ve put the bulk of my focus over the last 14+ years into the same two areas—keeping us healthy and avoiding unnecessary risks—all with the purpose of giving us the time and opportunity to accomplish big goals. As part of our continued adoption and promotion of the Collaborative Way Principles, you will all be requested to take part in three training sessions, the first of which is this quarter. During the first training session, I will touch more on these big goals, which will take all of us and many future Champions to achieve.
In later issues of The Champion, I’ll discuss additional thoughts on the next steps in “accomplishing everything,” starting with prioritization and timing. But for now, I am truly excited that the time has finally come for this newsletter, and I hope that you like what we’ve put together. I’d like to leave with advice that I think we can all use and which I like to send my daughter off to school with each day. Be nice, have fun, and learn something!!
Thank You,