In MBA school in my mid-fifties, some of what I learned was just attaching bigger words to stuff I already knew from experience. Others, such as the three-legged stool lesson taught by Jay Barney in Organizational Architecture class planted fundamental lessons that will never leave me.

The first step to creating a more effective organization is determining how to deploy your resources. There are no exceptions. Consider the following:

It was 1988 and I was out of a job. And I was running out of time to provide for my young family of five. When I told people I’m opening a consulting company named Contract Marketing most responses were “great, just what the world needs – another out of work guy posing as a consultant.”

The most underutilized asset of ANY organization is their database.

I’ve made the cut as a speaker on the national Vistage circuit. With no small thanks to my son and promoter, Kevin, we have ten presentations scheduled and that number is climbing. Vistage is a peer group concept with over 2,500 groups in the USA of 12 to 18 CEOs who gather once a month for a full day to work on their businesses together.

I stopped at a lemonade stand today. I told the Mom overseeing the operation that I never pass a children’s lemonade stand because it’s such a great investment. As I drove on, I started thinking about all the other “best investments” I’ve made over time.

Mansfield Frazier has a passion for helping his neighbors in Hough, including the developmentally disabled, homeless, and formerly incarcerated, to overcome their barriers to employment by putting them to work in his urban vineyard growing the grapes that will eventually be made into his award-winning wine (The Great Geauga County Fair, 2014).

The problem I have with solving problems is I often forget to first ask:

Note from Tim: Our Foundation’s Managing Director, Bill Leamon, wrote an update for our board recently about a young man he is mentoring named Chris, and I asked him to share his story for our June update. Peace. 

Here it comes again. It’s April of 2015 and the first two presidential candidates are off and running for November of 2016.