Several times a year, my son, Tim, and friend, Brian Bowers, and I speak to business management classes at Ohio State. Among the topics most discussed is managing people.

We all have plans. But until a plan is written, it’s not real.

A friend recently asked me a couple of interesting questions:

As I look back I am grateful for so much. Lately I’ve been thinking about gratitude I still have for people who believed in me. In fact, I have a list of people who have given me confidence and courage and I’m still updating that list at 63.

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.