Ohio State University ranked highly by corporate recruiters

In a recent Wall Street Journal survey, Ohio State ranked 12th best university for recruiters. Due to travel budget cuts and the candidates likely have relevant work experience, OSU and other large state universities are beating out the Ivy League as great places to find top recruits. To read the entire listing click here.

Business Person You Should Know

Name:  Tom Van Cleef                                  

Current Job:  I am managing director at Shine On Solar Solutions LLC.  Shine On Solar Solutions, a renewable energy development firm offering high performance commercial grade solar energy solutions, has launched a program to help Ohio schools, government organizations and businesses go green with solar energy. 

What was your first job?  Publisher’s Representative –Physics and computer science text books to college professors for Addison Wesley Publishing Company of Boston MA.

What did you learn?  When you are selling the text book your ability to hear complaints about textbook price disappears.  I learned that if you ask a “teacher” about a subject they love they will happily answer any amount of crazy questions. Truly, for as long as you can ask.  I have learned a great deal this way, and Oh I sold a bunch of books.

Worst job you ever had?  I have had multiple worst jobs plus I am an entrepreneur.  At sixteen I took a job as a dishwasher in a hotel restaurant,  bad bad conditions, management and pay 2.20 per hour.  I started painting garage doors and railings working hard into a painting company I contemplated skipping college to build.    

What would you be doing if not this… I have ideas five deep, its all about the capital.  A K 9 disaster seach school on my farm.  Will have collapsed buildings for training. 

How do you stay involved in your community?   I am a director for the Mt Aloysius Foundation, a group that supports 50 men of challenge who live at Mt Aloysius an intermediate care facility in New Lexington Ohio. We put on the Mt Als Roundup fundraiser that now has over 100 attend overnight.  I have a volunteer K 9 Search and Rescue Team that provides 24/7 search teams for trailing of lost persons, and the recovery of human remains.  

Favorite saying or motto?  

“I have not failed, I have found ten thousand ways that do not work”  Edison

The truth is not always your friend, yet brutally true. Me.

Your most prized possession?  My sense of humor and my four dogs

To find out more about Tom and Shine On Solar you can contact Tom at Thomasvancleef@shineonsolarsolutions.com or checkout their website at www.shineonsolarsolutions.com.

Values Are an Important Part of Stategy

Many strategic planning exercises include a discussion of the organizational values.  A Value Statement helps define what an organization stands for.  In its simplest form it is just a list of ideal that are meaningful to the organization’s leadership.  Like a Vision Statement, values are meant to act as a guide for making choices in the business.  Unlike the Vision Statement, which is about the future that is to be created, the Values Statement is about how the organization should behave in the present.  It is a description of what the business stands for.

Steven Covey uses the term principles, but he is speaking to the same concept when he say in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  “Principles are like lighthouses.  They are neutral laws that cannot be broken.”  For Covey his principles a static for everyone, but in practice each organization has a choice as to what they feel is important to them.

The concept of organizational value is not new.  The founding fathers included a Values Statement when they included “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in The Declaration of Independence.

As leaders, we influence our constituents by our words and actions.  Being clear about what is important to us, makes the delivery of our mission that more consistent.  Taking the time to sit down and write out what we want our business to stand for is a good place to begin to spread the principles of the organization.

The Business of Art

Here is a great conversation about the business of art. http://bsingh83.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/peas-in-a-pod-us-artists-and-entrepreneurs/

As you see in my comments artist should not feel bad about asking to get paid for their creations.  Mainstream businesspeople don’t feel embrassed to ask for what they create.  Artists should not either.

Central Ohio is a Hot Bed of Business Growth

If the Inc 500 is any indicator, Central Ohio is the place to be in business in Ohio.  Seven companies from Ohio made the annual list of the fastest growing private companies in America.  Three of those seven are in Central Ohio.  Two are in the Cleveland area.  Cincinnati and Akron, each, have one company on the list.  Last year twelve companies from Ohio made the list, five of which were located in Central Ohio.

InsuranceAgents.com, located in Columbus, provides online listings for consumers to compare insurers.  It was the highest ranked company in Ohio taking the 68^th spot in the listing.  InsuranceAgents.com achieved a remarkable three year growth rate of 3450.3%.  This is a slight drop from last year’s performance, where it earned the 24^th spot with 4582.2% growth rate.

Another repeat placer, Mission Essential Personal’s 1732% three year revenue growth earned it the 162^nd spot on the list.  Last year, it ranked 52^nd with 2537.9% three year growth.  Located in Columbus, it provides translators and interpreters to government agencies.

The third highest ranking Central Ohio company, People to My Site provides internet marketing services.  Located in Gahanna, it ranked 199^th with an three year growth rate of 1459.6%

Peter Arnell’s Shift not that Earth Shattering

Shift, How to Reinvent Your Business, Your Career, and Your Brandcommits a major faux pas of branding. It doesn’t deliver on the promise. The author, Peter Arnell, is a branding and design expert that works with several multi-national firms. You would think he would know better.

I was convinced to buy the book by an interview of the author on a morning TV talk show. The story presented was compelling. Arnell lost over 150lbs by applying the same branding techniques he uses in his business to his personal life. There is no doubt his weight loss is amazing. His book, however, is less so. Shift was presented as a guide to rebranding yourself and how to make major changes in your life. There was an implicit promise that there would be lessons on branding somewhere in the book. I found that part lacking.

The book suffers from another glaring branding mistake: a lack of a clear point of view. It seems that Arnell can’t decide whether the book was an autobiography, self help book or a business book. Based on the page count it was mostly a biography. Of 200 pages, the first 120 were dedicated a career biography with plenty of name dropping and self aggrandizing career accomplishment. There were only few references to his weight loss or his branding techniques. To sell the biography viewpoint, he included plenty of photos of himself glad-handing celebrities, including Muhammad Ali, President Clinton and Celine Dion. Slogging through the details of various conversations with the likes of Martha Stewart, Donna Karan and Eunice Kennedy Shriver was tedious. It was very difficult to pull any meaningful branding or personal improvement lessons from these conversations.

The second half of the book more closely met my expectations. There are several small chapters, each presenting a particular way of thinking that may help someone with managing a change in their life. I found the chapter entitled “Be a Tiger” particularly interesting. The core lesson was be courageous by being yourself. The lesson is told by way of an interesting anecdote about Siegfried and Roy’s trained tiger. But even that anecdote wasn’t original. It was a paraphrase of a Chris Rock comedy bit. Most of the other chapters in the second half had interesting insights but were backed up by some Arnell career anecdote that I found difficult to connect to the lesson of the chapter.

I really can’t recommend buying this book. It may be worth reading the first half if you are a fan of biographies or Star Magazine. For the self help aficionado the second half might be interesting, but for the business reader there is very little of interest.

BP Vision Statement Points to Limited Perspective on Safety

BP operates at the frontiers of the energy industry. We use world-class assets, technology, capability and know-how to meet energy needs and deliver long-term value.

The ingenuity and determination of our people have brought new resilience to BP. From deep beneath the ocean to complex refining environments, from remote tropical islands to next-generation biofuels– a revitalized BP is driving greater efficiency, sustained momentum and business growth.-BP 2009 Annual Report to Stockholders

This may not be their official vision statement but it seems to be what they are communicating to their stakeholders about BP’s management’s vision of the future.  Remember that the vision statement is how a firm engages and motivates its constituency.

I may be putting too fine a point on it, but their vision focuses almost exclusively on internal interests: growth of the business, employee engagement and shareholder value.  I wonder how this vision might change with the events of the Gulf oil spill.  Will safety and the environment take a more prominent role in their vision?

Further evidence of reduced concern for environmental safety can be found later in their 2009 annual report under the strategy section.

The priorities that drove our success in 2009 – safety, people and performance– remain the foundation of our agenda as we build on our momentum and work to further enhance our competitive position.

•  Safe, reliable and compliant operations remain first priority.
•  Strong emphasis on continuous improvement.
• Exploration and Production remains core vehicle for growth.

 Our strategy is to invest competitively to grow oil and gas production while working to drive performance across the group through enhanced operating efficiency, capital efficiency and cost efficiency.

 To meet growing world demand, BP is committed to exploring, developing and producing more fossil fuel resources; manufacturing, processing and delivering better and more advanced products; and enabling the transition to a lower-carbon future. We aim to do this while operating safely, reliably and in compliance with the law. We strive to run our business within the discipline of a clear financial framework.

 I find it interesting that the first bullet point stresses the safety but the first paragraph further explaining their strategy focuses on financial performance and cost cutting.  Safety is quickly erased by the first full paragraph focusing on growth and financial performance. Is safety mentioned in the headlines only as red herring to appease those that might question their commitment to safety concerns?

And it seems that when safety is mentioned, it is always in the context of compliance with the local laws.  As I mentioned previously, BP has differing inspection practices depending on local regulations, even when it is shown that the more strident procedures produce higher safety standards.  I am convinced that safety is not a overriding concern for BP, not just through their actions but also by their stated strategy.  In BP’s view, safety is  just another cost component needing management.  It seems their view is “Safer operations have lower operating costs and higher efficiency only up to a point.”  And BP seems to have been on the look out for the point of diminishing returns.  As they say themselves “BP operates at the frontiers”.  It is unfortunate that one of those frontiers is safety.

Update from GE: ecomagination

We’re at the halfway mark for the GE ecogmagination Challenge: Powering the Grid, and more than 1,000 ideas from 60 countries have been submitted with upwards of 16,000 votes cast so far. Submissions so far range from installing ultra-capacitors to manage the output of renewable energy resources and software solutions that make use of abundant real-time data to predict future energy use to wave energy using hydraulics and a hurricane-resistant wind turbine. Not to mention ideas that we may all see in our homes someday, such as intelligent adaptors and switches that would retrofit energy guzzling devices so they can talk to new smart meters. What’s your idea? There’s $200 million on the line (not to mention the future of clean energy!) to find the best ideas to create smarter, cleaner and more efficient electric grids! Submit an idea or vote for your favorite one on the site by visiting http://www.ecomagination.com/challenge before the Challenge closes on September 30th. Ecomagination Challenge: The challenge is an open call for breakthrough ideas and technologies that will help create a smarter, cleaner, more efficient and economically viable grid, and to accelerate the adoption of smart grid technologies. Collectively, GE and its venture capital partners have committed $200 million to help bring these new ideas to market. The challenge is open to technologists, entrepreneurs, start-ups, students and groups like yours from across the globe. It’s open to anyone aged 18 years or older and all legally formed entities. Read all the details here and submit your ideas at http://challenge.ecomagination.com/ideas. If you have any questions about this sponsorship, simply reply to this email and let us know.

Get a Complimentary Copy of the Entrepreneur’s Pledge Poster!

The words of the Entrepreneur’s Pledge have lived in your heart and mind, but now they can live on the wall in your company or even your home! The Kauffman Foundation is issuing this limited edition poster – at no charge – to the first 200 people who email Build A Stronger America with their full name and mailing address. From now through September 15, 2010, if you’re one of the first 200 people to contact us, you can proudly display this inspiring pledge that speaks to the value of entrepreneurs in our society. Email today>>

Why Vision Statements

Vision statements help create meaning for an organizations stakeholders.  Employees and others can use it to make connections between their actions and the values and purpose of the organization.  Vision statements can act as guides for employee actions and decisions.  The vision statement helps delineate not only what actions should be taken but also what actions shouldn’t be taken.  Organizations, as it is with individuals, are defined as much by what they don’t do and by what they do.

Compelling visions can inspire.  They foster commitment, meaning and a sense of belonging:  And when added to practices that encourage positive interactions that can motivate high levels of performance.

My first experience with a compelling vision was in high school.  As of member of the football team it was part of collective image that we were winners, champions in fact.  There was little doubt that we would be successful.   And our practices, both actual practices and traditions, reflected those beliefs.

We trained like champions, putting in many hours of voluntary efforts to demonstrate our commitment.  We practiced like champions by rejecting short cuts and mistakes on the field.  Much of reinforcement of these practices and vision came from peers not just the coaches.  We had all bought into the vision, and that translated to on field success.

With a well articulated and inspiring vision any organization can become the over achievers we did.