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Welcome back. We are talking with John Williams from CSI and we’re talking about the process
of visioning. John, when we were talking last, you had mentioned the importance of having
plans and crystalizing that vision into a plan and then working your plan. I am interested
to know about what your plan or business model for an overall successful company would look
like in the first place. Well, I think there are several very simple
items. Number one – is there a need? Is there a need that you have a product or a
service or can create a product or a service to fill a need that adds value to a customer?
Next is, what people? What types of skill sets are needed to achieve that? Next, do
you have the capital necessary to achieve that, the dollars and cents to fund that project?
Finally, do you have the management and leadership skills to achieve that objective?
This plan that you are outlining right here, from capitalization to the right people to
the product and service, etc., obviously has worked, in one form or another, for 40 years
for your company, but I am curious. Would this same plan work for a 25 year old recent
college graduate or a 32 year old who has a dream about starting his or her own business?
Is this plan sort of universal in its nature? If not, why not? If so, what would you suggest
to someone who is just interested in just getting started?
I think it is universal, although, I can’t speak from experience of it applying to everything,
but the way I measure that plan is I look at companies that are having problems, that
are on the market for sale and invariably, when I analyze them, one of those pieces will
be missing and that is the reason that the company needs a new lease on life with a new
buyer. Is there one of those things, the things that
are normally missing, that is more prevalent than another? In order words, do many businesses
miss the same thing without realizing they are missing it?
If they do, it is product and that is holding on to a product and not realizing that products
have lifecycles and they need to be freshened up going forward or they haven’t developed
the enhanced leadership and management skills to run a growing enterprise. Some folks feel
comfortable at a given size and can’t go beyond that.
Well, it is interesting what you said. You said product and people or leadership.
Yes. A lot of folks, the articles that you read,
say that most businesses fail in the first few years of the business because of undercapitalization
and we understand that, but what I hear you saying and correct me if I am wrong is that
capitalization, as important as that is, may not be nearly as important as having the right
product or service and the right people to lead that process.
Well, I know that there are places where it is difficult to find venture capital, if that
is what is needed, to start a business, but venture capital, in my experience, can be
available if you have got the right product and you have got the right people. Those are
the first two fundamentals and then the capital is generally available from some source.
Let me back up even one step further, before. In your comment a moment ago, you were talking
about the flexibility of changing as it was necessary in a business. I can’t help but
think about your particular business. Some 40 years ago, you read an article about the
numbers across the bottom of a check and how that was going to change an entire industry.
Well, that was the very infancy, if you will, of computer technology and all of that was
going to happen in the financial realm. Well, since then, that computer technology
has changed not only once, twice, but probably 100 or 200 times and yet you have remained
viable over that period of time. How does a company, especially one that is in a high
tech realm, continue to change with the times and with the changing technology and still
offer service and product that is appropriate for its customers and never goes out of date?
Well, I don’t think that original plan or vision or dream was complete for 40 years.
Okay. It is the type of thing that you have constantly
got to refresh and always have fresh plans for what the next challenges are.
So you went into this thing not saying that I have a 40-year plan. You went into the thing
saying let’s see how it works for the next two years, three years, five years and continue
to reconstruct the plan or develop that plan further as you went deeper into the process?
That is correct and create a foundation, a management structure, board structure, corporate
structure and capitalization that could allow it to grow and keep it from reaching some
kind of stranglehold. Is it safe to say that you don’t need to
marry yourself with a success or with a particular way of doing things, but that you need to
be constantly open to all kinds of advice and all kinds of input from all kinds of sources
in the days ahead, to stay viable with the business?
Well, my answer is simple. The answer is yes. You need to be exposed.
Okay. Now, we have talked about what it takes in creating and envisioning a particular model
for success, but you can’t convince me that there haven’t been stumbling blocks; there
haven’t been failures or frustrations or whatever you want to call them in a 40-year
career, in a 40-year business endeavor. Share with us one or two stumbling blocks, especially
in the early days of your business and how you dealt with them and how you eventually
overcame them. Well, one of the early stumbling blocks, in
1971, I felt that we needed to open more facilities and I had a staff that, to them, that was
threatening. The staff said, “If you are going to open more facilities that means that
we have other people who are responsible for that piece and we don’t know what is going
on everywhere.” So there is a human dynamic change and that was a major stumbling block,
but we got across it. I have started several products that have ended up being losers or
failures through the years. You are an old baseball player. Whoever hit the ball every
time they went to bat? Well, they say that you go to the Hall of
Fame at the Major League level if you hit three out of ten, so if you bat 300, you have
got a good chance of being one of the best ever and that is kind of amazing.
I like a higher ratio than that. You would rather have a 500 or 700 batting
ratio. I understand. We all learn from successes and failures. The successes we sort of gloat
in or bask in. The failures, sometimes, we slink away from but, in your experience, which
have been the most valuable teachers for you during your career with CSI? Which have taught
you the most, the things that you have really succeeded – the home runs, using the baseball
analogy that you just did or when you struck out or maybe made an error that cost you something
important? I can’t differentiate one higher than the
other. I think you learn from both. You learn and build confidence once you have reset the
vision on the next goal that you are going to try to achieve and you achieve it, you
build confidence to go further. To the same degree, if you make a major mistake, if you
spend the time analyzing why it went wrong and attempt to prevent that the next time,
then you enhance your probability of success. One more question, before we go to break,
both of them teach you things, you just now said that, but sometimes when you are in the
main position, the top job, can you be as tolerant of failures and failings, if you
will, from people beneath you and how do you encourage them during those failures and failings?
How do you tell them, “Hey, it is going to be okay? We can continue to work through
this. You will get better.” I think that the easiest way to do that is
to be the role model and when you make a mistake, tell your staff, “I just messed up. That
was not a good decision on my part.” That builds confidence in them that you are not
expecting perfection. We are all human. Well, that is intriguing. To me, of course,
any time you talk about the realities of business, it includes both successes and failures and
I am sure you have got more lessons to share with us, too, but at this moment, let’s
take a break and we will be back with John Williams and Influence and Impact in just
a moment.