My daughter and I were at the Leaf game when I started up again. She asked me a question, but after my 23 minute soliloquy on values and perspective, it doesn’t matter what it was. The gist of it though applies as much to Quartet, and potentially to you, as it does to my 16 year old. Read more
My dad made fruit juice for a living and he loved it. One day as we drove down the highway together, one of his trucks passed by with just two words painted on the side: Pure Juice. Now they were 15 ft purple letters, but I still kidded him about what sort of marketing genius it took to dream that up. Then, in a way that I had no idea that I would remember so vividly 30 years later, he told me that nobody really cares much about what you do, that you only have a split second to make an impression, and that you’d better be clear. Read more
We’ve done something about communication at Quartet that I think you’ll get a kick out of.
Our staff wear lapel pins that are one of four animals: a monkey, a turtle, a lion or a camel. The pins denote what sort of communication style the person favors and reminds us of the best way to communicate with them. For example, communicating effectively with a monkey requires a different approach than when communicating with a camel. I guess we really are bunch of animals after all.
One day my wife called me at work to discuss yet another wild holiday idea and I guess I wasn’t paying much attention. When she pointed that out, I replied that we were having a “Dodgeball Day” and that I really couldn’t chat right then. That “Dodgeball Day” metaphor for work at Quartet haunted me for a couple years, but I think I’m finally ready to discuss it.
For those who have not played Dodgeball, it is a brutal high school sport where the objective is to beam members of the other team with volleyballs that you throw as hard as you can. Head shots were illegal, but that didn’t matter to gym class thugs. In any case, balls zip all around the gym and you can get picked off in a cross-fire, by a rebound or by a fast ball up the middle. You have to be nimble, alert, well-balanced and anything else that can metaphorically spill over well onto Quartet.
I owe this thought to my father and Quartet’s newest employee.
My father worked in the food industry for most of his career and put himself through night school with three kids and a wife to feed. Very down to earth, he worked hard, had a great sense of humor and didn’t tolerate any sort of artificiality. Sunday dinners were usually really fun. I remember laughing so hard we couldn’t eat and sitting around the table so long our legs went numb. I miss him, I miss those dinners and I smile at some of the things I hear myself say now, knowing full well that they are little nuggets of hard-earned wisdom that spilled out during those marathon meals.
Quartet’s approach to IT cost savings is simple, but works. We put “First Things First” as my father used to say. We start by lowering costs compared to what you are spending now. We leverage our hard skills, infrastructure, knowledge and tools to improve your efficiency. We follow with technical innovation that usually includes infrastructure rationalization and process reengineering. The innovation part of this approach is where all the drama is, but we can’t get there without saving money on status-quo IT to start with. First Things First.
We launched Wireless Wolf services in May and argued that by managing mobile devices better, we would allow companies to save money and time. The response has been fantastic, but we only captured part of the benefit. Now we’re extending our Wireless Wolf services based on what we learned and introducing a Deployment and Training Service. We hope you like what we’re doing and look forward to discussing it with you.