Jim Thomason's "The Business of People"

We have, I believe, much to learn about business from a tiny luthier in the middle of nowhere. What he and his wife are doing right affirms some of what we're already doing and could teach us a thing or two that we're not. First a little background... I picked the guitar back up at age 44 after not having played since high school. It started at Henry Horton State Park during a management retreat. In the unofficial hospitality room I found my soon-to-be good friend Gabe Wicks playing and passing around his Martin guitar. People were taking turns, so I took one. It just felt right, not necessarily the instrument, but the sense of community and camaraderie. Instruments can be pleasant fill-ins for the solitude of introverts and many of them become superb players. For me the instrument is the focal point around which we've built a tight community of friends. Vonnie and I took this one step further this past weekend and traveled to Morral, OH, allegedly population 325 althou...

Each time I go to my neighborhood Publix I experience two pricing models. The difference between these goes to the heart of what's wrong with our health care costs as a nation. I drop my prescription off at the pharmacy, and then head off with my wife (without whom I couldn't find the front checkout much less any food item, but I digress) to grab our food for the week. When it comes time to check out I swing by the pharmacy and pay three $10 co-pays for three generic maintenance drugs. Then we go to the checkouts and pay for everything else. By the time we're at the checkouts I can tell you almost to the dollar how much we're going to spend because I've watched that with each item that's gone into the cart. I have absolutely no idea how much my prescriptions actually cost me because "they're $10 each." That's a lot of what's wrong with health care costs, and why HSA accounts are reshaping our thinking. With FSA accounts and PPO plans we...

As usual the headlines on the job market are dire. News agency after news agency reported that "March job losses were 61% higher than February." Surely all signs point to a slow recovery for jobs in the near term, but long-term the outlook is outstanding. Here's the rest of the story. March job losses were sharply higher than February's because February's 40,090 jobs lost was the lowest in four years . March's 67,611 was not great news, but let's dissect that further. First of all it was 55% lower than March 2009's 181,183 jobs lost. Now of that 67,611, 50,604 were government job cuts announced in prior months and finally implemented. The media got to count these twice as bad news: once months ago when the various federal, state and local entities announced the cut and again in March when they happened. Furthermore of these 50,604, just over 30,000of those are at the U.S. Postal service. So take out the USPS and the governmental sector cu...

I've never tried this before but, hey, why not. I am currently looking for a part-time Admin for a temporary spot that could work into a full-time job. Right now I need someone about 20 hours a week who would work as my AA about half that time and spend the rest of their time working for Travel and HR doing clerical support work. Before you ask, no, my current AA Dawn isn't going anywhere. Our work load has expanded as has Travel, and we need to slide Dawn over to help Jack in the more traditional HR work. This position would pick up some of her slack while she's working for Jack. As to who I'm looking for, we'd like someone who has previous Assistant experience (HR is a plus but not necessary), is professional in appearance and demeanor, has good instincts (we deal with people, after all), and is service-oriented so that our internal customers are treated well. As an added incentive to find the right person, we're okay with someone on the "Mommy track...

As we near the end of Open Enrollment I want to highlight some changes to the eligibility rules for our medical and dental plans. These mostly impact new employees coming in after the first of next month. Supervisors and all of us who recruit should know this information so we can use our benefits to recruit prospective talent. I believe we have a good story to tell. Immediate Eligibility Although this isn't completely new, I find that some people don't realize it. You are eligible for coverage under our medical and dental plan beginning on your hire date. You must allow a few days for sign-up, card printing and mailing, etc... but there is no waiting period after you're hired. Part-time Employee Eligibility This year for the first time we are extending eligibility to part-time employees. This doesn't cover temps, interns, contractors or any other casual labor. This eligibility extends only to those individuals who work regularly 20 hours per week or more and who the c...

Unless you've been camping in a distant cave you know that this week the House of Representatives approved comprehensive healthcare reform legislation. Over the next nine years this new law has the potential to substantially change the healthcare system and industry in this country. While most everyone knows something happened, what it means seems open to interpretation. Walking through the corporate office this week as part of our Open Enrollment process I heard many opinions and had several requests to blog on this topic. I've also sought out news items off the web, TV and radio. In addition, about a half dozen unsolicited email articles have come to my inbox by companies wanting to sell us consulting services for our health plans. The following is a summary of what I've learned to date. One more thing before we start. I am neither Republican nor Democrat, conservative nor liberal. Please don't try to paint me with a particular political brush if you don't agre...

It's open enrollment month in our company and many people are trying to make a decisions regarding their medical plans for the fiscal year beginning April 1st. This year our Tennessee employees have a four-option choice; PPO vs. High Deductible Plan (HDP), and Blue Cross "P" network vs. "S" network. With the various differences in premiums, co-pays, deductibles, HSA vs. FSA, etc... there is a lot to consider. The HDP has gained momentum due to favorable payroll deductions and some good feedback from people currently in the plan. The S network rates are cheaper, but that network does not include any HCA hospitals including some where several of our people live. With a lot at stake, and a lot to sift through, here are some simple decision points you should consider if you work at Nelson. This is just my opinion and does not change any of the Open Enrollment information we've sent to our people. We have informational meetings going on and you should attend one...

I've been home-bound for a few days due to knee surgery. As a Catholic who owns two Toyotas , and proud on both accounts, it's been tough to avoid the news. The hysteria over 30 year old allegations of priestly impropriety has moved from the U.S. to Ireland and now to Germany. The smart money inside the Church is that Spain is next. Meanwhile, "Me too!" runaway Toyota incidents with lawyers and reporters on standby plague the world's largest automaker. Being a student of institutional behavior, and a great admirer of these two great institutions, it's pained me to watch them get behind the story in their respective news cycles. Meanwhile, Late Night host David Letterman sets the standard for getting past his own reprehensible behavior of having sex with young female staffers over whom he had authority as host of the show and owner of the show's production and distribution company, Worldwide Pants. The differences in how these three companies handled t...

The American health care system is either the finest in the world or a hopeless morass of waste depending on who you talk to and their party affiliation. One thing that is absolute truth about our system is that it's complicated, and one of the root causes of that complexity is the interface between medical coders, medical provider billing, and your insurance plan. I'm near the end of a medical coding/billing/insurance problem that I've been working since July. The facts of this case (which I have permission to share) should help you understand why it's important to know your benefits, watch your bills, question everything, and use your HR department if necessary. In July we had a dependent on the plan who was referred by her primary care physician for a colonoscopy . The patient here had no symptoms or problems but had reached the age when that procedure is recommended. The colonoscopy was performed later that month and the results were clear except for a mild case...

One of the truths of growing your career is that as you progress through the organization you become broad and shallow as opposed to the staff emphasis of being narrow and deep . By that I mean that when you are on staff you work on a small variety of tasks which you must know completely down to the last detail. As you progress in your career and take on broader responsibilities there simply isn't enough time to go into all the details of every task; that's why you have staff working for you and that's their job. The further you rise in an organization, the more you just touch the tops of your different responsibilities. Your job then becomes fundamentally different; the organization starts paying you for judgement, trustworthiness, dependability and execution. Can they assign you to an area and almost completely walk away from it? If so, you've become a reliable manager. It is in that area of dependability and execution that there's opportunity in times of bad we...

I consider it a life-changing experience having spent 10 years in the Japanese automotive business. Even in an HR role I got to see first hand how a "culture of quality" permeates a corporate culture. I'm not sure that we'll ever be able to install anything like it at Thomas Nelson. Our business model is split between experiential content (live events, social media, etc...), electronic content, and physical content. While we want everything we do to be of high quality and value to the customer, we aren't solely focused on how to make an excellent physical product from the top down. This divided focus is contrary to the type of fanatical devotion to "the thing" you make that is required of a "total quality" culture. Still, we can make high quality physical products, and our product quality is in some cases an opportunity. Some regard the type of focus needed to make an excellent product too "blue collar" and so don't focus enough...

I've received some questions lately about our hiring freeze "thawing out". The inevitable question that follows is when the wage freeze will similarly thaw, and why we aren't giving raises yet if we're hiring. Here are the facts. We currently have four positions posted. Three are back-fills for people who left the company or were promoted internally to other positions. One is a new position in an area that management has determined was cut back too drastically in 2008 and where lack of a position is holding us back from needed revenue. Earlier this year we replaced one person who left with two lower-paid people for the same money. Other than that, any new faces you see around the operation are temporaries, interns, etc... We all hope for better days, and soon; meanwhile its important to note that everyone is doing more with less, not just you and your group. All the positions filled recently and all those currently posted add to the company's overhead a...

Okay, so you are tired and overworked and people are just plain getting on your nerves. The temptation is to blast some idiot who really deserves it and has for some time. You decide its time to fire that "special" someone on your team simply because the law says you can't kill them. You, gentle reader, need to count to 10 before you say anything, and sleep on it overnight before you do anything. I've seen it already this week. One of our managers started busting the chops of an outside trainer in the middle of class. Another one jumped all over me and didn't care to get the facts. I myself spent most of the weekend in the hospital with my Mom, and came back to work worn out and grumpy. The first three things that happened yesterday tempted me to invite the offending parties into a caged death match. Acting on such frustrations is neither a Christian reaction nor a good career strategy. So what do you do when you wonder how high a co-worker or your boss ...

As the recession begins to thaw and companies begin to rehire, supervisors and HR departments nation wide are dusting off their recruiting tools and trying to remember how to hire people. In the midst of this two university sports teams in this region have had similar coaching debacles that I believe reinforce a simple but elegant recruiting lesson. Sometimes the best solution is not to select a candidate and keep looking. A couple of years ago the University of Kentucky lost its embattled basketball coach Tubby Smith, a quality human being and great coach who won about 17 - 18 games a season. This of course was not sufficient for Big Blue Nation which thinks under 30 wins and not making it to the Final Four is a disastrous season. Smith decided to go to Minnesota where he can win 17 games and have a field house named after him. So when Smith finally had enough, UK needed a coach. Here is where college Athletic Directors are at a disadvantage. Season tickets have been purchased, games...

This a rare, off-topic non-workplace post but I'm on vacation this week and thinking about other things. While shopping for Christmas presents I briefly considered and then dismissed buying an iPhone or Blackberry for my wife. Our daughter has an iPhone and loves it; I have a company-issued Blackberry and find it handy at times. The purchase price of these devices is $450 - $500 unless you renew your cell phone contract, and then they are anywhere from $49 - $99. But that's where they lost me. I went to my local AT&T store and found out that we don't have a line on our family share plan that is up for renewal until February. I pushed back some with the nice young man behind the counter; after all, I send enough money each month to AT&T for my home phone, Internet access and three cell phones to supply a third world city with food for a year. What's eight weeks if you're making a long-time and very good customer happy. Nothin' doin'! I'm u...

In an industrial era where supervisors were "bosses" rather than coaches, where jobs were relatively unskilled manipulating things vs. information, and where the talent needed for these jobs was in ample supply was born the performance appraisal. The purpose was two-fold: force the occasion at least annually for the boss to speak to the worker about their performance and how they could do their jobs better, and provide a documented history of the worker's performance. That history, housed usually in the Personnel department, was primarily used for (1) review of the worker's history for purposes of promotion or reassignment, and in later years after the development of discrimination laws (2) documentation for the company to support its termination decision and defend against lawsuits. W. Edwards Demming, the most progressive-minded and talented of all management gurus, advised American industry to end this practice in the 1950's. As is well-documented, his ideas ...

Okay so we've worked our way through the worst part of the worst recession in our lifetime. We've practiced a relentless focus on our business, watched our expenses, kept the company profitable through a variety of challenges from weak retail to financial backers who think a bible translation means English, Spanish or French. Everybody on the team deserves credit. While focus is a great thing that keeps us on-task and taking care of immediate business it should not be the enemy of innovation. God gave us two eyes, and I believe that gives us the ability to keep one on the task at hand while the other one looks to the future. Without taking our "eye" off our immediate needs, we need use the other one to take a fresh look at some worn-out assumptions, blow up some old programs, and continue to simplify our business. This is a well-run profitable company, but I believe there are places where we're expending energy for little return. Since we're all doing the...

In the past few weeks I'm hearing discussion in our company and elsewhere about the potential need for social media specialists of some sort. I believe we should heed the history of technological innovations, get ahead of the curve, and skip this expensive and soon to be outdated step. Social media is on its way to becoming a required and ubiquitous skill set in several job families, not a position or department. I see similarities between this technological development and two others I've experienced in my career; the use of interpreters and the adoption of the personal computer. In international business the model was often that people of different cultures transacted business in some neutral third language or utilized interpreters to facilitate communication. It may seem a quaint notion if you're under 50, but there was a time in business where executives working in foreign countries actually travelled with a person who was paid to help them communicate. Early in my ...

It is highly likely that we will move the division headquarters of Thomas Nelson Live Events sometime this summer. While that's not guaranteed, that seems to be the direction in which we're heading. Some might wonder why, in the current economic climate, we would do such a thing. After all, isn't that inconsistent with our measures to cut costs and preserve cash? Here's what we're doing and why. Since the merger of the Facilities and HR departments I've been getting an education on commercial space. New space is often referred to as "Class A" space in that its new, well apportioned with a good location and solid management. Class B space is Class A space that has aged well, but no longer has the first class look of new top-quality space. Class C space is run down and tired, old and/or poorly maintained. The Live Events division space in Plano occupies offices that its been leasing for 9 1/2 years of a 10 year lease. That space was probably Class B when...

Earlier tonight at the recommendation of friend and colleague Lara Dulaney I stopped for dinner at Uncle Julio's in Allen, TX. Knowing that the rest of the Nashville contingent had gone home a day earlier, and that I was dining by myself, she told me that the food was good and that I could get a full meal at the bar. I thought that was a good idea because you're not so noticeable as "dinner for one" eating at a crowded bar. I drove the extra exit up from my hotel in Allen and found the place on an out-parcel in a shopping center that had TJ Maxx and Dick's Sporting Goods among other stores. It was mid-priced/low-upscale so nothing that felt like a waste of money. Unlike the eerily deserted restaurants I saw during lunch in the Plano area Uncle Julio's was busy at 8:00 p.m. and had the appearance of winding down from the dinner rush. So I sit at the bar and here is where the story really begins. One of the two bartenders stuck out his hand, said, "I'm ...