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From Rock to Millstone – 5 Years at Cummins

May 24, 2018 – Columbus, IN

I’ve never been with one company for more than four years, until now. This month marks my five year anniversary at Cummins. Five years ago I was a shiny new MBA with a vague idea of my new job at Cummins, a company I had only known a few months while doing an internship. I thought I was so valuable; little did I know what makes an asset valuable.

The Rock

During my interview days I could articulate which of my attributes would add to a company’s talent pool. When I was recruited to Cummins I felt special. I was that new rock found by the river bed ready to be added to a child’s rock collection. I thought: “Look at me! I am a special rock.” I could do any assignment, and doing what I was assigned was in my mind the transaction for my talent.

Thankfully I had good managers that could take a rough rock and make something useful with it. My value was not in my current talent. My value was in being malleable enough to do any job that was required of me.

The Transformation

In the past five years I have been through great transformations; the greatest transformation has been in the past two years. I changed from a malleable talent to a value yielding asset. I went from a rock in a collection to an efficient millstone. Don’t think it was easy or that I knew what was happening. My pride had to be put in check. My intelligence had to put into question and so were my skills. I had to allow feedback to know which areas I needed to improve.

There were two significant events in the past five years that have marked my transformation. Five years ago my father traveled from Guatemala to attend my graduation in Provo, Utah. His health quickly deteriorated due to diabetes; two years ago he passed away. My lifelong cheerleader was gone and I had to truly prove myself. The second event came two and a half years ago when I had been re-deployed for the second time in three years. I was assigned to be the project manager for a very large project. My role for the previous years was also project manager, but this role would truly stretch me. It was during this stretch assignment that my father passed away. I have to admit that I failed at my assignment. Gratefully I had a kind manager that was frank and pushed me forward. Both events happened on the same year, and that was my turning point from rock to millstone.

The Millstone

I have felt so much empowerment over the course of the past two years. I have lead several successful projects. I was promoted last year. I have taken extra responsibilities outside my normal work. I have even seen an improvement in the way I conduct my personal finances, my non-work assignments, and an overall purpose in life. I am grateful to my many managers that have guided my path in by both example and deed. I am especially grateful to my eternal companion, Debora, for always believing in me even when I didn’t; you are my support. Lastly I am grateful to Cummins for creating the right environment for a stumbling rock to become a millstone.

Looking forward I am optimist of what I can contribute to this organization, the community, and my family. I cannot be content with being a millstone. I will be a millstone maker.

 

Photo by Wil Stewart on Unsplash
Wil Stewart

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“Plan the work, work the plan”

“Plan the work, work the plan” where the wise words of a previous manager. They reminded me of the quote from Ben Franklin: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” This concept is well cemented in my brain. This is what I do at work everyday, in spite of that I was not applying it to my biggest project: my life. Shouldn’t there be a case to have a life plan? I had gone about my life using a checklist at best or nothing at worst. I was not giving enough time to planning my week, my month, my year, my life. I was planning to fail amidst successful plans at work.
At the end of 2017 I began to apply business principles to my personal life. I came across an advertisement for a planner, and the first words caught my eye: “What do you want to leave behind this year?” The question took me back and really made me pause. I wanted to answer the question quickly and move one, but I couldn’t. The question stayed with me for several weeks. New Year’s Day came and I wrote down my goals as I always did, yet I still couldn’t answer the question. The first week this year I set aside one day to come up with a good answer to the question.
After two days of soul searching, I had an answer and a plan. This year I wanted, above all, for my daughter to have a conscious and memorable baptism. I was also able to create meaningful desires for all the aspects in my life. I wanted to succeed as a husband, father, employee, manager, professional, mentor, disciple of Christ, and human. I was not only enlighten by this experience, but hungry for further introspection, planning, execution, and results. I set apart two hours each week to plan my week, four hours each month to plan the month, and two days each year to plan next year. I planned 2018 by setting goals for each of the roles in my life. I recorded all these goals in a note to be evaluated during each of my monthly planning sessions.
In my four hour monthly planning for January I analyzed which goals needed to be started, advanced, or completed that month. I put specific actions that needed to be taken during that month and the week that needed to happen. Many tasks were full actions others were more vague and required further thought at certain points in the month.  It took me less than four hours to plan the month and I was able to plan the first week. I made sure I understood all the tasks needed to complete the monthly goals. I assigned a specific day in the week when I was going to complete the work. I only assigned work Monday through Thursday to be able to catch up on in-week tasks on Friday.
As of this writing I’ve completed five weeks of planning and execution. I have also done February’s monthly planning. I cannot lie, it felt completely overwhelming the amount of things I needed to do each day. Gone were the days of just working on one or two initiatives. I felt like I was sprinting all the time, moving from one item to the next. After a couple of weeks while I was writing my thoughts about the prior week I noticed that I had completed more than half of the items I had set out to do in January. A sense of pride and satisfaction overcame me, I had moved the proverbial needle significantly and visibly. I realized that I could be on sprint mode because I had taken all the fluff out of my days. Instead of having multiple times of “what do I have to do now?” I crunched them into a few hours each month and week, and then I could just run. I had replaced all my planned failures into successful planning.
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Reflections on 2017

Friday January 12, 2018 – Columbus, Indiana

Looking back to last year, I can easily it was one of the best years as far as accomplishments, even though there were many goals that I set were not met. Think about that, I am proud even when the goals I set were not met, how can that be. My number 1 goal for 2017 was to buy a house, I tried to do it and was unable to do; the reason was that I did not know what was needed to fulfill it and I was not ready to do it. Goal Number 2 was to get a promotion and I did accomplish that; here is the kicker, this is not what I’m most proud of in 2017. My greatest accomplishment in 2017 was not even a goal at the beginning of the year, it was not even a goal by October 2017. Getting a deep understanding of my finances is my greatest accomplishment of 2017.

Looking at my records, I’ve had an Excel Budget since 2007 when I changed jobs and Debora stopped working, and almost every year we’ve set up a family budget. I thought that was enough, to know if our planned expenses would be covered by our income, yet we had good months and bad months. Questions about what we could afford was gut check that would lead us to hitting our spending breaks way ahead of the next paycheck. I felt that I was failing, if only we would stick to the theoretical budget we would be fine, a fleeting hope that never materialized.

Coming back from our summer vacation where our expenses were so far off our budget I turned my concern into action. I opened the 2017 Budget and added a column called expenses, then another with the difference. I pointed my browser to my checking account and started adding the values into each of the budget’s categories. Two months after, I had added my savings accounts and started tracking movements across accounts and had a tab for each paycheck, then a workbook for each month. In November I had tabs for each credit card, loan, and savings account; this changed my life.  I am so proud, happy, elated about these new revelations; I know exactly why I could not buy a house in 2017 and I’m happy I didn’t.

I am looking forward to a good 2018, I’m actually looking forward to better understand my financial situation and do something about it. The greatest consequence of wrangling the financial beast is that I feel I can wrangle other beasts in my life. I want to understand my health, my time management, my work habits, my exercise patterns, etc. I recognize a formula that works: define, measure, analyze, improve, control; straight out of the Six Sigma playbook. I’m so happy to start 2018 and looking forward to the new challenges.

 

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