My answer may surprise you
because I’m not going to run off a long list of products we carry or try to
dazzle you with technological “know-how”. The best way I can answer this
question is to refer to a person you may have not even thought of since your
elementary school days.
Remember that guy who flew
the kite in the rainstorm and discovered electricity the hard way? If you said
Ben Franklin then I’m sure you were one of those who received all those gold
stars in school (I’m still jealous, by the way). Anyway, it is well known that
Ben had a code he tried to live by every day. He called it
his list of virtues and each day his goal was to exercise every one of
these virtues before he would retire for the night. In bed and with his personal
journal that evening, he would reflect on his day and place a check next to the
virtue he had practiced.
Clearly, Franklin-author,
inventor, statesman-knew that his success was due to the fact that he held
himself to a higher standard than anyone else in relationship to his conduct. He
understood that if he consistently strived to better his character as a person,
good things surely would follow.
I relate this history
lesson because we too firmly believe that character building is the best road to
travel in creating loyal relationships with our customers, which then in turn,
allows us to achieve our goals. We also have a personal code of conduct that we
work to ingrain in ourselves every day and we call this code our “Four Core
Values”. These values are as follows:
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
“How We Get There is as Important as
Where We Go”
CREATING LOYALTY
“The Heart of a Servant”
CONSTANT IMPROVEMENT
“Doing it Better than the Day Before”
EFFICIENCY
“An Obligation of Excellence”
Okay, I know you may be
thinking, “that’s really great but what does that have to do with me, my
company, and our application?” That’s a good question and another great example
why you received all those gold stars (I haven’t forgotten). You see as a
distributor I don’t make anything for my customers in terms of product; however,
what I can create is the trust you have in the product I
represent. But your trust in the product won’t be there unless you ultimately
have trust in us. This is why our focus is in achieving our core
values every day so that you view us as the character-based organization that
measures its success by the people we help.
Please ask us the next time
you see or talk to anyone in our organization about our core values and how we
feel they make a positive impact on our relationships with our customers. This
is not just “feel good” talk but the very building blocks of our company. We
know that just like old Ben Franklin, if we continue to better ourselves
through our character, good things surely will follow.
Best Regards,
Craig West
Director
LINC Systems
Marking & Coding Division
