From: TomCrouser@aol.com
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 14:16:52 -0400
Subject: Perfectionist Owners
Content-Length: 16656
X-UIDL: 844787152.001

Crouser Report OnLine Copyright 1996 Thomas P. Crouser, October 6, 1996 -
Material may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written
consent of the copyright holder.
***** ***** *****
If you are located within a 6 hour drive of Jacksonville, Florida and aren t
doing as well as you should, then message me with your name, address and
telephone. I am tentatively planning a special group project this winter for
six selected companies. See the end of this message for more details.
***** ***** *****
Perfectionist Owners
Transmitted from Jacksonville, Florida

Crouser Report, October 1996

Dear Friends. . .

	Just do it! That s the advertising slogan of Nike, but it could just as well
be directed at a large segment of print shop owners who are
high-compliance-type individuals. Instead of  leading when times get tough,
they clamp down in their decision making process, busy themselves with detail
while others stand around and watch them work, and don t spend money even
when they should. They never sell nothing to nobody, preferring instead to
appeal logically to people with low prices. Generally, they end up underpaid,
unappreciated and with severe time management problems. It doesn t have to be
this way.

	Doctor Myers married Doctor Briggs and these two psychologists commenced on
spending their lives together studying the behaviors of normal people. They
developed the Myers-Briggs battery of personality instruments among other
accomplishments. The full battery takes several days to process and is quite
detailed. Others, building on the work of these two leaders, developed
shorter and quicker, although less insightful, instruments. We have used one
of these instruments for years and it has been extremely important tool in
assisting small press printers unravel complex situations. And it has, in my
opinion, a special usefulness to small and family businesses.

	Would you believe that most of us in small business have never been taught
business? Dr. Leon Danco of the Family Business Institute in Cleveland says
that people who start businesses do so not because they have money and want
to make a good investment, but precisely rather because they don t have
money. 

Most are dead broke or just been fired.

 he writes in Family
Business, a book that I use as a text and highly recommend.

	So, if you agree that most in small business never have been taught
procedures or principles of business, then you would understand we owners
rely on our 

instincts

 when faced with problems. That goes back to the myth
of business people being born. Well, our instincts do not come from
birthright. They come from the way we were taught to get things done through
other people. And the biggest influence there is our family. How did you get
Mom and Dad or your siblings to do what you wanted them to do? Some throw
temper tantrums. Some 

sell

 their ideas, such as my brother who would say,


I got this great idea. . . .first, let s get some of your money then we will
go. . . .and you will have fun.

 Still others get things done through
compliance with a set of rules. The way you influence Mom is to do precisely
and exactly what she wants you to do. There are bunches of different
influences and learned behaviors which combine to make your 

personality


what it is. Myers-Briggs and others studied these behaviors and developed
patterns by which we can identify ourselves. But this, in itself, does not
explain everything.

	We have to mix the power position of the small business owner into this
brew. Yes, the small business owner who has not been taught organizational
principles, for instance, will rely on their natural 

instincts

 or
personalities to get things done through other people. This does not mean the
natural instincts are bad. They are only 

bad

 when the strengths are
overused and become weaknesses. Every style has great strengths. And every
style has the opportunity to turn these great strengths into great
weaknesses, particularly under adversity. Under adversity, people clamp down
and use their base instincts more than in good times. Left untrained, these
instincts can be the ruin of the business.

	Uniquely, this same business owner could perform admirably if working for
someone else in a structured environment. If you were to go get a real job,
the expectations would be known. You would have to perform specific tasks
within specific frameworks and, although most of us would really dislike it,
you would be there when you were assigned, not when you wanted. Point is,
when we are in control of our own business, we make the rules. Untrained, we
will make rules based on what we want to do not what we should do. Spoiled,
some would call it.

	Let s take the case of some folks with perfectionist tendencies.
Interestingly, many are former executives with really responsible jobs in big
corporations who have been downsized. After handling a $50 million budget for
awhile, one would naturally assume they could easily handle life in a small
print and copy shop. Fact is, many are suffering severe humiliation and face
imminent disaster because they are not succeeding and they don t know why.

	Perfectionists are systematic, precise thinkers who tend to follow procedure
in both personal and business life. Extremely conscientious, they are
painstaking in work which requires attention to detail and accuracy. Left
untrained, they develop terribly complex 

systems

 which requires checks,
double-checks, and approvals to get things done and generally, they are the
people right in the middle of the system. This, of course, is where time
management difficulties arise.

	Many procedures are adopted in response to errors which add immensely to the
overhead of each transaction. Perfection, you know. Which is not to be
confused with quality management. The perfectionist blames the worker and
writes a rule. The quality manager attacks the root of the problem, removes
it and performance increases. While logical, many rules don t make sense. I
remember one owner who had the customer service rep write up the job then
turned it over to another person who wrote the order up again to make sure it
was correct. It s logical, but it doesn t make sense for it avoids the real
problem of training the customer service reps and holding them accountable
for their work. Perfectionists tend to be non-confrontational (not as bad as
some other types) and deal with problems through rules not leadership.
Quality managers deal with people.

	Perfectionists desire specifics on what is expected, how much time is
required, and how the work will be evaluated. They lead production by
focusing on production standards. They spend hours and dollars getting the
press production standard placed on work orders with the idea that if the
worker knows how much time they should take, they will then do their job
without any human interference (confrontation). What really happens is the
worker does the job in the specific amount of time or longer. A printer in
Pennsylvania stopped giving production workers times and the work increased.
Why? Standards are averages. Averages are the best of the worst and the worst
of the best. Some are faster than the standard and some are slower. The
average becomes the rule to live by. Simply put, while the owner is logical,
the impact on other people isn t always logical.

	Perfectionists can and do take risks when they have the facts and can
interpret and draw conclusions. They can make major decisions. Untrained, it
just takes them forever to do it. Why? They need all the facts which takes
forever. Problem is, we lead our team in an ambiguous environment. We don t
know all of the facts. Trained, the perfectionist uses probability to make
the best decision at the time and then moves on. (Note: we are picking on
perfectionists here. Some other personality styles makes major decisions with
no facts which is worse.) In short, Perfectionists bog down in details in
decision-making although they usually can make non-critical decisions
quickly. Carried to an extreme, perfectionists bog down in non-critical
decisions which we describe as High C (for high compliance or high
conscientiousness) Clamp-Down which can be deadly.

	Perfectionists also tend to react to personal compliments with distrust.
They agonize over personnel issues and tend to isolate themselves from their
troops. Others see them as cool and aloof. They re not. Underneath they are
very sensitive. Very sensitive.

	They judge others by precise standards which may or may not have anything to
do with the accomplishments of the organization. Generally, they focus on how
things are done assuming that will lead to the accomplishment of goals. It
doesn t. Leadership does. They influence others by their attention to details
and accuracy which can t be argued with except that they are generally seen
as royal pains who hire people, then criticize their actions, without any
reinforcement of good behavior. In short, they train people to stand around
and watch them work again adding to their time management dilemma.

	They also very frequently are seen running their business strictly from the
numbers. Most of the time, they are nothing but severely overpaid
bookkeepers. Interestingly, many insist on doing their own accounting without
training which, usually, ends up with inaccurate, insufficient or misleading
information. Also many end up measuring every minutia in sight, but still
don t have up-to-date financial statements.

	What can be done? Again, I have been picking on one personality type out of
fifteen which, for some reasons, appears to be prevalent in our industry.
Don t get the impression this is a horrible person with no redeeming values.
Trained, the perfectionist is of great value to the business and can be a
great business leader. They are conscientious; maintain high standards; and
are the epitome of quality control. Trained they learn that they will always


feel

 a certain way. They just are trained to know when the 

feeling

 is
running amok. They learn their internal goals of stable and predictable
accomplishments aren t always possible and stuff happens. They learn to use
less procedures and 

fail-safe

 controls and put themselves into their
organization by becoming the leader, not the scorekeeper. They are sensitized
that their overdependence on people, products and processes that have worked
in past isn t necessarily the way to do it today. They need to learn role
flexibility and interdependence among the team members.

	They learn coping techniques with their greatest fear: antagonism. They can
also improve their lot with acceptance of sincere reinforcement for who they
are; and to loosen up their restrained and cautious approaches to business.

	It s just a game. And just as the Nike slogan, 

Just Do It!

 means to get
off the bench and get into the game to the athlete, it means stop managing
and start leading for the Perfectionist. I know. I ve been there. Done that.
*****
	Real Success Stories: I want to share some real results attained by one of
our performance groups which met last month. At least six of the Pittsburgh
Eight have a significant amount of the qualities discussed above.

	Sales: One up 20% in 1996; another has a 3 year average increase of 25%; and
another 21% for 3 years. Another has had an unbelievable 70% 3 year increase
from $400 thousand in  93 to about $1.3 million this year. Three others have
very respectable 7%, 9% and 10% increases for 1996.

	Income: Yes, they are making money, thank you very much. Our sales champ is
headed for 20% income before owner s comp or $200,000 plus. Some of the
others include: one at 25% on $600.000 or $150,000; another 17% on $700,000+
or about $119,000; another 18% on $600,000 or $108,000; another is making
$100,000 or 10% which is a drop from the $200,000 range last year because of
overhead resulting from an additional shop s start up.

	Three others had slightly different results. One had a 3% increase in sales
but has shed expenses significantly to go from a negative cash flow to
positive which allows them to safely maintain their $100,000 a year draw from
the shop. 

	Another is through the really hard part.  They dropped from $700,000+ in
sales and making little money ($30-$40,000 a year) to $400,000 and still
making the same insignificant money. But, along the way, $300,000 of yogurt
printing was dumped (eat a lot of it, but nothing sticks), systems have been
streamlined (stopped doing paperwork which didn t matter), got out of the
trinket business (rubber stamps and stuff taking huge amounts of time with no
profit), the owner is now in control (one gut wrenching personnel


transition

 of the printer s right hand person who isolated and insulated
the owner from everyone and everything else), the remaining crew is charged
and the owner is doing significant work instead of spending ivory tower time.
I predict they will now kick butt in what we call the blossoming stage. 

	And one shop is in the awakening stage. Still, they have a 7% 1996 sales
increase, but are not making significant money, yet. They are awakening and
implementing their program.

	Financial Strength: Over a one to two year period, all have current ratio
improvements (current assets divided by current liabilities). In fact, the
average current ratio went from 1.5 to 2.1 within twelve to eighteen months.
Additionally, all current ratios went up. None went down. Some had
spectacular performance: 0.7 up to 1.1 and 1.6 to 2.9. One even went from 0.6
in 1994 to 1.3 in 1995 to 2.7 today. Some stayed strong such as the 3.3 to
3.3. That s performance.

	Well, there they are. Eight companies. I claim no responsibility for the
performance. Those accomplishments belong to the printers who did them. We
have had the privilege of working with these printers and helping them apply
the proven principles and techniques which pay off. As for everyone else. .
.truthfully, I just hope you don t have to compete with any of these guys and
gals.

       For a confidential discussion on your shop and whether participation
in anyone of our programs would be appropriate for you, please call or fax me
with your name, address and telephone. We will be glad to chat.
*****
1997 Estimating Guide Renewal Season Underway: We  run a renewal campaign
every year from September through November for our estimating guide
subscribers and then ship the books prior to January 1st. That way, we re not
having to bug you all year for renewals. As always, we ship in order of
receipt and shipments will begin in December. Those who purchased the
Estimating Guide for the first time in 1996 are allowed to upgrade to the
1997 Guide at a pro-rated rate. For further information, call our office at
(304) 342-5100 or message crouser@aol.com.
*****
Travelogue: Pamela and I will  be on-site in Ohio, Minnesota, Kentucky,
Pennsylvania, Florida, Georgia and New Jersey during the next few weeks. And,
if you have an internet address, but are not receiving the Crouser Report
OnLine each week, send me a message to TomCrouser@aol.com and say


subscribe.

 It s free and it s fun. See you soon.
								Happy Trails, Tom Crouser

P.S. 	

Top Performers In Any Field Are Developed, Not Born

. Zig Ziglar 

Some
Businesses Are Famous For Their Poor Performance.

 Anonymous.
*****
If you are located within a 6 hour drive of Jacksonville, Florida and aren t
doing as well as you should, then message me with your name, address and
telephone. I am tentatively planning a special group project this winter for
six selected 

emerging

 companies in addition to our normal work load.
Companies do not have to be 

successful,

 be making money or, for that
matter, have a lot of money. An alternative fee structure is available. The
companies should, however, have $250,000 or so in sales, be in good markets,
have the ability to print and be willing to embrace changes once they are
fully explained.

Message me with your name, address and telephone. We are tentatively planning
a special project this winter for companies interested in a quick turnaround.
I ll give you a call and we can discuss it.
***** *****
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