NEVER A DULL MOMENT
Still catching up here, but this post brings us right to the present!
August was all about stock market decline and Hurricane Irene. The first affected us deeply; the second did not (except that we sympathized with all our troubled pals in Vermont).
The August stock market decline reminded us once again, that the footing sure is slippery on this hill we’re climbing.
We had completed, during that month, thanks to the fine efforts of Ryan and Matt, three very successful schematic designs for major projects. All three clients loved the plans.
Two of them didn’t like what was happening in the stock market, however. Projects postponed.
The third was uncertain about moving forward for a variety of reasons. Project postponed.
We got walloped, folks, all in one week!
So, although we had plenty of immediate work for all, I was a little worried about our year ahead.
It was hard to be very worried, however, because this perfect storm of postponements and hold-ups coincided with two other things:
- A veritable explosion of interest and new contracts in Energy, partly precipitated by a new leasing system from SunPower (more about that later); and
- Although the postponements made our schedule of actual 2011-2012 ready-to-go projects lighter than I would have liked, I am unable to recall a time in the recent past when we had more active inquiries than right now.
So September and October have been about building it right back up again. Things are looking entirely different than they were during the August swoon.
One of the most exciting things to happen for us in awhile is the SunPower lease program, which allows us to offer solar electric systems in three ways: all up-front purchase (the usual), partial up-front lease, and no money down lease. This puts photovoltaics favorably within the reach of everyone, whether they have savings to spend or not. For anyone with a home, a south-facing roof (or un-shaded grounds), a meter, and an income, solar is ready-to-go! This already looks like it will be very big at the residential scale, and a big backlog is beginning to accumulate.
At the same time, we are working on several commercial-scale solar projects, with others incubating.
The moral of the whole story is this: we will keep running down every opportunity and keep doing everything possible to grease the skids. We will keep adjusting, stay flexible, and become more and more resilient. We will continue to refine our internal processes for getting work done more efficiently and effectively and we will continue to refine and diversify our marketing.
Twenty-eight remarkable people doing different things, doing them together, doing them well. We plan to keep it that way – through constant exploration, open minds, continuous improvement, supporting each other, and making the constant case to the region we serve that we’re the ones that oughta be serving it up!!
We can’t do much about the stock market, or hurricanes, or other forces too numerous to mention, but we sure can hunker down and do everything we can to change with the times and serve our mission too. Hope is not a strategy, so each time we come to a wall too tall to climb, we throw our best hat over to the other side – - so we’re motivated to follow.
Meanwhile we have been doing several kinds of long-range planning, which, given the uncertainties of the times, seems almost like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? I’ll tell about this in the next post and you can judge for yourself. Onward we go. . . .
CRAFTING A BUSINESS OWNED BY ITS WORKERS
During the past year I have been in correspondence and conversation with a number of people who are transitioning their companies to employee ownership, starting worker co-ops, or thinking in new ways about worker ownership and cooperative business.
Among them: Rick Dubrow and Cindy Landreth at A-1 Builders in Bellingham, WA, who are working on an employee buyout of the business they bought in 1976 from the original owner who started it in 1955; Jamie Odegaard who, with four friends, is starting a worker owned building company in Western Massachusetts; James Kosacz, the president of Autoworks in Kittery, ME, who is considering selling to his employees; Mark Skimson, in Terrace, BC, who is leading an effort to make a co-op purchase of a small ski area called Shames Mountain (following the path blazed by Mad River Glen in Vermont); Jeffrey Hollender and Gregor Barnum, formerly of Seventh Generation in Vermont (Jeffrey was the founder of 7th Gen) who are developing a major new – and very exciting – co-operative enterprise.
And the list goes on. Read more
EXITS & OPPORTUNITIES
BO BURLINGHAM IS AN INC. MAGAZINE editor-at-large who has been writing about entrepreneurship for three decades. I know him; we have crossed paths several times. But I know him much better from his writing, which includes a fine book called SMALL GIANTS: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big (I have to admit here, sheepishly, and maybe arrogantly at the same time, that when I read that book I wished we had been included).
The November issue of INC., has a long piece by Bo called “What Am I, If Not My Business?” which is about the challenges entrepreneurs face in leaving their companies when they retire or sell. He is in the midst of writing a book about the subject.
THE LONG HOT SUMMER
It’s been almost two months since I last posted here. It’s not that I didn’t have time, or that it flew by, or that I didn’t want to.It’s just that I wanted to say something that I wasn’t ready to say, and until I said what I wanted to say I didn’t want to say something else.
I wanted to look back at events of the early summer, but I was still “in them” and had no distance. Now we’re deep into autumn. The long hot summer is long gone. I’m far enough way. Enough distance.
SMC IN THE NEWS
I’d like to share some nice press SMC has received recently.
The first two are recent articles in local magazines about projects of ours.
DESIGN THINKING
In the autumn issue of Strategy + Business Magazine, editor Art Kleiner interviews Tim Brown, CEO of the legendary design firm IDEO. Kleiner tells about IDEO’s first great protoype, which was created when the company consisted of eight scruffy designers crowded together in an upstairs studio on University Avenue in Palo Alto. Douglas Dayton and Jim Yurchenko affixed the roller ball from a tube of Ban roll-on deodorant to the base of a plastic butter dish. Before long Apple Computer was shipping its first mouse.
Brown is a proponent of Design Thinking – every problem, in his view, is a design issue and can only be solved with Design Thinking. He says, “I want to challenge designers to transform design practice. There will always be a place for the artist, the craftsman, and the lone inventor, but the astonishing pace of change in the world demand new approaches to design: collaborative, in a way that amplifies, rather than subdues, the creative powers of individuals; focused but flexible and responsive to unexpected opportunities. . . The next generation of designers will need to begin looking at every problem – from adult literacy to global climate change – as a design problem.”
Values and Principles
A group of friends was here for a post-Labor Day vacation, enjoying the last harmonies of Vineyard summer – warm water, cool breezes, and empty roads. Devon Hartman runs a design/build company in L.A. and Jamie Wolfe is a design/builder from Connecticut. Dennis Allen runs a building company in Santa Barbara, CA. Sal Alfano is the editor of both the Journal of Light Construction and Remodeling Magazine. Each is remarkable in his own way. Each has much to teach. All agreed to do a panel discussion for an SMC company meeting.
The following questions were put to the four of them: what happened to your business (and you) between last September and this September, what lasting effects has the economic crisis had, and what’s next for you and your enterprise?
They spoke about the troubles of these times, but they also spoke – compellingly – about the possibilities, and new doors that are opening.
Moving A Mountain
Blogging is new to me. In fact, this is my first entry. The question is: why am I doing this? Why am I doing it to me and why am I doing it to you? I hope for good reason. There are two I can think of, so far.
The first is this. Over time, as South Mountain Company has matured (sort of), and in the course of my professional relationships, book adventures, speaking opportunities, and teaching experiences, I have found a small group of people who seem to be interested in what’s going on at SMC – what we are doing and thinking about. I’m curious to communicate with you, and others – in some organized way – to see what might come of this far-flung web of relationships.
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JOHN ABRAMS is co-founder and CEO
of South Mountain Company and the author
of COMPANIES WE KEEP read more
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COMPANIES WE KEEP is published by Chelsea Green Publishing
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