The right tool for the right job……

Ken Renker – Director of Sales

My father ran his own plumbing and heating business for 40+ years, and was a big believer in having the right tool for the right job. Long before the days of “Home Improvement” and Tim ‘the Tool Man’ Taylor, my Dad’s shop was jammed with the latest gadgets guaranteed to be the envy of any current day Weekend Warrior. At its peak, in order to accommodate all of his ‘stuff’, he needed to add more space and so he decided to expand into the abandoned auto body repair garage next door to his shop.

I was a 12 year old kid that loved to operate equipment and machinery….the bigger and dirtier, all the better…, and to me, this new place was a combination Disneyland & Smithsonian Museum. I experimented with acetylene torches, sheet metal fabricators, soldering equipment, pipe threaders, wrenches, cutters, die machines…and on and on.

Luckily, I never got injured, started any fires, or destroyed anything. More importantly, my mother never found out. As I got older, though, I came to understand that in the hands of real craftsmen, the right tools and the knowledge to use them, make all the difference.

Our toolkit at Optimum is pretty full too. It includes:

• Internet ordering capability – a “one stop shop” for all print and supply related needs
  
  
• Management reporting – usage and trend analysis
  
  
• 25 years of financial market experience:
  best practices to remove cost from your processes
  subject matter experts to implement those solutions
  
  
• Cost allocation of expenses – budget monitoring and reporting
  
  
• Print on demand capabilities to eliminate inventory and reduce obsolescence
  
  
• Warehouse / distribution support
  
  
• Graphic design support / on line proofing

In short, we have the right tools to help you operate more efficiently and reduce expenses.
We can make it easier for your people to do their job…and give them more time to focus on their customers. We’ll provide the reporting and budget controls needed to improve your bank’s efficiency ratio. And we’ll train everyone, so they know how to use the tools to get you the biggest bang for the buck.

The question is do you have the right tool for the right job …..and do you have the know-how to use them?

Let us know. We can help.

Personal Accountability

Personal accountability is one of the core values at Optimum Companies. That is why our team leaders are all required to read "QBQ" and "Flipping the Switch", books written by author John G. Miller.

QBQ stands for "Question Behind the Question" and is built on the observation that our first reactions are often negative, bringing to mind Incorrect Questions (IQs). But if in each moment of decision we can instead discipline our thoughts to look behind those initial questions and ask better ones (QBQs), the questions themselves will lead us to better results.

Here are some examples of IQ or "incorrect questions" - how often have you heard these before?

“When is that department going to do its job?”
“Why don’t they communicate better?”
“Who dropped the ball?”
“Why do we have to go through all this change?”
“When is someone going to train me?”

These questions put the blame on someone else and are not constructive. QBQ questions are centered around taking personal accountability. Here are a few examples of QBQ questions:

“What can I do to contribute?”
“How can I help solve the problem?”
"How can I communicate better?"

Miller’s book is a quick read that is full of practical methods for putting personal accountability into daily actions. You can tell this difference when you are working with someone from both branches of Optimum Companies, Optimum System Products and Optimum Print Solutions.