It's been a rough day or so, hence the short post. Yesterday I got the 5am call all of us dread: one of my manufacturing team members had lost her life in a car accident on the way into work. She worked in one of the most technology-intensive parts of our company, and as the day progressed we learned more about her hopes, dreams, struggles, and sacrifices that made the event all the more tragic. As President I feel a special responsibility for the people in the company, and I spent the day with my leadership team helping to comfort, console, and support friends, family, and coworkers.
Even at a family-owned and people-centric company like ours, this was a reminder that companies, and all organizations for that matter, are comprised of people. On this blog we talk a lot about how most companies think of employees as just a set of hands. An unfortunately much smaller group recognize that there's value in the brain connected to those hands. We need to go another step and remember that there's a full person behind the brain, a person that goes home to a family and friends and has dreams, struggles, responsibilities, and aspirations.
Let's not forget.