Conscious Asset Management

Blame

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 16:38:34 -0700

Toastmasters International is a wonderful organzation for expanding your horizons. In addition to a great deal of spiritual exploration that I do I learn a great deal from my friends in Toastmasters. Here is a copy of a speech given by one of our newest members. He's a former convicted criminal who has completely turned his life around. It touched me and I'm sure it will touch you:

"I was flipping through the channels a few weeks ago and I caught a quote, posted on the screen. It was from a viewer of the local news. This viewer had wrote in their opinion in response to a previous story. The story was on the most recent violence and shootings in Toronto. They wrote in saying �if our justice system and courts were not so lenient on our youth, then we wouldn't be having all these problems. We need tougher penalties and longer sentences to handle these people.� This statement took me back. Wow! our society is so naive. Look at where we place the blame. It is not the justice systems responsibility to fix these people. It is our responsibility as citizens, as people, as fellow human beings who walk this world together; to fix this issue. This person felt we needed to rule with the iron fist. Anyone who doesn't follow our rules or fit into our society must be locked up. Put them in jail and throw away the key.

We cannot fight hate with hate. For it was hate that created these criminals in the first place. In the absence of love, hate will prevail. Love is our goal. Love is our ambition. It is when we feel that this is being taken away from us, that is when we react and fight to get it back At any cost. We all crave this love, we all strive for this attention and warmth. Those �criminals�, they want the same things you and I do. They want to feel welcomed. They want to feel apart of something. They want the admiration and respect of their fellow man. Do we honestly believe that the gangs were the first place these people looked for acceptance? The gangs were just the place that someone finally welcomed them with open arms. As people they are no different from you or I. The only difference is society has put them on the outside and as outsiders all they have is the gun to enforce their rules. And each member of that family is more than happy to pick up a weapon to preserve their way of life. For it is that life that has finally given them the feelings they were looking for. The same feelings we all struggle for and long for within us. To me the gun symbolizes how hard these people are willing to fight to hold onto that feeling.

I want to take you on a journey. I want to take you back to kindergarten. Visualize a classroom full of young, spunky three and four year olds. How many of them have a gun? How many do you see living the �thug� life? How many, when asked say �when I grow up I want to be a criminal�? Not one person is born with the desire to hate, the wanting to destroy or the willingness to kill. But then our youth does grow up some do become criminals and some do kill. Why is that? If we are a society and the criminals are outsiders, how did they get there? The kindergarten kids are all insiders but when they grow to adolescents some become outsiders. What happened? At one point or another they get pushed away. We make them feel unwelcome and unwanted. We as adults modeled this behavior everyday as we interact with others and our kids, well they follow us perfectly. As a result we give these people only one final option. We turn them to the last family out there, the family of outsiders, in search of acceptance.

Do you believe that if you grew up under similar circumstances you would be any different from these people. From the way our society treats each other can you expect there to be any difference in the result. When we interact with the people around us we either leave them feeling good about themselves or we leave them feeling terrible about us. We either build love within each other or we foster hate and resentment. With every interaction we have a choice, we can either share a smile and say hi or we can ignore and continue to push away. You want a world filled with respect � show it. You want a world filled of love � give it. All of our issues on the outside stem from our personal issues on the inside. Pick up a book, read it. Learn its teachings. Educate yourself to become a better you so our children can have a better model.

It seems so convenient and easy, just like the lady on the news to blame others for the problems To say its their fault that life is this way. I'm here to tell you this. Take a look at your hand when you point the finger at someone. For every time you point the finger - there are three pointing right back at you. Thank you." by: Paul R.

Health care and maintenance

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:06:58 -0700

The world of asset management is moving well ahead of the medical profession when it comes to taking care of those physical assets we are entrusted with. We have the knowledge of proactive - preventive, predictive and detective methods in addition to all the diagnostic tools we have. We aren't using them all yet, but many of us are headed that way. Sadly it can't be said that our medical profession and health care systems are going there just yet.

In Canada we enjoy a high standard of living and by many measures we are a healthy nation. But we only look so good because we are comparing ourselves to a sorry lot. Health care in the USA is a shambles. Yes, the technology is there (as it is here), but it isn't accessible to all Americans - unless of course they are wealthy. You get it if you are wealthy enough to afford it. No discrimination. Here in Canada we limit access because we can't afford to make it any more accessible, so we all get treated in sequence regardless of need. No discrimination there either.

But these health care systems have it wrong. They are focused on fixing. Our systems wait until we (as individuals) run to some form of failure and then we rush to fix it. They are sick care systems. Calling that "health care" is no more valid than calling a maintenance department that does nothing but breakdown repairs an "asset care" system.

In Canada we have a bill before our parliament that would severely limit our free choice for more holistic approaches to taking care of ourselves. It's called Bill C-51. I don't expect anyone outside of Canada to care about our laws, but the direction they are headed in is of interest. This bill demonstrates a further erosion of our ability to make healthy choices for ourselves. It imposes greater government controls where they are simply not needed and worse - the sort of controls proposed are those that have proven to be entirely ineffective where they are being used already. I wrote a letter to our Minister of Health, our Prime Minister and my member of parliament. The form letters I received in response reveal that they haven't even read beyond seeing the word "C-51". They responded to concerns I haven't even raised. They are attempting to force this on Canadians. Similar laws have already been enacted in Europe with effects that are clearly beneficial to the pharmaceutical industry's pockets but not to the health of their citizens. I've posted my letter here so that you can read it too.

If you are Canadian and you haven't already taken steps to defeat this bill, then I encourage you to do so. If you are not a Canadian you might want to dig around and find out what similar legislation might be in the works for your country. If you are truly asset managers, then take charge. Don't let others do it for you.

Dress for success

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:03:54 -0700

There's some old advice to people seeking jobs and trying to move up the corporate ladder - dress for success. The dress reflects the person. Look successful, people will see you that way and they'll give you the chance you need to be successful. People like to go with a winner so they support those who appear successful.

Of course in our field of maintenance and asset management we don't really dress to impress. Flame retardant clothing with steel toed boots doesn't exactly look "cool". But have you ever noticed that the ones who have success in achieving their goals are the ones who appear to be successful (and I don't mean by the way they dress). They know, deep inside, that they are doing the right thing. They know that they are on the right path. They know that it just makes sense and everyone around them should just jump onboard the bandwagon with them. They get things done.

That inner knowing is reflected outwardly. We see it. We feel it in their presence, their energy, the way they come across. They speak to a deeper part of us than others, so we pay attention and generally we go along with their ideas.

Their "dress" is a state of being, a state of mind. It's that presence, that certainty they have, that knowing that we just can't seem to say "no" to.

I've got a friend who wants to attend a "self development" retreat on "Abundance". She can't seem to get the money together to pay the up front costs. Her energy is low. She is disappointed that she can't get the money together. She has a negative air about her. And she's never quite believed she could do it. The result - she doesn't. Yet other friends are going who are of similar means. Their attitude and approach was more positive. They believed in themselves and they've chosen to make it happen. Their positive energy returned to them in the form of enough money for what they wanted.

If you want something to happen and you just can't seem to make it gel, I urge you to look inside. Are you like my friend who can't get the money together - feeling down, not good enough, insufficient? Or are you like the others who just know they can. Looking inside will help you dress for success.

Health Care is Maintenance

Fri, 09 May 2008 07:08:43 -0700

Care of your health is a form of maintenance. You are sustaining an existing state of health. Maintenance is all about sustaining an existing state: in the case of your body, your mind, your spirit and emotions, the ability of those aspects of yourself to provide you with a meaningful, happy existence. If you are changing the state of health you are either improving it, or worsening it. Some choices we make can worsen our health - using harmful substances, driving carelessly, engaging in risky sex, overeating, smoking, etc. Some choices we make can improve our health - exercise regularly, eat organic (uncontaminated) foods, supplement our diets, take vitamins, engage in safe sex, drive carefully, don't smoke, etc. These are all choices we make at a personal level.

Maintenance of our physical assets is like that too. We choose at a personal and organizational level to either improve or worsen our physical assets' state of health. We can choose to execute work orders as intended, or not. We can choose to do predictive and preventive maintenance, or not. We can choose to test dormant and safety systems, or not. Some choices are healthy and some of not.

Organizations that react to failures rather than prevent them suffer more serious consequences of those failures. We all know that unplanned, unscheduled repair work is far more expensive than planned and scheduled preventive work. Our business suffers if we make unhealthy choices.

The state of our businesses and the choices we make are reflective of the choices we make personally. If we choose dis-ease on a personal level we are likely to choose dis-ease at our work. Look around you. Are your co-workers healthy choosers or unhealthy choosers? Then look at the state of the physical assets you maintain and rely upon for your livelihood. Are they "healthy" or "unhealthy"? You'll see what I mean.

Canada is reflecting the dis-ease and unhealthy choices of its people. Our parliament is sick, our political representatives do not represent us, they represent special interest groups, lobby's and industrial concerns that do not have the best interests of all Canadians at heart. Evidence of this is seen in Bill C-51 - an act to regulate non-pharmceutical health care products. We're talking about things like garlic, echinacea, vitamins, dietary supplements, natural products that help us MAINTAIN our health. It includes provisions that limit Canadians' rights as free citizens. It moves Canada towards dis-ease and mediocrity. If you are a Canadian reading this I strongly urge you to learn about C-51 and take action against it. Act quickly - it's being rushed through parliament right now and it is deeply flawed. It is unnecessary legislation. A harmful choice for our personal health and our collective health as a country.

You are asset management specialists if you are reading this blog. I'm sure you understand what I'm talking about here. Please educate yourself on this one thing and speak up for doing the "right thing" for yourself.

Here's a link to my personal blog to learn more: http://aworldwithoutenemies.blogspot.com/

If you choose to act please write (soon) to your local MP, our Minister of Health (Tony Clement) and our Prime Minister (Stephen Harper). Their mailing address is: name, House of Commons, Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6. No postage is required for letters to parliament in Canada.

When facilitation bogs you down

Wed, 07 May 2008 10:00:45 -0700

If you know me (James Reyes-Picknell) and the services I provide you'll know that I'm a major proponent of using facilitated approaches. A major hurdle to managing any change, any improvement or any project is getting the buy-in of your people. After all it's they who make it happen for you. If they don't believe in it, then it won't happen quite as you'd like.

General George Patton (US Army, WWII) was quoted as saying, "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity". He recognized that by unleashing people's creative talents you are likely to get the best results.

Facilitators help you do this. An unbiased facilitator helps your people arrive at their own decisions so that they will "own" those decisions. When you use a facilitated approach, you maximize the chances of achieving a high level of employee "buy in". When the ideas come from a group, that group is far more likely to work towards successful implementation than a group that's had ideas imposed on it.

This works well for decision making and analytical processes where "buy in" to the decision is important. But what about other activities like planning, scheduling, writing instructions, technical documentation and analyzing results? These are activities that effectively implement decisions. They are implementation as opposed to decision making steps. Indeed, teams may be useful for some of these activities, but do they need to be facilitated? I suggest that even if teams are used they can pretty much be left to their own devices. They'll muddle through successfully provided they are not a "dysfunctional team". In that case it's not facilitation, it's team training and team formation activities that are needed.

These activities are often left to individuals. Those individuals are generally subject matter experts and quite capable of doing their thing on their own. They produce a "draft" or a "strawman" output and that is then reviewed by other "team" members or other interested parties. The comments that arise from those reviews are considered and then incorporated into the work for final "publication".

Let's take weekly scheduling as an example. A scheduler (who is often a planner) prepares a draft work schedule for the following week. He/ she bases the scheduling on priority (how urgent is the work?) and criticality (how important is the asset to our operations?) selecting the highest priority work to be done first and breaking any ties created due to resource constraints by using criticality. The draft schedule is circulated to supervisors, superintendents, etc. - anyone with a legitimate say about what work gets done and when. If they have no comments, then the schedule stands and is implemented the following week. If they have inputs they bring them up at the weekly scheduling meeting, the schedule adjustments are agreed upon and the revised schedule is published for the following week. In this case the scheduler is acting as a team facilitator. There is no need for an independent, unbiased facilitator.

We can see how some processes, primarily those requiring decisions about "the way ahead", require group decisions and consensus. Those are led by unbiased facilitators for the best results. Other activities are really more an implementation of those decisions and require only subject matter expert input buffered with a review and revision process.

A world without enemies

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 12:09:04 -0700

Those of you who know me personally know that I'm into self-development and expanding my own conscious awareness of choices I make. I'm sharing some of that here but there's more to it that goes well beyond the field of Physical Asset Management. Check out my new blog here: A world without enemies.

You'll gain some insight into our Conscious Method^TM.You'll also see what makes me tick and by extension some of what makes you tick. The new blog is sparse at the moment but it will grow. I encourage you to follow it. It can help in life, in business and in every aspect of life as a human. Open your mind, accept what's being shared and enjoy.

Aging Infrastructure

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:35:29 -0700

In Sep 2006 a highway overpass collapsed in Montreal. Five died, six were injured. It had been designed in 1969. In 1992 and in 2004 it's deterioration was noted, but nothing was done. In the province of Quebec alone, some 12,000 bridges need major repair.

In Aug 2007 a highway bridge collapsed in Minneapolis. Dozens of cars and their occupants were plunged into the river below. 13 died, many were injured. The bridge was under repairs due to deterioration noted earlier. Clearly something went wrong. Design, the re-routing of traffic causing an overload on the parts that were in operation and other ideas have been cited. And this isn't the only bridge like that in the US.

The entire continent developed at a fever pitch in the last half of the 20th century. We built our infrastructure in a hurry as our nations grew and prospered. But we have failed to maintain them. The costs to restore what's already built are staggering. The time required to do so is long. We are in a mess! How many more bridges will collapse, lives lost, etc. will happen before we act decisively. What's missing? Political will.

Infrastructure is big, its expensive and it takes a long time to build or repair. The money comes from taxes - we don't like paying those. We award construction work to the lowest bidder. Some of those bidders get into trouble financially and cut corners to save money. People die later. Much later - but the cause doesn't change. Maintenance practises for infrastructure are sadly lacking - again its very expensive to do it well. Just drive around in virtually any city in North America and note how rough the ride is. The further north you go, the more winter and freeze / thaw cycles have their impact and the worse the roads are. The more rusted the re-bar is inside the concrete.

Who's fault is all this? Ours. We are all contributing to it. We are all choosing, in our own ways, to encourage poor maintenance of our existing infrastructure, award of contracts on the sole basis of price, to encourage corner cutting and to pay for it with human life. It may not be our life, it's usually someone else, but it could be ours too - someday.

Political will is sadly lacking for anything that takes time. Long term activities don't win you votes. Our politicians are so self-serving and we all know it. We rank them right down there with lawyers when it comes to people we trust. And sadly those politicians reflect those who elect them and our preferences. We get what we have asked for. And we continue to do so. Until we accept political leaders with vision and actually vote for them, we will not change this situation. All of our technology and knowledge won't work without the political will to use it effectively. So far that will is lacking and we are suffering with the results. North America is beginning to lag behind parts of what we once considered the "developing world". Our infrastructure is but one aspect of that lag that is beginning to show. How far will we slip before we see what we are doing to ourselves and choose to change it? Are we like the alcoholic that must hit rock bottom before seeing the need to change? Or are we smart enough to pay attention to those "canaries in the coal mine" and get our act together before too much goes wrong?

What will that political will look like? Long term thinking. Willingness to act for future generations, not just for today's voters. Willingness to cooperate among political entities and levels. Our infrastructure falls under a variety of jurisdictional levels. Doing the unpopular. Spending and finding money through taxes and other more creative and less regressive means. Making users pay instead of appearing to be fair. Doing what's right, not what looks right. Being smart and honest, not politically correct and naive. These are just a few ideas. What about vision? Political leaders tend to have very short sighted vision. It lasts as long as their next term in office - if that. Near the end of their careers they get smarter and decide to leave a legacy - they want their names remembered and then they start to do a few smart things. But no sooner in most cases. It's sad but we really do lack the political leaders to help keep our world leading prosperity where it is. We'll pay sooner or later - sooner for some of us, later for others, but we'll all pay.

Your internal talent pool

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:15:44 -0700

Companies are missing the boat. They are full of talent people who do not operate at their full potential. Why? Often, very talented people are stifled by the very part of the organization within which they work - their department (silo). Those silos operate to perform specific, usually well defined functions. People within them learn how to do that one function, or a part of it, and they get very good at it. They gain years of experience doing the same thing over and over. They don't grow. Their minds go numb from the sameness of it all. Creativity isn't called for nor is it nurtured. It dies. Ambition dies and progress stagnates. The entire organization goes stale doing what it does best. Without change - creative ideas, innovation and development, the organization stops thriving. It loses out to its competitors, wanes and dies.

Lack of management collaboration within organizational silos stifles the overall company. Departments compete rather than co-operate. Unrealistically short time constraints on most initiatives serve to push managers to rush decisions and action rather than seeking co-operation and collaboration. The results of sub-optimal. The lack of cross-pollination of experience and knowledge this fosters becomes a barrier to management development and growth. Potentially good leaders are constrained from really learning about the entire organization so they don't get the opportunity to grow. Worse still, their bosses recognize how good they are and keep them hidden in their own departments.

Truly good managers often stay put. Rotating through other departments rounds them out. It's a valuable leadership development practise that is often overlooked. Once in maintenance, your stuck there. Just imagine how much good a production manager who understood reliability and maintenance might be! One fear is that highly developed and versatile talent might move on to another company or worse, to a competitor. This only happens when they are unhappy where they are and the other company looks more attractive. There is no need to fear this if you nurture them, keep them happy in your own organization and help them see the opportunities that abound for them by staying put. The money invested in them up to the point where they become attractive to other companies is wasted if you fail to continue to invest. Don't let short sighted cost savings lose people for you. These days true talent is getting hard to find. It's all the worse if you can't hang onto it.

The shortage of talent in the workforce is making it difficult to recruit and hire new people. Skilled trades, experienced engineering talent, experienced and talented managers, etc. are all in short supply. As the baby-boomers retire the work force and the available talent pool outside the workforce is shrinking. The younger generations are simply smaller so competition for the few that are there is intense. The best source of talent we have available is right under our noses - inside our own companies. Keep them interested and engaged. Encourage them to take risks. To apply their knowledge and skills to new challenges. Provide them with opportunities to build and apply their skills, to develop and grow - and they will stay.

I meet a lot of younger and very talented technical people in my work. Many of them ask me about opportunities elsewhere and ask for coaching on what will help them advance their careers. Many of them confide in me just how discouraged they are. How they feel "held back". How their managers don't appreciate them, do nothing to help them develop, keep them stagnant. The future leaders of our companies don't want what we boomers wanted. We cannot motivate them the same way. That's why there's so much trouble hanging onto them. Our younger workforce is not dis-loyal, dis-interested, de-motivated; they don't have a "bad" work ethic. They are simply different. We, the current leaders, must understand this or we won't change. If we don't change, the current problems we are faced with will remain - and they'll get worse.

Employee turnover is on the rise in many companies. Ask yourself, "why"? What is your role in that? Are you part of the solution or part of the problem?

Why not change and grow?

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:52:14 -0700

Many companies are faced with a challenge - great ideas that go nowhere. Eventually the ideas dry up because everyone knows they'll go nowhere - so why bother?

There are several categories of reasons that lead to this. They all boil down to one - the organization isn't fully choosing the change. Here are the categories:

Corporate Beliefs: These can be significant roadblocks. For example, a ridiculously high financial payback "hurdle rate" can kill just about anything. A belief that ideas from within the organization must be the result of someones agenda so they'll be ignored. A deep distrust of a trade union can prevent well intentioned initiatives from the shop floor from going any further. Finally, a deeply held belief that we can't do it without a lot of (expensive) outside help will stop you from even starting.

Business Planning Practises: Budgeting is often done year to year. If something wasn't thought of the year before, it isn't budgeted and won't be funded. Even if the idea can pay for itself, there's no budget to invest! That's absurd and we can all see it, yet we often work in organizations that don't. The annual window is very limiting. Great opportunities that arise that may not last through to the next budget season can die before they are born. This arises from short term thinking. It works for short term projects that fit the windows, but nothing longer. It can't even capture multi-year initiatives.

Approaches to Managing Costs: If your expenses go over budget for a new initiative it attracts excessive scrutiny. This constrains people from doing what's right in the interests of doing what was budgeted.

Management and Leadership: If compensation or bonus is linked to short term results - as it almost always is, then the longer range slower payback ideas will suffer, even if they'll lead to significant long term and sustainable results. We favour the short term over the long term. Another limiting factor is the short "life span" of many managers and executives in their current roles. These folks are constantly moving around within the company and even among companies. They stay long enough to make substantial change but not to see it through. The next person in the seat then makes other changes. Nothing sticks and nothing is sustained.

Financial Constraints: Rigid adherence to financial reporting metrics such as ROI, EPS, ROA, EBITDA, etc., can limit investment opportunities. Improvement initiatives from within will have a cost. They almost always require some sort of cultural change and that takes long. Managing to meet market driven objectives is a no-win method. You simply won't drive something as slow as cultural change (getting a lot of people to behave differently) with a short term measure that keeps only shareholders and investment analysts happy. They are not the ones undergoing the change - and your people know it. The measures must be meaningful to them personally, simple to understand and realistic.

Culture: Some organizations are simply too big to budge. Large ships don't turn quickly and neither to large complex organizations. Not only are the formal processes complex and difficult to change, the people are used to behaving in certain ways that often reflect executive and management preferences. Some organizations are incredibly risk averse - they do nothing without analyzing it to death. Some are prone to jump on the bandwagon of every improvement initiative, but never finish any of them. Management is there to keep things stable. Change rocks the boat. Managers who are tasked with keeping things stable have no incentive to change.

Getting over these hurdles requires a change of approach.

Task senior leadership with the change - they must "own" it and truly support it, not just act as "figure heads".
Re-evaluate measures that drive short term results - they may be working against you. Look for long term metrics that are supportive of long term improvement ideas.
Open up to all ideas no matter where they arise - stop assuming that everyone has their own selfish agenda. Union members are employees too - they do care about your business' success.
Slow down senior management and executive turnover. Recognize that some of this is due to dissatisfaction in companies where they can't make significant change, so they move on. If they start something they must see it through to completion and to the generation of results for more than a quarter!
Move people around internally so that the reasons for various cultural barriers from within are understood by many. The new perspective brought by people from elsewhere in the organization can help shed light on these barriers and eliminate them.
Make financial measures and performance for change initiatives unique to the initiative. Don't judge long range improvements with short term measures. Protect your longer term sustainability goals from short term-ism.

Go Green

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 13:32:42 -0700

We are located in a country that is very sadly dragging its heals on environmental stewardship. Canada may have a squeaky clean image but the reality is different. Like our American neighbors to the south we are energy hogs. To make matters worse, we have even reneged on our Kyoto commitments - probably a political act to appease a sitting lame-duck US president with extensive interests in the oil and gas industry. In truth, there's not much in place in Canada to encourage companies to "green-up" their acts, but we've decided to take action on our own. Governments, ours included, tend to follow rather than lead - if we had truly visionary leaders our planet would be far greener and friendlier. Perhaps others will follow our lead (and no, we have no political ambitions).

Our operations are small, an office that consumes energy, but we use a significant amount of transportation. After all, we often travel to visit our clients and to participate in conferences all over the world. The present state of technology doesn't enable us to do this without consuming energy, much of it in the form of fossil fuels as we drive and fly. We can however ensure that the contribution of carbon to the environment that we generate is offset by carbon consuming activities. Through the services of Zerofootprint.net we are taking action to compensate the planet for our economic activities.

We are committed to doing our part to clean up our act - so we've begun purchasing carbon offsets calculated on the basis of our energy consumption. Our office and local travel energy consumption is already offset. Current client engagements where we haven't included provision for carbon offsets are being offset at our own cost. Offsets for all of our future client travel will be purchased on an engagement by engagement basis. Our client contract terms and conditions reflect this so that at least our participation in their operations leaves a net zero carbon footprint on the planet. We are hoping that this small step will at least make a few more people and possibly their companies more aware of steps that can be taken.

The payment of offsets is a sort of "environmental tax" that we are willingly paying. Interestingly, although we were fairly "green-minded" to begin with, we are realizing that by changing some of our office heating, air conditioning, lighting and transportation choices we can reduce our footprint even more and that will reduce what we pay in offsets. Yes, just like any tax, we want to minimize it!

Here are examples of the choices we are making to reduce our carbon footprint:

Use more fuel efficient rented vehicles for our local and client travel purposes,
When our present vehicle fleet is replaced it will be replaced with hybrid (or better technology),
Switch our lighting to low energy forms (fluorescent and LED lighting),
Turn our computers off when not in use,
Use both sides of printer paper through reusing it for internal documents,
Recycle all waste products that can be recycled,
Reduce our use of papers and inks by utilizing electronic documents and printing only those documents that cannot be handled on screen,
Switched to on-line faxing to eliminate paper use for faxes,
Compost organic wastes (coffee grounds and filters, tea bags, food left-overs, plant clippings),
Minimize client related travel by doing more of our client activities from our own offices instead of travelling,
Develop training products that allow us to deliver our training services electronically to eliminate the travel associated with "in-person" training work (wherever it can be done without compromizing the training results),
Utilize electronic contracts, reporting and invoicing to eliminate paper use and fuels consumed in mail and courier delivery,
Keep our office thermostats turned down and wearing warmer clothing to keep comfortable in winter,
Reduce our air condition use by turning the thermostat up and wearing lighter clothing to keep comfortable in summer.

What can you do? If you have suggestions please share them by responding to our blog.