Hello DCS Engineering and welcome to our weekly reminder where I do my best to remind us of the purpose in the work we do together. This week I’m thinking about thanksgiving. A quick internet search took me to the History Channel website. The first thanksgiving celebration was in 1621 but it wasn’t until 1863 in the middle of the Civil War that President Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving Day to be held each November. Now I know what you’re thinking. There are lots of quotes and saying attributed to Lincoln on the internet. One of my favorites, that is NOT something Lincoln ever said was “the best way to predict the future is to create it” – I liked it so much I put it on a wall once with Lincoln’s name attached. And then I learned it wasn’t something honest Abe ever said. So, I’ve learned the hard way to be cautious about what you read on the internet especially if it’s attributed to President Lincoln. So I cross checked this and ended up pretty confident that I had the history right here. Pilgrims held their second Thanksgiving celebration in 1623 to mark the end of a long drought that had threatened the year’s harvest and prompted Governor Bradford to call for a religious fast. During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress designated one or more days of thanksgiving a year, and in 1789 George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation by the national government of the United States; in it, he called upon Americans to express their gratitude for the happy conclusion to the country’s war of independence and the successful ratification of the U.S. Constitution. His successors John Adams and James Madison also designated days of thanks during their presidencies. And in 1817, New York became the first of several states to officially adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday; each celebrated it on a different day. But back to President Lincoln. This year I read Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin and after reading that, I’m amazed that during the civil war with all the personal and national tragedy surrounding him, he chose then to ask the nation to stop and give thanks. And it’s a good reminder for me – in amongst the chaos and sadness and loss that comes, to even then, maybe most of all then, live in gratitude. Lincoln’s proclamation said: “Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe.” So I hope as you look ahead to this thanksgiving holiday you will take time to give thanks and practice gratitude. Speaking of which, I’m sure thankful for each of you. For who you are, the way you work, and your contributions to DCS and our team. I hope you each have a Happy Thanksgiving!

12.Nov – Are they breathing? Hello DCS Engineering and welcome to our weekly reminder where I do my best to remind us of the purpose in the work we do together. This week I’m reflecting on the amount of work our team is tackling right now. I’m amazed at the level of competence and commitment from our team. Rising to challenges with new customers, new ways of working, and being great teammates. I’m also encouraged by the way I see our team working. Living our values and encouraging one another. Speaking of encouragement, do you remember from our offsite this spring the section of Team Work where we talked about building each other up? Brian shared a quote from Chick Fil A founder Cathy Truett: “how do you know if someone needs encouragement? If they are breathing!” so that’s my challenge for you this week. Find someone on your team who is breathing and encourage them. They need it and deserve it. After all if they work at DCS they are doing important work. The right way. And delivering the best employee and customer experience in the industry. And that’s worth encouraging! Thanks for all you do and for who you are!

Hello DCS Engineering and welcome to our weekly reminder where I do my best to remind us of the purpose in the work we do together. This week, I’m thinking about our growing team and the work we have done and the work we have in front of us in the coming year. DCS spends a TON of time, more than any place I’ve worked, on looking at sales forecasts and projecting resource needs. It’s refreshing and important and aligns to our culture of taking good care of each other. I’ve also just celebrated my 46th birthday. And I’ve been reflecting on what I have learned in the past year. I’ve learned that this focus on taking good care of each other has resulted in positive customer experiences and that has resulted in additional opportunities to grow our team and do more good work for even more customers. It’s pretty neat to see it work. One of the areas I’m most pleased with as we’ve grown our team is our commitment to our culture. Our interview teams focus on behaviors related to living our values and being great team players. It's only right that we make it very clear the behaviors we expect from our team members during the interview process. Most of you know that because most of you have been through this interview process. I’d ask you to also continue to hold each other accountable for living our values and being great team players. Now that you are here, you get to help grow not only our capacity and capability to deliver great work for our customers but also a great work experience and environment for one another. To help us prioritize delivering the best customer and employee experience in the industry. Thanks for who you are and all you do. Have a great rest of the week!

Hello DCS Engineering and welcome to our weekly reminder where I do my best to remind us of the purpose in the work we do together.

Today, I’m thinking about work. Which seems fairly obvious. Maybe less obvious, and more specifically, I’m thinking about the equation for work. In physics, W = F x d. Work is force applied through a distance. If you don’t move you don’t work. In other words, to do work, it’s more than just applying effort (Force), it’s about moving the task forward through that effort. The outcome (work accomplished) matters.

It’s also true that the way we accomplish the outcome matters. HOW we travel the distance. And that’s where our values and our mission come into play.

At the end of the day the work has to be done. We can, should, and do figure out smarter ways to do our work, but the work still has to be done. Effort applied. To move over a distance.

And the way we treat our fellow humans while we are doing that work goes a long way towards delivering the best customer and employee experience in the industry. That’s what makes DCS different – the way we do our work together.

Thanks for who you are and all you do.

Have a great rest of the week!

Hello DCS Engineering and welcome to our weekly reminder where I do my best to remind us of the purpose in the work we do together. This week, I’m thinking about our value of being easy to work with. When we say easy to work with we mean we are helpful and low hassle. It doesn't mean we don’t speak up, ask good questions, and think critically about our work. In other words, being easy to work with doesn't mean being a wallflower and just going along to get along. It does mean that we strive to be helpful and we trust intent. In my experience, often times when situations derail and people become entrenched and not easy to work with, we perceive the person, their idea or their position to be totally crazy. Instinctively, we want to write them off and judge their character (this is called fundamental attribution bias). If someone pulls out in front of me I think they’re a bad driver. If I pull out in front of someone else I’m in a hurry or just didn’t see them. But I’m a good driver. One idea that I’ve found helpful from the book Crucial Conversations. The authors talk about the opportunity to suspend judgement and instead ask ourselves, why would a reasonable, rational, decent person do this? This humanizes the person and allows me to see the situation in a more empathetic and understanding light. And we can then get back to being problem solvers who are easy to work with. Thanks for who you are and all you do. Have a great rest of the week!

Hello DCS Engineering and welcome to our weekly reminder where I do my best to remind us of the purpose in the work we do together. Today I’m reflecting on a model that Jake and I are working on together. Jake is our 11 (almost 12!) year old. And we’ve been taking up one end of our dining room table now for the better part of six weeks working on building a 1950 Chevy Pickup model together. If you’ve ever worked on one of these models you know that there’s model glue and paint and tiny parts and all sorts of challenges…especially for an 11 year old boy. So, we are taking our time and making good progress. And it’s fun to see the model come together piece by piece and start to resemble a truck. So, we celebrate when we see the engine come together and the frame and the wheels. It’s not a whole truck yet, but we are making progress and celebrating that progress. So, I was really thinking about taking the opportunity to celebrate when we see each other modeling our values well. While none of us are perfect examples of all of our values all of the time, there are lots of opportunities where we can each recognize and celebrate each other when we do model the behaviors that exemplify our values and our mission. So, that’s the challenge I have for you this week: Let’s be on the lookout for fellow team members making progress and call it out. Celebrate when someone is bold, reliable, a problem-solver, learning oriented, or easy to work with. Cause we are all like that 50 Chevy Pickup on the dining room table – a work in progress. Thanks for who you are and all you do!

Hello DCS Engineering and welcome to our weekly reminder where I do my best to remind us of the purpose in the work we do together. The engineering people leaders have been reading a book together called “how big things get done” and in it the author talks about Pixar planning. There’s plenty of good content and lessons to be appreciated and applied from how Pixar plans their movies. But that’s not what I want to talk about today. Instead, I wanted to share one of my favorite clips from Pixar’s Ratatouille. It’s by Anton Ego, the food critic in the movie, who says: “In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.” At DCS we value the new and reflect that in our core value of being learning oriented – which we say means “we are always improving. I also think there is a tie in between Anton’s reflection and our value of being a problem solver…our first response is let’s figure it out. It’s easy to be a critic. To point out the flaws in others or the work processes. It’s a trap I fall into more often than I’d care to admit. So, join me this week and recommitting ourselves to our values of being learning oriented and being problem solvers. Let’s focus on working together to get better solve problems and learn together as we deliver the best employee and customer experience in our industry! Thanks for your work and the way you do it. Have a great week!

Hello DCS Engineering and welcome to our weekly reminder where I do my best to remind us of the purpose in the work we do together. Welcome to October and the last quarter of 2024! Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t believe we are here already! For me, it’s a good reminder that there are just three months left to make 2024 all that it can be. So, that’s my challenge for each of us this week. Take a minute and reflect on the first nine months of the year. Where are you most pleased and what do you have left on your 2024 bucket list. How can each of us more fully live into our mission in these last few months of the year to deliver the best employee and customer experience in the industry? Where will you engage and deliver that experience for the other members of our team and for our customers? Before you know it, we’ll be turning the page on 2024, so let’s make the most of it while we still can. Thanks for all you’ve done this year for our team and for our customers – let’s recommit ourselves to living our values and delivering on our mission as we work together to finish the year well.