Michael Jackson vs. Billy Mays
By Lloyd Graff
Michael Jackson’s passing got most of the ink, but the death of TV pitchman, Billy Mays, just a few days later affected me so much more. Both men died at 50. Billy was funny without trying to be funny and could relate to consumers. Michael Jackson was a sad freak who couldn’t relate to himself or his fame. Mays had soul, Michael had hair.
Watch the following videos for more insight and a response from the Today’s Machining World team.
Michael Jackson vs. Billy Mays — Who mattered more?
Response to Michael vs. Billy Mays
Motivating Employees
Daniel Amos, the head of Aflac, the remarkably successful medical insurance firm, was interviewed in the New York Times on Sunday. His remarks on leadership and motivation are intriguing. He treats employees like voters and challenges his sales staff not with overt quotas but by telling his people he wants them to make a particular figure. For instance when he used to be a sales manager he would say to an employee, “I want you to make $60,000.” He recounts that employees couldn’t say, “No, I really don’t want to make that much.” He says they didn’t know how to argue with him when he said, “I want you to make more money.”
Link to full article: New York Times
Question: Do you think it’s advisable to treat employees as if they were voters?
Automatic Machining’s Last Issue
By Lloyd Graff
My daughter Sarah does funerals virtually every week as a Rabbi in Palo Alto, California. She has a knack for capturing the essence of the person who just died. She talks to the family, selects stories, brings in her own remembrances and embroiders the eulogy with texture and empathy. I thought about her eulogies before I started to write this piece about the death of Automatic Machining Magazine because I hope to strike a truthful and empathetic tone. Automatic Machining started almost 70 years ago under the name Screw Machine Engineering in Rochester, N.Y. Don Wood, its founder, had a background in the screw machine industry and saw an opening for a publication that catered to the people who produced precision components.
The magazine found its niche in the heyday of National Acme, New Britain, Brown & Sharpe and Davenport. Used machinery dealers, like Graff Pinkert and Co. coveted space in the back of the publication. It became the primary advertising venue for the business. Everybody read the back of the book and the Automatic Machining staff bent over backwards to accommodate a tribe of dealers and tooling guys who knew nothing about print advertising.
Don Wood was a machining guy who filled his pages with the stuff of the industry. People liked it because it was authentic and didn’t try to be more than it could be.
Simplicity and Don Wood’s personal and heartfelt columns gave Automatic Machining its voice. Its niche was small, but Wood and his advertisers defined it clearly enough to fend off larger competitors in the machining realm. Wood was a smart business person in his prime, staying under the radar of magazines like American Machinist and Modern Machine Shop while developing a following in the screw machine crowd with his folksy and sometimes whimsical approach. The competition finally found him around the year 2000 but Don continued to keep a following into his 80s. Don’s son, Wayne, worked in the business, but refrained from developing his own visible presence in Automatic Machining. The industry changed rapidly to one dominated by European and Japanese builders focusing on CNC equipment. Automatic Machining was a CAM operated magazine; a Davenport in a CNC world. When the bottom fell out of the market in recent months the magazine’s resources were depleted.
As a longtime advertiser and recent competitor, I mourn the loss of the Don Wood Automatic Machining era. I feel a sense of loss for his rugged and durable creation.
Johnny Cash’s Ode to GM
By Lloyd Graff
I often talk to machining folks who like to reminisce about the good old days when General Motors owned 50 percent market share and when people actually believed “what’s good for General Motors is good for America.”
General Motors got sloppy in every way. They made ridiculous deals with the United Auto Workers Union, spawning the infamous “job bank” and health care and retirement benefits that gave the company a monstrous sled to pull. In those good old days a lot of leaks developed. So many carbide inserts seeped out to bars near big factories to be traded for drinks, and were probably then sold back to the company. For a wry laugh click on the video below to listen to Johnny Cash’s wonderful ode to that corruption—“One Piece at a Time.”
Question: What’s your favorite GM car of all time?
A Heart to Heart with an Industry Veteran
By Lloyd Graff
Don called me yesterday to ask if I still remembered him. I said “sure, you are that fat Polack in Milwaukee with the Davenport shop.” I could say that because even though I haven’t seen Don in a decade, I always loved his good humor and sense of joy about doing business and making money.
“Remember me, I was that skinny kid who walked into your old plant in south Chicago with my Dad and bought my first two Davenports,” he said. I remembered the story even if I could never remember Don as skinny. Don bought a ton of Davenports and Acmes through the years from me, eventually selling that shop. But he couldn’t resist the clickety-clack of screw machines and started up another shop in the Beer City.
Don’s call was a sobering commentary on the times. His primary customer had dumped him for Asia and his foreman was retiring at 71. Sickness had caught up with Don. He had a quadruple bypass two years ago and is now breathing supplemental oxygen 24/7. He also battles to keep his diabetes at bay, among his other woes.
Don is a warrior and there was no “poor me” in his voice. He wanted the straight dope on what his five-year-old Davenports, three Brown & Sharpes and 18 years worth of collets, diehards and thread rollers were worth today. When I told him that an auction was probably a waste of time he took it with the stoicism of a beaten up knight.
My heart goes out to this good guy, especially to his heart, which I hope will ultimately come back, even if the Davenports never do.
Government aid allows work sharing
While job losses keep mounting in today’s brutal economy, a growing number of companies are avoiding layoffs using a program known as work sharing.
Instead of laying off employees, companies are keeping them while reducing workers’ pay, often by 20 or 40 percent. The employees generally get to hold on to benefits as well. Then, state governments step in and make up part of the lost wages, usually about half. Seventeen states have adopted the program, and economists and executives are hailing the program as a way to keep workers employed and retain skilled labor. A similar work sharing program has been credited with saving thousands of jobs in Germany.
With savings from reduced income taxes and from commuting fewer days, some workers nearly break even. Unfortunately, only a small portion of eligible businesses and workers are presently benefiting from the program because most companies still don’t know it exists.
A story in the June 15 New York Times covered a Connecticut metal working plant utilizing the program. At Tri-Star Industries, the 29 nonmanagerial employees now work three- or four- day weeks. “The alternative would have been to lay off three to seven workers,” Andrew Nowakowski, president of Tri-Star Industries said, “but that would mean that when things become busier, I’d run the risk of not having the trained people I need.” The company’s employees have bought in to the program as well, even if it means less pay. “Without this, it would have been four or five guys out the door and one of them could have been me,” said John Drzata, who runs a five-spindle precision lathe.
Right now, business is all about staying in game; fighting to see another day. A shrewd combination of sacrifice and creativity such as work sharing is the way to survive.
Source: New York Times
Question: Would you be willing to try a work sharing program in your business?
Acing a Phone Interview
By Noah Graff
For the many folks looking for new jobs these days, a phone interview is a common obstacle they face. In a recent video on the Wall Street Journal online, Clarity Media Group CEO Bill McGowan gives some simple yet shrewd advice for having a successful telephone job interview. According to McGowan some common mistakes people make include interrupting the interviewer, droning on with too much info and “up talk,” that annoying tone of voice where every sentence sounds like a question.
To increase a person’s expression of emotion and enthusiasm he recommends that the interviewee walk around the room and look in a mirror while speaking. He also prescribes yoga breathing to get rid of the nervous voice quiver one can get as a result of minor hyperventilation. Hmm, that might also be useful getting a date on the phone.
Question: Do you have a horror story about a phone interview?
Watch the following video for these tips and a few other clever pointers for a quality phone interview.
The Mineral Race
By Lloyd Graff
Over the last few years Chinese and Russian firms closely tied to their governments have bought up scarce mining and mineral resources. The Chinese have indicated that down the line they may make smaller purchases of U.S. Treasuries and spend more cultivating strategic materials. The Chinese are also developing their nuclear energy production almost as rapidly as they are building their dirty coal-fired electricity production.
A recent Atlantic Monthly piece, discusses the Chinese attempt to control the market for neodymium, the critical material needed for the industrial magnets in wind turbine engines and motors for priuses. Molycorp, bought the neodymium mine in Mountain Pass, California in 2000, which had been halted in 1998 because of environmental complications. They believe they can run a competitive operation mining the mineral despite the process being much more costly in the United States than in China due to environmental regulations. One expert in the article said if China is allowed to dominate the world’s neodymium supply “we could be trading a troubling dependence on Middle Eastern oil for a troubling dependence on Chinese neodymium.”
Source: Atlantic Monthly, “Clean Energy’s Little Secret”
Question: Is the United States in a long-term economic war with China?
Demonstration of Laser Marking System
Brian Bittner of Beamer Laser Marking Systems demonstrated one of the company’s products to Noah Graff, engraving a pen in about one second with a Today’s Machining World logo. He designed the logo using a Windows based computer on the spot.
Dealing with Pressure
By Lloyd Graff
Joey Votto is a great young hitter who plays first base for the Cincinnati Reds. Many students of baseball think he will eventually win a batting championship. He’s that good—left-handed, beautiful inside-out stroke to hit the ball to left center, and the snap to yank the ball out to right.
But it may not be this year, because Votto is sidelined indefinitely with an anxiety disorder that makes his life so miserable he has to take a time out from Major League Baseball, even though he’s killing the ball.
On the flip side, Zack Greinke of the Kansas City Royals is the favorite to win the Cy Young Award (best pitcher in the league designation). Greinke has great stuff, brilliant command and amazing moxie for a kid in his early twenties. This young pitcher looks like a faster Greg Maddux. Yet a couple of years ago Greinke had to leave the team for the 2006 season because he just could not deal with the pressure of the Big Leagues.
For many people there still is a sense of shame in looking for help with emotional pain. These are such tough economic times that more people than usual are suffering daily mental wounds on top of the emotional indigestion that most people endure every day.
My heart goes out to Joey Votto, and I share the joy of Zack Greinke. I hope the two guys will talk. It helps. I’ve been there myself.
Cincinnati Reds' Joey Votto (19) is congratulated by Edwin Encarnacion, right, and Adam Dunn, left, after Votto hit a three-run home run off Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Jeff Suppan in the second inning of a baseball game Saturday, Sept. 8, 2007, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/David Kohl)