2025: The Year of Innovation and Efficiency

Whenever I turn on the news or look at my computer, everyone talks about efficiency and innovation. Even the Zodiac is chiming in. My wife sent me an article about it since I was also born under this sign. If you were born in 1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989, 2001, 2013 and 2024, you belong to the Chinese Year of the Wood Snake and will attract good energy and luck. When the Wood element gets tied to the Snake, it marks a phase of innovative thinking, adaptability and personal development.

As the new year starts, looking back and learning from the past is always recommended. Increasing your efficiency as a business or an employee is always something we should be reaching for. A good start is with all those issues and costly mistakes you made last year. I hope that you held meetings reviewing costly mistakes and solutions to keep them from accruing in the future. This is a good time to review them. If not, this should be one of your resolutions to start the practice this year.

A good example that happened to us last year was delivering heavy material to a customer 3,000 miles away. We set it up to impress the customer as a hot shot going directly from our manufacturing to their location. However, when the trailer arrived, the truck driver called us to let us know the customer’s location was on a one-lane street with cars parked on one side. They had no way to unload the truck from the street.

Luckily, the glass industry is truly a relationship business. We had a customer not far from this location who had the room and equipment to unload the truck and store the material for our customer. It worked out for everyone. Our customers know that helping the competition can be good for business. We have now spent time training the team to ask the correct questions before doing a customer a favor.

We should all review our business each year and ask our employees and customers for suggestions on becoming more efficient. Small things can save time and boost employee morale. We are moving into a new facility this year and have spent many hours reviewing and drawing up plans for setting up the new facility.

I was over at the new building talking to the set-up crew, who were already full of suggestions for changing the plans to make the space much more efficient. Most of the suggestions will be implemented. Everything looks good on paper, but Plan B will work much better once you move in often. By involving the whole team, we will be off to a much better start in the new building. By asking the team what we can do differently, innovation will lead the way.

Successful companies regularly take the time to review what went right and what went wrong and will involve the whole team in looking for innovative solutions that will attract good energy and luck your way this year.

Happy New Year. We look forward to a great 2025. Thanks.