As I’ve written about before, we have been engaged with Aileronfor over two years. Aileron has helped us put a professional management system in place, define our mission and vision, as well as helping me to assemble a very strong board of advisers (which I would recommend to any business). Anyway, my contact at Aileron, Bill Barkalow threw out an idea of having an MBA team from University of Dayton conduct a study on Oregon. So, a little explanation on this; UD has a program called the capstone program (part of the MBA program) where they put a team of MBA student together, and as their final project prior to graduation, they do a full fledged study of a selected business.

At first glance I thought “a study”, what does that mean? But the more we thought about it, the more we thought “let us define” what study we want done. In a changing bnusiness like the printing and graphics business, there is a lot of wild speculation about what the industry is changing into. I read a lot as well as see a number of printers going the MSP (Marketing Service Provider) route. I also see print companies that are going the total automation route…figure out a way to convert everything to CMYK and automate the rest (that means not much customer service, and if it does not fit into a square hole, it’s kicked out). Then of course you have the printers out there that just refuse to believe the world is changing at all, and they are just going to keep doing what they have been doing for the last 20 years. Conclusion: yes, we’ve thought a lot about our future, and although we have a pretty good idea of where we are headed, why not have the MBA Team give us their 2 cents.

So, my challenge to them was this: If you just found yourself owning this company, where would you take it to assure success in 2015? The great thing is that if we did not like the results, we were not in any way committed to following them. So we proceeded with the Capstone project over the last 4 months, and believe it on not….I was more than pleasantly surprised.

Our team consisted of 5 students, Joe, Joe, Nathan, Mark and Celine. I won’t dig to much into the finding’s right now (I’ll save that for the next 5 months worth of blogs), but I’m thinking each team member had 125+ hours into this report. They started with a whole industry overview, and like a funnel, they narrowed it down to our local region, then to how Oregon fits into this region, and then on to new trends. They studied all of our product lines (and an industry overview on each product). After that, they made some recommendations, and even had some implementation plans for some of their recommendations. Actually, I was absolutely blown away by their thoroughness, and all the research that went into this.

So, since blogs that are to long probably never get read, I will hit upon some of the specifics of their study as well as our future plans in coming blogs. After weathering the recession of 2008-2010, I’m thinking that 2015 is looking pretty good in this business.

As a side note, everyone that was present for their presentation at Aileron a couple of weeks ago (and who had seen one of these before),  said this was the best Capstone project they had ever seen done

Recently, we engaged with Aileron to develop a strategic plan for the future of Oregon. I don’t know about what business you’re in, but in the printing business I felt like we really need to know what we are in for over the next couple of years. It was a very enlightening process. First off, I have to praise Aileron, if you are not familiar with them and you are a small business anywhere near Dayton (or in Ohio for that matter), you should be. I wrote a blog on taking the Class for Presidents when this whole process started, and it’s just gotten better.

So, after Bob and myself had both taken the Class for Presidents, we got together our management team and went out for a day of Strategic Planning. It was very enlightening. We collected a lot of research on Oregon from clients, employees and mixed it together with solid information on the printing & graphics industry. At that point, we were not only able to see where we stand, but where we need to go. It was a long day, but I felt good about what we did. One thing about Aileron, is that they are adamant that any assumptions, research and plans be based in reality. That’s part of what makes it all work.

OK, so what was the outcome? After we reviewed (and modified) our mission and vision statements, we were able to set some targets for revenue, COGS (cost of goods sold), as well as what kind of technology and marketing dollars need to be spent. This was after an in-depth SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats). And after that, we were able to lay out some priorities that will make us better at what we do. That means making changes and improvements to our sales process and our production process as well as our new digital printing department. We actually all took ownership of at least 4 or 5 tasks each and put a deadline on getting them done. And we will all review this action plan at least once a week to make sure we are all on the same page. Thats what I mean about Focus, we are all so focused on getting these things done as a team, I can’t imagine them not being done sooner than later.

Secondly, the results of the SWOT analysis told us a lot about ourselves. I have seen so many businesses in this tough economy jump into other services and products as a knee jerk reaction or just because they are scared. But we were able to find out that we are very good at what we do, and the print market that we are in is probably the best segment of the entire print market to be in. So what do we do…we just keep improving our process, keep investing in technology and making our workflow of jobs through the shop better than ever. We don’t get scared, make knee jerk decisions or stray off of our path, we just stay focused on our tasks we came up with and move forward. You know the old saying, if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there. Well, we want to know where we are going.

So with the help of the folks at Aileron, I don’t think we’ll stray off of our path in difficult times and I think (actually, I know) we’ll be all the better for it when things do turn around. I’m very optimistic about a good year this year and a great year next year.

Over the last 4 years we have developed a penchant for continuous improvement, and once you decide to take that journey, you go down a lot of pretty enlightening roads, one of which was a presidents class that I just took.

I spent 2 days in the “Class for Presidents” at The Aileron Campus in Dayton, OH, and just ate up the experience. It was about envisioning what the future state of Oregon should look like, and that’s a tough one to put into words. The fact really hit me last night when my wife asked what I learned, and even though I took in so much I felt like I was going into overload, I had a hard time putting what I learned into words or specifics, I just had a vision of the future Oregon.

To begin, it really helped me to learn what Aileron was and what their mission is. That helps so you don’t think it’s another flavor of the month management system. The whole idea started out as the Iams Management training program, and over time it grew to became Aileron. Clay Mathile was concerned where would people work when GM, Delco, Mead and NRC were not the major employers in town and who would carry the payrolls. It would be the small businesses, and they would need entrepreneurial expertise to grow and be profitable enough to carry all the payrolls to keep Dayton thriving. Knowing that really helped put me in the right frame of mind. I guess that I have read so many management books and been to so many seminars that I just take it all with a grain of salt. But this was real and I was very impressed.

I learned how much is up to me. And that’s not to take anything away from all the people that work at Oregon, but it’s my job to be able to visualize that state of the future and what its going to take to get there. That’s not to tough until you figure out it all needs to be based in reality, and then you really need to think about it a little deeper.

I took a course like this 7 years ago, right after buying the shop and it’s amazing how much more of it really makes sense after 7 years in the trenches of doing the presidents job. And the facilitator of the course ran a large manufacturing company and his stories from experience wove right into the material. It was good stuff.

There was a whole lot more I learned, but instead of going into details, if you’re interested in hearing more give me a call and I’ll talk to you about my experience at Aileron. If you are the president of a company I would highly suggest that you take a look at it, especially since we are so lucky to have this resource right here in Dayton. I believe that a professional management system along with a desire for continuous improvement through out any company is one more key to sustainability.