Angela Swenson, Sr. Channel Marketing Manager – Global Distribution @ Ergotron

Working at Ergotron, we eat and breathe multi-display productivity, helping people be more productive is what we do.  Last week our marketing group did a team building activity at Feed My Starving Children.  FMSC is a great organization that hand-packs meals specially formulated for starving kids and ships them to over 60 countries. 

It got me to look at productivity in a whole new light.

As it was getting closer to time to leave I was feverishly working on my two displays to get all my to-do’s done before we left.  As the time approached, my productivity was high and I was feeling a little reluctant to leave the office early even though I knew it was for a great cause.

We arrived at FMSC to a little presentation about what they do and information on some of the children that have been helped.  One point our host George made stuck with me. We weren’t just trying to feed hungry children. We were helping starving children avoid death. A sobering distinction.

From there we donned hairnets and started working on an assembly line packing rice, soy, dried veggies and flavoring into small bags. Others in the group slapped labels on the bags that needed to be filled. Others filled boxes with sealed food bags and stacked pallets in the warehouse for destinations around the world.

Through the laughter and fun there was a serious level of enthusiasm to work fast and accurately. Waste might mean some child may go without.

After a couple hours our group, along with the other groups there, were able to pack enough food to keep 54 kids from starvation, to feed them for a whole year.

Now I don’t know about you, but that’s what I call productivity. 

I normally can get a lot done in a couple hours time…a few loads of laundry, a PowerPoint presentation, helping my kids with their homework or a good workout. Somehow, none of it seems to add up quite the same. 

All these are equally important, in many ways. But what a difference having a sense of mission about something brings to an afternoon of a work.

It is a good challenge, to remember to bring that sense of mission into each day. How do you integrate a sense of mission into your daily work?

Congratulations are in order for Joel Hazzard, our CEO, for winning the Upper Midwest Ernst & Young LLP Entrepreneur of the Year 2009 Award in the Consumer Products Category.

Here’s what Joel had to say about it: “Of course the most important aspect of this is that our success is just that, ours (Ergotron). It is my privilege to accept the award on behalf of the entire Ergotron Family who all deserve recognition for being a company who has invigorated Ergonomics with a passion to help millions of computer and display users around the world.”

Joel was among six other leading entrepreneurs selected by an independent judging panel made up of regional business, academic and community leaders. Three other Minnesota executives were also awarded in the event, including Lee Anderson, chairman of APi Group Inc., who was honored in the Master category. The Technology-category award, to Ronald Konezny, CEO of PeopleNet, and Daniel Johnson, president of SearchAmerica, who won the Services Category.

The Upper Midwest program recognizes companies based in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. See here for the full Ernst & Young release.

Good luck to all the regional winners in the upcoming Ernst & Young LLP Entrepreneur of the Year 2009 national awards in November 2009.

In the weirdest “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times” week of the year so far, I was among the throngs of private business owners celebrating their growth at the Inc. 500/5000 conference in Washington D.C. last week, with business luminaries Bill George, Seth Godin, Jim Collins and Tom Peters, encouraging us.

I took a look at Tom Peter’s Blog, in particular, his entry, All Else On Hold.

According to Tom Peters, of In Search of Excellence fame, and FYI, this is not verbatim, the “Federal Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. – the most conservative free-market economy titan, performed an act of pure socialism to keep the world from slipping into a global depression. . .”

And Bill George at the Inc. 500/5000 conference, called it the “worst (financial) crisis since 1929.”

No doubt, these are turbulent times. However, perhaps Jim Collins summed it up best when he said, we need to “retain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail to the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be.”

It may be appropriate to reference Bette Davis at this point: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

Jane Payfer, Chief Marketing Officer @ Ergotron

Jane Payfer, Chief Marketing Officer @ Ergotron.com

I remember my high school graduation address, 30+ years ago; it’s had an impact in my life.  Do you remember yours? 

I’ve been fortunate to get to meet a people all over the world, and frequently, have an opportunity to have a business dinner with them.  Sometimes, the conversations that take place are challenging.  Finding that connection point with customers and clients isn’t always easy.  So I frequently ask people about their graduation address as a conversation “starter.” 

In over 20 years of these business dinners, I’ve met only three other people who have a clear recollection of the event.

Two of these didn’t remember so much what got said, as who said it;  a major celebrity  was involved.

I’ve only met one other person who had an inspiring, get your head in the game graduation address.

Why do I remember mine? Because it was short and sweet. Five simple words that have profoundly shaped my life: Don’t forget to do good.

Short and sweet is a good thing for we marketing types to keep top of mind. Short and sweet is memorable.  And Impactful.

Do you love your job? I love mine, and I’ve found that not a lot of people make that claim. Typically those that do, don’t say it haphazardly. As a round-up-to-one hundred, empty nester, I’m quickly approaching the retirement phase of life, and I can’t quite envision myself there, because, as previously mentioned, I truly do love my job. I can’t imagine “shelving it” just at that time when I’m feeling I’m at the zenith of my personal, and professional productivity and creativity.

And, to further exacerbate the situation, the major problem I face as the marketing team lead for Ergotron ( the title is VP – do titles matter?- that’s another whole blog) is that almost every time I watch t.v. or a movie, or peruse a magazine or newspaper, I see or come in contact with someone or some situation that could be improved through our human centered designed products. Sunday Morning on CBS is on right now. In a recent episode, they showed some researcher who had dual monitors on his desk, but they’re not positioned correctly; he leans forward to see the screen, hunched and crunched. It makes me wince – actually, it makes me crazy. Here someone was showcased getting national attention for their work on a life-saving research project, and the showcased work behavior is counterproductive to his own health and wellness. Which means there’s more work for us to be done, which means we’re really only getting started. Retirement around the corner? Not so fast. . .

When I was in high school, I went on a student government trip to Washington, D.C. We met Hubert Humphrey, who, at that time, had been Mayor of Minneapolis, Senator from Minnesota, and Vice-President of the United States. He spent over an hour with us, a motley crew of 14 students and two teachers from West St. Paul. predicting the impact television would have in our lives. The premise was that if a picture was worth a thousand words, how much more powerful, for the good, could a minute of television be. . .if the television content was developed correctly. This was the Vietnam era. The time when a picture captured a naked little girl, running away from a napalm bomb blast. It was a powerful image. And a haunting picture. She was nine. I was sixteen. His words, like that picture, have stuck with me ever since.

My boss frequently reminds me we can’t market like “Coke.” We’re not building a power brand. Ergotron’s go to market model is predominantly B2B. Even though we have many “consumer” products, we use the digital intersection of Mac, and PC computer and display market makers, to get our products into both commercial and consumer users’ hands. We’ve recently started working with a physical comedian here in Minneapolis, David Harris, to put a face to our company as “Tester Guy“. Tester Guy’s persona fits our company to a “t”. We are incredibly serious about the products we develop. We have safety tests, quality tests, environmental tests, tip tests, push, pull, prod and nudge tests at Ergotron, before we release a product to the world. Tester Guy puts a little light hearted fun into our own testing process, and then the functionality of the product takes him off into a fantasy world – a world that actually creates a touch point for the fun we have, doing what we do, trying to make the world a better place, at Ergotron.

While we haven’t gotten as many “eyeballs” on our video as we like, yet, we’re just launching the Dare2Dual program behind it on August 1st. I’ll let you know if its a successful attempt to build our brand. I hope Hubert was right. And that this 1 minute 40 seconds really tells a story, for good.

Joel Hazzard, CEO Ergotron

In the spring of 2005 I was posed this question by our board of directors – How are we going to Replace Harry (our late founder)?  My answer was simple but caught them off guard, because they were not expecting such a simple answer to an almost impossible goal.  I said we are never going to replace Harry, we just need to think and act like Harry, we need to carry on the very proud tradition of being a true innovator of products that simply make the lives of computer users and display users better.  We need to continue to innovate and continue to solve fundamental problems for the millions of computer and display users throughout the world.  

Today we call it enhancing the user’s experience, improving productivity and making Ergonomics affordable to the mass market.  Our Vice President of Marketing, Jane Payfer, perfectly sums up our overall commitment to this mission in one word “Wellness”. 

Creating a culture that thrives on innovation really starts with connecting with the customer at the product and use level, or seeing the Wellness first hand.  We encourage our team to go out in the world and install products and come back and give the company the feedback.  A simple concept?  Yes, but a concept that works very well.  I personally install products all the time and I encourage the Ergotron Team to do the same. We get tremendous feedback when we are engaged with our customers from 3 feet away versus 30,000 feet away because we learn exactly what our customers need versus thinking we know what they need.  This level of interaction allows us to walk into a room and not just see a Computer or a TV or a Display, it allows us to see the room, and gives us ideas on how to make better products that work in today’s environments – again, creating Wellness.

I’m extremely proud of the team at Ergotron, their passion and commitment to making Ergonomics affordable to the mass market, creating wellness, and bringing productivity and efficiency to millions of users every year.  Their strong commitment and focus on innovation allows us to turn a Notebook from a poor stand alone ergonomic computing platform into a wonderful ergonomic computing experience (check out our recently launched Neo-Flex WorkBase product).

Our marketing team came up with the concept of creating a blog to share our customer install experiences and called it “Thinking Like Harry” and my reaction – Perfect, just perfect.  I thought that this was a terrific way to share our culture and experience with those that are interested in our company, our products and our focus – Your Wellness.

I hope you will take the time to read through some of the install experiences shared by our team and let us know what you think.  Ergotron will continue to carry our late founder’s passion for innovation, we will continue to Think like Harry!

jh 

Around the halls of Ergotron, frequently we hear the adage, “You need to start thinking like Harry.” Harry Sweere, Ergotron’s founder, knew how to get people excited about maximizing their computing experience. This blog will highlight what Ergotron employees worldwide are doing to bring Harry’s vision to the markets we serve; whether that is their experiences in installing product in local businesses, exploring environmental compliance issues, or highlighting the ins and outs of a sit/stand workstation. We’ll feature guest bloggers from the market, explore ergonomics in the workplace and more. Harry once said, “Excellence is the result of dreaming more than others think practical, and expecting more than others think is possible.” Maybe you’ll catch the vision yourself in your day-to-day world; in fact, we encourage you to do so. Start thinking like Harry.

Daneen Kiger, Global Director of Marketing Operations