Author Archives: Kevin Kelly

Jan 02 2026
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Life

As I Lay Dying

On October 25 my life as I knew it changed forever. Only at first, I vehemently denied it.

That afternoon, around 5pm, walking with my wife in the crisp fall air, my chest tightened as in a vise grip, I bent over, and breathing heavily, with sudden shocking fatigue her I couldn’t continue. I almost collapsed on the spot, but she helped me back into the house and sat me on our couch.


Looking at me with concern, she announced we would go to the Emergency Room. Like any good male, I resisted her thoroughly rational pronouncement. It couldn’t be a heart attack, I thought, and it’d be embarrassing to go to the ER only to be sent home. As I doubled over, clutching my chest, I relented and got in the car. I certainly thought I’d be back that evening. Instead, I wouldn’t return home for ten days.

Initially, as I expected, one test after another showed nothing wrong with my heart or lungs. But then the doctor did one final test, a CT scan of my lungs, to rule out a blood clot. When he came to tell us the results, he started ominously. “The good news is there’s nothing wrong with your lungs. But we see something on your heart, and we recommend you stay the night so we can check it out.” My wife nodded yes, so I sighed, shrugged, and relented.

The next morning a doctor delivered the verdict. I had an aneurysm in one of my heart arteries. The following day, the doctor who performed the angiogram – a procedure where a small camera is inserted into your heart – leaned in after finishing and simply said: “It’s large, very, very large.” He seemed shaken. The doctor who performed the next procedure clarified that the artery was “aneuyristic”, followed with “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

That became the refrain: “I’ve never seen anything like it,” sometimes proceed by “Wow”. Another called me “special,” only not a special you’d want. Gradually I descended into despair and fear, as did family and friends. My wife and oldest daughter, who happened to be visiting, hovered and interrogated confused doctors. My pastor arrived to give me the Sacrament of the Sick, otherwise known as “Last Rites,” if given before you die, which now seemed a real possibility, given that no one knew how to fix the problem and my chest continued to tighten uncomfortably.

As I lay in bed on the third night in the hospital with death seemingly close at hand, I swore I wouldn’t be one of those people who said the moment changed their life. I wouldn’t chart a new course or find new meaning. I’d lived the life I wanted. Yet another two nights on, I awoke from a nightmare and knew I’d been changed, much of what I thought mattered didn’t, that I needed to reconsider everything. That’s if I had the time.

The turning point came in dreams. In the first, I saw my children grieving me, their pain and tears, and awoke crying, repeating “no, no, no”. It seemed the worst thing I could ever put them through. Suddenly seeing them was all I longed for. On death’s doorstep family, and then friends, were all that mattered. Not sales or profit. The next night I dreamt God came to take me. I argued with Him. I had unfinished work to do in the business and the family trust. Pensively he shook His head. The arguments were losers. If I lived, I’d have live differently.

Eventually, my local Oakland hospital kicked me over to University of California San Francisco (UCSF) hospital across the Bay. Worried doctors buzzed around me, which provided no reassurance. They did clarify that my left circumflex artery, one of three arteries in the heart, was very dilated. It measured 17 millimeters across, about eight times larger than it should be. It snaked around my heart, dumping blood into a 1mm vein that couldn’t handle the flow. I had, in clinical terms, a “fistula.” Only about .0002% of the population has one.

As I lay in my uncomfortable hospital bed in a small room at UCSF, death was more tangible than it had ever been. Rounds of cardiologists talked about a rare and risky surgery where the artery was bypassed and then closed. Or perhaps a simpler procedure where the connection to the vein was sealed. Or maybe a heart transplant. Or maybe do nothing and see if things grew worse. Maybe do nothing and treat the symptoms with medication. The surfeit of suggestions spun my head. Nothing seemed clear.

Around the tenth day, my doctors settled on the least invasive procedure but told me to go get second opinions. My heart was healthy enough to take the time, which came as a pleasant surprise. One pointed me to the Mayo Clinic, which has one of the best adult congenital cardiology departments in the country. Long story short, Mayo said the procedure contemplated would cause blood clots and very likely kill me. Surgery was very dangerous and a last resort. Watch and wait and recondition my body by working out, doctors said quite persuasively over three hours of meetings, emphasizing the positive. They asked that I come back in nine months to see how my heart was doing.

As we drove back to Minneapolis from Mayo, I sobbed out of relief. I’d live with a compromised heart but had a shot at a long life. My second chance had arrived.

I began by asking my children to come home and celebrate Thanksgiving early, fulfilling the ache that arose in that terrifying dream. I committed to reaching out to friends. I’d too often failed to, diverted by other daily demands. I accepted the business needed me less given the stellar management team I had in place. I resolved to write more, a long passion, and committed to gratitude and hope, not my tendency to worry over the worst case. I started working out for the first time in years, which has improved my energy. With whatever time I might have, I began considering what I might do for my community, other than serving on school boards.

As I looked around the table at my family on that Thanksgiving night, I offered thanks for them and this chance to live anew. Despite death lingering on the periphery, with a flawed heart beating in my chest, I thanked God for my blessings and the richness of my life. In fact, it seemed I felt gratitude for the first time in my 64 years. I knew I was at the beginning of a new journey, and had a long way to go, but I had begun.

Confronting death had done to me what I swore it wouldn’t. It changed me. Turns out the cliché is true. Which is why, I now realize, it’s a cliché.

Mar 24 2025
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Diversity, Government, Immigration, Managing

DEI Daze

Over the last few weeks, the attack on diversity initiatives has grown increasingly absurd. In the fervor to scrub race from U.S. government web pages, Jackie Robinson, black soldiers who fought in the Civil War and the Navajo Code Breakers mistakenly disappeared. The black head of the Joint Chiefs got canned, and the white female heads of the Navy and Coast Guard suffered similar fates. The message dovetailed off the words of Darren Beattie, the recently appointed undersecretary for public diplomacy who last year wrote: “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work.”

Oddly, I’ve been saying the exact opposite for years, based on actual experience. The leadership of our company is a extraordinary mix of brown males and females, immigrants, and white men and women. I know the place works because of that. We promote the person best suited to the job, who has the blend of technical skills and personality to handle the challenges they’ll face, while showing promise to move up to the next level.

Take our scheduling director. She’s first generation Laotian, started as the receptionist, moved into customer service and then took over scheduling. Somehow, and I don’t know exactly how, she keeps a 200,000 square foot factory running 24/7, 362 days with minimal downtime while handling one customer crisis after another. The white men who’ve tried the job want nothing to do with it. So what ? I have a proven leader who works around the clock and gets stuff done. That she’s a Hmong woman doesn’t enter into the equation.

Or does it? Is it possible that culture shapes the person? Immigrant and first gen women seem driven in a way their co-workers aren’t, including me. My head spins with what they get done in a day, including taking on and unraveling incredibly complex issues. There’s just a get-to-it spirit that drives the best of them, in the way us second generation types rarely muster. My first gen Director of Human Resources, for example, took the almost unheard of step for an HR executive of earning her MBA (while caring for a newborn, I must add). Growing up without often proves a great motivator. I can point to my own first gen father — a white male — as a great illustration. It’s just that we don’t have many European immigrants anymore. These days most are brown. Either way, I’m lucky to have them.

Research backs up my intuition. Back in 2019 the consultancy McKinsey & Co. found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity boasted profits 25% higher than the laggards in the bottom quarter. Ethnic diversity proved even more decisive, with the gap widening to 36%. The Harvard Business Review attributes such success to the way diverse teams challenge each other to think more broadly thanks to differing life experiences. They tend to make more factual decisions because preconceptions are more likely to get challenged, again thanks to different perspectives.

I’m not saying DEI programs didn’t get a little silly in some cases, if not worse. The problem comes when company’s build quotas and limit searches, instead of creating a culture where any gender or color can thrive. There’s no doubt we owe a debt to the ground breakers, people like the baseball great Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier enduring racist chants and insults from players, while building one of the most impressive resumes in the sport. His success showed what we had missed not including blacks at the highest levels. So why even consider taking down his web page?

The Administration itself undercuts its own arguments. Women dot its upper echelons, including chief of staff to the president, head of the Department of Homeland Security, and Attorney General. Why are they not DEI hires but Vice President Kamela Harris was, according to then candidate Trump? Why don’t black soldiers in the Civil War, who faced execution or slavery if captured, deserve mention for the ruthless bravery they exhibited?

I’m not sure where the anger about diversity comes from. I suspect, as Mr. Beattie suggests, it’s a backlash from white men, who feel passed over for positions they think they deserve. Whether they do or not. It ain’t easy to give up first position. I’ve seen it in my own company, where white males are more critical of brown and female department heads than they are of their counterparts. It isn’t uncommon for unpopular decisions to get pushed on them, and then their answers roundly criticized, another little fact noticed by the Financial Times. Still, we come together, put stuff behind us and make our company hum.

Ultimately I worry that the vilification of DEI will undercut the legitimacy of nontraditional leaders. I’m concerned the hostile environment will grow so strong that they’ll end up stepping down or taking demotions. That would be a mistake, as the research shows. Think of what we lose. After all, who will have the guts to steal home base?*

*Picture of Jackie Robinson famously stealing home in the 1955 World Series, a feat he accomplished 19 times in his career, which prior to his inclusion rarely happened.

Nov 02 2024
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Government, Life, Political Economy, The Economy

Remember the National Debt? Or, What Me Worry?

Whatever happens in the presidential election next Tuesday, Americans may be in for a very rude awakening. Call it a lesson on how the world economy really works

Most people think that the Federal Reserve sets our interest rates, which form the basis for things like home mortgage rates. It’s easy to come to this conclusion given how economics gets reported. The truth? The Fed only sets the rate for what banks charge each other for overnight loans to cover reserve requirements. That can influence long-term rates as it sets the expectation for future inflation, but it only has influence. Instead, those rates are set by the people who buy bonds that cover our country’s $30 trillion Federal debt. They’re called bondholders.

It’s hard to underestimate their power. Back in July 2022 the United Kingdom’s new Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss introduced what she called a “mini-budget”, handing wealthy Britons the largest tax cut since the 1970s, unfunded by corresponding spending cuts. Almost overnight the 5-year mortgage rate jumped to 5.25% from 3.63% and the British pound crashed from £1.25 to $1 to £1.03 to $1. That’s a staggering 31% increase in mortgage costs, calamitous in a country where short-term mortgages are the most common. The currency collapse – again, driven by traders — meant that prices for many goods imported from the United States, jumped 25%. Her government lasted 49 days.

How’d this mess happen? Bondholders who held British debt dumped it, and currency traders started betting against the pound. They lost confidence given the government’s £49 billion unfunded tax cut. Traders no longer believed Britian would be able to pay its bills, given the size of the cut and the firm belief, underwritten by history, that tax cuts don’t pay for themselves through economic growth. It’s a stupid idea invented by an economist scribbling on a napkin over drinks, repeated endlessly by venal politicians and known by bondholders to be a fantasy.

Fair warning to America. Both our presidential candidates and most of the citizenry seem utterly oblivious to the country’s galloping debt and its implications. The Trump Administration grew the national debt to $32.54 trillion by 2020 from $25.56 trillion four years previous. President Biden’s spending took it to $35.46 trillion. By contrast, in 1979 the national debt stood at a meager $3.4 trillion. We pay for this shortfall by floating Treasury bonds, which traders buy at an interest rate that they essentially set. We’re okay if they’re willing to pay at a reasonable price. If not, interest rates would spike, prices would go up, and we’d have to slash spending. Massive and highly unpopular cuts would occur across the entire federal budget.

Neither candidate has proposals addressing our vulnerability to debtholders. Instead, non-partisan groups like the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget estimate that both candidates would hike the deficit. The myriad of tax cuts proposed by Former President Trump’s aren’t offset by spending cuts. If his entire program were enacted, it’d lead to a debt increase of at least $7.5 trillion dollars over 10 years, with analysts warning they could conceivably add $15 trillion. Vice President Harris, thanks to tax increases, holds the increase to $3 trillion over ten years, but that’s hardly fiscal rectitude.

All this spending requires the bondholders. But hesitation is already in the air.

Despite recent Fed interest rate cuts, the 10-year Treasury note climbed to 4.28% on October 31, up from 3.64% two months ago. Traders have started to price in the inflation risk. None of this reflects the impact post-election political instability and violence would have. If we see third-world scenarios play out in this country, bondholders will run. Part of our attraction as an investment is our very stability. I’m not sure why so few think of this as threats of violence, hints at coups, or cries of vote stealing fill the airwaves. Finance shows no favorites, and bondholders won’t hesitate to teach us this.

We often think we know what we’re choosing, when in fact we don’t, because unintended consequences aren’t factored in. I heard former President Trump speak to the New York Economic Club a few weeks ago, where his promise to cut the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% received raucous applause. No one shouted the obvious: What about the deficit? Similarly, Vice President Harris’s promise to give first time home buyers $25,000 grants sounds great. But how is it paid for? Whether corporate taxes or home buying, it’ll be debt. We’re careening into a financial swamp of our own making, fueled by wishful thinking and that oldest of sins, greed.

Apr 10 2024
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Business, Leadership, Life, Managing, Thoughts

Leading with Heart

One night, about six months back, two of our employees on the graveyard shift overdosed on cocaine. They left the plant around 12:30am — all of this caught on video — walked across the street, and bought from a dealer waiting on the corner. They later claimed they did it because they were tired. The cocaine turned out laced with a near fatal dose of fentanyl, a common additive to drugs, I later learned, because the high is so addictive. One staggered back into the factory and collapsed in the restroom, with no pulse, saved by the actions of a co-worker. The other was later found near death as well. Police and ambulances converged on the scene, and the shift supervisor called our president, Pallavi Joyappa, to come deal with the situation.

How to deal with the employees involved? We asked them to tell the truth about what happened, a truth we more or less already knew. One decided not to, and we let him go. The other did, and we kept him on condition he stop using. When random testing showed that was harder to do than anyone thought, we helped him find a rehab center and told him to take the time he needed to get well. We held his job and let him keep his seniority during his 90 day leave. He returned clean, and remains so, and continues to be a productive printing press helper.

If I tell this story, and our leadership’s role in the aftermath, to senior executives at large companies, they typically can’t believe what they’re hearing. They seem to think we must run a crazy workplace. But those of us at the other end of the business spectrum like Emerald Packaging, with $90 million in sales, a small executive staff, such high touch come with the territory. Over the last decade, we’ve helped employees cope with the suicide of a beloved colleague, the murder of another, the untimely death of a third, and a long-time employee who lost two children, one also to suicide. Keeping our team together and focused through these ordeals has involved listening, hugs as people cried in my arms, even saying the rosary with a group gathered to mourn with the mother grieving her child.

I really can’t imagine leadership any other way. We’ve helped an employee ransom his brother kidnapped in Mexico, paid a tax lien for another, paid for educations, and so on. I look at it very similar to how Pope Francis imagines the Catholic Church. He sees the church as a field hospital tending to the wounded, which every one of us is in some way. We do the same at Emerald, because we have to. People bring their pains and sorrows and crosses to work every day, and unless we show authentic empathy and care, we can’t bring them together in this common project, making a product people need, building community around a common goal where they can transform that negative energy into something positive and tangible, allowing them to provide for their family’s by building a company, and a strong one, that will sustain itself for years to come.

Of course, that means making a profit. We’re a business, so we have to. Otherwise we can’t provide for people, invest and plan for the future. Still, that project — which ultimately falls to the company leadership team — occurs in a setting where real people work and live. And that must be respected, or really, what’s the point? Money alone doesn’t build a successful family or community or business or city or country. Running a smaller company is a human project, and with that comes all the messiness that us human’s live in. So, we pay for an employee’s drug rehab, give him the time he needs, and hold his job until he returns, hopefully with the stamina to avoid drugs and become a productive, loyal member of our team.

Covid sharpened this leadership approach. Since we were an essential business, we asked people to come to work despite the risks as we understood them. As the leader, I knew I couldn’t hide at home while asking others to show-up, so each day I went in. And every day for months, I worried I might kill someone. I knew our company couldn’t survive if people didn’t work, so we made a pact to keep them safe as possible. Our team worked tirelessly, creating protocols, finding ways to encourage safety, to get people to care for each other, and when someone did get sick, support them with groceries and pay as they sat in isolation for two weeks at home. It worked. We didn’t have an internal transmission of Covid until a year and a half after the first national cases. And the company not only survived, but against all odds thrived in 2020, allowing us to give some of the highest bonuses in our history.

So this approach continues. On a recent afternoon I found myself in the conference room talking to one of our better press operators. I asked him how things were going. He proceeded to tell me that his sister-in-law had just been murdered in Oakland, and now he was trying to provide for the children. I listened without flinching. This was his reality and he needed me to meet him there, not as a gawker, but as an equal. I told him if he needed anything to just ask. Weeks later he did, asking for help with a past-due bill. I had to make a decision, my word or my wallet. I picked up the paper and told him I’d take care of it. He had enough things to worry about. I know he’ll be an Emerald lifer, and I’ll have his skills for years to come. And all because I treated him as a person.

Though I find this part of the job incredibly rewarding, I know I pay for it in blood. My own blood, to be clear. You can’t help but take on people’s pain, their sorrows, as you help them focus on a common goal. There are many days where I sit in my chair and say to myself “I’m tired”. But as a business owner, I think you have no choice but to meet your employees where they are, and deal with all that means. If you don’t, your business won’t thrive because your people won’t work with the commitment you need. You end up giving yourself away. Doing so is both exhausting and exhilarating, and if you let it be, transformative of your own soul, as you come to understand how fragile humans are, and how being present helps. And in turn, allows them to tap into their best selves to make Emerald an extraordinary place to work, live and thrive, including financially.      

Sep 21 2023
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Business, Immigration, Managing, The Economy

Immigration Daze, Part 1

The politics around undocumented immigrants continues unabated, no matter the abject need for workers in the United States.  The Democrats use the lack of reform as a recruiting tool, while the Republicans use the possibility of change as fear bait.  All the while American businesses scour the landscape for employees, hanging signs outside their offices broadcasting job openings, as my company has done for several years.  Emerald Packaging entered the pandemic in March 2020 with 25 openings, and still has 18 today, a stark contrast from most of my years in business, when we could hire freely and rarely had any unfilled positions.

I know we aren’t alone. Ask any businessperson their most pressing issues, and lack of labor comes in the top three. With the unemployment rate trending around 3.5%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a government agency, says the country currently has over 8.8 million job openings, over 1.5 million more than just prior to the pandemic, when openings were already near an all-time high.  Ten years earlier, we had less than 4 million openings.  A historically low Labor Participation Rate has hurt, with only 62.8% of able working age Americans employed, compared to 66% prior to the 2008 recession. That’s roughly 5 million missing workers, most of whom retired, according to new research by the San Francisco Federal Reserve.

Meanwhile, we have around over 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, with around 6.5 million in the workforce currently, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.  However, many of those working — if not most — are trapped in the informal economy, stuck in jobs they can’t get out of without papers, regardless of skills.  Many Americans want the undocumented thrown out of the country en masse, which would only exacerbate a horrid labor shortage that’s draining growth from the economy.  I know this firsthand. Our sales could have been at least 5% higher last year had we been able to fill jobs.  And don’t lecture me about low wages. We’ve increased pay 15% over the last twelve months, and have packages equal to Tesla, the automaker down the highway from us.

The answer isn’t to throw workers we desperately need out of the country.  It isn’t to pretend we want immigration reform and do nothing about it.  The answer clearly lies with finding a path to legalization for workers already in the country. And creating a system that allows in the immigrants we need each year with the skills needed. Likely it’s a number that would end up in the many millions given the onslaught of Baby Boomers due to retire over the next few years.

I have more experience than I want with this issue. Around 12 years ago U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement audited us.  We had to let 18 long-term employees go, including supervisors and foremen.   Though seven came back over the next year having obtained legal status, I don’t think we’ve ever replaced the talent lost. And just a year ago six employees from a company across town that had closed applied for jobs, with the exact skills needed to fill open positions. But they failed the ICE e-verify check we now do to confirm status. Those jobs remain unfilled.

So, here’s a call for a sane immigration debate that leads to realistic solutions. It seems a remote hope right now, especially with the silly season of Presidential primaries upon us.  American business needs realism on this issue more than ever, and posturing politicians and media empires calling for blood serves us badly.  We have to speak up. I’m not saying this as some bleeding heart. I’m saying it as a businessman looking at the “Now Hiring” sign that has hung from his building for three years now.  With no end in sight.

 

 





May 04 2023
12 Comments
Family Business, Life

The Patriarch and Me

Last month I traveled to Ireland to catch-up with cousins I hadn’t seen in four years thanks to pandemic restrictions.  We had great reunions, filled with epic evenings of talk and drink.  Though I stayed up most nights past 1am chatting away, I didn’t feel worse for wear, I felt enlivened and happy.  How could one not, being with people who you care for so deeply, and who return the feeling. Only one thing bothered me.  Family kept heaping praise on my father for building something from nothing, rising from the tenements to success, the hero of the first generation born in America. I allow it’s an amazing story. My father started our manufacturing company, diversified into industrial properties and constantly helped those in need of a lift.

What ate at me then?  I succeeded my father as CEO of Emerald Packaging in 2002 when myself and my siblings took over, and have run the real estate side since his death. I’ve had to deal with what he didn’t do, including build an estate plan and property development. The estate plan itself is for the ages, designed to build on what he bought as opposed to dissipate it.  It was much the same over at the company. He built our family packaging business, used what it generated to invest in real estate, but by the time I took over we were in trouble. Declining sales and profits, poor machinery and alienated bank. I sweated with our team to get it turned around and had it roaring by 2006, growing 5x over the next few years. That took it’s own form of guts.

So I felt diminished as folks extolled my father and didn’t note the next generation as well. It’s a rare story for the second generation to grow what it inherited.  Only about 30% of family businesses survive into the second generation according to The Family Firm Institute. And I know he could only take his creations so far, and required others to take them forward. But as the trip rolled along I came to realize he does hold a special place. He’s the immigrant’s child success story, which always holds a place in family lore. He really did create from scratch. And he rightly has a special place, setting an example now lived across the family-tree in succeeding generations, both here and in Ireland.

He also taught good lessons to help take things forward.  Dad pulled back from the business when younger blood was willing to take the risks needed.  He handed over opportunity, too. In failing to craft an estate plan, he gave me a chance to learn how to do so, and in the process, put a solid foundation under his legacy. It’s an honor in its own way, building upon what he built for the next generations. I’m also faced with many of the same challenges that he confronted at a later age, and his example helps. I passed along more authority in the business by appointing a president, recognizing that my energies are now divided, and my drive a bit diminished. New blood was needed. I left Ireland with a renewed appreciation for my father. And a better understanding of my role in the family story. I couldn’t have built what he did. I’m not wired that way. But I’ve built on it as opposed to destroying it, which many successors fail to do.

By coincidence I saw a wonderful play in London called “The Lehman Trilogy” which told the story of how the family built the investment firm over three generations, which non-family later tanked. It’s a great story of building and renewing, how pace in business increases exponentially with growth, and familial successions done right. I knew the hard work of the second and third generations to grow the company. But you had to bow to the guts of the first, who created something they couldn’t have imagined on the boat across. A reminder that each generation plays a role, building on those who came before.





Apr 11 2023
7 Comments
Life

Hey, I’m Gonna Do this Blog Thing

I haven’t written for over two years. I don’t think I can name one specific reason.  I put a lot of pressure on myself to do long well-argued posts.  The effort takes time and energy. And I haven’t had a lot of either in the last two years, like most people in business. Simultaneously we’ve had to navigate a succession of events beyond our control, ranging from the pandemic to rampant inflation. Like most midsized companies we only had a few people who can manage.  The whole madness just took it out of me.  Inflation took the biggest bite, causing financial chaos that tossed us into a sea of misery from which only now, two years on, have we emerged.  Healthy but bowed.

Given that things likely won’t get boring soon, I’ve decided to take a different approach to the blog.  Namely shorter entry’s, more often (that’s not hard) with the aim of dropping something weekly. I’ve missed writing, which shows up when I edit someone’s email or rewrite my own. I revise with a zeal that indicates the frustrated writer wants out. The author in me has taken to passing out copies of Strunk & White’s classic writing handbook “The Elements of Style”. It would be far better if I just put the principles to work myself.

I’ve missed doing these entries. I have ideas and thoughts to share and I love playing with words.  Writing, even as a journalist doing a news story, transports me into a different universe, a playful creative one, that I rarely visit.  Sometimes it even feels deeper. “In the beginning was the word…..” St. John begins his gospel.  He conflates God and language. I think he was on to something.

This entry serves as an explanation and an expression of hope. Why I disappeared and what I aim to do. By the end of this week I’ll put something up on an issue and then come back to the keyboard week after week until it becomes rote. I hope the blog gets conversation going, or helps move one along, that enriches all of us. And I hope it brings a little more happiness to my life, which can use it after the last two years. So thanks for reading and see you back here soon.





Aug 17 2020
2 Comments
Covid Days

The Silence of Women

Over the last few weeks quiet conversations between women have proliferated around the company.  Whispered talk about the coming school year.  It more or less goes like this, I am told. One woman asks another how they plan to work and teach children trapped at home thanks to Covid.  This nearly silent exchange happens among women from the factory floor to the top of the company.  What will you do? How will you manage the kids? Will you be able to keep working?  Same questions, same shrugs. School districts have made matters worse by not revealing schedules until the last minute — less than two weeks before opening Fremont Unified School District has told worried parents almost nothing — or by imposing schedules that keep children in class until mid-afternoon. They seem little concerned by the wreckage wrought on women, who far more than men, bear the primary responsibility for child-rearing.

Sometimes I ‘m told the worries directly. One senior manager confessed she felt she had to choose between our company and her family. Another fretted she’d be cut out of decision-making since many important video calls happen in the morning, when she’ll be teaching her kids. Even a Mom with a high school student, a group that sometimes can work without oversight, wondered how to make sure her child is doing lessons while she works.

This isn’t a remote issue for me. Women form the backbone of our company. They fill key roles including chief operating officer, plant manager, scheduler, human resource manager and many more. They staff our bag-making and customer service departments. I count on their intelligence, skill, ability to multi-task. If a single one leaves the company will lose a step, maybe several. I know, for instance, that I could not run Emerald Packaging without the advice and energy of my COO, who has a small child she’ll have to teach. What if the school schedule sidelines her for much of the day? What will she do? The pressure, the avalanche of backbreaking house work, has already pushed her limits.

I know the solution. Flex-time, part-time, extended leaves and remote work form the arsenal that could keep female employees working. I wish I could say these options occurred to me upon learning of their growing despair. Instead I fretted until I remembered that one of our best customer service reps has worked from home for years, a solution we crafted when she almost quit to take care of a chronically ill child.  Such compromises form a path forward.  Already we’ve agreed that one manager can work from home three days a week. Another will work extended hours in the afternoon following what she calls “momline,” a shorthand for online learning. I’m not saying this won’t challenge us in new, unexpected ways. I just know I can’t afford to lose the talent to Covid’s temporary — even a full school year — intrusion.

The missing public discourse about this issue confounds me. I know society, despite its yakking away about gender equality, still expects women to manage the hearth. Even before Covid women did more than double the housework men did. The pandemic tilted the balance even further. At this historic moment, with the virus sweeping the country, we have unconsciously decided to return to the 1950s, offering little support for working women and putting no pressure on men to carry more domestic weight. It doesn’t help when a so-called progressive like California Governor Gavin Newsom quips that he knows this burden will fall unequally, but he’s lucky to have a wife who can handle it.  Even women seem confused about how to respond, more or less accepting the inevitable. Not demanding answers from companies or help from government. Dread filters through offices across the country. Quiet dread. The silence of women.

Childcare has become one of the leading issues forcing women from the workforce. Unless corporate leaders do something now, we could lose generations of women who have helped spur our economy in recent years.  Shareholders should especially worry.  A recent McKinsey & Co. survey reconfirmed that the profits of companies with women in key executive roles trends higher than male dominated firms. People skills, intelligence and mental agility play a major role. I’ve seen it first-hand. Women often do rings around men, including me, able to multi-task and organize in ways males can’t imagine. Worse for everyone, the pandemic-induced collapse of the childcare industry could sideline one-time working Mom’s for years to come, as after-school programs and daycare disappear, unless we find a way to immediately underwrite the industry.

Men have to step it up as well. They must tell their companies they need the time to help teach and then not get penalized for it.  While societal norms often lead men not to think of child-rearing as a primary responsibility, a attitude that must quickly change, fear about sabotaging careers drives behavior as well. Again, where is the pressure to move, to get corporations to support temporary work-life shifts? It’s not getting talked about much in the media, politicians don’t say much either. Men seem to have descended into head scratching confusion.

I can’t say I would have been much different in my day. I wasn’t as involved as I should have been in child-rearing or the monotonous chores that dominate home life. My wife bore the brunt, trading in her aspirations, which had its own costs. However, as I aged, especially more recently surrounded by working Mom’s, I agreed the division of labor didn’t work. I recently told her that I got it, that I deeply regretted my failure. The confession also came from experience. Three years ago when she had cancer I had to run the household alone. It nearly killed me. I do more of my share now, but I don’t want to again apologize to a mother for not doing my part to support the Herculean tasks they now face.

So I now wander with them into a new world. Odd hours, days off, along with Zoom meetings piled into the afternoon and long-term work from home arrangements.  As business owners, as bosses, as fellow-travelers, we do have choices in this moment.  Keep the employees who have fueled our success or lose them. It may hurt profitability in the short run as matters big and small missed, but I am confident it will rebound on the other side.  And I can sleep better knowing this time, with the women in my life, I got it right.

 

 





Jun 04 2020
3 Comments
The Economy

A Call for Corporate Patriotism: Help Save Our Economy

These days the business media and economic prognosticators sing hymns about the coming recovery. The verses go something like this: we’ve hit the bottom; the economy’s opening up; “V” shaped rebound; unemployment shrinks by summertime. The stock market reflects the good news. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen 27% from its lowest point on March 20 and looks poised to recover its all-time high by August. Investors seem confident the good times lay right around the corner.

Maybe the optimists will nail this one. I certainly hope so. But the economist in me can’t ignore the dark clouds gathering on the horizon. We simply don’t know what having 41 million Americans unemployed means. No one alive has lived an unemployment rate of over 20%. The knock-on effects of those numbers have shown themselves already.  April retail sales fell 14.1% following an 8% decline in March as people worried about their finances. Consumer spending reflected this, crashing 13% in April. And the service sector declined two months in a row, though a smaller contraction in April than March. On June 3, Bloomberg Economics forecast 6 million white collar jobs would disappear in the next few months.

It’s the service sector we have to keep our eyes on.  Over 70% of the U.S. economy falls into services, our fastest growing segment before the virus.  Whole industries have collapsed in the last few months. Recovery seems a remote prospect. Airlines, hotels and car rental companies have shed jobs like mad, with no certainty that activity will ever hit pre-Covid numbers. Who, after all, really wants to jump a packed plane of passengers in masks? Other segments are similarly hamstrung. Will people head back to salons or will gray hair become the new fashion? Will people run back to restaurants? Can eateries survive with 25% occupancy?

New trends present the most peril.  The recent corporate yen for working at home threatens to decimate businesses built to service corporate offices. With Twitter employees working at home forever what happens to those gyms, restaurants and dry cleaners that have popped up around their San Francisco corporate headquarters? They likely shut for good. Similarly video conferencing could easily replace much of corporate travel, resulting in a death blow to hotel chains and airlines with networks we no longer need.

So I’m calling for a New Patriotism. It’s time for those companies and individuals that have money to step up and spend. Take out from your local favorite restaurant and when it reopens go even if you have to wait for a table. Keep those office services, like the twice weekly fruit deliveries, rather than slash them. Twitter, Apple, Facebook and countless other companies have to get at least some of their employees back to work, so that businesses built to serve them don’t collapse this summer, including those that provide for their corporate cafeterias. Corporate travel must begin to bounce back enough to keep planes in the air, accepting it’s better to see a customer’s body language than guess at it on your monitor.

I’m no fan of conspicuous consumption but that’s not what I’m calling for. I’m saying that if you want companies to continue to buy your products — Salesforce that means you — you have to support the underpinnings of the economy built around you. I make produce packaging for foodservice. If I don’t take out from restaurants — we have bought 200 burritos for an employee lunch twice — then they won’t buy five pound bags of Markon romaine. That translates into lower sales and less profits for me, and hurts my customers who lose a significant market for their leafy greens. If high unemployment hurts retail packaged produce sales, my major market, I’ll be scrambling like others right now.

Over the last few days as protests have raged across the country, we have heard Americans must stand together to oppose racism. Certainly we must. But we also have to stand together to help our economy heal from the ravages of Covid-19. If we don’t, the sunny predictions being made today will look foolish by the Fall. And we’ll be scrambling to find glimmers of sunlight as the storm clouds unleash their fury all across our land.

 

Thanks to Chris Mittlestat for inspiring this blog. Check out his company at www.fruitguys.com

 





Apr 26 2020
8 Comments
Managing, The Crisis

Business in the Time of Covid

Before March 10 I remained fairly convinced that the virus known as Covid-19 wouldn’t break horribly upon our shores. I don’t know what lead me to believe that, perhaps the lack of cases and the few deaths seen here so far, perhaps a false confidence that everything would work out somehow.  But while driving to work I listened to CNBC  as the market crashed. And I heard former Food and Drug Administrator Dr. Scott Gottlieb describe in harrowing terms the pandemic headed our way.  Without mitigation measures Covid-19 would sicken tens of millions and kill millions in a matter of weeks. Within 45 minutes my mind flipped completely.

I sped to the work and literally ran down the hall to the office of my chief operating officer Pallavi Joyappa and demanded the scheduling meeting due to start in 10 minutes which stuffs 25 people into a small conference room be conducted on a conference call instead.  We had to start social distancing, I said, we had to make major changes now to make sure people didn’t get sick and die.  Over the next three and a half days our company, lead by our Ops team, completely changed how we did business.  We required people to use iso-propyl alcohol to wipe down machines at the beginning and end of each shift.  We hired two people per shift to disinfect the rest of the factory and offices. Customers and suppliers no longer could come on-site nor were truckers allowed inside.  We positioned hand sanitizers around the facility, requiring people to wash hands and sanitize before clocking into work. We staggered breaks and lunches, and reconfigured cafeteria tables to ensure social distancing. New systems were implemented so people could work from home. Overnight we went from 22 people in the office to just eight.  Finally, we held shift meetings to explain the changes and emphasize the seriousness of the conflagration on the horizon.

On Friday evening March 13 I breathed as sigh of relief. We had done what we could. Now we had to get back to work. But over the next several weeks Covid defined the contours of business for me and the rest of the company.  It seemed every day I’d come to the office expecting to deal with one set of challenges only to end up back confronting  Covid issues.  We had to write new protocols for health and hygiene including an ironclad rule that people not come to work if they had Covid symptoms or go home if they developed while at work. Employees had to stay home for 14 days if someone in their household got Covid. We decided to pay for Covid absences in order to encourage people not to come in. We instituted a protocol for reporting Covid symptoms. And we worked with our insurance company to pay for any hospitalization costs not covered under our plan.

It seemed to never end. When Alameda County closed all but essential businesses we had to make sure we stayed open so we could supply packaging to our produce customers.  Local officials helped us understand the regulations and we wrote letters for our employees identifying them as working for an essential business in case a sheriff or police officer stopped them while coming to work. We posted notices on our doors and asked customers to give us letters saying we were a supplier to an essential industry. We had to do it all over again when the state of California closed non-essential businesses across the state.

Meanwhile the list of new protocols grew. We implemented temperature checks the moment the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission allowed companies to do so. I bought about 10 temperature guns out of China that read only in centigrade — they were the only ones I could find — and Operations Director Michael Rincon distributed them to shift leaders and trained them how to use.  But then we noticed people bunched together while waiting for the checks as they entered and left the factory so we had to space people six feet apart by marking where to stand as they waited to get checked.  To make sure we took everyone’s temperature we decreed that people had to come and go through a single door in both of our buildings. We asked employees to observe social distancing rules in the factory which wasn’t easy given the noise from our printing presses and bag-making machines. We solved this by distributing masks and mandated wearing them.

We found we had to over-communicate with employees to make sure they understood the reasons behind the new protocols and the need to follow them. We began weekly shift meetings outside the facility where people could socially distance while being close enough to hear me speak, in a voice that would become increasingly raspy.  At the beginning people were stunned by our decision to make changes because the virus hadn’t begun its rampage and the federal government hadn’t started moving. I patiently described the violence headed towards us and the economic implications, including high unemployment. Following the protocols would allow us to stay open, enabling them to keep their jobs.  Work had become a matter of life and death I hammered home thanks to Covid. Each week we announced new measures and asked for suggestions. An important one involved replenishing cleaning supplies and soap on weekends when managers weren’t around to supervise.

Just as I thought we had things in hand we had our first real crisis. Rumors swept the factory that an employee had Covid and that we had covered it up.  Yet the employee had not communicated his condition to any manager.  We were blindsided. We had to chase him down only to find out he didn’t have Covid though he had posted a warning the night before on his Instagram account that he might have it because he had a high temperature and body aches, though they subsequently went away. We disciplined the employee for not following our reporting protocol and causing panic in the facility.  We then created posters which graphically displayed our Covid reporting rules and posted them around the factory.

Two weeks later we had our first real scare. An employee, following our new work rule, reported to a manager at work that he did not feel well — chills and joint aches — and we sent him home. Our human resource manager Diana Gonzalez checked on him later in the day and he had a temperature, so they advised him to get tested which he did the next day.  His father and brother, who also worked for us, were asked to quarantine at home until we got word. We meet with his shift to dampen panic. And then shut down the department and to do a major cleaning, including spraying the floor with disinfectant.  The following day his verdict came in — no Covid. Relief abounded.

Our costs for doing these things have added up. Between the six cleaners, lost production time disinfecting machines and Covid sick days, and the purchase of a computer system that automates temperature taking, the bill hit $250,000 in five weeks. I thought about putting a temporary price increase through to help pay the tab but then decided against it. Many of our customers, it turns out, were getting battered by lower prices as growers that used to sell to hotels and airlines and restaurants had dumped their product onto the retail market.

We implemented our Covid changes while bookings rose over 100%, introducing challenges of another sort. We scrambled to meet deliveries which we did often by the skin of our teeth. Fortunately, most customers worked with us to prioritize their orders but we continually asked for more overtime, as employees had to fill in for those who got sick or worried they might have Covid. During this time we also finished installation of a new printing press and a new bag machine during these weeks. These are Herculean tasks at the best of times. We also threw ourselves into community service, donating n95 and surgical masks and other person protective equipment to local hospitals. We even made plastic surgical gowns for nurses and doctors.

Even matters like finance became Covid driven. I made sure we had enough cash available to survive for many months if sales tanked due to a deep recession or the closure of customers due to Covid cases. We applied for a Payroll Protection Program loan to cover our employee costs if things went sideways. Our controller Marty Ankenbauer did a brilliant job getting our application in and the bank moved quickly. The loan approval was one of the happier moments of my career.

I know for the eight of us who made it into the office each day, these have been the most stressful days of our working lives. We not only had to meet delivery dates, we had to keep our employees safe. I constantly emphasized that working now meant battling with death.  Personally I have battled the worst asthma since my childhood, thanks to an explosive pollen season and doctor refusals to prescribe common steroid treatments for fear they’d compromise my immune system. The overlap between asthma and Covid symptoms unnerved me, as did the knowledge that if I did get Covid the odds of a bad outcome increased thanks to my compromised lungs.  But I felt I had no choice but to go to work, where the odds of catching the virus certainly were higher than if I stayed home. If I asked others to work, I had to as well. I knew I had to lead by example, not allowing fear dictate my actions.

It’s now April 26 and six weeks have passed. We’re still rolling out new protocols. Last week we created a company-wide SMS broadcast system to more easily communicate with employees. At the same time I could feel a more measured pace settling in, with more room for the tasks I normally do. People have begun taking time-off to recover from the punishment meted by the previous weeks. We’re smiling more it seems. But I don’t kid myself. It hasn’t grown any less stressful looking over my shoulder at a virus that may yet morph in unexpected ways.  And the thought that someone may get Covid at work continues to haunt me. The new normal has arrived.

 

Dedicated to those in sales and operations who have made it possible.





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