MUSINGS OF A CEO

Mar 18 2020

The Crisis

Our Time has Come (Donate Your Masks)

Our country gradually but steadily has moved to war footing to battle an unseen enemy, a virus. Around the world countries have begun to close borders, shutter businesses, demand citizens stay indoors when not working, not cluster in groups and so on. Our government, slow on the uptake but increasingly less so, has invoked a 1950s law that empowers President Trump to force industry where possible to vastly increase production of wartime supplies needed by the medical community, including masks, gowns, and respirators very much like President Franklin Roosevelt did as we moved into war against Nazi Germany. { read more }

Oct 01 2019

10 Comments

Government, Thoughts

Vaping Romaine

Last November around 2pm the Food and Drug Administration issued a recall for romaine lettuce. The leafy green had been identified as the culprit in an e coli outbreak that eventually sickened 62 people and hospitalized 25 nationwide, including two with kidney failure. This followed a recall from earlier in the year that left 172 sick and killed one. Millions of romaine heads ended up in dumpsters. The second recall banned the product during the height of the Thanksgiving season savaging the bottom lines of growers. { read more }

Aug 27 2019

6 Comments

Environment, Packaging

The End of Plastics?

After years of neglecting recycling, talking about recyclable solutions but not delivering, and working to stop bans, the plastics packaging industry stands on a precipice. Activists have taken matters into their own hands. It’s not about bag bans anymore. Now they’re pushing for recyclable flexible packaging. Here in California environmental groups have managed to fast-track legislation (Senate Bill 54) that would mandate recycling by 2030. That could mean drastically reducing the use of polypropylene and polyester, two difficult to recycle plastics popular in a myriad of products. The bill achieves its goal by specifing a waste reduction rate of 75%. As with anything else regards plastics, what begins in California will spread nationwide within a few years. { read more }

Nov 30 2018

7 Comments

Business, Diversity, Immigration, Life

Diversity, Immigration and Our Success

The faces of Emerald Packaging have changed beyond recognition from our founding. White men in shirts and ties ran the factory. They had a firm hold on management. Factory workers weren’t any different. Bookkeeping belonged to the lone woman. She could have run sales as well as or better than any male had she been given training. { read more }

Nov 16 2017

4 Comments

Business, Life

I’m Back and We’re Not for Sale

Recently a purchasing manager at a customer opined that our company Emerald Packaging, Inc., must be up for sale. His evidence? I have not been as active since my father’s death in August 2016 and family businesses nearly always sell after the founder dies. { read more }

Jun 22 2017

5 Comments

Immigration, Life

Emerald Packaging Immigration Raid Retold by CNN Money

A few months ago CNN Money called. They asked to do a story about the impact of n and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid we suffered over five years ago. How could I refuse? The new Trump administration had made immigration enforcement one of its main planks. We had an obligation to show what that meant for business. Thanks to what ICE calls an “audit” we lost 10% of our workforce. Most of them had 15 years or more experience with us, so out the door went some of our most accomplished operators and technicians. We’ve never really recovered. New employees, though good, don’t replace the knowledge we lost. Plus as we expanded, that talent wasn’t here to run our new machines. { read more }

Nov 10 2016

14 Comments

Life

James P. Kelly: March 18, 1930 – August 31, 2016

I haven’t posted anything since March because for most of that period my father’s deterioration due to metastasized melanoma overwhelmed me. I want to begin again by posting my eulogy (one of four) and my remembrance delivered at a St. Joseph Notre Dame High School financial aid fundraiser. Given that so much of life over these months has been dominated by caring for him and then grieving his death, posting these tribute seems a fitting way back to writing. { read more }

Mar 20 2016

8 Comments

Business, Managing

On Bids

Every so often a bid lands on my desk. It’s either a current customer seeking lower prices or a prospect looking to see if we’ll compete for their business. Whatever the case, it usually means someone asking for bottom dollar, or close. No other qualifications matter. Such exercises drive me nuts. Any company can find someone desperate or dumb enough to buy business. Even we’ve been guilty of such stupidity, always discovering it doesn’t pay. Some customers can’t help themselves. Supplier madness is just too tempting. { read more }

Feb 24 2016

1 Comment

Business, Life

Careless Email, Destructive Words

Most of us have vented frustration in an email. Some rant at the recipient like they’d never do in person. A smaller subset stumble badly. We hit “Reply All” when we don’t intend to, write a nastygram or some other uncomplimentary email about a person and hit “Send” only to realize that the person who we are complaining about got the email. Fevered attempts to recall it usually prove fruitless. The unintended recipient either ends up embarrassed or offended. Explanations may or may not salve wounds. But damage lingers. { read more }

Feb 06 2016