Company Culture Part 2

Hi, Stuart here,

In our last newsletter, we introduced the topic of  company culture.  We discussed how small decisions we make can change the "feel" of your company to your employees and also to your customers.

In this issue, I want to demonstrate how company culture affects the long term success of your company and how we sometimes have to fight to keep the company culture that we have worked hard to create.

Consider these three companies (names withheld):

#1 This is a small inter-mountain west company that at one point was making around $17 Million per year.

It started out as a small "mom and pop" organization with a great idea and a great product line.  They added sales people and soon realized they needed a pretty large customer service department.  The clients they sold the big ticket items to remained faithful customers for years.

The Customer Service dept was actually a secondary sales team that helps the clients sell more products to 'their' customers.  The original clients LOVED the customer service dept.

They had a company culture that felt like a big happy family.  They would barbecue burgers on most Friday lunches and the company picked up the tab most of the time.

They had a very cool thing they did every 3rd Monday when their newest clients would come in for 3 days of training on the equipment they had just purchased.  (not positive, but I'm pretty sure company #1 paid for all the training and travel expenses except for actually getting to the city where the training occurred.)

The company purchased matching shirts that were kind of like colored lab coats.  Everyone would leave their post (except a small skeleton crew) and, wearing the matching shirts, would go across to the training facility and introduce nearly all 60 of the employees to the new clients.  What a demonstration of customer support after the sale.

"This is Sally, she will help research any new products you have requests for from your customers."   Etc.

They grew to 60 employees.  Had a great run for many years.  They served a lot of people and in turn they made a lot of money.

Then they sold the company to some investors in New York.

The story continues below.


#2  This is the consulting firm I discussed in the first issue on company culture.



#3  A Web Development Company

Now let's look where they are today:

Company #1

Company #2

Company #3

Company Culture

Welcome to the first issue of the Small Business Solutions Newsletter!

Glad to have you aboard.

I have a lot of information coming your way.

Let me give a quick bio of my small business experience.

• Owner/Officer of 3 small businesses (2 still going strong)
• Worked with very large companies for 15 years, but as a consultant (from small companies)
• As an employee or sub contractor, I have been involved with small businesses for over 30 years.
• Employer of over 14 employees
• Also doing business in our Rental Company with just me and my wife.
• Bachelor of Business Administration from Idaho State University.
• And So Much More!

The topic for this first edition of the newsletter is:

Company Culture

What are you doing from day to day that makes your company unique?.  Both to your customers and to any employees you may have?

In my career, I have been in many company across the US and Canada.  Company culture varies from one extreme to another.  Of course it will depend on the local climate, are you in a large or small city?  How many employees?

Many factors affect and offer different options in your corporate culture.  But the good news is: you can decide what your company culture is like.

Some companies have fitness contests or rewards, others have a coffee pot and junk food in every department.  Some have very flexible office hours, others are very tight and strict.

How you set up your company culture has a wide and far reaching effect on your long term success; For either good or ill.

I once worked with a consulting firm that had 25 employees/contractors while I was there.  They paid fairly well, but their company culture was hard to deal with.  For instance, the company required you to have and pay for all the following items (at your own expense).....

• Cell phone - big boxy things that had voice only.  $79/month plus several hundred for the phone.
• Pager - texting was not available at that time.  $100 for the pager and about $45/month.
• You had to take out an American Express card in your own name.  If things got tied up in accts payable or accounting in general and your month ended, YOU were stuck with the penalties.  Each month could run between $5,000 and $10,000 for travel expenses.
• You were required to attend meetings in some other state.  The company claimed to pay for travel, hotel, materials and meals, etc. but somehow I always ended up on the short end of things.
• Then you were required, (ok, STRONGLY expected) to eat out for lunch with your group even when working in the home office, on your own dime.

So they paid fairly well, but with all those expenses eating at your pay, you were back to a meager, new from college wage.

THEN I moved to a different consulting firm.  They were AMAZING.  I was a contractor this time and not an employee, so things were different.

• First of all the pay was close to 4 times as much as the prior company.
• Cell phone technology and plans had changed a lot so it was 30% cheaper with lots more features.
• No pager necessary
• They threw really great parties.  I was not an employee, so I was not eligible for some of the benefits, but they treated me so well!
• They were centered 1600 miles from my house.  If they had a meeting, anywhere, it was a flight to get there.  They said, we would love to have you come, and bring your wife if you can.  If you can't come, that's ok too.
• It was much closer to a medium-sized supportive family.

Every time we left one of their meetings, holiday parties, or what ever, my wife and I would look at each other and say, again, "How did we get hooked up with these people?"  It was wonderful.

So, there are 2 companies doing nearly the exact same work, but with completely different corporate cultures. The first company was very micromanaging and in your face.  The 2nd was more trusting, rewarding and let you be your own manager.  If you had questions or other trouble, they were there to help.

 In part 2 of our culture discussion, we will talk about 3 examples of companies, decisions they made, how their culture changed, and where they are now.


Please share any good or horror stories relating to company culture you may have experienced in the comments below.  I'd love to hear from you.

Create a Strong Password

So to begin with, here are some poor decisions to make with your passwords:

DON'T write your password down on a sticky note and put it on your monitor, your pullout writing board or write it on your white board.

DON'T  say the letters and numbers in your password as you type them in.

DON'T use your child's name, your spouses name, your pet's name, your maiden name, or your parent's name.  I'll tell you how you can "sort of" do this later in this post.

And

DON'T tell all your friends, coworkers, or family your passwords.  The only exception to this is to tell your spouse/significant other the real important ones so they can get to money accounts or life insurance sites if you should pass away.

OK, Now let's build a strong password that the internet won't tell you is weak.

Start by reading the 3 appendices I have included.  I promise I am going to use information in those, so if you don't want to get lost, read them first:

Creating a Strong Password-Appendix-1 - Rules
Create a Strong Password Appendix 2 - Ciphers
Create a Strong Password Appendix 3 - Special Characters

Make sure you do at least 3 of the following steps to ensure the password you end up with is strong enough.

Step #1  Choose something you can remember
This is ok to choose a word that means something to you, a name, a thing, a building, a date, a former address (some of these are pretty strong all by themselves), anything that means something to you and that you can remember.

For an example for all these steps, I am going to use the word ANTELOPE

Step #2 write the word backwards (reverse cipher)

  ANTELOPE backwards is   EPOLETNA              (getting stronger already)

Step #3  Use a substitution cipher

I am going to use the following key for this step:

ABCDEFGHIJKLM
TUVWXYZNOPQRS 

so, substituting the letters from the word  
          EPOLETNA
from the key above, we get
           XJIRXAHT

(Remember, you can create your own cipher key to make it unique to you)

Step #4 Focus on repeating letters and substitute a number or special character in its/their place.
in our result from the last step   XJIRXAHT,    the letter X appears twice.

So I am going to substitute a + sign in place of the 2nd X so we get:
           XJIR+AHT

Step #5 Use both Upper and Lower Case Letters

           XjiR+aHt     Simple enough?

Step #6  Replace either a number or special character in your results

We want both numbers and special characters in there to keep the rule makers happy, so I am going to  replace the letter i with the number 1

           Xj1R+aHt


Step #7 Choose a letter to put one last special character substitution to finish it off.

That letter H is calling out to me, so I am going to replace it with 2 square braces [  ]  and a hyphen -  like this:

           Xj1R+a]-[t

And there it is!!               Xj1R+a]-[t          This is my new strong password.

with those special characters, the length turned out to be 10 characters long.  The longer the password, the more secure it becomes.

If I put this in a few password strength testers I get the following results:

http://www.passwordmeter.com/

https://howsecureismypassword.net/

I'd love to hear any of your own methods of building a stronger password.

Creating a Strong Password Appendix 1 - Rules

Most Sites/Security Systems agree on a basic set of rules to help make sure your password is sufficiently strong.  I will discuss the basic list.

Length

I just read an article about how 6 is NOT enough characters in your password.

They recommend 11 to 15 or more characters.    That's a lot to remember.

I used some of my tricks to  create a  password (13 characters long) and one of the password strength testers said it would take a desktop PC 51 million years to break!  That's pretty secure!


Don't Use Real Words

Most services and systems recommend NOT using a word you can find in a dictionary.

But what about words from a language that is not your native tongue?  How about from a dead language that is no longer spoken?

That might work.


Do Use Numbers

One way to use numbers is to substitute numbers for letters.   This is a BAD example, but what if you spelled the word PASSWORD like this?    P455w0rd   ?  Again that was a bad example.

Here are some number/letter substitutes:

L=1
Z=2
E=3
A=4
S=5
G=6
B=8
O=0


Do Use Special Characters

They recommend you use any of the followings Special Characters in your password:

~ ! @ # $ % ^ & *  ) _ + - = [ ] \ { } | : ; < > ? / \

for more info on that see:  Creating a Strong Password Appendix 3 - Special Characters


Do Use Both Upper and Lower Case Letters

This is a simple thing to do.  Just simply capitalize a random letter (or letters) in your password.

Example:   pasSworD


Reduce Repeating Characters

This is not only double letters:  paSSword, bOOKKEEper, or chEEse,

but a number, letter or special character that is used more than once in the password, like:

rHytHm, lEvEl, chEEsE, 18614,  or $tuise$


Avoid patterns

Patterns exist in numbers and letters.  Avoid anything like the following:

QWERTY    (Top row of Letters on Keyboard)
ASDFGHJKL   (2nd row of Letters on Keyboard)
ABABABABA  (
!@#$%^&  (Special Characters in order on very top row of keyboard)

13579  (Odd Numbers)
246810  (Even Numbers)

11235813  (Fibinachi Sequence)
3.14159  (Pi)
E=Mc2 (Einstein's Theory of Relativity)


Avoid Sequential lists

Avoid anything like the following:

ABCDEF
12345
ZYXWVUTS
5678XYZ

Create a Strong Password Appendix 2 - Ciphers

Ciphers

The password strength checkers all say NOT to use real words.  So one method of beating that system is to convert a real word using a cipher.

There are many types of Ciphers, They can be used in any combination to create a strong password.  I'll discuss several here.

Backwards Cipher:

PASSWORD = DROWSSAP
Simply spell your word(s) backward.  This is pretty good, but common words can be broken quite easily.     Never use MadamImAdam in a backwards cipher  (hint it is the same both ways).

Alternating Cipher

In an alternating cipher, you take 2 words and write them using a letter from every other word, like this  (I'll spell the 2nd word in all caps to help you see):

the words lettuce purple would convert to   lPeUtRtPuLcEe

To make this more tricky, you could spell the 2nd word backwards. like this (again, 2nd word is in all caps)

the words Lettuce Purple would convert to  lEeLtPtRuUcPe


Substitution Ciphers.

The can be created in any combination.  For Instance:

Simple Substitution Cipher:

ABCDEFGHIJKLM
NOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Simply substitute the letter above or below it.  For Instance:

If I substitute the letters in the word   password, I get cnffjbeq  p=c, a=n, s=f, etc.

That's all there is to a substitute cipher. but what if we want to get trickier?  Let's mix it up a little

ABCDEFGHIJKLM
ZYXWVUTSRQPON

This is just the same except the letters are arranged a bit differently; the second half of the alphabet is backwards.

If I convert the word password using this I get kzhhdliw.   Hey that's just as mixed up as before, but this time the cipher key is not as obvious.

Let's take it one step further:

ABCDEFGHIJKLM
TUVWXYZNOPQRS

in this case, I broke the bottom line at the letter T.  I added all the letters from T-Z and then ran out, so I started with N again to finish out the bottom line and ended with S.

Definitely NOT as easy to break the cipher key.

Again, these ciphers can be used in any combination to create a strong password.

I would keep a copy of the cipher in your shoe (just kidding) wallet or purse to help you in the event you forget the password you created with it.

Create a Strong Password Appendix 3 - Special Characters

These are potential substitutions for letters in your password.  The normal letter is at the left and its substitution follow each.  This is NOT a complete list.  Make up your own, use your imagination.

A   /\ (Forward and Back Slash)  OR /-\ OR 4
B   |3 OR |} OR !3 OR !}
C   ( OR <  OR [
D   |] OR |)
E   {  OR 3
F   |= OR !=
G   [- OR C- OR C, OR (;
H   |-| OR !-! OR ]-[
I   ][ OR | OR ! OR 1
J   _| OR ,| OR .| OR _! OR ,! OR .!
K   |< OR JUST <
L   |_ OR !_ OR 1
M   |v| OR !V! OR nn OR |\/| OR !\/!
N   |\| or !\!
O   0 (zero) OR [] OR {} OR ()
P   |> OR |^ OR !^ OR !* OR |*
Q   @ OR O_ OR O, OR O~ OR (repeat all these with a 0 (zero) instead of Captial o )
R   |? OR !? (couldn't find a good one, make up one that you can remember)
S   $ OR (/) OR 5
T   -|- OR -!- OR ^|^ etc
U   |_| OR !_! OR [_]
V   \/ (Back and Forward Slash) OR ^
W   vv OR VV OR \/\/
X   * OR +
Y   ^/ OR `/ Z   (\) OR /|/  OR %


The following are the names and locations of the harder to find special characters:
~ (tilda) to the left of the number 1 near letter Q (Shifted)
[ (Left Square Bracket) near letter P
] (Right Square Bracket) near letter P
{ (Left Curly Brace) near Letter P  (Shifted)
} (Right Curly Brace) near Letter P  (Shifted)
\ (Back Slash) above Enter Key
| (Piper Symbol) above Enter Key (Shifted Back Slash)
/ (Forward Slash) same key as Question mark ?  (Not Shifted)

Fake it until you become it !!

Over the years I have attended many professional development classes that have helped me a lot!  At one point I was attending a conference called COMMON for IBM Sys/36, Sys/38 and AS/400 (they were called mini computers at the time). These machines are now called the I-Series line (until they change the name again).

Anyway, we would learn all about specific software, the OS/36/38/400 operating systems, RPG/400, Security, Customer Support, etc.

Certainly I attended the classes I was sent to attend, but I always caught several sessions from the Professional Development track.

These sessions called to my soul, they helped me believe in myself when I needed it. They are designed to help me be a better, more professional employee/consultant.  I still think back to things I learned then and other similar classes I have taken since then.

So here is the first installment of a category that I am going to also call Professional Development.

This is a wonderful message from TED Talks/2012.  It was published to YouTube in Oct 2012.

Amy Cuddy brings to light a great idea to chew on.  Fake it until you become it.  If we only present ourselves as we currently are, we would never grow, nor make any progress in our careers.  

I have seen this in many instances in business, where someone is promoted from within to a management position.  This person's peers say "That is just Sam (or Sally) how can they lead us?"

So I watch Sam/Sally step up to the plate and act the way they have seen other managers present themselves.  Are they true managers yet?  Probably not.  But they persist and eventually they BECOME a manager.

This reminds me of the movie Remember the Titans.  The lead quarterback is injured and they had a backup QB, but he had never really acted as the leader on the field.  They put him in and tried to give him advice on how to lead and he says, "I've got this taken care of."

Then he runs out there are tells everybody to buck up and lets get serious, it's time to work!  And off they go.  I think he had some leadership skills, but no one on the team had seen them before, so he just went out and "faked it."

But enough about that,  Listen to Amy Cuddy.  She shows simple everyday ways to bring out our best self.  I'll include more on Body Language in upcoming posts.

Please leave a comment and let me know if this is beneficial and if you'd like to see more content of this type.

Thanks, 

Talk to you soon!

Adjust White Balance

	Adobe Photoshop
	Figure 1: Image with Poor White Balance
	Have you ever been disappointed by a batch of photos that you thought were great when you took them, but later, they look only so, so? Even a little drab or dreary? Maybe your white balance wasn't set correctly. This article is to help you after the fact. I will post another that will help you set the camera up correctly

Cute Little Word Tricks Part 1

	Microsoft Word
	Trick #1 The Change Case Option
	There are several reasons that this trick may come in handy. You accidentally have the [Caps Lock] turned on.

Select Columns From Another Sheet With VBA

	Microsoft Excel
	(Figure 1) Control Sheet with Command Button and Yes/No Criteria
	Problem: You want to use VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) in Microsoft Excel to hide columns in a different sheet than the one with the controls. Solution: This example works with Excel 2003 or 2007. It uses a workbook with three worksheets named Control, Labor, and Report. (See Figure 1)

MS Access Record Navigation Keys

	Microsoft Access Record Navigation Keys
	This is a basic topic, but I have found many people that are unaware of this feature. When using a form in MS Access (any version: 1997 or later) a navigation toolbar is displayed by default at the bottom of the form, as seen in Figure 1. These buttons are quite self evident, but here we go starting from the left:
	Figure 1: The Record Navigation Bar
	First Record Button: This moves the record pointer to the first record in the table and the data is displayed. (In some versions of MS Access) If you are already positioned on the first record, this is

Compact and Repair Your Database

	Microsoft Access
	This came up again, so I thought I would share it with you. As an Access database is used and records are both added and deleted, the datbase grows. BUT, the allocated space (on disk) for any deleted records is not actually removed. For example: You have a table with 5000 records and you go through and clean up any outdated or obsolete records. This seems like it should help make the database as a whole perform faster and more efficiently. However, if you look at the total size on disk before

Number Field Loses Decimals

	Microsoft Access
	Problem: A field created in Access (2007) is specified as a number with two decimal places (non currency). When data is entered, it rounds to the nearest whole number. This may still occur with the decimals showing as .00 Solution: This is not a difficult problem, but can be really frustrating if you do not know the correct combination of field properties. The problem is in the definition of the field. The example below is for a field to hold the

Gone Phishing

	A Phishing Scam is an email message sent by unknown persons that are looking for valid email addresses to sell to spammers. The way they do this is to send you a message that looks too good to be true. The message will ask you to go one of several things, any of which tells the 'Phishers' that your email address is valid. call a phone number, they will ask for your email address. click a link within the message (this promises something that is rarely delivered) open an attachment go to a certain website and enter your email address etc. This situation can result in:

Vista Wireless Connection, Local Only: SOLVED

	Figure 1: Connected to Router only
	Works in Safe mode or normal mode In my PC Cleanup/Virus removal/Performance tuning work I have seen several PCs and Laptops that don't/won't connect to the Internet with the System Tray message:

The Windows Registry and Registry Cleaners

The windows registry is a vital system file that is basically a large list of every program or data file/document that was ever installed using the standard windows installation program (msi).

Think of the windows registry like a big phone book. It lists programs and settings for anything you install or create on your PC.

Most uninstall utilities leave fragments behind in the registry. When something is not completely and cleanly

Speed up your Computer - USE Extreme Caution !!

Caution !! Caution !! Caution !! Caution !! Caution !! Caution !! Caution !!

DISCLAIMER !!

This is a set of steps I copied from techpirates . com
Here is the exact link:

TechPirates Posting

Don't use most of those listed on their link if you don't want to totally mess up your Windows installation.....

I have included (and Renumbered) only those that are easier to do and less harmful if you don't/can't follow

Protect your PC part 2

Forwarded Email Messages

There are some very funny, cute or shocking emails passed across the Internet everyday.

There are also some very dangerous viruses passed across the Internet everyday.

A lot of the time they are linked together.

Protect your PC part 1

This post will discuss the evils of viruses and malware that can come from social networking sites.

As you know I clean individual and corporate PCs that get bogged down, locked up or incapacitated from viruses, spyware and other malware.

I try to get as much history of the problem as I can before I begin. Too many times the

Welcome to...SPAMmmalot

	Figure 1: Never heard of Chris Newton..
	Ok, just for fun... Here is a link to a youtube video of a legomation version of Monty Python's Holy Graile Camelot musical number: "Welcome to Camelot!" Hence the name of this blog. (video opens a new window) Back to the topic at hand.