Putting Your Customers' Needs First

Richard Stanley (Director of Global Application Development): Just to reiterate, we wouldn’t be where we were without Woody…it is nice that he gave us credit, but he had the vision and he pushed our team with T&B Access, with CRM, with EDI to really let us reach our full potential and really help the team out. Thinking back, when I first started here, I worked on a lot of integrations with Woody and I can say before there was Urbanspoon, before there was Yelp, before there was LocalEats, Woody could find the best restaurants in any town so long as you did not let him drive!

Video Link: https://youtu.be/CFmH1HXJxdY

Woody’s Final Thoughts

The only thing I would add to that is that I have worked forty something years … I worked 13 years at Westinghouse in the Pittsburgh area…I worked in the semiconductor area and in fact, two of my biggest competitors were ASEA and BBC and, of course, they later would become ABB! So, I went full circle. And they wound up buying a good part of Westinghouse in the process in the United States so when you look at it … it has gone full circle. I started out with a company with probably 100,000 people with 70% of them within a 30-mile radius of Pittsburgh. I was with Westinghouse Semiconductor (Youngwood, PA) and then ten years in (Plain City) Ohio with Ranco Controls – maker of HVAC, automotive and refrigeration controls. Then I came back down here (Memphis TN) to American Electric. And, of course, American Electric got acquired by T&B…I survived that and then T&B gets acquired by ABB and I survived that … so I guess that is part of the story. Probably what is unique though is that for the last 23 years being here either in Lynnfield or at the headquarters here (Southwind) … one thing that we should all keep in mind is that everybody in this room including myself are all overhead…the people that make our business work are the people at the plants that make our product or the people at the warehouse who are picking, packing and shipping and delivering the quality product on time for our customers. We just need to keep in mind that is the focal point; none of us would have jobs if we didn’t have good quality products to deliver and we have got to be thankful for that role and not lose sight of it. Remember that our customers are the reason we all have jobs…even the people at the plants and that’s the thing that I think you want to keep in mind. “At the end of the day, if you are working on two projects and you don’t have time to finish both of them, just ask yourself ONE question … WHICH of these two projects is of more VALUE TO THE CUSTOMER? And work on that one first!

And, if you look at it and find out that neither one has any value for the customer, ask yourself what the hell are you doing it for?”

Video Link: https://youtu.be/ps43Y4kEipk