Welcome to 2019.
This blog marks the beginning of Perlmutter Unfiltered’s 5th year; it’s been fun writing and hearing from friends, colleagues, customers, and others from all over the world. I hope my mix of topics — innovation, leadership, and technical insight — have inspired you professionally and personally.
Thinking about 2019 and preparing for another great year put me in mind of an interesting Fast Company article about what we can do to improve our work space.
Everyone gets comfortable at work, from where we sit and who we prefer to work with on our projects and teams. As leaders in filtration technology, we look for “no-drama” days in which the process is optimized, production is overcapacity, and customers have no machine issues. However, these calm and steady-state environments can lead to complacency and learning plateaus. On the flip side, when we experience periodic disruptions, we develop new views and new ideas.
Therefore, for 2019, I suggest “becoming uncomfortable.” Shake up projects, teams and tasks/responsibilities. Sit somewhere new. Push yourself personally and professionally to embrace change. Together we can all become leaders in filtration technology.
Becoming Uncomfortable
First, step-up to new roles and look for new responsibilities. This could be as simple as becoming an expert in distillation or solid-liquid separation (contact me and I can help you!) or developing expertise on a specific process at your company.
Next, constantly challenge yourself to get better… call a vendor for a “lunch & learn” seminar, call a new customer and more importantly, make a call rather than sending an e-mail or text. The act of picking up the phone often makes us more uncomfortable in this digital age.
Going further, make small changes every day. A small change is easy to make and before long, the team, the process, the office will see improvements. Working for BHS Filtration, we say, in German, eins bei eins (one by one) or as I like to say “millimeter by millimeter.”
So, let’s all become more uncomfortable in 2019. Make proactive changes rather than reactive. Let me know your ideas on this, share your successes, and we can all learn to become uncomfortable together.