In a few weeks we’ll be welcoming Christian Rawles to our team. Christian will be our Sales Manager, joining Dave Bartholomew in designing and implementing our new sales strategy.

We want to have the strongest sales force and the best customer service in the business. Christian and Dave are ideally suited to make that happen.

We received over 200 applications for this position and many were very, very strong candidates, making the selection process luxuriously challenging.  We considered many and interviewed several, and we found just the right fit with Christian.

Why Christian?

Christian has worked with us before. For two years, he did an incredible job of reorganizing and running our production and logistics. Christian is incredibly reliable and a multi-talented learning machine. We’re very happy to have him back, especially in such a key position.

Christian understands Ambler, our style, our aspirations, our product, and our customers. He will expand our capabilities without changing our flavour.

So everyone please welcome Christian Rawles (back) to the team!

For the past month or so, I’ve been investigating a potential new business, one that would be entirely web-based. (Years ago two paths diverged in a wood, and I chose to live in my car and climb full-time rather than learning HTML…)

The details are irrelevant to Ambler, but what I’ve learned about the Internet in the past few weeks is hugely relevant if Ambler wants to thrive in the future: People entrenched in the web world (even those that have never met each other) can know a whole lot more about each other than the rest of us do. And one day the rest of the world is (hopefully) going to catch up. Continue reading →

For the past month, I have had the pleasure of working with Dave Bartholomew.

Our work with Dave is still in its infancy, but it is already showing positive returns. Dave has a wealth of knowledge and experience, and it’s a fabulous opportunity for us here at Ambler.

Having Dave onboard also gives me a great opportunity to be a student again. Despite what the tone of my personal blog may suggest, I have very few answers and I enjoy being a beginner whenever possible. The person with the greatest opportunity and potential for growth is the guy or gal in the class with the least knowledge and skill.

Shockingly, not everyone sees it this way. Continue reading →

What most people think of as lonely people hiding behind computer screens will soon be a new world order. And it’ll soon be a powerful business advantage in all industries, not just among web professionals. Or it will be a huge disadvantage if you’re a late-adopter.

The texting teens, tweeting twits and pimply-faced nerd stereotypes will soon be upgraded to mansion-owners and Ferrari-drivers when more of those same folks become Presidents, PhDs and CEOs. And those that still use fax machines are going to be left in the dust.

The “nerds” — a positive term, I think, for a group of which I proudly consider myself a neophyte member — are winning because of three distinct advantages: asynchronous communication; the productive, personal nature of text; and most importantly, knowing when to use what. Continue reading →

Sooner or later, something fundamental in your business world will change.

We live in an age in which the pace of technological change is pulsating ever faster, causing waves that spread outward toward all industries. This increased rate of change will have an impact on you, no matter what you do for a living. It will bring new competition from new ways of doing things, from corners that you don’t expect.

It doesn’t matter where you live. Long distances used to be a moat that both insulated and isolated people from workers on the other side of the world. But every day, technology narrows that moat inch by inch. Every person in the world is on the verge of becoming both a coworker and a competitor to every one of us, much the same as our colleagues down the hall of the same office building are. Technological change is going to reach out and sooner or later change something fundamental in your business world.

— Andrew S. Grove, former President & CEO of Intel, from his book Only the Paranoid Survive (preface) 

For the past week, I’ve been sticking to a rigid work schedule. I decided to try it out because, for the previous six months, I had been working “until I was finished”.

Of course, “finished” never came, the quality of my work decreased as the hours increased, and I was starting to get burnt out. I even started to fantasize about going to a beach.

The main problem was not the number of hours, but with so much time allocated to work, I didn’t have to be selective about which tasks I concentrated on. Without constraints, I wasn’t forced to pick and choose the most important things out from amidst the fluff. The result was that I got a lot of things done, but not the right things.

To combat the situation, I did two things: I stuck to a rigid work schedule and, even more importantly, I kept a work journal. From those two practices came three immediate benefits: increased urgency, much-improved focus and a refined selection of tasks. Continue reading →

This question has been burning up cycles in my head for more than a week. A post on one of my favorite blogs started the thought process. 

Initially, I thought the question was ludicrous. Especially when posed to another person. Can’t he answer that himself? My gut-level response last week was, “As many as it takes.”

However, I’ve been burning the candle at both ends for over six months now, and it’s starting to suck. 

Often enough, working until a task or project is complete is a necessary and beneficial experience, sometimes mandatory. And there’s a lot to be learned from a mandatory-to-completion environment.

But most workplace tasks and projects, admittedly, do not fall into that category unless horribly planned or pathetically procrastinated.

The question still remains: “How many hours should I work?” Continue reading →

Last July, I justifiably blasted a book called Why Work Sucks & What to Do About It. The authors, trying to sell more of their consulting services, gave a shiny-happy, absent-of-detail description of what it’s like to work in a Results-Only Work Environment. Since that time, and with no help from the aforementioned book, we at our office have successfully adopted a work environment free of a defined schedule and by being entirely results-focused.

But today’s the day that I give it a pragmatic, grown-up name. I call it “Working on the F.A.R.M.” Continue reading →