You will enjoy John Chaney’s blog at the Dexter + Chaney site. Chaney, who co-founded the construction software company in Seattle with Mark Dexter in 1981, shows how years of practical experience combined with initiatives to remain relevant have resulted in a blog that is both modern in style and wise in content.
Consider this recent post, Foundations, where he reminds us of fundamental success basics:
I think one of the reasons I enjoy ?WoC? (World of Concrete, a major annual trade show in Las Vegas) ?is the interesting mixture of people who attend and companies who exhibit. My software company?s booth is directly across from a heavy equipment supplier. With a lot of attendee traffic at this show there hasn’t been much time to visit with other companies, but I did have a chance to pop over and admire the huge pieces of brute force metal. I was particularly impressed by the concrete crusher on display. And I think the gentleman I was speaking with was actually interested in our cloud-based software.
In our several brief exchanges, we realized that we had more in common than one would think. Although we offered pretty much polar opposite products to the construction market, our discussion soon changed from cloud software and concrete crushers to how we approached business. We talked about how the only way to stay relevant and keep growing was to keep innovating ? keep introducing new products and adopting new technologies. We talked about how the most important investment we make is in our people ? hiring and keeping people who care about what they do and who make a difference And we talked about how vital it was to listen to our customers, not come up with our ideas and our business plans in a vacuum.
So I suppose it is appropriate that at the World of Concrete I was reminded about foundations. The foundations that support success and growth and that make things like cloud computing and advanced concrete crushing equipment possible. Keep investing, focus on your people, and listen to your customers. Then whatever you build will be built the right way.
Chaney’s blog is certainly a worthy contestant in the competition. ?You can through this construction marketing link until 5 ?p.m. on April 1.
