Getting closer to the boating season

It is Friday and I am another week closer to going boating. I can tell the season is nearly here because the temperature, while not yet where it needs to be, is certainly going in the right direction.

What does this mean? It means I am going to my local ship chandler to buy paint, electrical supplies, and marine-grade molding tomorrow. I'll then spend a good chunk of money and my weekend at the boatyard where my boat has been stored for the winter working beneath the cover. I'll probably need an extra tube of sealent or some tool that I don't currently have, which will mean another trip to the boat store and more money. Oh, and it is time to re-up the boat's insurance and USCG documentation. More money.

But, guess what? I am happy to be spending the money. My contribution to the stimulus is local, directed, measurable, and transparent. I hope I am one of many, many boaters who are doing the same thing this weekend and weekends to come.

What does climate change mean for me...?

You may have noticed the news article on my blog's marina RSS feed about sea level rise in California. The article --"Venice, Marina del Rey at risk with rising ocean levels"-- reports, "Hundreds of thousands of people and billions of dollars of Golden State infrastructure and property would be at risk if ocean levels rose 55 inches by the end of the century, as computer models suggest."

It got me wondering what was going on in my home state of Rhode Island.

A quick search found a report issued by NOAA's Coastal Services Center that finds, "While a United Nations panel of scientists and government officials is predicting that oceans will rise up to 2 feet by 2100, coastal resource managers in Rhode Island are preparing for the sea to rise 3 to 5 feet. And that estimate is considered conservative." The report continues, noting, "Sea level rise along Rhode Island's coast is contributing to increased coastal flooding and erosion, and has the potential to damage infrastructure and property."

So, what is the reality of this situation? I believe that the truth often lurks in the middle of opposing views. There is clear evidence of global warming. There is less clarity about the rate of change and how much of this change can be attributed to macro, historical climate trends. And, as demonstrated in the two articles above, there are some very interesting propositions about the consequences of climate-change trends on our opposite coasts.

I suspect many of my colleagues and friends have strong opinions on this topic—one way or the other. That's good. To encourage the conversation that needs to happen, the Association of Marina Industries is scheduling a Climate Change workshop in Warwick, Rhode Island, on July 28. This will be, to my knowledge, the first workshop for the marina industry that deals head-on with this issue. Speakers and attendees will review the facts as they are known, learn and understand the range of policies coastal states are considering to address these facts, and discuss practices that can be used by marinas and boatyards to adapt to the situation. This should be the beginning of a productive and interesting conversation.

For more information about this workshop, visit AMI's training and certification page.

-Mark

What is this web 2.0 about?

We’ve been kicking the term around the office and most recently I was part of a meeting were we spent some time talking about Web 2.0 and its application to our work and business efforts. Is the internet changing right in front of us again?

Wikipedia.org defines web 2.0 as “a perceived second generation of web development and design, that aims to facilitate communication, secure information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and applications; such as social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies”

Although I couldn’t define it as clearly as the collaborators over at Wikipedia, I do sense a real-change in how we are using the internet. Years ago (and I do mean years ago), I was focused on email addresses and web sites. My first contact with the internet came with the introduction of email addresses at the University and a training on how to search the web using web-crawlers using a now extinct program called Netscape.

Today the internet is quickly becoming about Facebook, Linkedin, blogs and tweets. It is these web-features that are driving web traffic, connections and, most importantly, populating search engine results. To be sure, web sites will continue to be important, but their function is shifting from being the primary internet presence to the place where our blogs, tweets and social profiles lead our customers to for secondary information. Assuming this is true and we are part of the advent of web 2.0, the team here is working hard to understand the implications.

So that is how I ended up here on Blotspot. Others in our office are experiementing with other web-based communities and communication tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. I do believe the internet is changing. Right now, right in front of us. I believe that traditional, static web sites will stop being the most important part of the web, replaced with something more dymanic, active and adapative. I don’t know what this will be, but the team here is commmitted to being part of it, whatever it is.

Mark

Going boating...?

I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that all the slips in the marina where I keep my boat have been renewed for the upcoming season. Granted, this is a small, town-run facility with minimal services, but 100% renewal anywhere right now is a good thing. Given the market conditions, a nation's gross domestic product that decreased at an annual rate of 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter last year, the 10.3% unemployment rate here in RI, and the ever-increasing number of “out of business” signs on main street, it’s encouraging that boaters are still going boating.

My boat goes in on April 15th. (Yes, tax day!) I’m already counting down the days until I’m spending my afternoons aboard working on this or that. I look forward to that first gathering of friends to celebrate a Friday afternoon and the first trip to my favorite anchorage with my family. For me, it’s never been a matter of if I’ll put the boat in the water, but rather when. Sacrifices abound, but stop short of laying up the boat. Apparently, given the renewal rate at my marina, I am not unique.

Boats in the water keeps yards busy with launches and spring commissioning and may create some repair work. A family that uses its boat (as opposed to keeping it in the backyard) will spend money on boating supplies, fuel, food, ice, perhaps transient dockage, equipment upgrades (not everyone can resist the current sales on boating gear), and possibly—and positively for boatyards—service and repairs from those accidental groundings.

Considering all that’s happening around us, the fact that every slip in my marina has been renewed says a great deal about the nature of boating in general and is incredibly good news for our industry this season. At least for this moment, I’m allowing myself to be hopeful.

Our culture

We spent a large part of the day interviewing young, talented professionals who applied for position Lighthouse posted last week. We are seeking a Administrative Coordinator to provide support to our growing portfolio of environmental consulting projects.


I am always impressed how hard it is to suss out how an individual will fit into our culture. At Lighthouse we believe that cultural fit -- how someone will fit into our style, pace and approach-- is the most significant key to hiring the right person. As a shared time management company, our team has to work across many different clients; quickly and seamlessly. It requires constant motion, thoughtful but efficient decision making and an adaptive approach to one's day. Although the person's technical skills are important, for us, more importantly, is trying to decipher how they will (or won't) fit into our culture.


So how do we test some one's cultural fit? In my experience, the most successful approach I've used comes from: Interviewing and Selecting High Performers: Every Manager's Guide to Effective Interviewing Techniques. This concise guide suggests consistent questioning using real scenarios and comparing the characteristics of your high performers to the canidates's performance traits.

Finding out how someone reacts to a particular, known quirk in your office space casts a real light on how someone will react once (if) they get there. We draw our questions from real office situations we know the canidates will face. We probe their answers, trying to understand their approach to the problem and their attitude towards the problem.

The second test, identifying traits that are already proven in your office setting and measuring those against the candidates' traits, is a clarifying process. The premise is that high performers help define the office culture and therefore, their traits can be described and compared to the canidates' traits. It is an illuminating process because it helps us understand our office culture and creates a structured interview approach for finding the right fit.

Regardless of the approach, hiring is never an easy process. And it today's world, every investment mattters.



We'll let you know how we did this time around.

-Mark

Focus or diversify

It is true that Lighthouse balances two seemingly different business foci. This balance is intended and strategically important. Both depend on back-office business services such as administrative support, event management, accounting, communications, logistics and the like. We call this the business spine. By building a consistent and high quality business spine, we are able to service both our trade association partners and our environmental consulting clients using shared capacity. Shared capacity means we can do a lot more for our clients at better rates then most.

It also means we place a high value on learning and efficiency. Knowledge management is a key feature in Lighthouse's network. We realize that only through continuous sharing and learning will our knowledge and skills grow to meet tomorrow’s challenges. Learning also promotes operational efficiencies – creating systems that can be easily replicated across our clients bring faster, bigger and more impactful results.

For example, today we spent another important hour talking about the International Marina and Boatyard Conference, learning from our excellent event in Ft. Lauderdale to evolve how the program will be delivered in Tampa next January. Our team drew from the IMBC experience as well as lessons we've learned by delivering other events; events for other clients spanning many different topical areas. It may not have felt like we were improving our business spine, but we were and we did.

-Mark

And the next question is: What about your environmental consulting services that Lighthouse is so well known for?

Yes, in addition to our association management services, Lighthouse also has offers environmental consulting.

Our environmental consulting focus is on coastal resources and their watersheds. The team at Lighthouse believes that healthy ecosystems are a essential part of society and that coastal areas and their watersheds are particularly vulnerable and vitally important.

How do we deliver our consulting services? Like are shared time association management model, Lighthouse has a networked organizational structure that allows the practitioners to share a common business spine. Experience has shown us that utilizing our core of shared time administrative support services is frequently a more cost effective alternative for research and business support. Our practitioners access this spine remotely and on a shared time basis. This shared time business spine allows us to keep our operating costs and overhead low while providing the highest quality service.

Our network of practitioners harnesses a diverse set of skills and knowledge areas critical to the success of any coastal management initiative. These experiences are based on a range of field experiences throughout the world. Our practitioners have worked at local, national, regional and international scales levels to introduce, develop and apply the process of integrated resource management.

What is shared time association management?

I am often asked, what is shared time management?

Shared time management allows participating companies to leverage their limited resources to access a range of talents and skills that they could not acquire on their own. Shared time management allows these businesses to stabilize their current service offerings, often vastly improving their effectiveness. It also provides these businesses some excess capacity so that they can begin to build new program offerings.

By subscribing to a shared time management approach, trade groups:

• can go places strategically that you have not been able to get to because it increases and expands capacity. By sharing capacity you gain capacity.
• access management experience and expertise usually only available to much large associations. Because Lighthouse has shared time relationships, you can afford access to this expertise.
• Build on our network of industry relationships that offers the potential for alliances in areas of training and education, industry communication as well as administrative efficiencies.

here we go...

Want to followup what we are up to at Lighthouse. Get an inside view to our work, our perspective and our philosphy.

Happy reading.

Mark