2011 Summer

The Riverside Group – Adapting to Change & Investing in the Future

August 21, 2011

by Melissa DeDonder, The Binding Edge

The Riverside Group was formed in 1988 following the merger of three Rochester, New York companies – Riverside Book Bindery, Zahrndts Book Bindery and Monroe Paper Finishing. Each company brought a diverse set of products and services to the table – Riverside specialized in perfect binding and saddlestitiching, Zahnadts brought case binding and Monroe offered a complete range of diecut finishing services.

As a full-service post press company with an emphasis on case binding, the Riverside Group is able to provide a complete spectrum of services and products ranging from binding and diecutting to laminating and folding from one location in Rochester. Riverside’s primary customer base covers the greater Northeast region of the United States, however, it is steadily growing to include customers across the nation.

“I believe that our customers come to us not only for the quality of our products, but also because of the quality of customer service that we provide. This begins with estimating and then continues throughout the entire process, from sample making to staying on top of production schedules and providing timely answers to questions or concerns,” said Peter Pape, president. As an extension of customer service, the company provides technical tips and production articles on its website to provide time- and money-saving tips to help customers plan for their next project.

As an all-in-one finishing house, Riverside can run anywhere from 250 pieces up to ½ million in its 110,000 sq. ft. factory. To manage each project from start to finish, the company has invested in a diverse set of equipment that represents almost every manufacturer in the industry. “Because of the nature of our sales volume, we try to have both semi-automatic and fully automatic equipment available for each process, which allows us to complete small, medium and large jobs as needed,” Pape said.

Currently, case binding makes up 35 percent of Riverside’s business and the company has two case binding machines onsite. Perfect binding accounts for 20 percent of the facility’s workflow, and the company has two perfect binders. Book1One, its online digital book manufacturing division, also accounts for 20 percent, and wire-o binding represents 15 percent of the business. Diecutting or specialty finishing accounts for 10 percent of Riverside’s production and the company maintains seven foil stamping machines to support this demand. Riverside also maintains full sample and prototype departments, and provides a spectrum of hand work that includes packaging, inserting and folding, including complicated display pieces. “Our product mix is all over the board, from direct mail folding to high-end coffee table books. We are probably best known for our high-end coffee table books,” Pape said.

One service that Riverside no longer provides is saddlestitching. “We know our customers and we try to specialize in services that they can’t do in-house. Saddlestitching was an area of low volume for us, and as we looked ahead and tried to adapt to change in the marketplace, we decided to discontinue saddlestitching because it wasn’t what our customers needed,” Pape said.

Investing in More Than Just Equipment

Riverside knows how to meet the needs of both its customers and its 80 employees. “Our employees have an average tenure of more than 14 years,” said Pape. One reason may be the time and resources that Riverside invests in its employees. All employees are crossed trained to run an average of five to seven different pieces of equipment and merit pay is based on their abilities and the skills needed to run the different machines.

“Each person is allowed to move at their speed of learning on new equipment. They are aware that in order to move up in pay scale, they need to be versatile in many areas and flexible enough to meet the evolving needs of our customers,” Pape said. Employees who have been with the company for an extended period of time also are reviewed on their ability to train others. New employees get a formal review four times over the course of the first two years to ensure that they are in sync with the company’s goals.

Riverside also believes in promoting from within. “Most of our management team has ‘grown-up’ alongside the company – they started on-the-floor and have worked their way up,” Pape said. Pape himself began as a sales person in 1981. “At that time, we were around $400,000 in sales. I purchased the company in 1984 because the owner wanted out of the business and I was crazy enough to want in,” Pape said.

Lean Management Leads to Many Rewards

In 2008, Riverside began implementing lean management strategies, and the company has reaped many rewards from this investment. “As the leader of this company, I am always looking for a different way to do things. We don’t want to be just another clown in the parade; we want to be the band,” Pape said. After much time researching lean concepts, Pape took the idea to Riverside’s management team and they agreed that it was the right thing to do. A consultant was hired to facilitate the initial training and help move the company in the right direction. This consultant still works with Riverside to audit the program and train new employees.

Pape estimates that thousands of changes have been implemented the past three years to make the company more streamlined from the inside out. For example, Riverside has taken a clamp changing process that used to take five hours to complete down to an efficient 20-minute process. Another example of success includes inventory management needs – the company has cut them by 30 percent internally without disrupting customer service. “We did this by analyzing turn times of materials needed for supplies and then reducing them without affecting customer needs. We also provide fulfillment for several customers, and we used that same process on the finished goods side of our inventory,” Pape said.

Pape reports that when any type of waste happens at Riverside, the company and its employees are invested in finding ways to reduce it. “As a result of our lean management efforts, productivity, customer service and employee satisfaction have all increased dramatically,” Pape said.

To implement lean management strategies, the company first created a Lean Management Team to manage the process and to continually look for ways for the company to eliminate waste in the future. This team meets once every week. “Sustainability can only be achieved when you have a management team that’s fully dedicated, with support and buy-in from the top,” Pape said.

Second, Riverside committed to company-wide employee training and continuing education. One-hundred percent of Riverside’s employees received an initial eight hours of training. The training sessions were broken into two four-hour sessions over a two month period of time. Each session was comprised of a mixture of senior managers, office and floor employees. “The training focuses on why we need to have lean management and how it will help each employee in their day-to-day jobs. We then cover the basics of lean and how to implement it in the work place. The final component focuses on how we measure it as a company and how the employees as individuals can effect change,” Pape said.

Lean Management Team Leaders received an additional 40 hours of training. All employees are required to participate in at least two continuing education sessions prior to their next performance review. “This approach doesn’t mean that we don’t make mistakes, but it does mean that we learn how to prevent them from happening again,” Pape concluded.

Seizing an Opportunity for Growth – Book1One

“As a company, we believe that our business will always be changing and that we need to change with it or we will be left behind,” Pape said. This philosophy guided Riverside into launching an online digital book manufacturing division called Book1One. This innovative division was designed to meet the small press run needs of individuals, independent publishers and organizations seeking professional and affordable printing and binding services for quantities of one to 1,000 pieces.

“Digital book manufacturing was an area that was unfamiliar from the normal trade bindery perspective, so we’ve done our homework,” Pape said. A team of Riverside employees began exploring how the company could produce one book at a time and still make a profit. The team established some guiding principles about how the company would successfully operate, and then added processes and investment as the company grew. “I will be honest and say that we never anticipated how much computer software and development that it would take. That was a whole new area for us,” Pape said.

Since Book1One’s launch in 2007, the print-on-demand book and photobook markets have increased exponentially. Book1One currently accounts for 20 percent of Riverside’s business, and it is anticipated to grow even more in the coming years. “This is where the growth potential is right now for our industry. It’s very exciting,” Pape said.

Book1One is managed by a member of Riverside’s senior management team, and offers soft cover, hard cover, thesis/dissertation, legal (sewn), plastic coil and saddlestitched binding options. Riverside has invested in software solutions to automate many of Book1One’s services; however, its employees are cross-trained to work for Book1One as needed.

For the customer, downloadable free photobook and photo calendar software provides templates that can be used to create professionally designed products without the added expense of hiring a graphic designer, or pre-designed PDF files can be uploaded directly to the website. Book1One provides a quick turnaround time – five business days for soft cover and 10 days for hard cover books. Just like The Riverside Group, Book1One prides itself on customer service and offers a variety of self-publishing tips, checklists and a blog on its website at www.book1one.com.

Pape says that there has been some cross over between Book1One customers and Riverside’s traditional bindery services, but not enough to put a percentage on it. “The two companies serve two different customer bases. When we do have crossover, we make it seamless for the customer. It’s not a major part of our plan to integrate these services,” Pape said.

The Riverside Group shows no signs of slowing down in the future. Despite the recent downturn in the economy, the company continues to invest in new equipment and processes, including a high-speed casemaker, a zero-makeready casemaker for shorter runs, a new tipper for end leaves, a film laminator and a UV coater. “Going forward, we anticipate continued success and growth in the digital book market, as well as a greater emphasis on casebinding from our traditional market,” Pape concluded. With its track record of forward thinking, Riverside’s anticipation will likely lead to future success.

ecoGenesis Allows RF Welding of Green Materials

August 21, 2011

by: Amy Bauer

A proprietary radio frequency (RF) welding technology from Genesis Plastics Welding is expanding the capabilities of traditional RF welding machines, allowing them to bond a wider array of materials, including many considered more “green,” or ecologically friendly.

The technology, called ecoGenesis™, has been in development for more than 20 years, according to Tom Ryder, Genesis president and chief executive officer. Today, the company applies ecoGenesis to products produced in its contract welding facility in Fortville, IN, and licenses the technology to other plastics manufacturing companies.

ecoGenesis is a system that “bolts on” to existing RF welding machinery and, using standard settings and no additives to the materials being welded, provides a strong bond between materials that previously weren’t candidates for RF welding, such as polyethylene, polypropylene, polyester, nylon and bioplastic. These phthalate-free materials are options to polyvinylchloride (PVC), which has become the subject of concern among consumer and health groups.

RF Then and Now

Traditional RF welding works by passing radio frequency waves through materials, exciting the molecules so that they heat up and meld together from the inside out; thus, creating a strong bond. Ryder described it as similar to a potato heating in a microwave, cooking from the inside out. While RF welding has been used extensively with PVC and polyurethane (PU), Ryder said one of the biggest downsides to RF welding has been its limitation primarily to such polar materials – those with molecules that because of their positive and negative poles attract or repel one another. Nonpolar materials are made up of molecules without positive and negative poles. Those materials like polyethylene, polypropylene, polyester, nylon and bioplastic – are candidates for ecoGenesis RF welding.

As described in a white paper paid for by Genesis Plastics Welding and The Dow Chemical Company, “Prior RF welding art allowed for only a few polymer films – like polyvinylchloride (PVC) and polyurethane (PU) – as candidates for a good RF weld.” Technical consultant OmniTech International was hired to evaluate ecoGenesis and “confirmed that films, copolymer films and fabrics with low dielectric factors (DLF) can efficiently and effectively be RF welded with ecoGenesis – without the aid of coatings, adhesives or other costly treatments.”

Other methods for bonding nonpolar materials include using heat sealing, impulse welding, adhesives or materials with polar additives, such as EVA, said Ryder, noting that each has its own drawbacks, whether limited dimensions to the weld or added materials costs. “There are other methods, they’re just not as efficient or cost-effective as ecoGenesis,” he said. By eliminating the need for expensive heat seal additives and allowing the substitution of lower-cost raw materials, ecoGenesis helps to keep costs down, the white paper notes.

Proving the Technology

While the company declines to disclose many specifics of the ecoGenesis technology, or how many companies currently are licensing it, Ryder says seeing has been believing for Genesis Plastics Welding customers. “The real gurus of radio frequency welding are very skeptical,” he said. “Because it’s proprietary technology and we’re not able to disclose or just hand over the technology to anybody without a license, to be honest with you, they don’t believe us.”

He says one of the best ways to convince those considering the technology has been by taking materials a company has tried unsuccessfully to RF weld, creating the weld using the ecoGenesis technology and sending the finished product back to them. If companies still express disbelief, Genesis offers a visit to the company’s facility for a nonconfidential demonstration. “We’ll have the technology hidden, and they come in, they see it’s a standard RF machine and none of the settings are changed,” he described. “And when they witness us welding it, they become believers.”

Technical Specifications

Ryder said the ecoGenesis technology can be added to any standard RF machine, large or small, as easily as a tool can be changed, allowing a shop to switch from welding PVC and polyurethane in the morning to welding nonpolar materials like polyethylene and polypropylene in the afternoon. Because it is an addition to existing machinery, Ryder said, companies are saved a large investment in capital expenses.

“The technology lasts for tens of thousands of cycles. It doesn’t leave any residues. It doesn’t require any additives in the materials that you’re welding. And it can be taken on and off the machines,” Ryder described.

Operating ecoGenesis doesn’t require an extensive amount of training, he said. Genesis coaches a company’s setup technicians. “If a company has technicians that are very familiar with using RF welding, they’ll actually find it very simple to use,” Ryder said. Those operating the machine in many cases may not even realize it’s there. “It changes nothing with the day-to-day pushing the buttons and making the product,” he said.

Because Genesis Plastics Welding operates its own contract welding facility, which includes the ecoGenesis process among 24 different RF systems, it has been able to develop products for some companies or do pilot runs, testing and analysis before licensing ecoGenesis to them.

Demand Grows for PVC-free

The push toward PVC and polyurethane alternatives is being driven in large part by public concerns about adverse health effects of phthalate plasticizers in some PVCs, which increase the material’s flexibility but also may leach out. Burning of PVC also releases harmful toxins, so disposal is a concern.

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA) limits the amount of phthalates allowed in children’s products, and California’s Proposition 65 requires warnings on consumer products containing any of hundreds of chemicals that the state lists as known cancer- or birth-defect-causing agents. PVC-free and phthalate-free labels are becoming selling points for consumer products.

Ryder said large retailers are moving to reduce or eliminate PVC in their inventories. “Right now, companies like Staples, for example, are putting out press that says they want to be PVC-free in 2012 and 2013,” he said. “Wal-Mart’s giving better grades for PVC-free product. Target’s doing the same. Companies on the retail end are pushing that with their suppliers,” he said, noting that businesses are looking for solutions now rather than waiting to see if more regulations will follow.

In the case of loose leaf binders, buyers may increasingly be looking for phthalate-free binder covers and sleeves and sheet protectors, while still expecting a traditional binder look and feel. “And from a packaging standpoint, if you have a cloth product that’s not PVC and you add PVC packaging to it, you’re bringing your opportunity down with those retailers,” Ryder said.

Cooperative Marketing

In addition to the growing “green” buzz in the marketplace, Genesis Plastics Welding is incorporating a push strategy in rolling out ecoGenesis by working with materials suppliers looking for ways to use and market their materials to manufacturers. The Dow Chemical Company, which helped pay for the white paper on ecoGenesis, is one example. Another is a company called PolyOne GLS Thermoplastic Elastomers, with which Genesis recently partnered in welding phthalate-free medical devices and marketing the achievement.

“We’ve done a lot of networking with materials suppliers, because they’re the ones trying to push their materials to the manufacturers,” Ryder described, “and they’ve helped us in that sales process.”

Future of ecoGenesis

While the applications of ecoGenesis will continue to grow as new materials emerge, Ryder said he doesn’t see traditional RF-welded materials disappearing. “PVC is a good material. I don’t think it will totally go away,” he said. But he noted that the potential of some materials, such as bioplastics, has barely been tapped. “There’s new materials coming out every day,” he said. “And being able to switch from one to the other I think is a good opportunity because there may not always be a better advantage with polar materials every time.”

“ecoGenesis just provides people more opportunities and more options to choose from. It’s taking the RF technology and advancing its opportunities. It’s creating options. It’s not taking it away, it’s just making it better.”

To read the full white paper and learn more about ecoGenesis, visit http://genesisplasticswelding.com/ecogenesisplasticswelding/weldablepolymers.

Perfect Binding for Digital Print

August 21, 2011

by: Steven Calov, Heidelberg USA

In the finishing realm, perfect binding plays an important role in promoting efficient operations and fast turnarounds as the market moves toward digital print. As print becomes more prominent as a marketing piece, short-run perfect binding is becoming more desirable, compared to stitched products.

Speaking of digital print, its suitability for short and ultra-short runs and smaller formats is a given; however, there is more to the story, based on changes in the marketplace that have revised traditional thinking about short-run approaches to the finishing of digitally printed output.

The market dictates the pace of change, moving toward shorter print runs and faster delivery times, as well as a leveling of the playing field between the finishing of conventionally and digitally printed products in the smaller (20″) formats that are currently digital’s sweet spot. In this new environment, printed materials arrive ready for finishing off a variety of output devices, while finishing requirements are being met with a variety of in-, off- and near-line solutions, depending on volume and whether the aim is to print one or 1,001.

Digital Dollars

Like digital printing, digital finishing is driven by performance, quality and cost. Some digital printing devices are equipped with finishing units capable of performing binding and finishing functions – including perfect binding – in-line. This makes the process of printing a complete book more efficient because it eliminates a material handling step from the workflow, sparing time and expense, but it also can limit an application’s variety and production speed. However, the need to provide fast, inexpensive finishing of digital work using traditional equipment built for offset calls for results-oriented solutions that will add quality and value to the printed piece, bring cost efficiency to bear on the finishing process and keep profit margins high.

Perfect or adhesive binding is a method of binding single sheets – as opposed to signatures – into a book. Many digital books are printed as stacks of single sheets. One of the most easily automated of finishing processes, perfect binding’s low cost makes it a popular choice for binding a variety of printed matter, wherein single sheets are gathered, stacked and the binding edge covered with glue. A cover is attached to the book and is held in place by the glued spine. Then, the entire product is three-side trimmed on a dedicated trimmer or guillotine cutter.

Professionally perfect-bound books have square backs, smooth spines and adequate adhesive strength to prevent the pages from being pulled from the binding. The only way to accomplish this used to be with large off-line production machines, which required lengthy makereadies and resulted in expensive short-run applications. The larger off-line perfect binders were better suited to longer print runs. In recent years, however, a combination of factors has prompted printers to seek out small-format standalone perfect binders to accomplish low-volume, short, ultra-short and one-off run digital work in-house. These factors begin with the rise of specialty print products, such as digital photobooks, and extend to commercial printers offering custom and on-demand services to their customers. Rising transportation and delivery costs also have played a role in the shift to in-house production.

Designed for Digital

An alternative to large off-line binding devices are smaller, economical, off-line perfect binders, which are compatible with or specifically designed for small digital print applications and have the capability to produce perfect bindings that are of nearly the same quality as the bindings produced with the larger machines. The overhead cost is much less than the larger machines and makeready times are greatly reduced.

Solutions answering these needs are modular, flexible, integrated, run at speeds as fast or faster than the output device and offer multiple opportunities for reductions in labor, including quality verification. They are easy to operate and quick to set-up for new jobs, and, last but not least, feature connectivity and JDF. They are machines that can handle books from digital printers and offset presses and perfect bind books of one or 1,000 quickly, efficiently and profitably.

A Sticky Wicket

Are there challenges presented by the perfect binding of digital print? Yes. Among the biggest are failure to form a durable adhesive bond on digitally qualified papers, as well as the potential cracking of inks and coatings. In particular, the presence of fuser oil left on digital sheets can have a severe impact on the pull-strength of a digitally printed, perfect-bound book when hot-melt adhesives are used. Toner can have the same effect if the printing bleeds into the spine of the book.

For these reasons, the perfect binding of toner-based color sheets using conventional hot-melt adhesive has been largely supplanted by the use of polyurethane-reactive or PUR adhesives on fast-makeready binders such as Heidelberg’s entry-level Eurobind 600 PUR. This machine features Heidelberg’s unique nozzle application system, which takes the convenience of PUR glues for adhesive binding of digitally printed materials one step further by minimizing (expensive) PUR glue exposure, giving a more consistent glue line on the cover of the book, and saving time and money over open tank systems. While PUR is more expensive than traditional hot-melt adhesives, it also lasts longer, weathers extreme temperatures, looks good and holds difficult plastic or coated stocks reliably. PUR technology ensures reliably high adhesion to the sheet edges so finished products can be opened flat without problem, even with difficult materials such as heavily coated papers and digital print products.

But don’t count hot-melt down and out just yet. While PUR provides an added measure of safety that the job will not be rejected, it also adds significant cost. Given the recent migration to inkjet and oil-less fusing of toner based products, however, hot-melt glues can provide a more cost effective solution as long as the spine preparation is sufficient to result in good book adhesion (good pull results). At least one perfect binding operation in a digital print environment we know of has spent effort to prepare the spine very well in combination with hot-melt glue to produce excellent results. It will be interesting to see whether PUR or hot-melt “wins” in the coming years, or whether both will share this space.

A Trimming Dilemma

We also should mention trimming. Trimming is accomplished with either a dedicated three-knife trimmer or a guillotine paper cutter. The issue with three-knife trimming is that the capital cost for the machines is most often above $100,000 US, while the quality of trimming delivered by machines currently on the market often is not up to market expectations, due to spine knicking. A cost-effective alternative is to use a guillotine cutter instead, even though it adds another material-handling step to the process. Heidelberg has studied the problem and found that at quanitities up to 1,000 books per hour, the cost and productivity of guillotine trimming can be advantageous. Over the very short run, the challenge is to reduce the makeready of the cutter from book to book size, so equipment suppliers are exploring ways to add automation to the cutting process. By sending the cutting parameters to the guillotine at the point of prepress, or by using a bar code on the book to load the cutting parameters, the cutting process can be sped up substantially while reducing re-runs and waste.

Seize the Day

Short-run perfect binding today denotes not just shrinking order quantities, but also foreshortened turnarounds and product flexibility demanded by customers who now have the option to produce low-cost books in the quantities – as small as one – they need. Manufacturers of finishing equipment are seizing the opportunity to fine-tune their equipment to handle the requirements of digital output. As mentioned above, today’s high-speed automated perfect binding machines can execute digitally printed, perfect-bound books in in-line, off-line and near-line configurations (useful in cases where the binder runs faster than the output device). Lift-type deliveries are designed to ensure superior glue stabilization and gentle transport of the book block in different production environments.

Automated components are designed to facilitate the adjustment of clamp opening widths; integrated pressing, scoring and spine preparation; gluing length control and more. Meanwhile, the addition of exchangeable hot-melt and PUR glue tanks, variable clamps, self-calibrating missing sheet detectors and graphical touchscreen controls for shorter set-ups, lower waste and faster turnarounds mean that top-quality, digitally printed, adhesive-bound products can be produced quickly and economically on traditional perfect binding equipment from offset or digital streams, with disparate jobs ganged together for maximum efficiency.

Advances in finishing automation are being driven by the rise in digital printing, characterized by declining run lengths, quick turn requirements and the need to train workers quickly. As run lengths get shorter, set-up time becomes a bigger percentage of the total job time, driving up the labor cost per unit produced. Because traditional equipment built for offset printing typically requires more makereadies for digital work, regardless of run length, the reduction, elimination and/or automation of costly extra steps is an operational imperative. The goal? The ability to finish digitally printed output at high speeds, in real time, with no waiting, at the highest quality.

Steve Calov is postpress product manager for Heidelberg USA. A leading solution provider for the print media industry, Heidelberg manufactures precision printing presses, platesetters, postpress equipment and software for integrating all printshop processes. For more information, visit www.us.heidelberg.com or call 770.419.6500.

Sacred Cows in an Economic Downturn

August 21, 2011

by Ed Rigsbee

What better time to grind sacred cows into hamburger than during an economic downturn? The sacred cow protectors in your organization experience lowered resistance when times are not so good. It is much more difficult for them to defend the pet projects, products and services that have reached their sunset when placed under the tight economic microscope.

If You are a Sacred Cow Defender

Upper level decision makers pay especially close attention to questionable activities in an economic downturn, organizational restructuring or during a merger. If you have even a faint indication that you might be a sacred cow protector, this is the time to realize that everyone will be attacking your pet sacred cow. Ask yourself if this cow is worth your career. Might it be time to let go?

To help you work through the process of either defending or letting go, consider the following:

Why should this cow continue?
Who cares most about this cow? Why do I protect it?
Which market or stakeholder segments does the cow still serve? Is this cow still profitable?
Is this cow worth the organizational resources necessary to sustain it? Has this cow reached its sunset?

If You are a Cow Grinder

This is the moment you’ve been waiting for – it is time to rid your organization of that outdated, resource-sucking albatross that has, in your opinion, been dragging everyone down. While this is a good time to bring out the meat grinder, you’d better be smart about your actions. This is not the time to pretend you are a bull in a china shop, but rather take a methodical approach to getting that cow into the grinder.

First, you must remain aware of the fact that most sacred cow protectors have their identify and self-worth complexly entwined with the cow that they protect so ferociously, much like a momma bear protecting her cub. And you do not want to get between them!

How do you help an iron-clad mind to open up? Perhaps oil and leverage will do the trick.

The oil relates to the idea of slipperiness verses friction. The iron-clad mind is the friction and you become the oil that helps movement. Your job is to help the protector see that there might be new or better ideas, products and services that might possibly… maybe perhaps serve the market or stakeholders better than the currently protected cow.

Leverage relates to an outside object or force that allows ease of movement for heavy or stuck objects. Needless to say, the stuck or heavy object is the cow protector. The outside force could be higher authority or replacement product/service. Higher authority needs no explanation. Replacement, however, is a formidable subject. Where or what could the cow protector use as an alternate crutch for channeling their passion?

Grinding Cows

We’ve always done it, our customers expect it and so we should continue to do it. This is an area that can be overcome by numbers, metrics or measurements. It is difficult for a person or department to defend something that can be proven to no longer be performing.

The “not invented here” attitude can be a challenge when offering alternatives to the cow you want to grind. Leading the cow protectors to their own discovery of a replacement generally works well. The price that you, the cow grinder, must be willing to pay is to relinquish an ego boost and the credit for being the cow grinder.

For most things there is a season. Even sacred cows that are only approaching their sunset must be examined closely. The challenge is in letting too many old cows run the pasture. If in your organization there are a number of cows that are nearing their end of usefulness, all your organizations resources are being allotted to refreshing and keeping alive old cows rather than allowing innovation and discovery of new and profitable, non-commodity products and services to take their place. You can swim with the sharks in highly competitive regions or head for the open waters of innovation and creativity.

So what’s a reasonable person to do? If you are a cow protector, be certain it is worth protecting. If you are a cow grinder, be sure that cow’s sunset has arrived. Grinding cows simply for pleasure or self-adulation is not an acceptable reason to flick the switch and start the grinder. The magic for your organization is for the leaders to have the wisdom in understanding and recognizing the difference.

As a nationally recognized speaker on partnering, Ed Rigsbee has helped organizations of all sizes to build successful internal and external collaborative relationships. He has authored three books and over 1,500 articles helping organizations to take full advantage of their potential. Contact Rigsbee, find additional (no charge) resources and sign up for his complimentary weekly Effective Executive eLetter at www.Rigsbee.com. Copyright © 2010 Ed Rigsbee