Richard t farmer biography examples

For example, we had been hiring people with no transportation to get to work. We also had hired people who lived 40 and 50 miles away from our plants. They obviously wouldn't stay long. So we put together a list of specific hiring criteria. Our hires had to have certain characteristics. I always had business on my mind 24 hours a day, seven days a weekwhether I was on vacation with my family or whether I was home watching TV.

I always had a pen and pencil in hand to jot down business ideas as they came to mind. So we began putting teeth into it. We decided that no one could get a raise unless they did Customer Awareness Duty every year. That means actually riding on a route with a service sales representative actually servicing our customers or going to a Cintas plant or facility and working with the partners there.

It is almost impossible for someone to work with a customer, whether an external or internal one, and not come up with ideas on how to improve things. This process has been invaluable. We've gotten some great ideas through this program. If we were going to be able to establish a national presence within the two-year time frame, we had to attract talent in a hurry.

Work hard. Make sacrifices. Reinvest in the business. And go for the long term. We should all be on the lookout for barnacles, I'd say. When a new ship is put into the water, it has a clean hull. It moves fast through the water and is very manoeuvrable. It has nothing to hold it back. But if that ship sits in a port for a year, barnacles will accumulate on the hull.

It'll slow down the ship. It'll take more power to run the ship than it should. It will become less manoeuvrable because of all the drag. Businesses are just like ships. We have to look for the barnacles. Whether we know it or not, we've got barnacles. Your job is to find those barnacles and scrape them off. Then I'd give examples of barnacles—buying things that you decided you needed 10 years ago and you don't need them anymore.

Or having somebody prepare a report that was very important to you five years ago, but now you no longer need it. But they're still preparing it for you. That's a barnacle. People we've outgrown or are occupying positions that are no longer needed—they're barnacles too. Sometimes the intuition of people who are deeply involved in an issue is better than all the research that money can buy.

If you wait for all the gears to grind, you might never make a decision. We constantly strive to improve the process, the systems, the products and the service. We started having brown paper sessions throughout the company. The savings and quality improvement were tremendous. Nothing is ever perfect. Nothing is ever good enough.

Richard t farmer biography examples: Dr. Richard Farmer (), Master of

We are never satisfied. We wanted everyone to be challenging and questioning everything we do. Service and value generate loyalty and repeat business, not gifts, meals or entertainment. So, we will politely decline gifts, regardless of circumstances. We view everyone in the company as important. Everyone in the organisation is performing a vital function, contributing to our principle objective.

Richard t farmer biography examples: My involvement in China started

We repainted them. Then we put in new refrigerators and new vending machines… " The old man really cares about our conditions ," I could almost hear them saying. We have learned that when there is a problem, the person who knows most about it is the partner on the shop floor, who actually does the work. Our partners are likely to know far more about the problem and how to solve it, than the supervisor.

If we are thinking about a new office procedure, our office partners get involved before we do anything. This kind of input has avoided costly mistakes and earns the commitment from everyone for better results. Long after I had become an executive, I always went to the people on the front line to get their opinion on how to solve a problem. They usually knew the answer better than their supervisor.

Positive attitudes and optimism are a must in a fast-paced environment like ours… We do not let situations we cannot control cloud a positive approach to our jobs. It consisted of written guidelines on how to handle recurring problems. We went back over the files and notes that had accumulated over the years. We documented the systems that we had developed.

We put it all in writing. This may seem like some sort of bureaucratic exercise, but it wasn't. It wasn't perfect at first, but over the years it has become one of the key ingredients in the Cintas culture. Each time we identify a recurring problem, we huddle up to determine the best way to solve the problem. We issue a preliminary policy and invite comment from managers.

Then we issue the policy and we expect everyone in the organization to follow it until we change the policy. This practice started way back in the s in response to a very real challenge. They are business services, not consumer services. They typically are recurring services, meaning we do them over and over. Most are based on route delivery.

As long as we stay in that sweet spotour expertise in one area can be translated into another. We began to define our character, which in a word is "professional.

Richard t farmer biography examples: Farmer joined his.

These people are professional. Find sources: "Richard T. This article reads like a press release or a news article and may be largely based on routine coverage. Please help improve this article and add independent sources. February Career [ edit ].

Richard t farmer biography examples: Richard Theodore Ely (April 13,

Philanthropy [ edit ]. Associations [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Farmer, philanthropist and the founder of Cintas Corp. Archived from the original on May 7, Retrieved January 17, Archived from the original on February 28, Archived from the original on May 3, Archived from the original on April 17, He was The business leader and philanthropist's life story is literally one of going from rags to riches.

The company ranked No. Despite being a hard-charging businessman, his manner was without pretense. Over the next five decades, Farmer demonstrated how his precise focus on a deceptively simple formula for growth transformed the small local company into a national powerhouse. Need a break? His legacy and the culture of honesty, integrity, and professionalism that he instilled at Cintas continues today and into the future.

Farmer joined his family's industrial laundry in after he graduated from Miami in InFarmer created Satellite Corp. Satellite had an aggressive program of acquisitions that led to to percent annual growth rates in the s. BySatellite Corp. Inthe merged business took the name Cintas and its shares were listed on the Nasdaq Stock MarketThe company hired an ad agency to deliver a new name "to take the company into the future," according to Cintas' website.

But the agency didn't deliver, so Farmer, company controller Bob Kohlhepp who rose through the ranks to ultimately become the company's president and then chairman and marketing partner Nick Curtis came up with Cintas while doodling on a napkin. The company's growth led Cintas to a new headquarters in Blue Ash in The company moved its headquarters to a acre campus in Mason in Farmer served as CEO through and as board chairman through