Family Album

21st Century — Here We Come!
By: Mike Bolen

Well gang, it's official — we made it into the 21st Century. That makes three centuries and a couple of millennium for McCarthy, and not too many companies in any business can match that kind of staying power. The other day I was looking back at some of the old McCarthy photos from the 1880s and couldn't help thinking about how much things have changed over the last 138 years. We no longer need things like Mule Skinners (or mules for that matter), or Pay Masters, or Time Keepers, or Steam Shovels, or Drag Lines, or Carbon Paper or Slide Rules (I've still got mine though, complete with leather holster). We are even down to one IBM Selectric Typewriter by my count. We've gone from Brothers to Building. From local to national. From sweat to the Intranet. From employees to stockholders. From small to not small. From wooden barns to Nano-Technology. A remarkable a journey when you think about it, but what does it all mean?

What jumps out to me is pretty simple, and is an obvious fundamental strength of McCarthy. For over 138 years we have been able to successfully adapt ourselves to an ever changing world, while managing to hold on to the core values that make it all worthwhile. Through good times and bad we have developed a rich history, one that still serves us quite well as the foundation of our culture. Valuable and comforting for sure, but not enough for the task ahead. In the future it will be our collective ability to recognize and adapt to a world of even faster paced change that determines how well we survive and prosper. Tough rules, but it's a real tough game.

For the past several years McCarthy Management has been engaged in a very focused evaluation of our structure, our environment, our performance, our values, and that ever changing world we just talked about. The product of all that effort is the Company's Five-Year Strategic Plan, which is just completing its second year of implementation. We have learned a lot about ourselves and our marketplace, and what initiatives we need to undertake to best prepare ourselves for the unprecedented growth we have in front of us. We also learned that changes in our organization and systems were the logical and required result of all this new enlightenment.

McCarthy's Operating Divisions all do business under pretty straightforward charters — build spectacular things for satisfied customers and make money. In pursuit of these lofty goals, they are almost constantly tweaking their structures and systems to respond to changing market requirements. The Corporate Division charter is a little more complex. Our responsibilities are clear: provide service to our Operating Divisions, develop and enforce policy, manage company assets, and plan for the future.

How we carry out those responsibilities is a constant evolution. This year we made several significant modifications to the Corporate Division organization chart that we believe will match up well with the challenges in front of us. We have several familiar people moving to new jobs, and several new people in unfamiliar jobs. We have also changed some lines of reporting to speed up communication and decision making.

While this year's changes were more extensive than I would expect in a normal year (whatever that is), we will continue to make regular modifications to all of our organizations in order to stay current with what we see in front of us. It's a process that has worked well for over 138 years, and I expect it to work even better in the future. So what do you all think are the top candidates to move to the list of “stuff we no longer need” in the 21st Century? How about copy machines (paperless world?), or day timers, or Symons Forms (hot in summer, cold in winter, always heavy), or what's left of Chuck Avery's hair. Fun game.