I just finished writing our new employee handbook and had a remarkably good time doing so.  Writing the handbook was the result of our recent recruiting process during which I realized that our handbook was crap.  It was stiff, boring, and nothing like us.  So I set it on fire (figuratively of course) and started from scratch.  In doing so I was really confronted by the difference between policy and philosophy.  I started to see that a lot of what we called policy was a way to legislate our philosophies.  Instead of being able to express our philosophies in both word and deed in a way that made them real, we took the shortcut (cheat) and made policy instead.  Policy isn’t bad.  Policy is necessary.  But when policy is used as a substitute for a strong set of philosophies the system is broken.

I found that being able to identify, relate, and live out our core values (thanks Zappos) sort of supersedes the need to have a lot of  rigid policy.  I looked up the word philosophy and got this definition: “a theory or attitude held by a person or organization that acts as a guiding principle for behavior”.  That sounds way better than policy to me.  I would much rather lead by sharing values that describe why we act the way we do than to simply tell my employees, “here are the rules”.  In the end it’s not a question of whether policy is good or bad, but of whether we are using policy in effective ways or using it as a means to avoid the hard work of leadership.

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Travis is heading down to Anchorage today to participate in the Humpy’s Marathon on Sunday.  Since running his first marathon in 2006 Travis has run the Equinox Ultra Marathon (50K!) in 2009 and is currently registered to run it again next month.  Travis logs about 200 miles a month running around Fairbanks and we’re super proud of his accomplishments as a runner.
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No April Fool’s jokes here.  We’re super excited to announce that we’ve lowered the starting price for 8.5 x 11″ color prints to 75 cents and created a steeper volume discount that will yield much lower prices for color printing.  In fact, we’ve lowered the prices for color printing on all of our stock selections!  11×17″ paper starts at $1.25 and can cost as little as 70 cents.  The variables are too complex to go over here, but call today for an estimate on your next project and you’ll see how much more affordable color printing is.  Now is the time to make the switch and embrace color for all of your projects.
Your world is in color.  Now all of your prints can be in color as well.

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