Castool Community

The main factor that will determine the economic wellbeing of our children and grandchildren will be the strength of the economy that we pass down to them. This will depend, in turn, on the quality of the capital and infrastructure we pass onto them, along with the level of education we give them, the state of technical knowledge we achieve and the state of the natural environment.

If we cut the deficit by making spending cuts that affect our progress in these areas, we will be making our children worse-off, not better-off.

Employees who are thriving – not just satisfied and productive, but also engaged in creating the future make for sustainable individual and organizational performance.

Thriving has two components: vitality and learning. Vitality is the sense of being alive and exicted. Learning or growth comes from gaining knowledge and skills.

Conditions for thriving:

- providing decision-making discretion

- sharing information about the organization and its strategy

- minimizing incivility

- offering performance feedback

Helping people grow and remaining energized at work can boost performance in a sustainable way.

Capitalism remains the most powerful, flexible, and robust system for driving broad based prosperity and enhancing quality of life.

BUT, keeping capitalism on track will depend on our ability to rethink the priorities that guide everyone in the system. In particular, we will have to throttle back the pursuits of competition and ROE.

The ideas of competition and ROE were brilliant in their own time, but new metrics more suited to today’s world need to be developed. Capitalism needs to be reformulated to create sustainable prosperity.

Sustainability is survival. Today global business is using up resources at a rate nearly 1.5 times as fast as nature can replace them. These essential services, such as clean water, clean air, arable land, and a stable climate, are what businesses depend on to survive.

The viability of business itself depends on the resources of healthy ecosystems and that sustainable ways of doing business should simply become the norm.

Businesses are beginning to measure the costs of environmental  impact, consumers are investing in sustainable companies, and contributors to supply chains are converging on sustainable standards.

Providing earnings guidance increases analyst following and cuts down on unwelcome surprises, which in turn reduces stock price volatility.

Giving information to investors and doing it honestly and in an understandable way, is good business.

Managers often ignore the fact that information flows both ways. They can also learn from investors. Stock price movements around earnings announcements reveal a lot about investors’ growth expectations and their perceptions of management’s credibility. Short sellers often signal serious operating problems. Wide bid-ask spreads and large variability in analysts’ forecats point to uncertainty.

The post earnings conference call with investors and analysts is quite useful. These calls usually produce action, studies have shown that an abnormally high volume of stocks trades during and immediately after these calls.

An interesting fact is that hard corporate data only accounts for 10% of stock price changes that occur around the time financial reports are released. Clearly soft information colours many investor’s decisions. Soft information is crucial.

Investors will reward companies that guide them by providing solid and credible information

1) Air-cooled container mantle for extruding micro-tube and other extrusions where the container is not able to dissipate the required amount of heat

2) CX Type single cell die oven which heats dies to a uniform temperature safely in 30 to 40% less time then Castool’s standard C type ovens. The oven was specifically built for large dies, but is applicable to all sizes.

3) Billet quench and lubrication device in development

4) VOS (Visual Optimizing System) has been running successfully at an extruder for several months

5) RDX (Robotic Die Expeditor) is complete and ready for sale. We are all very excited.

6) Water cooled vacuum valve with increased evacuation cylinder

If you start your work week on Sunday, you will get a head start, so that by the time your colleagues arrive on Monday you will have the things you want to accomplish organized.

You might even want to officially change your work week to Sunday to Thursday, if your role permits?

You can pitch that Sundays would be very productive for you because of the lack of distractions in the work place. You may be able to vary your work time so you could still fit in important family and social activities

Ask if you can try it for a month and see where it leads.

The problem is that if managers try to make work seem meaningful, it may reinforce a sense of supervisory control that employees dislike.

Instead:

Get to know each person and build strong bonds

Become a catalyst, letting your employees lead while you become a follower

Let jobs morph with change and be open to hearing about ideas subordinates have for how their role might be reinvented

Urge employees to be in the moment in their work habits because this connects to fulfilment

Allow employees to get excited about the aspects of their job that bring them the most satisfaction. As a manager, you get to decide how performance will be judged and rewarded, but you cannot tell people which task means more to them!