<![CDATA[Recircle Software - Blog]]>Thu, 09 Jul 2026 06:56:05 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Redo Your Best "You"]]>Fri, 30 Aug 2019 14:57:36 GMThttps://www.recircle.software/blog/redo-your-best-youMost of us are two people -- work-me & personal-me. What if we took the best of what we do in each persona and applied it consistently?

​Bam. 💥 We'd be better family, friends and leaders. I wish I had learned this early in my career and I bet you can think of people you admire who do it well. Hope you can use this short doc to help you invest in the best you.
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]]><![CDATA[Redo Your 1:1 Time]]>Tue, 16 Jul 2019 18:31:50 GMThttps://www.recircle.software/blog/own-your-11-timeThis happen to you?

You find yourself across the table from your boss or employee. You chat about something benign or give a quick update on a hot project and, poof, -- a text comes in, someone walks up, you run up against another meeting...the moment is gone. It is common for employer/employee relationship dissatisfaction to come from being off-track with expectations or performance.

Problem is the right conversations are not happening. Shouldn't we manage our interactions better? I learned to commit to a structured 1:1 process and I hope this quick guide helps you.
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]]><![CDATA[Let’s Redo materials management like we Redid energy use]]>Sat, 29 Jun 2019 15:11:01 GMThttps://www.recircle.software/blog/lets-redo-materials-management-like-we-redid-energy-use
In 2010, the Department of Energy and some powerful commercial building owners (Lowes, Walmart, Costco, McDonalds, more…) issued a challenge to the industry to provide more energy efficient rooftop HVAC units (RTUs).  At that time, no commercial RTU manufacturers met the challenge. Now, 5 of the major manufacturers offer more than 195 models that do. 

Today, building efficiency products represent more than $60 billion in U.S. revenue; they grew 43% from 2012 to 2016.  In 2018, 2,250,000 people spent some or all of their time working on delivering energy efficiency technologies. Employment in energy efficiency grew 3%, twice the national average, adding 67,000 jobs nationally.  This does not even include those working on other advanced energy segments such as wind energy, solar or energy storage.

When challenged, both the public and private sectors responded.  New associations and collaborations were created, R&D budgets and startups in the space boomed and federal, state and city entities created incentives to fuel all that activity and catalyze the movement.  Now programs like ENERGY STAR helps consumers and businesses save over $30 billion each year by marking energy-saving products, homes, and commercial buildings.

We need some of that love for the reuse and recycling of materials.  Why?

Jobs and the economy:  In 2016, recycling and reuse activities in the United States accounted for 757,325 jobs, $36.6 billion in wages; and $6.7 billion in tax revenues.  A U.S. recycling rate of 75% by 2030 (we are stuck at 35%) would create 1.1 million new jobs.

Resources & the environment:  We need to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.  Most folks don’t know that materials management is associated with an estimated 42% of all U.S. GHG emissions.  Let’s put it into perspective -- according to the EPA, if we increased recycling of mixed construction and demolition debris to 50% (we stand at around 34%), it would drive reduction of 75 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent.  That calculates out the same as if we avoided use of 120 billion kWh of electricity -- like not using electricity in all of Argentina or the Netherlands for an entire year or taking 16 million cars off the road for a year.

Don’t get me wrong -- we need to keep turning the energy efficiency crank.  An astounding 64% of the primary energy consumed by US manufacturing is “lost” during transmission, power and steam generation, process heating, HVAC and lighting use, and other activities.  Just saying we need to learn from our success and apply it to the management of reusable materials and catalyze the innovation machine.  

Oregon is one of the most active states when it comes to energy and the environment.  In 2018, the Oregon Dept of Environmental Quality invested $600,000 across 16 projects in Materials Management grants.  On the other hand, Energy Trust of Oregon spent around $143M on energy efficiency in 2017.  

If we have learned one thing from energy efficiency it is that public / private investment in driving resource-use behavior change and innovation pays off.  

​Now let’s Redo our approach to materials management.
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]]><![CDATA[Please, Redo your recycling thinking]]>Tue, 04 Jun 2019 20:59:20 GMThttps://www.recircle.software/blog/please-redo-your-recycling-thinking
You are standing in front of your trash and recycling bins with a plastic container (or a metal lid, plastic bag, old power supply, some plastic toys) in your hand and you are thinking, “...this HAS to be valuable.  If I put it in the blue bin, at least it stands a chance of staying out of the landfill.” -- So, in the blue bin it goes.

The hard reality is that 25-40% or more of what we are putting into the recycling bins is being treated as trash.  Unfortunately, today many of those “valuable” items go from our recycling bin to the landfill but only after much unnecessary handling and expense.

By now, most everyone knows our recycling ecosystem has been knocked to its knees.  Just about the time we were all getting properly conditioned to separate materials, our biggest final destination for the stuff we “recycled” (China) stopped taking it and the industry is now working hard to adjust.  

We will get there eventually and be better off than we were.  But, it is going to take investment in processes and equipment not currently in place and industry needs time and extra capital to get there.  What they don’t need is us making it harder and more costly than it has to be. Please don’t give up, just seek to do it right.

So, as you ponder, item in-hand, please either:
1) ASK your waste/recycling service if they still take it (it could have changed since they printed it on top of your bin or...
2) TRASH bin the item, as painful as that might be. You are not saving the planet by “wishful” recycling.  You are actually making it worse.

​Doing a Redo on your usage and recycling behavior will ensure you are not becoming a larger part of the problem and it will help give our national innovation engine time to invent and invest our way out of this mess.

]]><![CDATA[Dare to do a Redo]]>Sat, 01 Jun 2019 00:06:08 GMThttps://www.recircle.software/blog/dare-to-do-a-redo Picture
Be comfortable being wrong...Really?

Read a number of articles that related comments Jeff Bezos made about leaders and being right.  When asked about what he is looking for in a leader he said, “I want people who are right most of the time….I want to see a track record of hard decisions that ended up being right.”  

The interesting part is that this does not necessarily mean a leader never changes their mind.  In fact, he goes on to say that this type of self-correcting behavior is positive, even encouraged, because the smartest people he has observed are often, “...revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.”  

​OK, so gather some initial data, be decisive and act.  Then gather new data, openly embracing any challenge to your earlier decision and, if necessary...do a redo.  The key is to get it right and sometimes that redo is the hardest/bravest decision you will make.

This is true in strategy, product management, people management, solution design and raising a family. It is about being open. I plan to share more examples of the payoff for putting yourself in a position to a leverage a redo.

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” - George Bernard Shaw

Can you quickly bring to mind a situation where you made the hard business decision for a redo and had it pay off?  You should, you may be asked...

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