New York Times article on Gentle Giant's recent pro-bono work

This week the New York Times released on article on small businesses that are still finding ways to give despite the poor economy. Gentle Giant was featured in the article which included an interview and photo of myself as well as a summery of our efforts to help out those in Haiti who have fallen on hard times due to the earthquake. Finding ways to continue giving is important part of our company culture and we pride ourselves on being able to maintain those efforts. Click on the link below to check it out!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/business/smallbusiness/16sbiz.html?_r=1&ref=business

GG's Annual Summer Party Fun

Check out these great photos from our annual Summer Party! A

few weeks ago, the whole company was invited to partake in this important, and very fun, annual event. Each year, we take time out to spend a day together to have fun, relax, get to know each other better, and compete in lighthearted games. This year is extra special because Gentle Giant is also celebrating it's 30th anniversary (hence all the cupcakes). In the other photos,

there's evidence of how mighty even the smallest Giants are (beating me and some of our crew members at tug of war), and finally, a bunch of guys enjoying the water slide!

Inc.com Interview about Feedback

Today on Inc.com there was a Q&A published in which I discussed the critically important art of giving and receiving feedback with editor Leigh Buchanan. Check out the article here!

At Gentle Giant Moving Company, our success and often our very survival relies on people's ability to give and receive feedback. It is a skill that we invest a considerable amount of time and money to develop within our workforce. Without this skill, we would not be able to understand what our customers need and want from us or be able to communicate with one another about how to do a better job.

As giving and receiving feedback is a skill, one can never been perfect at it, so feel free to let me know if you have any feedback on how I did with this interview!

GG Culture and Company Growth

This photo shows me with three great Giants (from Left to Right) Eric Ragland, Pat Inman, and Nick Temme (far right), marking the opening of our latest and greatest new facility, GG Seattle! You can see this and many other photos of Gentle Giant employees on and off the job at our Flickr page.

Visiting employees at our 17 different locations, especially ones in locations in our newer regions like Seattle, New York, Charlotte, and DC, is a great reminder of what our company stands for. Part of our mission is to create great opportunities for smart, hardworking people. The fact that we can launch in markets like Seattle and allow our people to have the opportunity to step into leadership roles and use that opportunity to personal and professional growth gives me great pride.

Congratulations to all of our leaders at Gentle Giant, especially our employees in Seattle who are celebrating the opening of our newest warehouse and office facility!

Giants are Glad to Give

Last week the Somerville Journal, the weekly newspaper in the city where Gentle Giant Moving Company is headquartered, published an article about a very special charitable giving project in which we participated (clicking on this image will allow you to view the article full-size).

The short version of the story is this: A nearby realtor named Kathy Irving from Hammond Realty in Cambridge, Mass., who knows Gentle Giant well, wanted to help victims of the earthquake in Haiti. She got people to donate a variety of badly needed items, including crutches, walkers, beds, and other items used to help injured people, and Gentle Giant collected, stored, packed and transported these items to an agency in New York City, which shipped them to Haiti for use by Partners in Health and other emergency relief organizations.

However, there's a much bigger story, one that I'm both proud of and humbled by. Gentle Giant Moving Company, now in its 30 year, has a long-standing commitment to charitable giving and philanthropic activity, and the company even has its own charitable foundation to help direct these efforts effectively. Fortunately, we've been recognized for this commitment with awards and praise. However, our most important rewards are the constant willingness of people like Kathy Irving to work with us on community involvements, including serving our customers. Furthermore, because supporting youth development is a core part of our philanthropy, in some way we benefit from that, since we rely on smart, responsible, strong, educated, professional, kind young people to join us year after year as part of our fantastic moving team.

I want to personally thank our employees for their constant commitment to working together for the good of our community, each other, and Gentle Giant!

Congrats to a Growing Giant Family

Just 2 days ago, a married couple who work together here in the office at Gentle Giant had their second child together. Congratulations to Tom and Carolyn on the birth of their son William, who joins his older sister Ava among the ranks of the luckiest babies on Earth because of who they have as parents!

I'm personally quite overjoyed about this news, and it reminds of what a unique work environment Gentle Giant has, which really focuses on the development of great personal and professional relationships. In our company we have countless couples, who met on the job, in long-term committed relationships. Many of these couples now have children (affectionately referred to as our littlest Giants). We espouse to have a very family-like atmosphere here, and I think the fact that so many actual families exist here is proof positive of that.

At Gentle Giant we value relationships above almost everything else, and I don't mean romantic, intimate relationships. I'm talking about relationships with customers, coworkers, employees, managers, vendors, neighbors, community leaders, and virtually anyone with whom we share resources, time or space (even other drivers on roads where we take our trucks!). As a result, naturally we have as many quirks as a real giant family, but we also have a tremendous feeling of loyalty and security. Whatever tensions or conflicts arise, we know that our colleagues support us at the end of the day, and that feeling of safety allows us to focus on our jobs and our goal of helping our customers, and not focus on internal politics or selfish interests.

Congrats again to Tom and Carolyn and all of Gentle Giant on our growing happy family.

Running The Stadium

That's me, second from the left, with a group of great employees from Gentle Giant, running the stadium at 6:30 am one day recently. Why do we do this, you might wonder? What is "running the stadium?" It's a very beloved, though often hated, important tradition at Gentle Giant Moving Company that helps us build the character and teamwork we need to be a great moving company.

As a college rower in Boston, I was introduced to running the stadium, which involves climbing up the stands in each of the 37 sections of the coliseum style Harvard Stadium. Although the goal is to do it as quickly as you can (and hopefully improve each time), the purpose when movers from Gentle Giant movers do it is not to see who is the fastest.

Running the stadium for us is a way our movers demonstrate that they are willing to focus on a challenge and complete a job no matter how difficult, because there is always someone counting on you. We celebrate when someone is fast and strong, but if someone is slow and struggles through it, we don't give them a hard time. We cheer them on and encourage them to do their best. We're happy they push through the sweat and exhaustion to reach the top of the last section and congratulate them heartily.

At Gentle Giant, we have a set of values that are represented by something called the Giant HEART (Honesty, Enthusiasm, Above-and-beyond effort, Respect, and Teamwork). The stadium teaches a lot about ourselves and each other. The stadium has a great deal of symbolic and practical meaning to us, so it's a tradition we uphold, and it's an activity I plan to keep doing for as long as humanly possible.