Hi, I’m Paul Darley, and thanks for tuning into our November issue of Inside Darley. It’s election day and I think we are all ready for these elections to be over. Hopefully as a country we can all come together no matter who is elected.
For those of you in the fire service you’ll probably take a lot of interest in our third quarter results from FAMA on new fire truck orders. They were exactly 25% under the 3rd quarter from the previous year and that’s the same decrease we saw in the previous quarter. It’s interesting to see and is about what most people anticipated. One of the areas we are seeing a trend in is a decrease in large orders, which is an indicator that maybe large cities are being hit hard by Covid-19. We aren’t seeing this decrease as severely in suburban areas and rural volunteer departments.
We have attached for our pump customers a survey link to our 2020 pump survey. If you fill that out there is a chance you can get a little gift.
The next three articles we have attached are going to help you figure out where trends are going. The first two articles are from McKinsey who we have been working closely with. The first is called “2 Key Traits for Successfully Navigating the Coronavirus Crisis,” the article talks about agility and curiosity. The second article is titled “The Journey to Agile: How Companies can Become Faster, More Productive, and More Responsive.” Lastly an article that recently came out called “Success Strategies in the Age of Covid”
I’m sure you are aware that November 11th is Veterans Day. That’s a really important holiday here at Darley in light of our defense business, which really goes back to world war 2. Today almost 80% of our business or about half a billion dollars will be from our defense customers in 2020 alone. It’s a very aggressive part of our business. Roughly 1/3 of our employees today are veterans so we thank them for their service and there is so much we can learn from all the veterans and our active military today. If you are looking to sell more and more to the government as a distributor you should check out this article put out buy the NDIA. It’s called “Selling to the Federal Government.” You should also take a look at our Darley Defense Capabilities brochure, which talks to some of the products we are offering to our military customers.
I think everyone can learn from our military leaders. Going into Covid-19 we wanted to focus on shoring up our inside. One of the areas we’ve done that is by bringing on General Bernie Banks to lead our team in leadership development for our employees. We have engaged him for a 12-month program, he has taught at West Point, he is currently teaching leadership in diversity at North Western’s Kellogg School of Management. We are excited to have him on our board.
If you get the Harvard Business Review or even if you don’t I encourage you to search for the most recent issue. There are two great articles on how to develop your leadership style and reinventing the leadership selection process which talks about West Point and the leadership the army is developing.
We also flooded this issue with 6 other articles on military leaders from the Secretary of Defense to a task force report on where the department of defense is going 2021. A CEO magazine article on mitigating risks in challenging environments and learning from our military. We also have an article on work life balance from the army chief of staff, and Dwight D. Eisenhower was actually known as the Balancer in Chief, and we have an article about him here too. Finishing it off with the Stockdale Paradox.
Thanks for tuning into this issue of Inside Darley, if there is anything we can be doing to support you, we hope you reach out to us.
