"We're in business now"

"We're in business now" was a way we Mainers, back in my day, told each other that something that wasn't working started working.

I am thinking of when I was about 12 years old and was helping my uncle Alan, a master plumber. (I guess that would make me a plumber's helper). I was at one end of a garden hose and he way back at a faucet that he had just repaired. Out of my end of the hose came a rush of water. "Yep, we're in business now", Alan called out to me.

Now, 53 years later, I am teaching business management, and this catch-phrase comes back to me. Moments ago, the last of the big critical supplies came in to Babson College, so that folks up there can prepare the registration packets for our soon-to-arrive OBTC 2008 participants. Until that last item came, we were not yet in business. Then, I got the e-mail - The CD's of our Proceedings arrived. Now, we're in business.

"We're in business" is a handy devise to teaching managing. We can show our learners that being in business is a momentary state of affairs - not a more permanent sounding status. Managing is make sure that all the elements critical to performing as a business are in place, functional, and well-fueled with human energy and wit. That garden hose was pretty much useless in delivering water to our customer's garden, until Alan replaced a broken faucet - one that had been used over so many decades that it "plumb wore out". Seeing that water come bubbling out fixed this image of success in my mind, only to be retreived now.

Yes, OBTC 2008 is in business and we'll work at it from now through program's end next Saturday afternoon. I am sure there will be a few surprises to challenge our capacity to be in business, but we have the team, the will, and the place to keep it flowing from now to then.

Thanks, Uncle Alan, for a durable lesson about business.