Along with passion, we believe productivity should be a key driver in the workplace. We believe passion and productivity go hand-in-hand and also drive quality and results.
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Productivity
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APR’s Passion + Productivity = Give Back
Guest blogger, Travis Muszynski writes:
I work for a company called APR in Opelika, Alabama. Although I’ve only been with the company for about three years, it all started with a few very smart people that wanted to make parts and software for their own cars. The parts became products and before you know it, APR was born. From that day on, APR has gotten to where we are through hard work, late nights, attending shows and simply doing what we love.
We are known for high quality performance software and hardware for Audi, Volkswagen and Porsche. The vehicles we modify range from entry level to over $100,000. We have dealers all over the world and support many vehicles we will never see in the United States.
Our products range from stage 1 software which can add up to 200 horsepower depending on the vehicle, bolt-on accessories, all the way to stage 3 kits, which add a lot more power and involve replacing the factory turbocharger with something a bit larger.
For me, passion is something that makes you want to get out of bed and go to work, not for the paycheck, but for the enjoyment of doing what you do. Passion sometimes wakes you up in the middle of the night with the next great idea that you MUST write down immediately before you forget it. Passion causes our calibrators and software engineers to sleep occasionally under their desks so they can wake up and keep working on the latest problem or calibration. This passion is fueled, ironically, by our love for high octane, fire breathing, turbocharged German cars. For us, hearing the sound of a tuned, big turbo engine makes us giddy. It’s that feeling of being forced back in your seat and knowing that you were at least a little bit responsible for making others feel the same way.
Every day we demonstrate our passion and obsession for what we do. We do this through every detail whether it be a CAD model, engineering drawing, a complex code change or a meticulous calibration. The effects of our passion, are the products. Not all products get to leave the development center and become an APR products. If it doesn’t meet our standards, it will never see the light of day.
Everyone that works here knows what it takes to design an APR product. It does indeed require passion. It also requires pride, caffeine, teamwork, heated discussions, collaboration, testing and drive to succeed. Failure is a failed attempt to success. It takes passion to drive through the failures to achieve success.
Productivity, for my team, is tracked by the products we release. The more products we release, the more potential for profit. Passion for the products will always drive productivity. The issue at APR is not usually productivity. Instead, it is keeping the productivity, productive. With the amount of passion we have for the products we make, it’s easy to get distracted and pulled off track. My main job function is to guide the passion and productivity in the correct direction and lead my team to timely product releases.
Hiring great people is critical to passion and productivity. There are several factors that are important in APR’s hiring process. In our industry, it’s not difficult to find candidates that are passionate. Just look for the guy or girl that is spending most of their spare time and money on their car or reading about the next thing they want to install on their car. The type of people that work at APR usually have more than one car, at least one of them is a “project car”. When a potential employee tours our facility, it is extremely easy to see their passion. You see it in the gleam in their eyes and in their conversation.
We also look to see if the candidate believes in and possesses our values. Our values include trust, extreme customer focus, extreme performance, and care more than just about yourself.
“Passion (which fuels productivity) + APR’s Values (which encompasses giving back) = the perfect candidate for APR.”
There are several ways to get existing employees excited and passionate about working here. The most important thing is to let them know the work they are doing is meaningful. What they’re working on today could lead to making someone’s dreams come true. What they’re doing will give someone that feeling of being pushed back in there seat that we all love. The work they just completed might make someone’s drive to work just a little more fun and could possibly create a domino effect that changes the mood and attitude of everyone around them.
Another way to get an employee engaged and passionate is to let them experience the fruits of their labor. We toss them a set of keys and let them take a car out for a drive and feel firsthand what they helped to accomplish. Doing what we love gives that feeling to everyone that buys our products.
Every day at APR I take it as my responsibility to let someone know how special it is to work at APR. All positions here at APR are extremely important and allow the company to function. There are not many jobs that give you this sort of experience and allow you to live out your childhood dreams of making cars go faster. Every little boy has one of the same few car posters on their bedroom wall. I like to remind my fellow co-workers that we get to design and build the products that will be on the future bedroom posters. How cool is that?!
As the company grows and matures, we have started to do things to give back to the community. APR has taken on a volunteer incentive and begun involving itself in causes that are important to the APR staff members and the community. We are so excited for our upcoming holiday event where we will be sponsoring girls, from the Lee County Sheriff Girls Ranch, with a gift for the holidays as well as hosting them at APR, LLC for a meal.
APR has also partnered with a local nature preserve to lend a helping hand from employee volunteers to work on special projects that keep the preserve beautiful and functioning for the community.
For years, APR has been involved with Auburn University’s Formula SAE team. This relationship has allowed APR staff members to mentor and foster the growth, development, and passion for the automotive industry with the team. Because of this relationship, APR has hired and provided many internship opportunities for Formula SAE members. Having the opportunity to share these experiences and passion with the students has been very rewarding on all levels.
Other small events we have been involved with include the Auburn- Opelika Touch-a-Truck Event and a supplies drive for the Lee County Humane Society.
Giving back is a way of showing how grateful we are for the opportunities we have been given to do what we love for a living. Our hopes are that the little things we are able to do to give back will be contagious and create an epidemic that will make the world a better place for our children and grandchildren. Giving back is what humanity is all about.
We also recognize that these volunteer opportunities allow our employees to better connect with the community, provide an opportunity for morale boosting and teambuilding, promote networking opportunities, and provide a way for employees and APR to give back. At the end of the day, volunteer work just makes you feel good and we would like to support that effort at our company.
APR is a growing company that has had a very rough road to get to where we are. We have worked very hard to get here, but without passion and being given opportunities along the way, it never would have been able to happen. GO APR!!!
Website: www.goapr.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APRMotorsport/timeline
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoAPR?lang=en
Instagram: https://instagram.com/aprllc/
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FireSeeds’ Passion + Productivity = Give Back story
For FireSeeds, a recruitment and leader development company in Birmingham, Alabama, work is a place for impact. Founded by Cord Sachs and Justin Harris in 2011, the company exists to create multiplying movements of multiplying leaders in the for-purpose marketplace.
“We desire to connect integrity-filled leaders with companies who value their culture. We also create consistent and intentional leader development strategies for organizations through an online platform called WildSparq.com,” said Will Riley, Marketing Director for the firm.
To FireSeeds staff, passion comes from impacting people. “It all goes back to our vision of creating multiplying movements. A movement happens when we place one of our leaders into a company culture where they have the opportunity to grow both personally and professionally. It’s a huge win for us, ” says Riley.
The passion FireSeeds has for multiplying leaders leads to a productive workplace. Once a quarter, the team reviews its vision, mission, and values to ensure that they are living them out. When calibrating focus towards purposeful work, FireSeeds asks two questions: Does it accomplish our vision and does it drive revenue?
FireSeeds has taken their passion for leader development and created a system to maximize it in WildSparq. We walk through every lesson and leadership resource before making it available to our companies. Through the use of the platform, motivation has increased, passion is further expressed, and individuals grow. The system allows the company to reward their employees for completing lessons, track their metrics of development, experience their teams on a personal level and teach one another with dynamic leadership content. “We believe this personal and professional development tool has revolutionized how we work,” says the FireSeeds team.
In addition, FireSeeds takes its focus of Passion + Productivity to give back beyond the walls of the organization.
“There are plenty of people in need, and we believe we have an opportunity to positively influence others. It’s grace. We love showing grace toward others. Two organizations we are involved with are Clerestory and Five Loaves. Clerestory aids people through recovery. Regardless of their broken past, individuals participate in classes where they learn valuable workplace skills so they can be ready to work again. We have volunteered and interviewed students to give them direct feedback on how they can improve their resume, cover letter, and interviewing skills. Five Loaves is a company that employs graduates from Clerestory. They offer catering services that far surpass any event company we have ever seen. We continue to serve Five Loaves by having them cater meals to our team as well as refer them to other businesses in the Birmingham-metro area. We are continually going to numerous events these organizations host, so we can find creative ways to partner alongside one another and end poverty in the city,” says Riley.
The combination of a Give Back focus inside and outside the walls of FireSeeds can be summed up as this: “Plainly put, we want to focus our energy on infusing leaders who want to have an impact in work cultures, and work with companies who want to invest in their people. Development doesn’t just happen. It requires work! We work, so we can give.”
Do you work so you can give?
To learn more about FireSeeds and their online leadership development platform, WildSparq, check out these resources:
–ESPN3 Commercial (Official Leader Development Partner of the Gulf South Conference)
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Passion + Productivity = Give Back: Education Elements
Education Elements, an organization that helps school districts personalize learning, embodies the saying “Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me, and I may not remember. Involve me, and I’ll understand” in their approach to education. Because of their belief that learning can be customized for every student, powerful results are being seen across the nation in student outcomes.
Their story demonstrates how passion + productivity for the work that they do and for improving K-12 education leads to students who are better prepared by their education for college and career so that they can give back to their communities as they get older.
Here is their story:
When Education Elements was founded in 2010, “blended learning” was just an idea with little traction and no real proof points. Anthony Kim, a longtime education technologist, wanted to help schools rethink the structure of schooling and the way technology could strengthen instruction and streamline operations. Anthony founded Education Elements on the belief that learning could be personalized for every student.
Our work started with a single charter school in Los Angeles and grew from there. KIPP Empower, our first school, had a specific problem to solve – creating a high-quality education with excellent academic outcomes in the face of limited per pupil allocations. The station rotation model developed at KIPP Empower is one we have seen replicated again and again across the country because it works, KIPP Empower is now one of the highest performing schools in the state of California.
We hire people who are amazing at what they do and want to use their talents to make a difference. We are all driven to have a positive impact on student outcomes and look for new team members who feel the same. We look for people who get excited about the opportunity to work with districts and schools. We want to get people fired up and demanding that every student have a fundamentally different educational experience that focuses on their individual needs. Our teams volunteer in after school programs and on weekends. They give back constantly.
With this, we all take on a whatever-it-takes approach to supporting the districts with whom we work. Our team works tirelessly to make sure that districts and schools have what they needs to help students succeed. The passion of our team leads to great results in public schools. Those results are measured in several ways: accelerated growth in reading and math; deeper learning in reading and math; higher student engagement; and higher teacher satisfaction.
We now serve over 100 schools across the country including large school districts such as Houston ISD, Newark Public Schools, District of Columbia Public Schools and Horry County Schools (the 2nd largest district in the state of South Carolina) and small districts like Piedmont, AL.
As the list of schools, districts, and networks we have worked with has grown, so has the set of challenges and the diversity of solutions. Our design-thinking process, which starts with an articulation of goals and assessment of school and district readiness, enables us to facilitate models that meet the needs of every school, just as the personalized environments we develop meet the needs of every student. We work with a range of proven blended models, ranging from a lab rotation model with Rocketship, to flex models at Career Path, to station rotation at the District of Columbia Public Schools. We often see iterations of all of these models within a single building in order to best meet student needs. Our 100 schools therefore represent 100 cases of developing a right-sized model, and thoughtfully and holistically supporting its implementation.
Fundamentally, we believe students should love learning and that we can bring that joy back through our individualize approach. This empowers us to demonstrate passion + productivity = give back in our work so that students have the chance to do the same.
Want to learn more about Education Elements?
Visit their website, or follow them on Facebook and LinkedIn
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Passion + Productivity = Give Back (Fitness)
As January comes to a close, many of us are saddled with the potential reality that our new years resolutions, many of them fitness and health related, are falling by the wayside.
Susan Ozier, a Health and Fitness Coach, knows how many of us feel when it comes to this reality and is using her personal experience to fuel passion and productivity to give back to others in a way that helps them achieve their goals.
She is passionate about helping other women learn how to eat healthy and in turn feed their family healthy foods because when a person gets healthy it affects every aspect of their lives. They have energy and confidence they didn’t previously have and that transfers into their family life, their job, and even their friendships. Susan loves to see how, through her help, mothers are able to regain energy to play with their kids and then become an example to their children of what a healthy lifestyle looks like.
Here is Susan’s story:
Last winter, I felt like I had not hit my groove as a mom of two kids under three and still had about 10 lbs of baby weight to lose. I wasn’t happy with the way I was feeling about myself and decided to make some “real” New Years’ resolutions. For the first time, I decided to write them down with specific goals and accomplishments I wanted to achieve in 2014. I went on a date with my husband and shared them all with him so he could help hold me accountable to the spiritual, financial, marital/parental, and physical goals I made. For the first time, my physical goals weren’t dictated by a number on the scale. Instead, I wanted to feel comfortable in my clothes and confident in a swimsuit by that summer with a focus on being healthy, not just being skinny.
I started researching and looking into different diets, nutrition plans, and workouts, using my background knowledge and experiences from my exercise science and nursing degrees to help inform my new plan. I did a lot of research on clean eating and weight lifting which were both new ideas for me at the time. I had previously stuck to more traditional diets that deprive particular food groups and added massive amounts of cardio for exercise because I wrongly believed I would bulk up if I lifted weights. I lost weight quickly at first as I dove into this new nutrition plan of eating mostly clean foods and kicking my Diet Mountain Dew habit. Heavier weights than I was used to along with high intensity interval training totally transformed my body even when the number on the scale quit moving I was seeing progress in the way my clothes fit and the new strength and confidence that I felt. I felt healthy, strong, and more confident than I had ever felt before I had kids because I had taken control and implemented real change in my life.
As people started asking me what I was doing to lose weight I decided I wanted to share with people what I had learned over the past year. I became a Beachbody coach to help others reach their health and wellness goals because I know what a difference being healthy and learning to take care of my body has made in all aspects of my life, and I wanted to do the same thing for other women.
As a coach, I hold monthly challenge groups that provide specific workouts, nutrition plans, and most importantly, accountability and encouragement from me and the others participating in the group. You can have great nutrition and workouts, but without the accountability it is a lot easier to fall off track. I love helping others learn how to be fit and healthy which doesn’t have a thing to do with weight, but focuses more on eating clean, staying active, and feeling good about yourself.
It isn’t easy to live a healthy lifestyle in today’s world of convenience and fast food, but I have found it to be easier with accountability and support from a network of like-minded people, and I want to provide that for others. I want to be honest and real and show people that living a healthy life is doable and worth the hard work.
Even with my background in Exercise Science and Nursing I never had anyone to hold my hand and walk me through the little changes I could make. I had to learn them myself over time and now I think it is important to share my knowledge and passion with others so that they can get healthy and in turn get their families healthy.
To learn more about Susan and the work she is doing, check out www.SusanOzier.weebly.com or visit her Facebook page.