I love the month of March for many reasons. For one I’m a huge college basketball fan and March Madness is the greatest three weekends of hoops all year. But I also love March because it means Spring is right around the corner! The temperature starts to rise, we get reintroduced to the sun in Indiana and within a few short weeks flowers, trees and shrubs of all kinds will start to blossom and bloom. But what happens when they don’t? What happens if our flowers never bloom? What do we do if a tree stays dormant? For most of us that answer is easy, we dig it up or cut it down. But is that ultimately the right answer, or is it oftentimes just the easy answer?
At this point I hope I’ve intrigued you enough to be asking, “Why is PacMoore, a food contract manufacturer, writing a blog about gardening?” The answer is we are not, but the above visual of a plant that isn’t producing its expected fruit or flowers is the best way to introduce you to a concept that PacMoore is all about, and that is growing people.
Nurturing Character in People
When our plants don’t produce what we want them to we have two choices. We can cut them down or we can work in the soil, add some fertilizer, water it and nurture it. The same is true of people. We are always judging people, be they family, friends or employees, by the “fruit” they are producing. When the fruit is bad we prefer to just get rid of them. When the fruit is good we love them and enjoy the relationship. What we need to understand is that just as the fruit of a tree is the sign of its health, so too the fruit of someone’s life is a sign of that individual’s character. When a person’s character has not been developed their life will most likely reflect that and the question becomes, what do we do?
People Can Grow and Change
For most people, and certainly most employers, the answer to that question is simple…get rid of them. The problem with that, however, is that devalues the person and says to that person, we don’t believe you can change. At PacMoore, not only do we believe people can grow and change, but we have witnessed life transformation first hand. We have seen managers, supervisors and co-workers come alongside people and help teach them character traits such as respect, dependability, initiative and forgiveness. We have come to understand and believe in the power of investing into the roots of a person’s life knowing that if we work with them on their roots, their character will change and ultimately so too will the fruit they are producing. Unfortunately getting in the soil of people’s lives can be dirty and difficult, but it is ALWAYS worth it.
Ask a gardener one of the greatest joys of gardening and they will tell you it is taking a plant that wasn’t producing flowers or fruit, working with it, fertilizing it and seeing it produce beautiful flowers and healthy fruit. At PacMoore we love to delight our customers with services such as extrusion, dry blending, consumer packaging and spray drying, we are excited to feed the world, but nothing gives us more joy than coming alongside our people, investing in them, training them, working with them to develop their character and see them become a person bearing great fruit! Whose soil will you work in this spring to help them produce beautiful fruit?
