Category Archives for "Irwin"

Quality – Starts With Me

Quality Week on The Stretched Blog continues with this 3rd post.  Go check out the past two days of discussion if you need to catch up.  You can catch up my clicking here or here.

As a dad and as a leader, I care about passing down and exemplifying quality to me kids and to me team.  I want them to respond with quality.

Unfortunately, I don’t always get it right at work or at home and neither do my kids or the members of my team.

I think it’s important to understand the benefits of doing things with quality and to recognize the downside of allowing our performance to be less than stellar.

You may know that our family currently has two dogs.  Iso is our forever doe.  He’s a lovable eight year old black lab who loves to lay around and sleep.  Irwin is our 17 week old seeing eye puppy.  He keeps us on our toes with his puppy teeth and puppy energy.  Hannah, our daughter, is responsible for taking care of Irwin which leaves our son, Isaac, to handle Iso.  (Are you confused with all the “I” names?)  Part of caring for Iso involves taking him outside and cleaning up the dog poop.  It’s not a glamorous job, but you can understand that it’s essential.

When Isaac takes Iso out, he’s supposed to clean up after the dog right away.  Obviously, there are major benefits to performing this task with quality.  The yard is clear of “landmines” and Isaac doesn’t have to mess with it later.

But what happens when his “job” performance lacks quality?  We end up with dog poop in the yard.  Someone steps in it and gets it in their shoes.  Then they track it in the house which leads to lots of extra cleanup and wasted time.  It also means that we have to be on Isaac more to make sure he’s doing his jobs correctly.  This isn’t fun for Isaac or for mom and dad.  Inevitably, Isaac has to spend more time cleaning up the yard, because he didn’t do it right the first time.

Suddenly, the lesson in quality starts to make more sense.  When it comes to quality, we want to do it right because we do it right – not because we do it twice.

As I ponder quality today, it may seem like I’m picking on my son.  This isn’t my intent.  These thoughts are a reminder to me that I must act with quality first – especially if I expect my team and my kids to make quality a priority.

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.  Colossians 3:17

How have you been positively or negatively impacted by your attention or lack of attention to quality?  If you are a leader, how do you demonstrate the importance of quality to your team?

January 7, 2012 Week In Review…

It’s time for The Stretched Blog Week in Review – the first for 2012!   The traffic to the Stretched Blog is at an all-time high this week.  In fact, blog traffic on Wednesday was the highest ever on the blog (and Thursday’s traffic was right behind).  Thank you!

Here’s the rundown on the posts for the week:

Monday:  December 2011 Top Posts

Tuesday:  Meet Irwin

Wednesday:  One Word For 2012: Transformed

Thursday:  The Stretched Blog Visits The Analogous Truth

Friday (this actually posted Saturday do to a visit to me by the stomach flu):  Ice Breaker – My First Car

Your continued contribution to the blog through comments is greatly appreciated.  Your comments are what makes this Stretched Community!  Please remember to take the time to Subscribe to the blog, so you can have Stretched delivered daily to your e-mail inbox.  Also, don’t forget to stop by the Jon Stolpe Stretched Facebook fan page.  Become a fan to keep up with some additional Stretched stuff.  I have started to share more blog highlights from other blogs that I read regularly.  I think you’ll find some great stuff here.  Thanks!

Here are a few of my favorites from around the blog world this week:

It should be a fun week upcoming.  Brandon Gilliland will be guest posting on Wednesday.  We’ll have another fun Ice Breaker on Friday.  And there’s sure to be more Stretching the rest of the week.  Please stop back so you can see what’s going on here!

How about you?  How was your week?  If you’re a blogger what happened over your way this week?  Did you read any great blog posts this week?  Share with the rest of us!

Meet Irwin

Our family has grown in the last couple of weeks.  No, Leanne and I did not have another child.  But we did add another dog to the mix right before Christmas.  Irwin is a golden retriever and Labrador mix, and I believe he turns 9 weeks old today.  He’s not your normal 9 week old family dog.  Irwin has a purpose, and we only get to have him for a short period of time.  You see, Irwin is a Seeing Eye puppy.  He was bred to help a blind person.  As puppy raisers, we will have Irwin until he is 12-18 months old.  Our job is to get him house broken, teach him a couple of basic things (sit, come, etc.), and to get him exposed to public places as much as possible.  From there, Irwin will return to The Seeing Eye in Morristown, NJ where he will go through 8 months of intense training.  This is when he’ll learn the skills required to guide a blind person.  At the end of his training, he will go through a final exam and health check to make sure he’s ready to go to work.  Assuming he passes, he will be matched up with a blind person.  They will work together for a month up at the school before they are sent home to live and work together.

The whole new dog thing has definitely added a chaos to our home, but it has also been fun.  Hannah is the official puppy raiser, and she has been doing an unbelievable job.  She takes him out to “park” whenever it’s time for him to go.  She lets Irwin sleep by her bed at night.  And she wakes up early to make sure he gets outside before any accidents.  If Hannah does this twice before she graduates high school, she’ll be eligible for a scholarship from The Seeing Eye.  So it’s likely that this won’t be the last new puppy we’ll see in our house.

Many people have asked, “how can you raise the puppy for a year and let it go?”  That’s a great question.  I’m sure it will be tough to say goodbye to Irwin when the time comes, but it will be easier to release him knowing that he has a purpose.  As parents, we have a similar experience with our kids.  Sure we get them for more than a year, and those 18 or so years can be filled with all kinds of ups and downs, but I think it’s important to realize that we have influence and responsibility over our children for a relatively short period time.  In essence, they are on loan from God.  There comes a time when we must release them for their greater, God-given purpose.  And so, Irwin reminds me of this.  I want to make the most of the time with my kids while they’re under my roof, and I want to release when the time comes them knowing full well that God has a purpose for them.

Have you ever had to release someone or something in order to pursue a higher calling or purpose?  What made this transition easy or hard?