Monday October 18, 2004

The View from outside of Headquarters

My youngest daughter is studying and living in Paris right now as a part of the Sweet Briar Junior Year in France Program. Living in France has been a great experience for her. Her French is getting much better and I really believe that getting a perspective on the U.S. from outside the U.S. is very important.

No matter how hard I try to not have a California-centric view of the world I always do. It can't be helped. I have to remind myself that getting input from outside of headquarters is so important. It always improves the quality of my work. I know it. I've seen it again and again but it is so easy to think you already know the answer.

I've been calling VPs to tell them about JDS preview and JDS on their laptops. Just today I learned that our European staff get their laptops in a different way than we in the U.S.do and I got a totally different slant on our vision statement from a service guy in Canada. Thanks!