Dear Members,
Part of my job as general manager is not only to look at the numbers and to think about them, but also to interpret them and to develop a sense of what they’re telling us. This requires finding creative ways to put big numbers into perspective, to give them a sense of scale.
Think about this: we do more than 2 million transactions per year. Two million! Ironically, big numbers are so big we often don’t realize how big they really are. Two million can seem like a pretty staggering number, or it can seem like nothing at all because it’s so abstract that it’s difficult to imagine.
One way I like to put a large number into scale is to think of it in terms of time. Think of a number in seconds, for example. Two seconds from now is about the end of this sentence. Two million seconds from now is about 23 days away. Or think of it in terms of days. Two days from now is Monday. Two million days from now is more than 5,000 years away.
Circling back to the issue at hand, we’re not talking about dollars or seconds, but transactions. Clearly 2 million transactions per year is a very big deal.
To me, it doesn’t speak to our size or scope or even our level of success, but instead, it speaks to our impact.
Every transaction is serving someone. It may be a different person, or it may be the same person making multiple transactions. Regardless, 2 million transactions per year represents a huge impact on our communities. The takeaway is that through this organization, we all have the opportunity to make a real difference in the world, just by doing what we do each day.
My thanks to all of our members and employees for making that difference. Questions or feedback? I’d love to hear from you. Please reach out anytime. My door is always open.
—ed
NOURISH. CULTIVATE. COOPERATE.
Ed Fox
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