GIVE is an initiative here at Gibson that serves as a foundation for our charitable giving, providing an outlet to support our strong tradition of community engagement. In the future it will be more complete by encompassing all our efforts with colleagues, clients, and the community through service, wellness and safety, and growth initiatives. GIVE is the name we chose a while back because it aligns our mission ‘Protect What Matters Most’ to GIVE What Matters Most.

Last month my Dad sent me an article from the Indianapolis Star and said, “You should write a blog about this.” I assumed a political piece from Dick Morris was coming my way. Instead it was the tale of a resurrection.

While on the treadmill the other morning, I was flipping channels and ran across an infomercial for an exercise program called the Brazilian Butt Lift. Not surprising given the run up to New Year’s Day and the typical hype and sometimes hysteria surrounding resolutions. As I slugged along on my fast paced walk at a 12% incline, it was fascinating to watch the program with all the before and after stories. The promised results were amazing! I actually began to wonder if my daily morning 30 minute walk was as strenuous as it needs to be.

In his blog Mindful Matters, consultant George Altman writes that the Gallup organization found only 30% of U.S. workers are truly engaged in their work. As he points out, that means 70% of the workforce are not meeting their full potential. Gallup estimates this lack of engagement costs U.S. businesses about $500 billion per year.

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to travel to China. We spent time in Beijing, Qingdao, and Shanghai. Specifically the incredible history in and around Beijing, the entrepreneurial spirit in Qingdao, and the electricity of Shanghai were really amazing.

My friend and coach, Larry Linne, was in town recently. Larry spoke to a group of area employers about brand and reputation risk. We were fortunate enough to get him to spend a few hours with our sales team after the event.

Recently I read a column in Forbes magazine by Rich Karlgaard. It was about legendary Stanford women's basketball Tara VanDerveer. Many may not realize that Vanderveer spent much of her time as a student at Indiana University in the 70s watching, observing, and learning from Coach Bob Knight. She says one of her secrets to success was "hanging around" the best and brightest in her business.

A few weeks ago we put all the lake stuff away for the offseason. As I gazed at the water skis, I couldn’t help but think about what a great summer it had been. My nine year old, unable to get up the summer before, was up on two skisby early June this year. A few weeks later he had me remove the training strings holding the skis together. My eleven year old went from two skis, to dropping one, to becoming a pretty impressive slalom skier by summer’s end.

It was not without a lot of hard work from both of them. I can’t tell you how many times I got the call of “Ready Dad!”, slammed the throttle forward and took off, only to look back and see them take a dive into the lake. Every time, I dutifully circled the ski rope back around them. We would repeat the same process as many times as it took.

With all of the media coverage surrounding the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that we have a real crisis in America with health and health care costs. It’s widely known that obesity and diabetes rates have doubled in the last 15 years and that costs are tracking up along with these trends. Any organization doing a deep dive on their health claims costs realizes that the Pareto Principle is alive and well. It’s likely 20% of their employees or family members are incurring 80% of their costs, and that 80% of those costs are directly related to conditions linked to lifestyle choices.

Several years ago the National Institute of Health put out this comment: “If we could get Americans to do just three things:

1. Stop using tobacco products
2. Stop drinking to excess
3. Not be obese

I was reading a blog post on Harvard Business Review the other day by Vineet Nayar. He is an entrepreneur and author. He was touching on the three ingredients of successful teams - which I translate to having a motivated workforce.