Posts from — February 2008

Very rarely do you see anything on this blog not written by me. Part of the reason is that I believe you are coming here to read what I have to say about leadership, personal development, self-improvement, success, etc. On the other hand, I think you also want to find interesting content. Most blogs or writings these dasy are very short blurbs with little pieces of content, more like nuggets. Though that is fine, I like to dig a little deeper into subjects and explore them more fully. Due to this appraoch, it is rare to find something that is thourough and applicable to present here.

Last week I received my regular message from TheLadders.com. I have a memebrship with them always on the lookout for a great opportunity or new information. They recently also started to add a few interesting articles to their postings. The one you are about to see and read really struck a cord with me. I contacted TheLadders.com to receive their permission to post the article on my blog here.

I hope you agree that providing really good presentations is a huge differentiator in the modern business world. Yes, there are books out and you can take classes. To find what works well in a reasonably compact format, I find what Carmine Gallo has written to be a great start. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

Axel Meierhoefer, President AMC LLC

Deliver a Presentation like Steve Jobs
By Carmine Gallo

When Apple CEO Steve Jobs kicked off Macworld 2008, he once again raised the bar for presenters everywhere. While most deliver information, Jobs inspires the audience. After analyzing his latest presentation, I’ve extracted the 10 most motivating elements to incite listeners.

1. Set the tone. “There is something in the air today,” Jobs projected to the crowd to open the Macworld conference. By doing so, he set the tone for his presentation and hinted at the key product announcement–the ultrathin MacBook Air laptop. While every presentation needs an angle, it doesn’t have to be unveiled right away. Last year, Jobs waited until the 20–minute mark. When the time was right, he noted, “Today Apple reinvents the phone.” Once you identify your angle, make sure to weave it throughout your presentation.

2. Demonstrate enthusiasm. It’s impossible to deny Jobs’ passion for computer design. Next time you’re crafting or delivering a presentation, think about infusing it with your personality. Most speakers get into presentation mode and feel as though they have to strip the talk of any character. Remember, your audience wants to be wowed, not put to sleep. The audience will follow your lead. So set an enthusiastic example.

3. Provide an outline. Jobs set expectations by noting, “There are four things I want to talk about today. So let’s get started…” Verbally opening and closing each of the four sections helped to make clear transitions between talking points. For example, after revealing several new iPhone features, he said, “That [the iPhone] was the second thing I wanted to talk about today. Number three is about iTunes.” Make lists and provide your audience with guideposts along the way.

4. Make numbers meaningful. When Jobs announced that Apple had sold 4 million iPhones to date, he provided context for the figure. “That’s 20,000 iPhones every day, on average,” Jobs explained, “What does that mean to the overall market?” Numbers don’t mean much unless they are placed in perspective. Connect the dots for your listeners.

5. Try for an unforgettable moment. This is the moment in your presentation that everyone will be talking about. Every Steve Jobs presentation builds up to one big scene. In this year’s Macworld keynote, it was the announcement of MacBook Air. To demonstrate just how thin it is, Jobs said it would fit in an envelope. Jobs drew cheers by opening a manila interoffice envelope and holding the laptop for everyone to see. What is the one memorable moment of your presentation? Identify it ahead of time and build up to it.

6. Create visual slides. While most speakers fill their slides with data, text, and charts, great presenters do the opposite. There is very little text on a Steve Jobs slide. Most of the slides present one idea for the audience to walk away with. This is further supported by see–and–say syncing. For example, when outlining, “The first thing I want to talk to you about today,” was accompanied by a slide with the numeral I. When he discussed a specific product like the iPhone, the audience saw a slide with an image of the product. Inspiring presenters are short on bullet points and big on graphics.

7. Give ’em a show. A Jobs presentation has ebbs and flows, themes and transitions. Including video clips, demonstrations, and guests creates the feeling that the presentation is more of a show than a lecture. Enhance your presentations by incorporating multimedia, product demonstrations, or giving others the chance to say a few words.

8. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Despite your best preparation, something might go wrong as it did during the Apple CEO’s keynote. Upon attempting to show a few photographs from a live Web site, the screen went black. Jobs smiled and said, “Well, I guess Flickr isn’t serving up the photos today.” By moving forward and recapping the new features he just introduced, it was no big deal. Don’t sweat minor mishaps. Have fun.

9. Sell the benefit. While most presenters promote product features, Jobs sells benefits. When introducing iTunes movie rentals, Jobs said, “We’ve never offered a rental model in music because people want to own their music. You listen to your favorite song thousands of times in your life. But most of us watch movies once, maybe a few times. And renting is a great way to do it. It’s less expensive, doesn’t take up space on our hard drive…” Your listeners are always asking themselves, “What’s in it for me?” Answer the question. Don’t make them guess. Clearly state the benefit of every service, feature, or product.

10. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Steve Jobs cannot pull off an intricate presentation with video clips, demonstrations, and outside speakers without hours of rehearsal. Jobs rehearses the entire presentation aloud for many hours. You can see he rehearsed the Macworld presentation because his words were often perfectly synchronized with the images and text on the slides. A Steve Jobs presentation looks effortless because it is well–rehearsed.

Use this 10–part framework to wow your audiences. Many observers claim Steve Jobs has charisma. True. But he works at it. Nothing in his presentations is taken for granted. He studies the art of telling a story to inspire his audience. You must do the same to electrify your listeners.

To close out our series about “The value of organization” we are going to take a look at the cultural aspect of the systematic attribute, especially as it applies to time management, how time is seen and used, and what it can mean for us in daily life.

To some extent it depends on where you are coming from, what your heritage is, to determine how you see time. Our culture is significantly impacted by our heritage, as well as our upbringing and the experiences we make over time. Past, present, and future have differing significance in people’s minds. Here are a few statements to consider from a book titled: “Riding the waves of culture”:

• Our expectations of the future determine our present
• Our present actions determine the future
• Our present experience determines our view of the past
• The past has made us what we are today

How would this apply in practical terms? The authors say:

We can make ourselves miserable in the present if a long expected payment is delayed to the future. We can discover in the present a fact that makes what we did in the past far more justifiable. In fact, an important part of creativity is to assemble past and present activities, plus conjectures about the future, in new combinations.

As we have seen in previous installments of this series, some people see time and events in a sequence and therefore apply a very systematic view to tasks, goals, time, etc. On the other hand, other people have the clustered approach to organizing, which often also uses a more community oriented system. What does that mean in practical terms?

Well, people scoring high on the systematic attribute and being very organized would not easily break the sequence of events, violate priorities, etc.  If they are waiting in line fore something and another person would jump in front of them, they would be offended, and try to re-establish order.

Conversely, lease with a more clustered and community oriented approach would not see this as a significant inconvenience. A good example form the book mentioned above talks about an Italian butcher. When he unwraps salami, he would ask all the people in the store who would want or need salami and then cut slices accordingly. This way the sausage would only have to be touched ones, even though the persons who entered the store last might get served out of order. As you can see the sequential approach to order is not always the most successful.

When talking or writing about time, planning, and being organized, I feel it is important to recognize the importance of scale. Where I come from, longer term planning was always a part of life. I guess most people in the Western hemisphere and countries would agree. Still, the magnitude can vary. For me long term is 5-10 years, for many of my American friends is more like 6-12 months. Part of this view stems from the fact that people in the United States like to have control. That also goes for the future to some extent. If present actions shape the future, which can only really happen in relatively close proximity between present and future. Even though today’s actions have impact on the future in 5 or 10 years, it is not easily and immediately detectable.

For me this difference in the view and scale of time and what future really means, manifested itself during a large scale project I was in charge of a few years ago. A significant number of residences were to be build in a small town. This created an opportunity for people to get into real estate with a very modest investment. The really cool part of the project was that the residences would all be rented for 3 years at a time based on a 19 year contract. In addition, the rent collected was subsidized by the government resulting in rates significantly higher than typical for the region. This allowed for a residence to be fully paid off in about 10 years.

I thought this was a fabulous opportunity to invest. When do you get the chance to put in about $10.000 and ten years later you own a house free and clear – or so I thought. Well, very few of my friends and associates actually participated in this opportunity. They main concern was the lack of positive cash flow coming from the rent form the beginning of the contract. Without it they deemed this to be a risky deal and stayed away. Those who jumped in kept smiling all the way to the bank. When asked, most people said that a 10 year time horizon was too long for them to plan on. Now, almost 10 years later, the early investors keep getting the rent and don’t have any payments anymore. It’s basically like retirement happening early. Even in another 10 years, when the underlying contract runs out, they will be able to rent the residences for approximately 30 more years before they fall apart. As often – it all depends on your perspective of time and opportunity.

As with all the other aspects affecting the systematic attribute, time and the perspective you have towards past, present and future makes a big difference for your actions. It is true that we can’t change the past. On the other hand, the level to which we cherish it has impact on our actions today and in the future. As mentioned many times, being aware how you think about these things and analyzing how your actions and view fit into your perspective is the first step to solidify what works well and adjust what doesn’t work so well.

In summary, all the different aspects impacting the systematic attribute need to be considered together to provide an explanation of the scores you can reach, the changes you can make to your life, and the actions you can and should take to get the most out of life. The systematic attribute plays a pivotal role in tapping into your performance potential. When you know where you stand and way your goals really are, and you add your perspective of time, you have an excellent chance to carve out a path that will be on a direct line towards success.

Axel Meierhoefer, President AMC LLC

As discussed at the very beginning of this article series about the value of organization and the impact of the systematic attribute on the performance of individuals, there are many facets to be aware of. Today, we are looking at three more of them:

• The Pareto Principle
• An Organizational Myth
• Self-motivation

As always, I conducted some research into these terms to get a better understanding. Here is what I found about the Pareto Principle:

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the causes. Business management thinker Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed that 80% of income in Italy went to 20% of the population. It is a common rule of thumb in business; e.g., “80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.”

It is worthy of note that some applications of the Pareto principle are appeals to a pseudo-scientific “law of nature” to bolster non-quantifiable or non-verifiable assertions that are “painted with a broad brush”. The fact that hedges such as the 90/10, 70/30, and 95/5 “rules” exist is sufficient evidence of the non-exactness of the Pareto principle. On the other hand, there is adequate evidence that “clumping” of factors does occur in most phenomena.

The Pareto principle is only tangentially related to Pareto efficiency, which was also introduced by the same economist, Vilfredo Pareto. Pareto developed both concepts in the context of the distribution of income and wealth among the population.

The observation was in connection with income and wealth. Pareto noticed that 80% of Italy’s wealth was owned by 20% of the population. He then carried out surveys on a variety of other countries and found to his surprise that a similar distribution applied.

It also applies to a variety of more mundane matters: one might guess approximately that we wear our 20% most favored clothes about 80% of the time, perhaps we spend 80% of the time with 20% of our acquaintances, etc.

The Pareto principle has many applications in quality control. It is the basis for the Pareto chart, one of the key tools used in total quality control and six sigma. The Pareto principle serves as a baseline for ABC-analysis and XYZ-analysis, widely used in logistics and procurement for the purpose of optimizing stock of goods, as well as costs of keeping and replenishing that stock. In computer science the Pareto principle can be applied to optimization phrases.

In the realm of systematic attributes and the value of organization, a small, maybe 20% increase in organizational measures, can lead to very significant benefits of efficiency. It is also worth noting that the principle, even though the numbers might change, often applies in coaching, where a relatively small amount of time communicating with an individual and helping to establish exercises with the goal to change habits can cause life changing results, not just for a small time period, but permanently. I have a number of coaching clients, especially regarding the systematic attribute, who can attest to this phenomenon.

In summary, Pareto is not something you can do much about, but rather something to be aware of. As I have written many times, awareness is often 50% of the solution. Being aware that a small change can make a big difference can provide the motivation to take massive action. That’s what’s often missing. We know what we like or want, and we have an idea what it takes to achieve it, but the motivation to take action is missing. Being aware of the Pareto principle can be the first step to achieving your goals.

While researching many potential aspects influencing the systematic attribute and the value of being organized, I came across an interesting piece of advice created by Maria Garcia:

THE INFAMOUS ORGANIZATIONAL MYTH  (Maria Garcia)

Myth: To be organized means to be neat or tidy.

Yes, we will admit that you can be neat and organized at the same time. But, there is also a huge percentage of neat people who are extremely disorganized.

In fact, and this one’s probably going to throw you for a loop — you can be the total opposite of neat (you can be sloppy) and still be organized!

So, what does it mean to be organized?

Truth: To be organized means:

1) You get everything done when it’s due.

2) You find everything you need when you need it.

It’s really that simple.

Keep these two phrases in mind, and you’re well on your way to optimum organization.

I agree with Maria, although I believe this really only applies to people who are already organized in the filing and planning way discussed at the beginning of this series. For people with the clustered approach, they might achieve the goals, but they might need to expand a he amount of time and energy and hurt themselves in the long term through anxiety, increased blood pressure and other indications of stress. As the old saying goes: “The results alone don’t always justify the methods.”

Finally today, I like to address the motivation to change. If you score relatively low on the systematic attribute but have a hard time to change and take massive action, what can you actually do?

Let’s suppose you value your time at $100 an hour. Then imagine throwing $100 down the drain every hour. Ouch! That’s exactly what you’re doing if you’re wasting your precious time. If you knew that you were losing $100 an hour, would you continue to let your time dwindle away on unimportant activity? Probably not.

Placing a dollar value on your time will help you determine what you are willing — or not willing — to spend your time on. Don’t ever sell yourself short. Establish how much your time is worth and use that value to make decisions on how to spend it.

The same approach should also answer the question: What should I really do with my time. Nobody is good at everything. If you find that there are things you are not good at or motivated to do, you will probably take longer than someone who loves this kind of work. In addition, you will possibly get frustrated. For individuals with a low score on the systematic attribute I have found that filling out forms and generally working on administrative things is a dreaded. Instead of doing it anyway, and keeping the value of time in mind, you should consider outsourcing.

If you value your time as being $100 per hour, you can easily find someone working for $10 and hour or maybe a little more. If that someone loves administrative work, you actually help him or her while you love the fact that you can do what you are really good at – and earn the value of your time. That’s what I can a win-win proposition.

Axel Meierhoefer, President AMC LLC

Today we are building the third part of the important aspects of the systematic attribute relevant to performance. As you recall, we initially talked about the difference between thinking and planning sequential versus thinking and acting in clusters, using filing versus piling. Then we looked into time management and how it can help to organize ones actions, both for individuals with a sequential approach to organization as well as for those with a more confuse approach to organization

One of the results of relative low scores on the systematic attribute, especially when combined with the tendency to work through clusters, piles, and less sequential approaches is a tendency to procrastinate.

Procrastination is a type of behavior which is characterized by deferment of actions or tasks to a later time. Psychologists often cite procrastination as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision.

What is important to now is that procrastination in the context of business, management, and performance, is not typically occurring as a deliberate act –exceptions excluding. An individual at the management or leadership level does not want to procrastinate or deliberately do so. For people scoring low on the systematic attribute, when they have the clustering nature, procrastination occurs due to the overwhelming amount of data, information and associated tasks flowing into the brain of the manager or leader. Rather than organizing everything in sequence and attributing correct priorities, all data is put in clusters and piles.

That by itself is not even the problem. Seen as a single event it would not be an issue. When you look at a whole day or week of new information coming in on top of existing piles of data, information and tasks it becomes increasingly tough to keep track of what needs to be done first, what has the highest priority, and how to keep all other things in view. Things literally begin to fall through the cracks of capacity the mind can spare to monitor all the things that have been assigned a name, pile, file, or place, together with a priority.

For the person procrastinating this may result in stress, a sense of guilt, the loss of personal productivity, the creation of crisis and the disapproval of others for not fulfilling one’s responsibilities or commitments. While it is normal for individuals to procrastinate to some degree, it becomes a problem when it impedes normal functioning. Chronic procrastination may be a sign of an underlying psychological or physiological disorder.

The word itself comes from the Latin word procrastinatus: pro- (forward) and crastinus (of tomorrow). The term’s first known appearance was in Edward Hall’s Chronicle (The union of the two noble and illustre famelies of Lancestre and Yorke), first published sometime before 1548. The sermon reflected procrastination’s connection at the time to task avoidance or delay, volition or will, and sin.

For people with a natural tendency to act, plan and live sequentially, procrastination can be overcome by learning how to use tools, like planners, organizers, things like the MS Outlook Calendar, etc. On the other hand, individuals with a more clustered, piling, keeping everything n the table-nature, the solution to procrastination is to include deliberate pauses in every day, week, or other timeframe of reference. During these pauses, things that have been completed are recognized. This can initially happen on a list, piece of paper, white board, etc. After a while it will become a habit and can be performed completely in the mind.

The importance lies in the fact that the procrastinating individual, especially the clustering kind, does not ever see anything being completed. The number of clusters, piles, and unfinished tings seems to constantly increase and appear overwhelming. With the pause and deliberate recognition of completion, the brain can learn to forget things without guilt. If combined with methods of prioritizing, much more happiness in life can be achieved and sense of satisfaction is felt each time a pause leads to the realization of what has actually been completed.

Another aspect of the systematic attribute is the process of multitasking. Here is what I was able to unearth about the phenomenon of multitasking:

Human multitasking or multitasking is the performance by an individual of more than one task at the same time. The term is derived from computer multitasking. An example of multitasking is listening to a radio interview while typing an email. Multitasking can result in time wasted due to human context switching and errors due to insufficient attention.

Since the 1950s, experimental psychologists have done many experiments on the nature and limits of human multitasking. In general, these studies have disclosed that people show severe interference when even very simple tasks are performed at the same time, if both tasks require selecting and producing action (e.g., Gladstones, Regan, & Lee, 1989; Pashler, 1994). Many researchers believe that action planning represents a “bottleneck”, which the human brain can only perform one task at a time.

Author Paul Johnson describes one kind of multitasking: “It usually involves skimming the surface of the incoming data, picking out the relevant details, and moving on to the next stream. You’re paying attention, but only partially. That lets you cast a wider net, but it also runs the risk of keeping you from really studying the fish.”. Multimedia pioneer Linda Stone coined the phrase “continuous partial attention” for this kind of processing. Continuous partial attention is multitasking where things do not get studied in depth.

Multitasking has been criticized as a hindrance to completing tasks or feeling happiness. Timothy Ferriss argues that one should rarely multitask and should instead devote full attention to completing a very small set of defined goals. Barry Schwartz has noted that, given the media-rich landscape of the internet era, it is tempting to get into a habit of dwelling in a constant sea of information with too many choices, which has been noted to have a negative effect on human happiness 

In my studies, I find that this aspect of happiness is mainly related to the discomfort caused by endlessness. It is the endless amount of information one can find in all the media available today. It is the endlessness of emails coming in every day, the seemingly endless stream of meetings to attend. That does not mean that multitasking cannot lead to happiness. It can if done right. 

When I say right, the assumption is that there is a desire to do more than one thing at a time (or the need) combined with a process that seeks to achieve success and happiness. The way you can do this is by training yourself to recognize which things you can do together. In most cases this works best if one thing or task actually supports the other. A good example would be listening to calming music while having to create a complex document or assemble a product.  

The music is basically occupying the senses, especially the ears. If you work in an environment you feel safe in, you don’t need to pay attention to noises that could forebode danger. If the music is soothing to you, it will put you in a relaxed, comfortable state of mind. In this state, you will probably create a better document or assemble a product faster and with more precision then first doing the work and then listening to the music. The sounds support your actions. 

Another example would be the use of the computer program PowerPoint while giving a speech. Sadly, most people and organizations violate the real purpose of this software. It was supposed to allow users to create and display graphics, pictures, audio, and videos. Today, in most cases, people just use slides to show bullet lists of words, or even a partial list of the exact statements they make during their speech or presentation.  If you really take time to identify supporting pictures, tables, and graphics to go along with your speech, then put the screen of your computer in your view without loosing contact with the audience, you can actually provide a much more powerful speech or presentation by activating all the senses the listener and viewer has. In most cases they will remember the pictures and metaphors, and not the words you spoke. Interestingly enough, they will probably also still know what you wore and how you sounded a couple of years later. 

Multitasking in this way is helpful and not a problem. When you do it by splitting your attention partially into two or more things, you will not only create stress, but your work results will be lacking and you will not be a good role model for those you expect to follow your lead or directives. 

With filing and piling, planning and clustering better understood, time management explained, and today’s excursion into procrastination and multitasking complete, we are ready to explore the Pareto Principle and some myth about systematic attributes and organization. 

Axel Meierhoefer, President AMC LLC

When I began to look into the aspect of systematic nature and being organized as part of my continued learning and research for leadership, management, and performance improvement, I discovered that there is a lot to learn in the pivotal area of organization. This is the second installment in the “Values of organization” series. The first article was titled “Do you file & plan or pile & scramble”. This time we will be looking at another aspect of being organized – time management.

The field of time management had actually taken on a life of its own for some time in the 80’s and 90’s as a way to get more productivity out of a given amount of hours. It is related to being organized and systematic because the methods help systematic individuals to actually create a plan and then follow through on it. Here is what my research into this part of being organized brought to light:

Time management is commonly defined as the management of time in order to make the most out of it. In a 2001 interview, David Allen observed: “You can’t manage time, it just is. So “time management” is a mislabeled problem, which has little chance of being an effective approach. What you really manage is your activity during time, and defining outcomes and physical actions required is the core process required to manage what you do”.

Time management can refer to all of the practices that individuals follow to make better use of their time, but such a definition could range to cover such diverse areas as the selection and use of personal electronic devices, time and motion study, self-awareness, and indeed a great deal of self-help. As narrowly defined, it refers to principles and systems that individuals use to make conscious decisions about the activities that occupy their time.

The label “time management” cannot predate the widespread use of the word “management” in our sense at the beginning of the 20th century. Popular self-help books on the subject were published around the same time (Arnold Bennett and Orison Swett). Concerns about the wise use of time have a longer history, reflected in the large number of proverbs concerning time and its utilization, dating at least to Classical Greece and to the Old Testament and other wisdom literature.For many years management texts did not emphasize the personal productivity of the manager.

Many popular management texts had no explicit material on time management or personal productivity management. When it was covered, the coverage was brief and often linked with stress management, which actually makes sense, as lack of time management, as we understand the term today, can easily lead to stress and anxiety. We have seen indications that a reduced level of systematic scoring in the performance assessment, especially when the score is relatede to the time management issue, is combined with raied levels of anxiety and stress indicators.

Time management strategies are often associated with the recommendation to set goals. These goals are recorded and may be broken down into a project, an action plan, or a simple task list. For individual tasks or for goals, an importance rating may be established, deadlines may be set, and priorities assigned. This process results in a plan with a task list or a schedule or calendar of activities. Authors may recommend a daily, weekly, monthly or other planning periods, usually fixed, but sometimes variable. Tools to support these activities are plentyful and begin with calendaring in Microsoft Outlook, Client Management Systems like ACT, but can go as far as detailed customized versions of special software.

On the business level the most complex solutions have been developed for large scale project management, applying many of the same aspects of goal setitng, task development, and task assignment with priorities and budgets.Different planning periods may be associated with different scope of planning or review. Authors may or may not emphasized reviews of performance against plans. Routine and recurring tasks may or may not be integrated into the time management plan and, if integrated, the integration can be accomplished in various ways. In reality, all these processes should be called time allocation methods, often associated with the goal of productivity improvement and capacity management.

A completely different approach, which argues against prioritizing altogether, was put forward by British author Mark Forster in his book “Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management”. This approach is based on the idea of operating “closed” to-do lists, instead of the traditional “open” to-do list. He argues that the traditional never-ending to-do lists virtually guarantees that some of your work will be left undone. His approach advocates getting all your work done, every day, and if you are unable to achieve it helps you diagnose where you are going wrong and what needs to change.

This revelation goes along with new research about New Years resolutions. They can turn into a pattern of disappointment, especially if ambitious resolutions weren’t achieved over and over again. In the larger business sense, this also relates to the teachings of John Kotter about establishing lasting change in organizations. Only if you follow a plan and all the associated steps,(eight in Kotters system) can you expect to get to a point where the new process will be called the way the organization has always done things – after about 3-5 years. 

People with the clustered approach of thinking have a harder time to apply many of the suggestions in time management. Still, just because things arer not sequential doesn’t mean each of the clusters wouldn’t benefit from prioritizing and time management.  Like with many of these aspects, attributes and revelations, gaining awareness is more than 50% of the solution. Combined with other teachings about the nature of performance, you can vastly improve your achiement of goals, success, and overall happiness. 

Axel Meierhoefer, President AMC LLC