President's Desk with Joe Harverson

Welcome,

In my first article I spoke about our identity and proposed a shared identity for Alaron. I would like to extend this idea of identity to three other concepts -- vision, mission, and strategy. There are little other tasks so hotly debated in business than how to craft these three concepts so they have an impact on an organization. Most companies have vision and mission statements, but most employees don’t know what they are or don’t use them in their everyday tasks. A good vision and mission statement, like knowing our identity, guides us in making decisions everyday. What is more important is that they guide us in making consistent decisions everyday. A clear strategy helps us make consistent more far reaching decisions such as what markets to enter and what projects to bid. I see the following for our company:

Vision: Alaron conducts its business such that its employees and their families become responsible citizens of the world.

This concept bears some explanation because it is so different. Although Alaron recognizes some responsibility to shareholders of Veolia, our first and foremost responsibility is to our employees. We want Alaron to be a stable business that prospers for many years in the future. That stability is transferred to our employees who now no longer have to worry about their jobs. They can concentrate on improving themselves through education, raising good families, and hopefully enjoying grandchildren. Stability allows our employees to invest in their futures instead holding back for fear of job loss. We reinvest the profits that we make back into our employees through education, skills acquisition, and financial planning. We also set positive examples on how to treat other human beings, regardless of their needs, races, creeds, or national origins with care and respect. We believe that these positive attributes will trickle down to our employees and their families and result in a much better world to live in. We are investing in a superior quality of life with the hope it will be contagious. Our vision is very long term. The vision can guide us in making good consistent decisions. For example, we are not interested in short term opportunities that jeopardize the company and our employees for the sake of a quick profit. We treat each other and the people we meet with care and respect. We care about ourselves and strive to learn and improve.

Mission: Alaron solves problems with professional solutions that we are proud of.

Please notice that our mission directly reflects our identity and it should. If our identity and our mission were skewed we could not be successful. This is where our employees are head and shoulders above the crowd. When we bring in a business consistent with our strategy and vision, our employees set about to solve all the problems in a professional way, that they are proud of.

Strategy: Alaron is a mutual fund of niche nuclear businesses that are characterized by low volume and high margins.

This has been our strategy since 1998, and it has served us well through the years. It allows us to weather storms in the market place. We focus on businesses that provide highly technical and complex services and support them in entering and staying in the nuclear business. We provide the infrastructure, permits, licenses, insurances, and expertise for other companies to succeed and grow in nuclear markets. We maintain a staff of cross trained employees that can freely move from business line to business line. We have Project Managers that can move from a schedule intensive waste transload project to a technology intensive metal recovery operation. We have built our facility and trained our employees consistent with our strategy. When we look at opportunities, we constantly compare them to our strategy and our vision and it helps us make good consistent decisions. This year we will be using that strategy to enter non-nuclear markets.