Navajo Inc.

flow of people, ideas, applications, saleability, and reinvestment aligns into a sustainable, profitable cycle, irrespective of the pushback. “That speaks to part of what makes our company attractive as an employer,” says Deuschle. “Being privately-held and privately-financed, we have the freedom to invest a little bit differently than if we were private-equity backed or public. We’ve been able to make our own way. When someone tells us ‘no,’ we listen—I think we’re great listeners—but we’re also confident about what we think is going to work. It hasn’t all been successes, but we’re very agile. We’re able to move quickly; make a new decision and admit we made a mistake. Fail fast, and then execute against that. That’s what makes an environment that attracts and retains good talent.” “As part of our mission to simplify everything that we can, we knew we needed to rethink our flow racking system,” offers Antonio Soto, Vice President of Operations. “But when we talked to the engineers and vendors, they insisted our concept wouldn’t work. ‘No one does this,’ they said. Well, we knew that that wouldn’t work for us, so we still went through with it. We invested the money, and it ended up working perfectly.” Technology has been a big driver of the changes that have propelled Navajo forward. “We like to apply as much technology as we can,” Soto admits. “For example, we have learning pods in front of every machine. That comes from learning how our workers behave. We develop our own how-to videos on how to run and troubleshoot the equipment. Anyone can watch the video and, in under two minutes, become an expert on how to run the machine. Our old system had a learning curve of two days. With the new system we’ve just implemented, we’ve shrunk that down to 10 minutes. That gives us a very competitive advantage.” Many of Navajo’s warehouse workers are outfitted with Google Glass, an optical head- mounted display shaped like a pair of eyeglasses. “Smart glasses are incredibly useful when you