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We all know that it can be a hard thing to find just the right classic muscle car for restoration. Obviously you need to be very picky if your going to get just the right car to start with. It’s just not an easy process to locate a good car for a restoration project.

In this article I will try to demystify the process of locating just the right car for you. If you have done one of these projects in the past, you can obviously handle a little tougher of a project car. But for this article like most of my other articles I will stick to the beginner theme.

A restoration project is supposed to be a fun thing. You should not get a complete junker to start with, the idea is to find a car that you can complete the restoration on. A car that won’t be pushed to the back yard to rot in the elements.

With that in mind let’s talk about the price you should plan to spend on a good car for restoration. There is no such a thing as a $2,500 dollar classic car that is anything more then junk. Remember what I said at the first. Unless you have already done a restoration you should stay away from junk to start with.

You should put aside about $10,000 for a good starter restoration project car. In my eyes a good starter car is one that has very little to no rust in the body and no burned electrical wiring. Get a sound car mechanically, you can find this for about $10,000.

You should evaluate your skills to restore the car, and get a car that fits in to your skill set. If you’re a good mechanic you should look toward a car that may need more mechanical work then body repair, or electrical work. Keep in mind that you will enjoy the project a lot more if the car leans more toward your skill set.

I’m by no means saying that you can’t learn all of the processes that you need to know to perform a car restoration. What I am saying is this, if you are able to get a lot of the work done by yourself it will build your confidence and you will have more fun.

When looking for cars for restoration, you should consider how hard the parts my be to find. If the parts are readily available for the car that you choose to restore the project will flow a lot smoother. If you think of all of the things that may slow you down during the project, and look for the ways around those problems you should be all good with the work.

It’s a good day when you realize that you have found the perfect car for restoration, and you know that you can afford to buy that car and start the project. You buy the car and load it on the trailer, or if your the lucky type of person you drive it home.

Many Industry professionals, when asked this question, would assume the co-packer only gets involved at the end of a projects life cycle and although that can be true for some jobs its becoming more important for companies to approach the co-packer at a much earlier stage, and sometimes even before they’ve begun the manufacturing process.

Contract packers have always been an integral part of the supply chain, ensuring products make their way to the shelf in both the timescale required, within budget and in the condition retailers expect, but what if you get to the point where you’ve manufactured a product, have retailers lined up and then can’t find a suitable co-packer to oversee the final stages of your project.

It sounds impossible to think that you’d get to this stage and not be able to find a suitable supplier, but many things can influence the end of the supply chain. One thing nearly all co-packers have in common is the increase in demand for their services during the lead up to the holiday periods such as Christmas and Easter. Brand owners and project managers are generally aware of this trend and can use their knowledge and skills to ensure their supplier has the capacity to handle their project but placing additional work load on an already stretched work force can sometimes cause issues that can normally be avoided. Obviously it’s not always possible to plan so far in advance that everything runs like clockwork such as when demand for a product outweighs manufacture and this is where having a partnership with your supplier really comes into its own. By working in partnership with suppliers and not simply seeing them as a means to an end, you encourage more trust in the relationship and this often results in a sustainable partnership that can react to market conditions much more flexibly and result in significant achievements for all concerned.

Another problem than can arise as a result of last minute planning is the difficulty in actually finding a supplier who is set up to handle the job with the necessary equipment, systems and work force in place. Most co-packers will specialise in certain sectors whether it be pharmaceuticals, toiletries, confectionery etc, and will have the appropriate equipment and certifications in order to work those sectors, so doing your homework prior to approaching these suppliers can be time saving and result in a smooth running project. Generally if you have a partnership with an existing supplier they would be open to discussing procurement options for equipment to tender for most contracts but this again is something which takes time and should be considered in great detail and from the outset.

The diverse nature of the packaging industry as a whole tends to mean that most projects have a bespoke time frame and keeping within those constraints is specific to that individual job. Working with co-packers from the early concept stage can ensure that all parties are aware of their responsibilities and the time frame their expected to work towards giving everyone the chance to plan ahead and ensure your project gets completed in the most efficient and manageable way.

Complexity, rapid change, information overload, meaningful work and endeavors, enormously difficult decisions and a global economic malaise are but a few of the daunting challenges that face people in organizations today. Perhaps no time in history has the need for bold and effective leadership been more needed, demanded or required. Yet it seems the ability to respond to this call for leadership is inadequate because by some expert accounts leadership development is going nowhere fast. These are the findings of the last two biennial global leadership forecasts conducted by Development Dimensions International where on average more than 14,000 executives and HR managers from over 70 countries were surveyed.

Just think of it, after spending billions of dollars on talent management initiatives, on behavioral screening, on performance measurement equations and metrics, leadership development is going nowhere fast? How can this be? Where are the leaders, where is the leadership? Perhaps the answer lays in a lesson from the movie Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Arc. As Indy and Sallah learned when they searched for the Well of the Souls in hopes of finding the Arc of the Covenant, make sure your digging in the right place!

Say the word leadership and it means different things to different people even though many are drawn to the notion of a positional or heroic leader. In 1978 James MacGregor Burns, the patriarch of leadership thought in America, wrote that the predominant leadership approach tends often unconsciously to be elitist; it projects heroic figures against the shadowy background of drab powerless, masses. In the idea economy, where Peter Drucker has pronounced the knowledge worker as the leading class, this notion of leadership is an aberration completely out of touch with the reality of today’s world. Have you been on the Internet lately– not a really drab and powerless place?

Yet it seems we continue to dig in the same place although at a frenzied pace. That place is marked by a factory mindset–an industrial perspective portrayed as an indescribable set of traits fully owned by the leader who sits at the top of the organization. In the factory mindset, whatever the leader does is leadership. All we have to do is make better leaders follow their orders and we will be saved!

The fact is that the ideas and principles of the leadership models built for industrial times are grossly limited and incongruent for an interconnected, extremely aware, technology and information enraptured society. A society that is surrounded by rapid complex change and charged with making infinitely difficult decisions and who, at the core of its being, seeks purpose and meaning from the work it does.

In this environment, the job of leaders is changing dramatically as innovation, leadership and learning at all levels of an organization have become the lynchpins of creative success. 21st century leadership must focus on melding a multitude of diverse talent and individual ability into collaborative, interdependent, and unified action capable of addressing the most complex and intractable issues and challenges.

The challenge for all 21st century leaders is to create environments built on mutual trust and continuous learning where participants in these leadership-dynamics are fully engaged, derive meaning, take ownership and responsibility for the results, and come to do their best work each and everyday. In the 21st Century, organizations must expand their thinking and act outside of the box with a notion of leadership that views participants as fully involved partners that bring talent, energy, creativity and combined action to bear on the issues at hand. In the 21st Century leadership is no longer a noun, but a verb where the actions of a committed group of people teach us that leadership is what people do together. Perhaps, it has always been so. Now, start digging!