Every year the CEI senior leadership team gathers together to discuss our annual kick-off meeting and the yearly theme. The theme is generally a phrase, word or mantra for our employees for the year. It serves as a reminder of the goals that we set for our company every year. With goals being set in 2019, the main theme that came across for our partners and management team members was to simply “keep going.” CEI is on an amazing growth track and with the economy, in line, we are moving toward being even better. As a company we don’t want to deviate from what we are doing, we want to continue on the path toward greater excellence. With that goal in mind, we decided on the “Keep Swinging for the Fences” theme.

For most baseball fans this phrase is easy to understand. But for the non-fanatics, this could be a confusing phrase that seemingly has nothing to do with CEI, its mission, its customer base, or roofing and sheet metal work. The phrase “Swing for the Fences” is a baseball term that has its origin beginning in the 20th century with early baseball reporting. Since then it is grown in popularity to have meaning not related to baseball.

In baseball terms, it means to hit the ball as hard as possible with hopes of hitting a home run. The figurative meaning is to “go all out” or give maximum effort into what you are doing. The task at hand is like stepping up to the plate and you always want to step up with your best self. Then when you go to swing the bat, it is like doing the task. When you attempt to do the task you want to bring the maximum effort.

For CEI, “Keep Swinging for the Fences” means a couple of things…

First, it recognizes the effort that is already been put in. “Keep” is an important word because there is not a time where we weren’t trying our best. It’s just important to bring that motivation and hard work into every day. Just because you continue to hit home runs does not mean that you should take a step back and not bring the max effort into swinging. When it comes to being the best, you have to be the best in the little details. Bring the max effort into every day will show when you are trying to hit it out of the park in that job, project, month, year or with that customer.