Abe Lincoln said, "Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax." Mr. Lincoln knew the value of a sharp blade; without such knowledge, his family may not have had a log cabin. Without sharp tools, the job takes longer. We've all seen projects completed without sharp tools in the job box.
Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, said you could remove 10 percent of the people from a company and not miss them. He elaborated by saying two out of every 16 employees are turkeys. But I'm not so sure that's a fact, Jack. In small companies, employees may wear several hats. You often see multiskilled workers with a bigger work load than those in larger companies. It's not uncommon to see a human resources person doubling as the safety, security or environmental person. A quality control individual may also be the shop manager. Cutting the shop manager position would mean there would be no quality control person.
Rely on the pros
It makes sense not all hires are top professionals. Even in the highest levels of government and corporations, there are people who could be replaced with someone smarter or with better skills. When I managed safety departments, I hired the brightest and most skilled professionals available. Why? Because they had to fill the void I presented. It was my responsibility to lead them even though I may not have always been able to perform their skills with precision.
Young and dumb
I opened my first business in the 1960s and, as a part-time business owner, I hired part-time workers for my civil jobs such as concrete paving. All my workers were high school students. They fit the mold of the "Y and D" group. I called them "young and dumb" but soon realized I had mischaracterized them. They should have been called " kids with limited experience."
During a paving job, I showed one of my kids how to trowel the concrete with a feather edge. His first few passes looked horrible, but before the day was done he could feather like a highly paid finisher. All it took was basic knowledge, a little bit of time and some patience on my part. By the next concrete job, I knew who to put in charge of finishing. I often received many compliments on his work. As it turned out, he may have been the best 10th-grader concrete finisher in the country!
The same was true for a kid I put in charge of surveying. My "Y and D" team soon became young professionals. My surveyor quickly learned how to lay out a slab-square and level it. This kid was better than me (although I did not tell him so). He was dependable and worked so well with others I made him a foreman and also gave him one of my pickup trucks with take-home driving privileges. He drove the best and kept his the cleanest of my three-truck fleet. I did myself a favor by giving him responsibility and accountability. He was responsible for picking up the crew and having the tools ready for the day's job. He had them at the jobsite on time and ready for work. Who would have guessed that a junior in high school would turn out to be such a good manager of his high school peers? As a matter of fact, he was in the high school architecture class I taught. He ultimately completed college and became an architect. He had the innate skills within himself; all I did was give him a chance to show it.
Destroy metal
I remember well having to buy many tape measures for my work crews. It seemed someone was always chopping up the metal tapes with a hatchet (a tool used to sharpen and drive stakes into the ground for our concrete forms). Those same crews broke many shovel handles until they learned to utilize the sharpness of the shovel and not use the handle as a lever. My kid foremen often made the guys work with short-handled shovels until they learned the proper technique.
As a company owner, I learned to work with the "turkeys" rather than trim them from the workforce. So, like Abe, I was always sharpening the ax carefully. I knew in doing so, you have to destroy metal, and to me, the metal was precious.
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