Wisdom of The Bosses

I have been blessed. Changing jobs always seems to improve my situation. It has become a thing not to be feared. But just be curious, and maybe mildly excited about what the future has planned for me. 

I have worked for The Ingham County News, The State Journal, The US Forest Service, ShopRite, Goff the food store, The US Navy, Pacifica, Ringuard, Detroit Testing Lab, Kelsey-Hayes, Entela, The US Navy Reserve, TRW, I.E.E., ElectroRent, Cummins, Carlisle, and Parker Hannifin. Navy commands were Glakes, NCS Stockton, USS Dixon, NAS Sigonella, Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Pugent Sound Naval Shipyard. And each place taught me something. Some things are such a part of me that I don’t think about them anymore, but I use those lessons subconsciously. Of course, they all taught me many things, but some of the highlights are memorable. Here are some of the lessons I remember in random order.

USS Dixon: I remember Master Chief Bedle from the Dixon. He would come by the bench while I was working on fixing some impossible to fix thing and always give me good suggestions. One thing he taught me is “you have to use some shoe leather”. It is important to walk around and see what your people are doing. It is not sufficient to ask them at meetings. Go and see for yourself. They might be stuck. They might need your help.

Kelsey Hayes: K-H was probably my least favorite job of all time.  The boss at Kelsey-Hayes was unremarkable, except to say he was not a good boss. Frank Hlavity I think was his name.  Bach wrote “a problem always comes with a gift in its hands”.  The company, had a culture such that I did learn some useful things.  They had a book that everyone had to study called “The Goal”, by Eli Goldratt. And there are numerous valuable lessons in that book. And, they required me to use a Franklin Planner. They kept it when I left, but I was so impressed by the value of the thing that all these years after, I buy my own where ever I am. And I do my planning every day. I also started reading Covey and leaning the seven habits when I was at K-H.

ElectroRent: My boss there was Alan Rode. He is a wise boss. One of the gems I learned from him is that Saturday is your backup capacity. If you work every Saturday to get routine work done, you have no reserve capacity. Best practice is to only work Saturdays when needed. He also taught me to be less emotional at work. It doesn’t help. Just gets in the way. Best to keep cool at all times. And it takes some practice, but it’s worth doing. His boss, Rom Deming is also wise and taught me things about the business. Really, the difference between a good deal and a bad deal. And to focus on the goal of the business is to make a profit. Technical guys with their head under the hood can easily lose sight of that.

Detroit Testing Lab: DTL was my first job out of the Navy. Boss there was Lynne Neumann. She was my favorite boss. One thing she taught me was how to have a conversation with customer. You don’t start out with business, because they are not listening at first. You start out with non-work related topics and after you establish the communication channel, then you talk business. She also taught me not to take myself too seriously. She used to wear a foam lobster hat when she was in a bad mood to warn people to stay away. Sometimes when I had a problem I would sit in her office and explain it, and the answer would become clear to me. And I would thank her. And she would say “I didn’t do anything but you are welcome”. When I was there I had this offer from another place, and it was a car payment raise. I didn’t want to tell her I was leaving. But later I found out, she also had plans to leave. A little over a year later, she called me from her new place and I went to work for her again at Entela.

ShopRite: One of the bosses at ShopRite was Warren Kimble. Really, the thing I leaned there was customer service. How to speak to a customer. How to listen to a customer. How to treat a customer. And I think of my internal customers the same way as any other customer. It has been something I have used in every job since.

TRW: Boss was John Carey. When I first started there, he had me create a system of test request numbers. I was so young I did not know to do that, but it was critical to success there. He also used to say “better to ask for forgiveness than permission”. In that environment, that is absolutely true. Many times if you ask about something you know needs to be done, people will throw up barriers without really meaning to. If it needs to be done, just do it.

Carlisle: Boss at Carlisle was Alan Backstrom. Very technically savvy guy. His hobby is to look up root causes of big recalls that happen and keep track of that. Usually it is a software issue he told me. I think the most important thing he taught me is the importance of testing a proper number of samples. He said that if you are only going to test one sample, it’s better not to test at all. If you do the test, you might believe you know something about the part. Its bad, or its good, but you really don’t know anything. If you make a decision without doing any testing you will be more careful, because you are aware you don’t know anything. If you make a decision after one test, you have false confidence. You may make a terrible mistake.

Cummins: At Cummins I worked with a bunch of grouchy union guys. And the rule I developed is “always assume people have good intentions, no matter how abrasive they seem”. If they are telling you it can’t be done, or it should not be done that way, there is a reason. Everyone wants to do a good job. Everyone wants to do the proper thing. Sometimes perfection gets in the way. Take the time to slow down and understand what the problem is. The worst thing you can do is go full boss and tell to shut-up and do it.