Her Catalyst: Part 08 of 25

In Part 08, Sharlene hopes she can be distracted from missing him while she travels half way across the continent to secure the investor funding for their new company. Then she’s on the verge of panic when it’s suggested that she give a presentation about the new company. On the flight there, she had quickly helped with a medical emergency, but she’s unprepared for the consequences afterward.

A peek inside:

“. . . They insisted that everyone they worked with, especially anyone who worked for them was of equal value as a human being and worthy of respect. And that every job was important and every person should be able to take pride in their job whether it was digging ditches, being a janitor, or handling millions of credits. . . . a number of stories of how Dad personally fired a top notch engineer who thought they were too good to empty a trash can. That’s when his Deutsche accent would come out the strongest, ‘Ve don’t need no prima donna, ve a vurking company, not a silly ballet’.”

Sharlene chuckles then says, “I can almost hear him say that.”

“Everyone seemed to assume David and I would take over the company when we were old enough. Almost in response, Dad often made sure we had to do some of the dirtiest jobs, not only to teach us the company from the ground up, but to teach us humility. We also learned that the people we worked with on those dirty jobs were good people, honest, friendly, and hard working. In many cases, they didn’t have worldly success simply because of a lack of educational opportunities or they lived in an economically depressed area where only the most ruthlessly aggressive people succeeded.”

After a brief pause, she asks, “If you had only one piece of advice to pass on to a new company executive, what would it be?”

“Your people are your success. They can do their job without you, but you can’t do your job without them. You need them a lot more than they need you. Dad did his best to teach us that, but what really drove it home was the wreck. . . . Dad was gentle, yet firm with me as he pointed out that without some sort of leadership, things will tend to move towards anarchy. Often corporate executives are only figureheads, but even a figurehead can inspire the people to greater accomplishment, assuming they care about the people and aren’t just self-serving do nothing monarchists. If you support and encourage your people, they can make you successful. If you undermine and degrade your people, they can destroy you.”

“Thanks, Dad. George would mostly agree with you.”

“What part would he disagree with?”

“The last sentence. He once mentioned having a micro-manager for a boss and wondered about the intelligence of their boss who kept them on and the idiot who hired that boss and wondered how high it went.”

Robert nods his head as he says, “Yeah, that can happen, especially if you have committed employees who believe in doing their jobs regardless of how inept or abusive their boss is. And the more layers of management there are between the ivory tower and the worker on the floor, the more likely that can happen.”

“That’s another incentive for me to keep the company small. I’ve also been trying to gently encourage George to poke around in all of the jobs and ask questions. If we do grow, I want it to be clear that he’ll listen to the worker’s concerns and that he has a direct line to the top. In spite of how much he cares about me, he hasn’t been afraid to tell me an idea I had was impractical or could become twisted into something I hadn’t intended.”

“More companies could use that sort of interface. That was part of the idea behind the union movement, to give the workers a voice, but it soon degraded to where the union had its own agenda and the workers were caught in the middle. Instead of one self-serving management entity the workers had to deal with, there were now two, usually with conflicting positions. And when they did agree, it was often to the worker’s disadvantage. . . .”