Mental Meals!™

The Ten Most Feared Words In Business

Posted November 7th, 2008 by Bart Gragg

I Am From Corporate and I Am Here To Help!

Yeah, right. 

Those are the ten most feared words in corporate America.

A piece of advice to the new manager and trouble shooter.

If you ever say “I am from corporate and I am here to help”  watch the reactions of the people you are talking to.  Their facial expressions will range from the benign poker face through the coughing into their hand as they turn away to the expression of dismay and disbelief.

Be different.  Do something different. 

You will get further faster by letting the people you are there to help, help you.  Here’s how I learned to work it in a short story:

Back when I was a consultant in the oilfields of Texas I was assigned to bring a new well online.  In order to do that we had to ’swab it in’.  Swabbing is essentially using a rubber tool lowered on a cable down into the well and then pulling it back out quickly with a load of fluid, oil or water.  This relieved the pressure in the well and hopefully it would begin to flow on it’s own. Kind of like plunging a toilet in reverse with the expectation that the richness comes from black gold instead of…

Anyway, I had never seen this done.  I had heard of it, had it described to me, read the reports on other wells, but never experienced it.  So I drove out to this oilwell in the piney woods of East Texas and there I met a couple of old geezers, Clem and Rufus.  These old codgers were dressed in bib overalls, probably still used their Bowie knives to shave with and diesel fuel for aftershave.  They even thought the full moon had such a huge pull on the ocean 200 miles away that it caused high tide to climb up higher, pressing on the oil 5,000 feet below ground and making it come up faster.  Who am I to argue that one?

I lowered and sat on the tailgate of my truck and waited for them to eyeball me and amble on over.  Clem, or Rufus, or Clem, well, one of them, cut a wedge of Levi Garrett tobacco off the plug, started chewing on it and sipping on his warm Dr. Pepper.  Hey, they taste the same, so what do we care?  At any rate I sat there and eyed them back knowing they were thinking that Reece, my boss, had sent his ‘boy wonder.’

It was quiet in the woods.  I waited a spell, Clem offered me a chew, I accepted, worked it around in my jaw ’til it was comfortable and said “Reece sent me out here to watch you do your job.  He says you two boys is the best they ever was at swabbin’, so if it’s all the same to you I’m gonna set right here and watch you do your magic and listen to you tell me how this whole thing works.” 

Clem spat, took a sip and said “Fair ’nuff.” 

I learned more in six hours watching, listening and asking questions than I would ever learn reading reports and charts. 

Even better, I gained their trust and loyalty for years to come.

Can you say the same for the people you work with?

Bart Gragg

Tags: Bart Gragg, loyalty, trust