Art On The Rhine River

All right, here's a story from 150 years ago. Had a company trip. Company was having a huge success. Explosive growth. Took the top people. Art and Angela Williams took us on a top leaders trip about, I don't know, 50, 60 of us to the Rhine River. So this is about a lesson I learned from Art Williams on the Rhine river trip. You ought to take that trip sometimes. Pretty, pretty cool. Sleep on the boat, eat on the boat, then wake up the next morning and you're in another town. Take pictures of scenery all the way. Pretty good. So I'm sitting around. So here we go. You look for things to do. You got plenty of. Plenty of time to sit and talk. So we're on the boat and you wind up having your coffee, looking at the scenery, and it's a lot of fun and things come up that you hadn't wonder about or whatever. So we're sitting on the back looking at it as this thing kind of goes down the river and pretty cool. So I'm asking Art, and I said, art, you know, I'm looking at here. Here we are in the boat and we got a table, got your chairs. And you know, I'm sitting over here like this. Got your coffee legs, and Art's over here. I don't think Art drinks coffee. So he was having his Coke. We were talking. I said, usually when you talk to artists, if you don't ask questions, folks, you never find anything out. And when you get a chance to talk to people that are smarter than you ask questions. So here I am over here. Even if you get burned, I'm saying, hey, Art, you know, and so you know what's going to happen is when you get through before you answer, well, that's dumb, Larry. He doesn't really say that, but that's how you. That's what you feel like when you're asking a pro. But if you don't ask the questions, you never get the answer. So I was looking at the situation and I said, here we are on the boat and you've got 50 to 60, if I had to guess, it's probably about 50, 60 of the top people. They represent like one of the top thousand of everybody that comes in a big company. A lot going on. But these are the top, top, top people, you know, have big organizations from all over the country. And when you look at them, you got people that you think they're the elite of. The elite. You know, if you got a major company, you had success in business, you think these are the elite. But I'm looking around at these and I know these guys, you know, they're just. We grew up together. And you find one guy, one guy cannot stop whining, you know, no matter what, he's going to find something wrong. Another guy is, he'll spend every dollar you give him. You know, another guy, he can never stay focused. And basically another guy is so full of excuses it's unbelievable. And you go down the list and another guy, you can never, I mean, he's actually, you know, he can never understand a new idea. You give him a new idea, he never gets, you know, he never gets it. And you have to explain over and over. And another guy you talk to, if you try and agree with him, he thinks you're starting an argument. And these are all great guys, great people persons, great high achievers, but they got. You look at him, you say, these are not the great. Other guys are just indecisive. So I'm looking at these people and I'm thinking, if I was going to go out there and win a war and I'm going to do something great, I want to have heroes, I'd want to have mighty men, I'd want to have role models that you could do great things with and not with all these warts, all of these imperfections. And so I said, I'm thinking of this when I'm talking to Hay. Art. So I go over to open my big mouth with Art, but again, that's how you learn. So I said, art, aren't you depressed? Now this is a. Probably not what he was expecting. I said, aren't you depressed? You've got your best and brightest here and it looks like a knucklehead factory. You know, really, if you look at them individually and you're saying, you know, how do we ever accomplish anything great with this group of chuckleheads? That's what you've got to be thinking, Art on this boat. So that was my question. So Art's reply is, no, you're looking at it the wrong way. Now Art had been before he got in business and incredible fact, he was a state champion football coach two or three times coach of the year and things like that. Then he went into business and had incredible success in business. And that's why we're, you know, we were a part of the team and we learned a lot about management, people skills, problem solving, all from Art. And so he was ahead of us in that arena. And so it was interesting to get his take. He said, you're looking at it, Larry. The Wrong way. No surprise there. I looked at, you know, as a person starting out in business, most of the things you think are the right way to do it are going to be wrong. And until you get out there and try it, you're not going to find out. But he said, you're looking at it wrong. You got to look at it a different way. He said, look at it this way. He said, there. You don't look at them as individuals, in individuals. He said, you look at them as a team. What you do is look for what strengths they have. You're not looking at them as complete, perfect in every way. People you're looking at them for, look for their strength. What are they good at? And it's kind of like the movie the Dirty Dozen. Lee Marvin, you go out there and you find the strength. He said, when I look at it, he said, I see I've got one guy. He said, here's what's happening. You're looking at these guys as you see. He said, what I see is, I see a huge circle. You put us all together, we're monstrously powerful. You have a powerful, complete team, all abilities. You have people who can, creative people who can be creative, people who are problem solvers. You have people that can analyze technical things. You have people who can always communicate things, find ways to communicate things to the organization. Even the most difficult decisions, they can communicate. And then you have other people who we will always give you. When you come with a new idea, the reaction of how the customer is going to pick it up, another guy will always have a dead on feel for how your organization is going to respond. And you go, he went all down the checklist. You get this, this, this, this, this, this. It's like a football team. We got a quarterback, we've got wide receivers, we got offense tackles, we got, you know, we got the defensive tackles, we've got the great, you know, all the way down, we've got the everybody on offense. We need all the skill players, solid people in all the other positions. We've got defensive players, we've got great special teams, we got great coaches. And he was clicking down through. We got great sales trainers. And he said, I see this thing is like a vibrant, powerful whole. He said, what you're doing at it, you're looking at the pieces. He said, you're looking at this, this guy over here. You want him to be a circle, but now he's like this and this guy is like that. He said, I'm not looking at, you know, the imperfections. He said, individually, sure, nobody's perfect. You know, we, we're all got, you know, we're just a sack of rocks, basically a sack of skills going to go nowhere individually. But he said, when you could put all these together into a team and find a spot, have a big project, a big company that needs all of these skills and get everybody involved, you can make them into a powerful whole where you multiply the, the benefits and the impact of all these items. Because by being a part of the team, they can specialize, you know, like a surgeon. A surgeon is never going to be good if he has to be the nurse, he has to be the administrator of the hospital to check the people in as they come to the hospital. He has to be the orderly that gets them, you know, washed up and everything and shaved and ready for surgery and wheel them down. You know, surgeon can't do all that. He can only be great reaches greatness if he could focus on what he is great at. But when you put all the, when you have a big opportunity, a big company, you got a place for everyone to focus in and use their strengths. He said, larry, you can do something amazing, something mind blowing and make, give a chance for everybody to be a part of it and have that kind of championship level success they could never do on their own. So this was a great moment for me. I would have never gotten that. That moment only came that one time I asked the question. And folks, I've used that insight ever since in building my team and I just thought you'd want to hear about it too.