There’s a Muddy Stream Running Through The Yard

Oh great. A recap show.

You know the feeling. You turn on the TV expecting the next episode and instead they’re showing you a bunch of stuff you’ve already seen.

C’mon. I saw this one.

But then something happens. You remember something you’d forgotten about. You laugh again at something that made you laugh the first time. Maybe you notice something you missed. And before long, you’re kind of enjoying reliving the whole thing.

So that’s what we’re doing this week in The Yard.

No new lesson. No new customer story. We’re just going to walk back through the gate and look around for a while.

If you’ve been here from the beginning, you’ll recognize some things. If you came in somewhere along the way, you might look at a couple of them and wonder, What in the world was he talking about?

That’s okay.

Let’s walk.

It seems appropriate that we start with some mud.

We’ve talked about understanding how the mud gets on the tires. Not from a conference room. Not from a spreadsheet. And not from somebody telling you what they think is happening.

Stand in the mud and find out.

We learned that you can’t learn to drive sitting in a parked car.

There was a boss who showed up in his Ram pickup and other days in his Porsche. Same guy. Same company. But depending on what he drove that day, you might have thought two completely different people had just pulled into the parking lot.

We’ve looked for the truth in shops, sitting at coffee counters and standing in rock quarries. Places where nobody bothered to put a gatekeeper at the door.

Somewhere along the way we met a few Books of Knowledge. People who have forgotten more about their jobs than most of us will ever know. People carrying 20, 30 or 40 years of experience around in their heads while everybody else is busy looking for the answer on a laptop.

We’ve had eagles and turkeys. One of the eagles even ended up wearing sunglasses.

That still makes me laugh.

We talked about who makes us better, who we’re making better and why you probably shouldn’t expect to soar with the eagles in the morning if you’ve been running with the turkeys all night.

And of course, we wandered into sales.

That’s where 1-800-QUICKQUOTE showed up, along with an old saying of mine:

“Once you give someone a price, you have nothing left to sell.”

Because relationships matter. Credibility matters. Knowing the customer matters. Understanding why they’re buying matters.

And sometimes the brother-in-law matters too.

Where is that guy anyway?

We talked about winning orders and then reminded ourselves that when the purchase order finally shows up, the celebration doesn’t last very long.

Practice is over. The game has begun.

Everybody gets a little dirt on them after that. Sales. Engineering. Purchasing. Operations. Quality. Parts. Service. Accounting.

Nobody gets to stand on the sidelines and stay clean.

We even hung a quality certificate on the wall. That went pretty well.

Until somebody found the infamous step drill.

Turns out there can be a pretty big difference between what the process says is happening and what’s actually happening when nobody thinks the auditor is looking.

Pink ponies. Giant rainbows.

And everybody still knew where the step drill was buried.

Most recently, we went all the way back to 1990 and watched a 60-second United Airlines commercial.

An old customer fired them because he didn’t know them anymore.

Thirty-six years later, that is still one of my all-time favorite speeches.

Get up out of your chair. Get out of your office. Close down your laptop.

And go see them!

So there you have it. The Yard recap show.

No golden buzzer. No judges. Nobody getting voted off.

Just some mud, trucks, strong coffee, a parked car, a Ram and a Porsche, a few eagles and turkeys, a Book of Knowledge or two, a brother-in-law nobody can find, the infamous step drill, a purchase order and an old customer we probably should have gone to see sooner.

Not a bad walk.

But something happened while I was walking back through all of it.

I noticed a muddy stream running through The Yard.

I don’t think I intentionally put it there. It was just there.

It ran past the mud on the tires and the parked car. Past the Books of Knowledge. Past the Ram and the Porsche. Past the eagles and turkeys, the gatekeeper and 1-800-QUICKQUOTE. It ran underneath the quality certificate, right past that infamous step drill and through the purchase order.

And it kept going all the way out to that customer we hadn’t gone to see in too long.

Different stories. Different people. Different experiences.

Same muddy stream.

And once I noticed it, I couldn’t stop seeing it.

How we show up is what matters most.

Sometimes showing up means actually being there. Sometimes it means listening instead of talking. Sometimes it means getting out in the shop and understanding how the mud really gets on the tires.

It can mean asking somebody who’s been doing the job for 30 years what they think before you tell them how you’re going to fix it. Keeping the promise after the purchase order arrives. Admitting that the process on the wall isn’t the process happening on the floor.

Or simply getting in the truck and going to see somebody.

Different situations.

Same muddy stream.

Funny. I didn’t see it when I started writing The Yard.

I see it now.

And maybe that helps explain why I keep writing it.

This has never been “Hey, look at me.”

It’s more like, “Hey, this happened to me. Maybe there’s something in it you can use.”

I’ve spent 40 years smelling diesel fumes. I’ve ruined my share of nice clothes getting grease on them in my quest to understand what’s really going on. Along the way, I’ve accumulated a pretty good-sized Book of Knowledge.

Some pages came from getting things right. Plenty came from getting things wrong. And a whole bunch came from customers, bosses, mechanics, salespeople, engineers and all kinds of people I’ve worked with along the way.

Somebody shared part of their Book of Knowledge with me.

I figure the least I can do is pass some of it along.

Maybe one of these stories makes somebody laugh. Maybe it makes somebody think. Maybe it reminds them of something they already knew but hadn’t thought about in a while.

“Yeah. I knew that. Thanks for reminding me.”

That works for me.

Common sense doesn’t go out of style.

And if sharing a little of my Book of Knowledge helps somebody add a page to theirs, we’ve all won.

Maybe The Yard doesn’t need some big explanation about where it goes from here.

Maybe the fence just gets a little wider.

Because that muddy stream doesn’t stop when the workday ends. Showing up, listening, learning, building relationships and keeping your word matter wherever the stream takes us.

Nothing heavy. No life-coach nonsense.

Just real experiences, a little common sense and maybe an occasional reminder of something we already knew.

So whether you’ve been walking through The Yard from the beginning or wandered in somewhere along the way, keep walking.

Look for the muddy stream.

It’s been there all along.

And apparently, so has the lesson.

How we show up is what matters most.

See you next week…

The journey continues.

— HAMP