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I Hate Quitters.
“I hate quitters” has rung in my head ever since I was about 10 years old. I was playing in a state tennis tournament, I was in the middle of the 3rd set, it was hot, and I was running out of gas. My opponent kept on pressing and pressing, I bent, and he won the match. He was a ranked player, I was unranked. His fortitude to push ahead, persistence, and preparation for moments like these were why he was ranked.
I remember coming home at the end of that day and telling my father about it, and the brief conversation that followed went something like this:
Dad: “What happened in the match you lost today?”
Pete: “Well, I did a good job, I just didn't quite get to the end.”
Dad: “So you quit.”
Pete: “I didn’t really quit. I just figured I'd done as much as I could do against the guy.”
Dad: “So you quit. And the other guy won.” He paused for effect, “Listen to me: I hate quitters. Never be one.”
My dad didn’t speak to me for a few days after that. It was pretty harsh, but that was the way he was. However, after 50 years, I still remember it like it was yesterday. And, as tough as it was to hear, to this day I'm glad he said it.
I've been in situations in business where things look terrible. You can’t just quit when the circumstances on a job are not working out, you can't just quit when you have had a bad week at home or at the office, and you can't just quit when you have a major setback in your business. You've just got to get down to it and start making lists of the tasks that have to be accomplished, and in what order.
In our business, if you’ve got a job that is not going well, you go to the jobsite and make a list of the things that have to be done the next day. You review that list with your foreman. When you check in at the end of that day, he will have to let you know if those tasks got done and explain why not if that is the case. Have tomorrow's list ready to give to him at this same check-in.
Manager: “Why did you only get 4 out of the 5 tasks accomplished today? Why, what happened? What held you up?”
Foreman: “Well, we ran out of mastic.”
Manager: “It’s a cardinal sin to run out of material. Now that you're close to finishing this job, you should be counting the stuff you will need to finish the job every day, so you don’t run out. I don't want you to have a whole bunch sitting on the job when you finish, but I don't want you to run out before the job is finished and for that lack of material to hold the entire job up. You might not be able to control the weather, but this is an example of a problem that you can solve.”
While I appreciate the tough love from my dad, he left it up to me to figure out what I needed to do to win. Take a breath and use situations like the above example as “teaching moments”—it may take you a little more time to work with your foreman this way, but you will be teaching him valuable professional and life lessons that you will hopefully only have to do once with him. However, after the 3rd time of “teaching” basically the same thing to this foreman, it will likely be time for them to move along to a position better suited to their capabilities.