I have talked about shortcuts before and just how inefficient they are. Once again I will relay a story from an old now deceased friend of mine, Bud Hackney, logger. Bud had his own logging company that was family run then on it's third generation. So knowing how to log large tracts of property were no unknown to Bud. He was working up on a mountain with another outfit called Weyerhauser, who not only owned the mountain's logs but had their own crews logging them as well. So one day the Weyerhauser logging outfit challenged Bud to a race to see who could log their side of the mountain faster.
The catch was though that Weyerhauser had 5 times the crew that Bud had and in a perfect world should have had no problem beating Bud's two crews down the mountain. Bud accepted because he was wily for one thing and for another he had watched the Weyerhauser crews log for several weeks and figured he had an edge they wouldn't easily recognize. So off they went and Bud's two crews beat the ten crews to the finish. The Weyerhauser guys couldn't figure out how Bud had done it even though they watched Bud do his logging. First off Bud was razor sharp in his process and for another after some prying by the Weyerhauser foreman, Bud told him how he did it. Simply he said, I didn't take any shortcuts.
Bud told the Weyerhauser foreman that he watched their crews violate proper procedures and then have to go back to correct them in their haste to win the race. Bud didn't take shortcuts but he expected his crews to work their butts off whenever daylight shone. The moral of the story here is that even though shortcuts may make one think they are ahead, there is usually some unresolved issue that needs going back on to correct thus losing any advantage gained and often putting one behind. The honor of work is in itself sufficient to make one do the work correctly so that a feeling of pride and job well done is recognizable even if it is only acknowledged by the worker them self. Any job worth doing is worth doing right, a motto I live by no matter the job.
The catch was though that Weyerhauser had 5 times the crew that Bud had and in a perfect world should have had no problem beating Bud's two crews down the mountain. Bud accepted because he was wily for one thing and for another he had watched the Weyerhauser crews log for several weeks and figured he had an edge they wouldn't easily recognize. So off they went and Bud's two crews beat the ten crews to the finish. The Weyerhauser guys couldn't figure out how Bud had done it even though they watched Bud do his logging. First off Bud was razor sharp in his process and for another after some prying by the Weyerhauser foreman, Bud told him how he did it. Simply he said, I didn't take any shortcuts.
Bud told the Weyerhauser foreman that he watched their crews violate proper procedures and then have to go back to correct them in their haste to win the race. Bud didn't take shortcuts but he expected his crews to work their butts off whenever daylight shone. The moral of the story here is that even though shortcuts may make one think they are ahead, there is usually some unresolved issue that needs going back on to correct thus losing any advantage gained and often putting one behind. The honor of work is in itself sufficient to make one do the work correctly so that a feeling of pride and job well done is recognizable even if it is only acknowledged by the worker them self. Any job worth doing is worth doing right, a motto I live by no matter the job.
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