2019 RETA Breeze Sept-Oct

Education is a measure of someone’s ability to learn and adapt. Education also ties in very closely with ambition. Ambition in this instance is the desire to become better tomorrow than you are today. It is very hard to acquire an education without ambition. Many have, but those who have, may have peaked. Ambition is normally what drives us to complete a degree, or apprentice, or trade program. Ambition provides the desire to improve one’s lot in life. A desire to earn more money, or a desire to acquire more skills or a bigger house. All good things when combined with honesty and education. An ambitious employee without honesty may lead to problems. An ambitious employee without education / knowledge, may be motived to do things beyond his training, creating more problems. As Mr. Day outlines honesty, ambition, and education (knowledge) are the three legs of the stool of success. Hiring the “Ideal Operating Engineer” will help you on your road to success. The original insert author, C. I. Day, served on the Executive board of the Southern Ice Exchange. The revision author, VernM. Sanderson, is the Safety Services Group Leader at Wagner-Meinert LLC, as well as a part time instructor at the Tex Hildebrand Center, and author. Your feedback is certainly welcome. Vern can be contacted by emailing the Breeze Editor.

of everything with which they come in contact. They should keep a memorandum book (Master Maintenance Log), keeping the various costs of jobs therein. The knowledge of cost of output should be familiar to them, also the knowledge of rate of depreciation of the various parts of his plant. Or in other words, their education should not only cover the ability to operate continuously, a thorough knowledge of the technique of their subject. These should only be training towards the end that, in the maintenance and operation of their property, they should be able to get a maximum return on the expenditure of every dollar. Perhaps my characterization so far has been too idealistic, but our subject is that of ideals and we expect our operating engineer to have an ideal, and that ideal should be no other person than the manager himself. In fact, we question whether it would be logical for the manager to establish an ideal operating engineer. They could not treat the subject of an ideal without their being within an ideal organization, and such an organization should furnish opportunities for their advancement and their success. While it is true that there are operating engineers whose ambition may be strictly on the lines of wishing to be authority or consulting operating engineer, at the same time, I believe

that insofar as we are treating of an ideal operating engineer from a manager’s standpoint, our ideal should hold their manager as the Operating Engineers ideal and that his ambition should be to acquire the management of the property. All of their character, education and ambition combined should be such as to enable them to progress along from the position of operating engineer to manager, and even then their ambition should dictate another ideal.

”

Many years ago, as a young manager, I had the opportunity to ask

George Briley, Ron Cole, Larry Kelly, and Leroy Moseby, how they would layout a young engineer’s career path to assure they reach their fullest

potential. While interviewed separately, they all gave similar

responses. Those being; hire smart, hire character, hire a go-getter, and then expose them to as much of the industry as possible. Let them make little mistakes they can learn from and build their confidence. At the time I marveled at their wisdom, never imagining that the same philosophy had made print 75 years previous. Honesty is one gauge of an employee’s value. True honesty is when you’re honest while knowing no one would be able to catch the lie. Honesty is an internal value. Honesty to ones self, in most cases assures honesty to others.

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