The Whistle

Listen to this post on Substack.

First week at the Crossett, AR paper mill, 1964. A man named L.V. pulls the new guy aside and points up at a whistle hanging over the floor.

"See that whistle? It's a break whistle. When a sheet breaks off the machine, that whistle blows and we run."

Then he says something else important.

"That came off my daddy's train. The log train that switched logs into this mill back in the early '30s. I want to tell you: when I retire, that's my whistle."

"Yes, sir."

Neither one of them ever mentioned it again.

The new guy was Joe. He's my wife's grandfather. We call him Gan Gan.

Years go by. Joe ends up managing that mill.

Then L.V. retires.

And Joe has the whistle taken down. Cleaned up. Brassed. Mounted on a walnut plaque.

He hands it to L.V. at his retirement.

L.V. cried.

Here's the part that gets me.

L.V. didn't think Joe would remember.

One conversation. One time. No follow-up, no reminder, no ticket in a system, no note in a CRM. Most of us would have lost it by Friday.

Not because we aren't considerate. Because we're busy.

But Gan Gan was busy too. "Some people say 'I work 40 hours a week.' I worked 40 by Wednesday." He averaged 70, running mills that were among the most profitable in the world.

He was busy. He remembered anyway.

Leadership isn't just the thing you say in public at the all-hands, or post for your followers. It's whether the offhand thing somebody told you one time is still sitting in your head twenty years later, and whether you do anything about it.

And I find that hopeful.

Gan Gan pulled this off with a legal pad and a memory. No CRM. No reminder app. Nothing listening in on the call and writing it up for him afterward.

We have all of that.

So we can do this too.

I said I'd write a series on business lessons from my own family. This is the first. Catch the whole series here.

More coming.

Photo is him and my oldest a couple weekends ago.