Over the last few years I have been recalling and documenting
my professional career, including the strife, trouble and opportunities that
presented themselves to me and just how I handled each of these. I will not say
just how many years it has taken me so far as in reality, it has taken much
longer than I ever imagined it would take. All things considered, I have
thoroughly enjoyed this task. It has brought back some great memories as I recalled
the exacts of what actually took place during each of these moments.
Some of the events were not that hard to recall as I had
found opportunities to use the stories over and over all during both my military
and civilian career. These stories were tagged about one third of the
way through my tenure in manufacturing as Moose Stories by a young man who
worked for me in multiple capacities at several different organizations. I had discovered
Warren Sanford as he jumped up and down and hollered at me from behind a
packaging line during my time at Tandy in their Personal Computer Division in
Ft Worth, TX. Warren was just the
guy I needed for a come-in-late and stay-later printer and PC specialist during
a software implementation project converting Tandy from a homegrown system to a
standard MRP system. Warren also
worked for me as my Network Administrator during the time we spent at Sun
Engine, a remanufacturer of automobile engines in Dallas,
TX.
During the twenty-eight years I spent working in numerous
manufacturing assignments, I found even more opportunities to use what I had
learned from the people and situations I had previously been associated with.
Many of the teaching//learning points were associated with my experiences
during my time in the Army. While they were military in nature, the situations
were still all about people. These adventures with people resulted in a
much more basic understanding of those people and their thought processes. As most
of those I was associated with in the manufacturing arena had little if any
military experience they seemed to relate to the characters and the
predicaments in the stories—everybody plays army at some point in their life
and the attraction never goes away.
The people lessons that I took away from these
stories helped in making both me and those around me understand better what we
could do to improve our lot in life. After all, people, their actions and the
results of their actions are the major time consumers that take up the
majority of most manager’s and supervisor’s time— both good and bad people are
the real players in the continuing story of our daily endeavors.
When a particular situation presented itself that I thought
the relating of a previous experience with a core theme aligned with the
current situation might be appropriate I would gather those on my staff and do
just that. I told them a story. Then we discussed the predicament that I had
just related to them and through our discussion I pulled from them the desired outcomes.
They worked out their trouble and routinely were better off as a result. As it
seemed to work each time I tried it, I continued to use this tactic more and
more as time went on.
Usually after working with an organization for some time and
recognizing the need to relate one of these adventures, I might start in and
then be interrupted by one of those that had been there for some time asking:
“Is this gonna be another moose story Howard?”
I should digress a bit here and give the reader some
background.
During the earliest years of my career, I was serving in the
United States Army and stationed at Fort
Richardson (Fort
Rich), just outside of Anchorage,
Alaska. Initially I was assigned to B
Company (Maintenance & Supply) in the 172nd Support Battalion of
the 172nd Infantry Brigade (Separate & Light). In an attempt to
improve operations the platoon I was assigned to was detached from B Co. and
attached to the 54th Transportation Company just three weeks after
my arrival. This action formed a Supply & Transportation unit and provided
my initial stint in a provisional//test unit—this remained a central theme
throughout my entire military career. I started as the Section Leader of an
element in the Supply Platoon. Having the dubious luck to follow two First
Lieutenants who were relieved as platoon leader and petroleum officer—I being
the only Lieutenant remaining who had not yet wandered into tragedy and
trouble, found myself as the Supply Platoon Leader with the additional
responsibility of being designated the Accountable Officer for all
supplies coming into and going out of the Brigade.
The platoon’s mission was to provide supply and service
support in the areas of rations (food), petroleum (POL), ammunition, clothing,
general supplies (tents and the like), construction and barrier material
(building material, concertina wire and other like material), and major item
re-supply (weapons, vehicles, helicopters, etc). The only classes of supply not
provided by my platoon were repair parts and medical items; these came from two
sister units within the Support Battalion. After almost three years of testing
the organization the unit was eventually designated as Delta Company (Supply
and Transportation) and assigned to the Support Battalion. Change didn’t always
come in a timely manner in the Army of the early ‘70s—that far eastern conflict
was taking away a lot of the attention.
Support operations conducted while in Alaska
Oh yes, the Moose connection. During the four years I spent
in Alaska, I experienced more
than several sightings, encounters, confrontations, happenings, run-ins,
arguments, disagreements, quarrels, rows, conflicts, clashes, and skirmishes
with moose—many more with moose than any other animal in Alaska.
An animal that takes up as much room as your run-of-the-mill
Bull Moose and weighs in at as much as twelve to fourteen hundred pounds
demands attention and most of the time, the right-of-way. In the far, far
woods, as my son would come to call the area adjacent to our quarters, I would
frequently find myself during the deepest part of the winter playing tag with a
bull or cow moose in and around Ship Creek which passed just one hundred yards
or so behind the home the US Army was so grateful to allow us to utilize during
our stay.. These encounters would routinely make my wife furious at me—as you
might imagine—but not not the moose. Tapping a moose on the nose and dodging
behind a tree was akin to the same game we would play with a bull or mean
white-eyed momma cow back in Texas
during my teen years.
Moose out our back door
These encounters might also involve a run-in with a moose in
the morning formation just outside the Battalion’s barracks area. Or maybe the
incident might take the moose through the glass doors into the building itself.
Once observing a confrontation between a moose and a VW Bug on the highway into
Anchorage gave me a real healthy
appreciation for these antlered obstructions. We even experienced a hungry bull
that crawled on his knees under our back porch in order to get to the only
grass available that winter—the grass outside the dryer vent coming from the
basement of our quarters was always green.
Well, not everything revolves around a moose experience,
it’s the people who work with and for you that step into, instigate, or cause a
problem that makes up a manager’s day. During the forty years I spent in the
management, supervision and consultation of operations, both in manufacturing
and the military; I continually found myself in the study of these people who
caused the situations to happen to and around me. While a good deal of the
stories are somewhat military in nature, largely due to the fact that I
spent time at more than sixty posts, camps and stations; they are primarily
just stories of people, the situations they find themselves in, what got them
there and how we//they sometimes resolved the dilemma(s) that we found
ourselves in.
Ft Greely Alaska, Feb 1974 -98°F
Ft Greely Buffalo herd in area later the same day Feb 1974
Eventually I realized that often I really had to watch out
for that guy, Warren, knowing that I enjoyed telling the stories maybe even
more than they enjoyed listening and learning from them. During routine
meetings he might say something like: “Tell us another moose story
Howard.” This was sure to lengthen the meeting’s duration and kept managers and
supervisors away from their intended responsibilities.
2LT Brown & Sgt Garcia standing on top of 10,000 of Jet Fuel
The adventures I have documented are all true. I know that
for a fact. I was there when they took place and often was the one that they took
place to. Usually they all had reasonable endings—some more reasonable than
others. The situations I intend to relate in my book (should it ever become
such) taught me more than I could have ever learned in a management or
supervision class tucked away somewhere on a college campus or a
one-two-or-three day seminar taught by the very successful presenters of that
type material. Just like many of you out there; the lessons of life are much
more real than the case studies that professors will ever cause you to
study. Most likely you have been involved in just as many situations as I have
and through this volume of work I will endeavor to spur just the slightest
amount of memory and realization that you may know more about what leadership,
management and supervision is all about than you previously thought you did.
I had this same jeep the entire 4 years in the command
I hope you find the stories and information to be
enlightening, helpful, sometime even humorous, and at least interesting—the
original cast and their actions were just that. Some of the names will have to
be changed, but please remain assured that the stories are true and the dubious
names may be factious only to save embarrassment; a point readers will
subsequently understand. This understanding of people and their reasoning is
what I took away from some very interesting, sometimes stressful or physical
demanding but always memorable people experiences.
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