A week or so ago, Marshall, Terry, Rhett, Conner Lake and I had the privilege of attending the Oregon Governors Tourism Conference in Bend. We have been trying to get in with this group for some time, and we finally got the chance. During the conference, we attended a panel discussion put on by Travel Oregon. There were two panelists, a man from the Oregon Department of Transportation and a woman from the City of Madras and they both were intimately involved in their respective employer’s preparations for last summer’s total eclipse. Both were very engaging speakers and offered interesting anecdotes of the experience, but the woman from Madras was particularly compelling. She showed us a slide listing all the departments and individuals in those departments that she had to coordinate with on a regular basis to prepare for the 100,000 people who stayed in or near Madras for those days. As she was describing how she dealt with all these people, and there were at least 100, she said her biggest challenge was to make sure that each department and their staff ”stayed in their lanes.” In other words, do the jobs they were there to do, and not to get involved in some other department’s job.
It stuck with Terry and me and it echoes what I have talked about in other blogs to you all, the importance of everyone here doing their job, their entire job, not someone else’s. Every job we have here at Guaranty is important and necessary and that is why we have all of you here, to do one of those jobs. If we all do that, we function like a fine watch and our customers can make that seamless journey through our dealership that we talk about. If we don’t do our jobs and get involved in someone else’s, we do two things, first we don’t do the thing we are here to do, so someone else has to, ’cause they all have to get done, second, when you involve yourself in someone else’s job, they don’t get theirs done either.
So, do your job, and do it to the best of your ability and allow your other team mates to do theirs.
Have a great weekend everyone.
Ed
