On July 4th, my Grandad, founder of Wilson Lumber, would have been 111. As I was reflecting on him, I was thinking how good he was at seeing things that were wrong and fixing them. He could fix anything, and at a time when we were a small company with just a few employees, he was exactly what we needed.
In fact, I’d say that one thing a lot of us Wilsons have in common is that we're able to quickly identify things that could be made better. That’s good. The question is this: how to go about fixing it?
For Granddad, if you saw something that could be improved, you fixed it.
Now that we’re a larger company, we must be a little more careful. For example, if I am on the yard and notice a forklift that is not operating, not only do I not know how to fix it, there are other people who are better, faster, and smarter with that kind of thing.
So instead of grabbing a wrench (or whatever you fix a forklift with 😊), my role is to ensure that we have good systems in place to handle things like that.
I’m not saying we’re perfect, just that as a business grows and changes, we have to as well. What about your business?
Are you spending time on things someone else should be doing? Is it at the expense of what you could be doing to make things better?
If there is any way that we can help, let us know.