Effort is important, but knowing where to make an effort makes all the difference...

"Give me the best person to do the job, the second best is too expensive." - Senior Rockefeller.

Storyline:

Ever heard the story of the giant ship engine that failed? The ship's owners tried one expert after another, but none of them could figure but how to fix the engine. Then they brought in an old man who had been fixing ships since he was a youngster. He carried a large bag of tools with him,  and when he arrived, he immediately went to work.

He inspected the engine very carefully, top to bottom. Two of the ship's owners were there, watching this man, hoping he would know what to do. After looking things over, the old man reached into his bag and pulled out a small hammer. He gently tapped something. Instantly, the engine lurched into life. He carefully put his hammer away. The engine was fixed!

A week later, the owners received a bill from the old man for ten thousand dollars.

"What?!" the owners exclaimed. "He hardly did anything!"

So they wrote the old man a note saying, "Please send us an itemized bill."

The man sent a bill that read:

Tapping with a hammer ......................... $          2.00
Knowing where to tap  ......................... $       9998.00

Reflection:

"Experience is not what happens to a person; it is what a person does with what has happened to him/her."

Comments

[Bhasker Patel]

How true it is

[Bhasker Patel]

How true it is

[Brian]

Knowing where to tap... is certainly something to aspire toward. Until I am good enough to be the best at what I do, I am not worth much to too many customers.

It takes courage, persistence, discipline to get there. Maybe courage to believe in one's own potential and abilities is the most important of these.

[Ron]

Sadly, this is a made up story based on an actual incident that occurred to Charles Steinmetz. You can do fact checking yourself, of course, but in the actual incident, he was called in to fix a large electronic generator on dry land, and after a long careful analysis, placed a chalk mark on the generator and explained to the staff very carefully what to do within the generator just after the chalk mark. When asked for an itemized receipt for the large bill General Electric (his employer) sent them, he itemized it as 'drawing chalk mark, $1.00, knowing where to put the chalk mark, $(the rest of the money).

[Jason B]

I'm retired now but I appreciated this story. In my industry, youth is king - people joke that if you're over 30, and you're not in management already, your career is over.

Reasons are said to be "we are too stuck in our ways" and "we are unfamiliar with the latest technologies". But everyone knows the real reason: older people are unwilling to work insane hours!

This story got me to thinking: an experienced engineer who has been in the guts of many different types of "engine" (which essentially are all the same, on a fundamental level) can solve, "in the tap of a hammer", problems that would send teams of inexperienced engineers into a tizzy of re-inventing wheels.

In my company I was lucky enough to be recognized as the go-to guy in my field. I do wish I could have been paid $9998.00 per hour though.

[Andy]

Some companies tap backwards. In the obsession for short term cost cutting, they tap (out) valuable experience. They fail to see the overall Return on Invstments in right expereince people.

[Jennifer]

Whether this story is true or not is irrelevent, it is what we learn from it.
What I get from it is that paying for quality to the source is just as important as the source knowing the importance of their quality!