In the winter of 2008, I was serving as second in command to a psychological operations team operating in southern Baghdad. Our team was an independent four-man group that was responsible for a 200 square kilometer slice of desert.
In May 2016, we added a 10 x 40 addition to our house. A year later, in 2017, we planned to open the exterior wall of the house to tie the new addition in and only do the minimum amount of work needed to make the addition livable.
I'm a bit of a practical joker. Back in 2015, I was working in our Fab Shop. I wanted to get the best of my buddy Matt. I had a drill with a vari-bit and I thought I would scare Matt by poking him with the drill bit and then pulling the trigger.
Day 18 of our journey from Loganville, GA to Seabeck, WA: I was excited when we arrived in Kemmerer, Wyoming and saw a sign directing us to J. C. Penney's home and first store. It was a little after five, so I stopped to see what time the home would open tomorrow.
Prior to my role as a detailer, I worked in the field as a journeyman plumber. The job site was a brand new high school made of concrete and steel. I was freshly turned out from the apprenticeship program and my appearance reflected that: tattered shirt sleeves, worn out tools, and frayed overalls.
I was raised on a dairy farm and loved to drive and operate equipment. One day, when I was about 17 years old, my father and I were going to transport cattle from our dairy to the Portland stock yard.
For over 30 years, I have worked with the senior management, leadership, sales, marketing and customer service team members of client companies.
On April first of this year, my crew was assigned the plumbing of the new resident's hall at George Fox University. While working on the third floor bathrooms, just down the hallway from the loading doors, the sheet rock workers were in the process of off-loading sheet rock.
Four weeks ago I decided to put 5X more enthusiasm into spending time with each of my six children. I had fallen into the pattern of getting home from work and then trying to send the kiddos to their rooms or outside to play so I could get my own time to relax.
You can't learn to lead from lectures. Online learning is the wave of the future. I'm a strong advocate for using the extraordinary resources of the Internet to pass along knowledge.
Larry W. Dennis, Sr. President,
Turbo Leadership Systems©