What Crisis Will Excite Obama into Action?
The President came into office without enough experience to get hired to a major management position with most companies. Every national crisis demonstrates his lack of experience combined with a detached arrogance as a vivid symbol of his enormous ego without real substance involved.
He sounds good when proclaiming his dedication, commitment and innocence in the Gulf oil tragedy. I remember my water spill incident vividly from my early days with some minor responsibility for project management.
As a young employee of a very major company I was assigned the project management of a natural gas installation to a large facility that the company was using as a spare parts facility. Major renovations were needed to bring the facility to company standard. The new gas line was one minor activity that was assigned to a project manager with equally minor experience-Me.
I met with my excavation contractor to review the ditch location he was to dig and drove back to my office several miles down the road, stopping for a coffee break along the way. When I got back to the office and headed for my desk I was intercepted by my excited boss who wanted to know what I had done at the site to cause such a disaster. Water was squirting into the air and flooding the main highway to the airport and was the hot news item on the radio and TV. I turned around and headed back to the site with trepidation since I realized that the next few hours would determine my future employment status.
Driving down the highway I soon saw a fountain of water shooting high into the sky.
The flooded site and highway had people running everywhere trying to find a shut off of the main water supply for the industrial site that had been broken by my contractor when he started to dig. Five minutes reviewing the situation I realized that we were using a plan that was a reverse, mirror image of the actual “as built” situation. In a short time we had the water turned off. I took a deep breathe and thought I was in the clear when approached by a distinguished looking executive who, with authority, asked when the building would have water. My smart answer was that I just got the water shut off so couldn’t he give me a minute to catch my breath. His answer was, “I just gave the order for 1500 people on this shift to go home for lack of sanitary facilities and in 30 minutes I will need to cancel the second shift if I have no sanitary facilities.” Looking at me with daggers he said :. “Do you know how much that is going to cost the company because of your screw up, JUNIOR”?
I said without hesitation bring in your second shift I’ll have you in business.( Oh, the arrogance of youth) At that moment I didn’t have a clue what I needed and how that would happen. With the help of all the talent I could round up and with a borrowed helicopter the repair equipment needed was on site in two hours and a temporary fix was in place by mid afternoon.
My job was important to my young family and I was highly motivated. I wonder why Obama has not demonstrated similar motivation when thousands of lives are going to be severely damaged by the current crisis in the Gulf.
An interesting part of this experience was that in the time when the water was shooting into the air flooding the highway and almost shutting down the airport no one was particularly interested in fixing the blame. All attention was focused on fixing the break in the pipe. I got big league help from various contractors and a military buddy who decided to test a, just built, helicopter in the area where the needed parts were located, 75 miles from the site.
My yearly review produced a very big raise and a promotion beyond expectations.. I don’t think Obama will get the same results from his Gulf strategy concerning a leaking pipe. I hope not.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
Mary, Get over it. Bush is not the president any more.
I admit He came in with only a little more experience and was not the brightest bulb in the box. He however had some good help and was not on a Socialist path.
America needs to be strong and find a decent President and team in 2012.
Obama,Reid and Pelosi need to join Bush in retirement
Actually, Bush came in with years of experience being the Governor of Texas. As the third largest state, bordering a foreign country, and US coast line, Bush had quite a bit of experince as a Chief Executive Officer. As Governor, he was responsible for the state’s justice system, department of public works, social programs, budgets, and daily operations in so many ways.
You don’t have to like Bush, but you can’t deny that he had far more experience than Obama. Carry that forward to the logical question that if you thought Bush was a bust, why do you think Obama will do any better with far less experience?
Buck, We knew years earlier that you could make things happen! Dick