Do Your Part

 

This post is actually not about my cancer journey. It's just about work at the BMW plant, but it's too long-winded for the 3,000 character limit on LinkedIn. Themes here do have some applications in other areas than work, like community, nation, family, or church... playing our part with humility and gratitude. But just a quick comment on health: Radiation on the largest lung tumor went fine, but I was more tired and sick than expected for a couple of weeks. I feel really good on the Fruzaqla pill, which is a huge blessing in contrast to other things I've experienced. So on a daily basis it's just hip pain now, I guess still from the bone lesion. My next PET scan is this Wednesday 3/4.

Anyway, I have other things on my mind... My daughter Emma painted this picture for me several years ago when I worked in Road Test. It came from an analogy I often used with my team that we all needed to be like rowers in a canoe, synchronized and focused on one mission, rowing together toward our True North. 

For example, my True North at Road Test Rework was this: We don’t just rework, we investigate, document, and hand off our findings to a problem solver who will make sure it never happens again. It could never be just about fixing and shipping one car, but about preventing recurrence on others. That was our little part in having fewer unhappy experiences for customers.

By coincidence, our plant president used the same rowing analogy in his welcome video when he arrived a couple of years later, having been a rower himself. He’s an engineer too, just smarter and more educated than me (and probably a lot nicer). He’s a Builder. 

He was quoted as saying this at South Carolina Automotive Summit in 2022: “I grew up in rowing competitions. Rowing and car production in my point of view has a lot of things together. It’s a team sport. You have to show endurance, you have to also follow the processes, in terms of synchronicity, and you have to go the extra mile when it hurts.”

“Synchronicity.” I’ve learned a lot of new English words from Germans over the years. But that's definitely the right word, and what he said is true.

Everybody has to eat. Some people are talented at monetizing the mistakes of others. That’s ok, I guess, I just like working with people who build things. 

I've definitely learned in my years at BMW that I'm not as special or smart as I always thought I was. There's absolutely no place for arrogance of any kind, as I have been prone to for most of my life (for no reason). We're all here with a commitment to do our little part, whether it seems important or not. If somebody finds a smarter way, we do it.

Occasionally I’ve heard our company characterized as a greedy, oppressive, faceless corporation with deep pockets. Maybe people with this impression haven’t spent much time inside the fence or walked very many miles in safety shoes (they probably don’t like cars either, which takes them down a couple more notches). 

I can tell you the corporation isn’t faceless - It has lots of faces, actually. Thousands of them. If not enough of them show up on time to their assigned work station and do what they’re told, production is zero and none of us get to eat. Call it archaic if you want, but there is no such thing as self-organizing, non-hierarchical teams when you build cars mostly by hand. This is not like other kinds of work, where it doesn't matter how many people show up on a given day or when they get their work done. If we want to build cars, we do it all together at the same time, or it's simply not happening.

As one colleague puts it, we see fourteen hundred miracles happen every day. Every time all the right parts make it here, whether from across the street or around the world, through all the right trucks, trains, boats, planes, and hands onto the right car, and at the end of the line the engine starts (or the high voltage relay closes with no errors), it really is a modern-day miracle. 

A lot of blood, sweat, and tears goes into that. Well, maybe not that many tears - You have to be a little bit tough to make the 1/4 to 1/2 mile walk from your parking spot to your work station, spend 10-12 hours working with your hands, on your feet, maybe contorting your body in weird ways to fit in a tight place, and then make the walk back - 4 to 7 days a week depending on what’s happening, rain or shine, hot or cold. This part of the organization is always under a lot of pressure, which is unavoidable. So maybe not tears, but blood and sweat for sure.

I actually did almost shed a tear of joy once, on my first visit to this plant for a tour years ago when I worked at Michelin R&D. We walked through the whole process from body shop to the end of assembly. When we got to the very end and the cars started and drove, it really was an emotional experience - each one a beautiful new BMW being born, like a baby. To most of you this is really weird, I know.

Maybe it’s also just emotional for me to have a special place in my heart for Builders, but I think there’s a good reason… I’m no economist, but if I understand correctly, wealth creation happens when you build something desirable and sell it. Let’s say, using totally fake numbers, it takes $30k of parts to build a car, another $30k of labor, another $30k in real estate, buildings, and equipment. Then you sell the car for $100k (leaving $10k for R&D, projects, bonuses for the workers, and shareholder dividends). Then the happy customer drives the $100k car for a couple of years and sells it to a less fortunate (or more prudent) enthusiast for $75k, so he can buy the new model. All of us who built the car got to eat, and the first customer still had a car worth most of what he paid for it after a couple of years. That’s the magic of wealth creation. And the better you do at building an object of desire, the more the customer will be happy to pay - Therefore the better your workers will eat, and the bigger your investments and development projects can be. 

As somebody in my team put it the other day, the Camry is the perfect car for people who don’t like cars. That reminded me of the Quiznos commercial years ago where they said “Wrong Way” (a.k.a Subway) is for people with no taste buds. This makes the car (or sub) more of a commodity, which tends to squeeze margins because nobody cares whether it's a Camry or something else, as long as it's cheap and bland. There’s certainly a place in the world for Camrys - it’s just not our place. Our place is to build a machine of beauty - a work of art, science, and performance. The customer cares that it's a BMW, and so do we.

Taking money from builders and giving it to other people isn’t wealth creation - it’s just subtraction. Some people make their living this way, and I suppose there’s a place for it - It’s just not my place. Even in an imperfect world with imperfect Builders, I’d rather at least try to be on the positive side of that equation than a cost of doing business. 

Like most engineers, I’ve made that long walk to and from the parking lot at various times of the day and night over the years. Sometimes with friends, usually alone, occasionally during shift change in a sea of hundreds of other workers. 

One thing I’ll never forget - the sound of hundreds of footsteps padding along in the darkness. It’s like this when night shift is walking into work during the winter when it's dark. People are usually quiet at that time, except for the thousands of footsteps… thousands of safety shoes of various sizes padding along in strides of different lengths, all attached to bodies ranging from giants twice my size to fiery little women barely 5 feet tall. They keep the pace up - everybody needs to be on time, even for night shift. All the faces have brains behind them, and hearts.

When day shift is leaving, the average walking pace seems a little slower. Usually they walk out with their friends, with cheerful banter about the day’s work. Thousands of faces, all attached to brains, and hearts. In general, I think they're happy to be there. There's a stronger spirit and thicker skin than the average population, which tends to bring its own kind of happiness with it. Maybe it was an easy day, maybe it wasn't. Who cares - they'll be back tomorrow. It's what Builders do.

It’s not only the line workers - Builders are everywhere in the management team too. Recently I was among a group who made some little presentations to our VP and his department managers (I’m not usually invited to a room like that). The level of positive engagement, in-depth technical questions, and good solid ideas coming out of that group of managers was refreshing and unusual. I know somebody will point out an exception like they always do, but in general they didn't get there by politics and privilege. They got there because they’re Builders.

I went really far out on a limb recently and emailed a VP on personal topics. I got a very kind response within a couple of hours, which I did not expect. Not the heartless behavior people outside the fence might expect from somebody who doesn’t know me from any of the other thousand badge numbers under his department code. 

Even in HR, the VP’s skill set isn’t just the expected chief curator of sob stories. She has a face too - a fair one - but there's also a brain behind the blonde beauty. She managed vehicle production in various departments for many years before HR - a Builder through and through. 

I realize not very many critics from outside the fence really know these people. Not that I really know them personally either, being on opposite ends of the totem pole. Maybe they make imperfect decisions occasionally, I'm not sure. But I am sure what they’ve built is something remarkable and wonderful, and I count it a blessing to play my little part.  

It’s not just about the cars. Last time I checked, my six children were fed and clothed, the two with special needs have never missed a surgery or expensive medication, and I’ve never missed chemo or radiation. I hit my little out-of-pocket maximum before the end of January each year, and that's all I pay... But of course it's not free. Say what you want about deep pockets. 

You don’t have to love these faces, brains, and hearts just because I do. I get that. I understand that I'm not speaking for anyone but myself.

I realize honesty can be uncomfortable to hear, but sometimes I’m convicted to be honest anyway. I’m not trying to be mean or snobby. I want you to hear one message above all: Gratitude.

I will never be able to repay the debt I owe, economically or otherwise. 

My best contribution is equivalent to a pushpin on some underbody panel that nobody would ever miss, and that’s ok with me (remember the “I’ll do my part” campaign with Mr. Erlacher?). And I’ll keep doing it as long as I can, assuming my badge still works at the Lot D turnstile on Monday morning.

Being on the right side of history has become more important to me than making history. I’ll pick the Builders’ side every time.