Turbo Leadership Systems^™

Sell your solutions for progress

Kevin, general foreman for a Northwest piping contractor, told Session 3 of Turbo’s Leadership Development Lab (LDL):

“In 2005 I was working at the Intel Ronler Acres jobsite. My job at the time was to respond to all emergency calls for Intel. On a Friday night at about 11:00 pm, I was called in to look at a plugged solvent line. When I got to the plant, one of the Intel techs told me he had been looking for the problem for a couple of hours with not much luck. I made a suggestion that we use a subcontractor that had never been used before on an Intel jobsite. It took some persuasion, but the Intel property manager gave us the go ahead. I asked the contractor to use a color scope to look inside the 3” pipe to find the plug. After we located the plug, the Intel tech began to bang on the pipe with a hammer. This wasn’t working. As far as we could tell, nothing was happening. From an earlier experience, I suggested we try a concrete vibrator. We strapped the vibrator onto the pipe and turned it on. Wow, it made quite a racket! You could hear it ‘for miles.’ The Fab manager from two floors up came down to complain about the racket. In a few minutes the plug came out. The line was clear and finally ready for use again. The manufacturing operation, which had been brought to a complete standstill, was restarted.

“After this ordeal, Intel decided to replace the entire drain system with a 5” pipe and gave the work to our company.

“The lesson I learned from this experience is the importance of selling, not just telling, my ideas. Ideas are worthless; ideas are only valuable when put into action. Getting my ideas into action requires that I sell them. Selling my ideas almost always requires that I step out of my comfort zone at least a little bit. I must step over the edge, take a stand for my idea, and more than take a stand, present a case, make a case using all the evidence and conviction

at my disposal. My case must overcome the natural resistance all new ideas encounter.

“The action I call you to take when you have an idea you believe in is stand up, speak out with confidence and conviction. You'll see problems solved and you will receive deserved credit. The benefit you will gain is your business will grow, your clients will respect you, and you will advance in your career.”

The world is filled with little people who have great ideas. They halfheartedly present them, only to see their ideas rejected, and then they go into victim mode, blaming others and not themselves for their failure to see their ideas successfully implemented.

Today is your day to stand up, speak out and sell your idea with clarity and conviction. Through this process, you will be the purveyor of progress.

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