Shortyism #8: Any job worth doing is worth doing right

We have all heard this expression in some form.?But I call this a Shortyism because Dad lived this motto.?I saw someone who shared this same belief last week and it spurred me write about not only taking pride in your work, but also feeling proud when others see your work and recognize that it goes beyond the minimum required or ordinary.?Sadly, I don’t see the same level of pride in work these days, so last week was just the hopeful reminder that I needed that some people still do believe in doing their job right and taking pride in it when they do.

I started working for Dad in the summers after I finished 5th grade. I was old enough to know the difference between a slot and Phillips screwdriver and big enough to carry a 250 foot roll of 12-2 copper wire on the job.?In Shorty’s eyes, that meant I was ready for some physical labor to support the family business. From that first summer on working for Dad, he made sure that I understood that whatever I did on the job was a reflection of his work – and he was proud of his work. He would not tolerate anything less my best effort on a job.?I saw that firsthand one of those early summers when I was too young to be able to help much on the job site.

At eleven years old, I was just competent enough to staple wires after they were pulled from the service panel to circuits throughout a house.?A hammer and cable staples are all that was required – and not driving the staple through the wire (that’s kind of important to avoid short circuits…).?Or at least I thought it was that simple.?But I learned that there was more to stapling wires if you worked for Shorty.?He expected every wire to be straight with no kinks.?If a wire had somehow gotten twisted or kinked while pulling it from one stop to another, Dad expected me to straighten out the wire before I stapled it.?This seemed silly to me and I asked Dad why make the extra effort to straighten the wires??Shorty, in his typical plain-spoken way, informed me that he wanted others to see that he took that extra time to make sure that his work was the best. “I don’t want someone to look at a job done by Nail Electric and think it’s half-assed.?I want them to know that it was done right.?If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing right. And everyone is going to know that Nail Electric did it right.”

Even at that young age, I understood this.?Dad truly took pride in his work and I could see it.?He would finish wiring a service panel and step back to review his work.?There would be 40-50 sets of wires pulled into the panel and every one would be neat, straight, and stapled at regular intervals.?For a man who couldn’t tell a Monet from a Remington, Dad could appreciate his own artwork.?If the wires did not meet his standard of perfection, he would work at it until they did.?Monet had his paint, brush and canvas; Rodin his hammer, chisel, and clay, and Glenna Goodacre her sculpting tools and bronze.?Shorty had wires, a hammer, and a service panel.?And for him, every house he wired was an opportunity to perfect and show off his artwork of an electrician.?One of my favorite memories of working with Dad was seeing him step back and admire his own work.?It wasn’t arrogance, but pride in a job well done.?And Shorty didn’t admire any work that wasn’t well done! I found a picture on reddit that would qualify as electrician art to Shorty. Unfortunately, this is not what you will find with most service installations - like the one below it.

This Shortyism has served me well in all facets of life, but it really gave me an advantage in my professional career.?I have been surprised over the years at how many bright and capable people just do the bare minimum and look for shortcuts rather than spend the effort at their job in which they can take pride.?In one group in which I worked there was an individual who was clearly smarter than the rest of us – his coding and quantitative skills were far greater than mine.?But on every project that we worked on together, he was more concerned with getting the project done than getting it done right.?There would be careless errors that cost us hours of time that could have been easily avoided with a quick review. But this never bothered my colleague. Sadly, he didn’t seem to realize that his rush to finish usually ended up costing us more time.?Had he listened to Shorty he would have known that a job worth doing was worth doing right.?He also would have kept his job…

The beauty of perfect wiring has been a tremendous motivator for me as an academic too.?My dissertation chair and academic mentor was Bill Megginson.?Bill is now the Michael F. Price Chair in the Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma – earning that distinguished position because of his perfecting style of research and writing.?After working as Bill’s research assistant I knew that I wanted to learn how to be an academic researcher from him.?I saw the same mentality in how Bill approached research that Dad took in his job.?I knew that if I worked under Bill that I would learn to conduct research the right way.?Many red ink pens were killed in the writing of my dissertation, because Bill would bleed all over a section that wasn’t right.?But that’s what I wanted – if a PhD were easy to obtain, then it wouldn’t have value.?I still remember Bill asking me if I was ready to defend my dissertation because he thought I was ready.?If the perfectionist said I was ready, then I was ready.?Just like I had my wires stapled straight for Shorty, I had a literature review and empirical results that Bill had forced me to perfect.?My defense went well and after a few minutes of deliberation with the committee, Bill came out and said, “Congratulations Dr. Nail!”?He delighted in being the first person to ever call me that.

I could have obtained a PhD with much less work and effort, but Bill made me do it right.?The publications that resulted from that dissertation earned me promotion and tenure.?I didn’t have to seek out new research projects that would help me meet the standard for tenure because Bill made me do it right before he would sign his name on my dissertation as advisor.?It was just like Dad wouldn’t let me staple crooked wires when I worked for him, the pride that both men took in their work meant that I had to make certain that my own work was its best if I wanted them to say it was good enough for them. I just hope that both Shorty and Bill know how much their demanding nature for “doing it right” made me who I am today.

All these thoughts really hit home last week as we were having some renovations done around the house.?Chuy showed up one morning with the sliding cabinet and door he built for us.?He first made sure that the stain he used matched perfectly.?It did.?Then he meticulously installed the new cabinet, making sure that everything was perfect?- level with a slow glide that ended with the door perfectly aligned. ?He stepped back when he found perfection and admired his work.?He said perfecto! with a smile on his face and I flashed back to seeing Dad doing the same thing 45 years ago.?I gave Chuy the ultimate compliment – I told him that his work reminded me of my Dad’s.?Ruthie and I treated him to lunch as an extra thank you for a job well done. It was the least we could do for a job done right.?Shorty would approve.??