Working Together

Hello, my name is Gary Shotton, and I’m here in the country of Uganda in the continent of Africa in the capital city of Kampala and I’m here in a nice safe surrounding. I feel like the whole city is safe, but a little hectic sometimes. We’re in a quiet spot so I can record these, and today I’m going to talk about the subject of working together. Now, just a little of my background. I was born and raised on a farm and ranch in the state of Colorado in the United States of America, and I happened to be born into a family that we work together as a family, but we didn’t have a lot of interaction with a lot of other people. I don’t know that I really learned how to work together very well from my upbringing. So, I had to kind of learn it on the process. For example, my dad would be very hesitant to ask any of his neighbors for anything, to co-op together or pull together into sharing something, because it many times led to misunderstandings and problems. Maybe somebody would borrow something, and they wouldn’t return it, or they wouldn’t return it in the same condition, or it was broken, or something like that. So I had to kind of recognize the importance of learning how I could be a part of something bigger than just me. Now, as time went on, I went to college and I worked at a big oil company. I was in heavy construction. Well ,now’s where I got to start to work together with people. I had to learn how to work with fellow workers, I had to learn how to work with my employees, I had to learn how to work with my boss. See, this is the first time my boss was something someone other than my dad. So there is a process that you’ve got to get through that says hey, I can maybe not tell this concern at this time, or this is not something I should talk about at this time, and this is something maybe I need to to think about, make sure I’m not just complaining about something, and working with my workers that work for me. I had to learn not to jump on them, and be overly concerned, and pick at them, and be a micromanager. I had to learn the skill sets of working together. You’re going to have to learn those things as well. And as time went on, I realized this project got bigger and bigger and bigger because I grew as a business, I grew as a company, and I need to work together with key people like my banker. Oh my goodness. I couldn’t look at my banker, who was loaning me money, I couldn’t look at him as my enemy. I couldn’t say my goodness, you are a bad guy because you’ve got all this money, and you won’t give me any money. I had to recognize he was on my team, and he understood my needs, but he wouldn’t always write me the check for more money. I had to learn how to work together, and I had to continue down this process. So now I have a bigger company, and I know that even more so as time went on, I need outside consultants, I need people that know more than I know, are better than I am. In fact, that’s the goal to becoming a successful business person is to surround yourself with people that know more than you know. Why would you hire all these people, especially as consultants, that you know more than them? That doesn’t make sense if you think about it. But, sometimes we hire someone, we ask them to give you input, and then you think you know more than they do, and so you don’t listen to that input. I mean why did you hire them? You should surround yourself with employees ,if you can, that would know more about things that you don’t know about, and you learn from them, and they become a part of your team. Now just this last week, I was with a group of individuals in the area of Kampala, Uganda, and these were people that were very low paid, underpaid individuals. They were looking for some sort of additional revenue. And, the very first thing that came to me, because there’s about 15 of these in this group, I asked the question “Are you all working together in any fashion to help overcome your challenges of a low income, low revenue?” And you know not one person raised their hand. They didn’t give me one indication that they were going to be working together on anything. I said “Listen, you’re all in the same boat here, this is not something, if you can help each other you’ve got to at least do that. You could create a small team, you could share…” it was mostly ladies, and I said “Ladies, you know if you have a business idea…” and we talked about business ideas and we gave suggestions, we actually opened up some thought, we thought on that, but see almost all of these ladies their husbands were actually in the military, so they weren’t around to help take care of the kids. So, if you’re mother with small children, guess what? You’re kind of stuck. Your husband’s away. I mean, it’s a no-win situation. Well, it seemed obvious to me, why wouldn’t you agree to take care of each other’s children? Just for one day, not permanently, not all week, not all month, that’s a job. One lady could let her children and trust her children with another lady’s children for a day while she needed to go do some business, or take care of business on her home-based business, and we would trade off, and they could now take care of the other kids. It’s a whole different atmosphere of being able and willing to work together, and find those people that will work together with you, and you now become a team. Much more can happen as a team. Now, so I’m clear, I’m not an advocate of being partners. When you join together in a partnership, when you own something together, when you pay bills together, when you share customers together, you know, that really comes kind of with a lot of extra challenges in my opinion. Because, I’ve seen the downside of that. You know, I’m just going to make it up, but let’s say that you’re a roofer. In our state, in our country, we have the need for an air compressor. A lot of times a lot of our tools are designed for an air compressor, and you need that air compressor. That air compressor in some countries could be very very expensive, and you really don’t need it but for a few days or a few hours, and you could go rent that from someone else, but you know you might have somebody else in the very same business, and they don’t have an air compressor and you know you could tell them, say “Listen, let’s keep track of it, let’s be fair, but why don’t you use my air compressor when when you need it? I don’t need it, you can use it, but I ask you to take care of it. I’ll show you how to take care of it, I ask you to return it in the same condition that I have, and I have this other tools that you could use my tools. We’re going to work together. Another way you could work together. Maybe you’re just doing small jobs, and you have some friends that are in the same business. Yeah in some ways your competitors, I understand that, but there’s ways to get around that and it’s a big city, and I’ve always known that there’s more than enough business to go around then just these two suppliers can supply. So maybe you’re a custom. That’s just being your own boss. No partnership. I’m in agreement with that. I’m for that, but on occasion you can land a big job that’s going to take several weeks. There you may not have the capacity, the power, the supplies, to be able to manage that big job. You could come together, in my opinion, if you’re already accustomed to working together, and do that big job and make it very clear, make it very understandable, who’s going to get paid how they’re going to get paid, what they’re going to be paid. Maybe subcontract a little bit, and now the two or three of you together, pulled together just for that one big job. Then when that job is done, believing that all worked well, you’re not lifelong partners, you can any finish that arrangement. Go back to being individuals. Remember, I’m not an advocate of two leaders, two strong people becoming partners. That’s going to be difficult in my opinion. It can work, but very seldom. But sometimes you can work together and be bigger than you normally would. I’m just hoping that you can understand the philosophy here, that you can understand that unless you pull together with your peers, people in your same economic level, your same business level, and work together, you’re going to find that the path is pretty hard. It’s going to be pretty slow getting to where you want to go. It’s going to be more difficult. The load, I mean there’s the old saying that that if you got a lot of bricks, you know, you can only carry so many yourself, so you got to share the load. You got to share the load, and so in that I would hope to be of help to you just with the idea of working together. Up next