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Junkyard Management

Three Junkyard Lessons

Years ago I wrote a long version of this post for a publication. I found it recently and thought it would be a good blog post (though you could thank me for cutting over 50% of the length).

The gist of the article is simple. I learned three key things about leadership while working in a junkyard, and here they are.

Leaders go home with grease under their fingernails.

Time after time I’ve watched supposed leaders avoiding the messy parts of their jobs. They over-delegate, ignore, or explain away the really tough challenges.

The junkyard was more egalitarian. The …

Goble Properties, Junkyard Management, Leadership, PathLight,

Conflict and Peace

This story is about conflict that ended with peace and friendship. It’s one of those (seemingly) few happy ending stories, so it stands out amidst all the doom & gloom we often hear.

It begins, naturally enough, as a disagreement about real estate. Down the street from a property I own is a vacant commercial lot. The owner — who also happened to live nearby — partnered with another company to propose a use that I considered a horrible addition to the neighborhood. It was, in my opinion, going to bring in crime, traffic, ugliness, etc. Worse, it did nothing …

Family, Junkyard Management,

Trust, Lies, and Ice Cream

When you grow up working in a family business, you quickly learn that trusting your family is central to success. More than once I heard my dad say, “Never trust anyone but your brother, and keep a sharp eye on him.”

Truth is he was speaking to my brother, so I was the one to be watched closely. Which makes sense because I was over a decade younger and far more prone to do something stupid.

But whether applied to him, me, my sisters, my uncles, or anyone in the family, the point was the same: don’t trust anyone but …

Junkyard Management, Random Thoughts,

The things we don’t know

Not far from the Goble Ranch, a couple hundred feet down the side of a steep hill surrounded by oak trees, sits the ruins of what is probably a 1940 Ford. Not much is left – just the body and frame. The serial numbers and license plates are long gone, as is the engine.

Nobody knows how or when it got there. But it’s been at least 50-years because that was when I first found it. It was an old wrecked junker even then.

We’ve made up stories about the car for years. It was used by bootleggers, or it …

Junkyard Management, Junkyard Wisdom Book, Junkyard Wisdom Rebuilt, So you think you're a writer?,

ChatGPT

Have you used ChatGPT yet? It’s an amazing tool. Here is a quick example.

I asked “What is junkyard wisdom™?”

Now keep in mind the phrase didn’t exist until about 2009. And it’s been exclusively used by me (I hold the trademark) or reviewers of my work. It took me a few years just to figure it out myself.

ChatGPT’s answer came in ten seconds and was shockingly accurate:

Junkyard wisdom refers to insights and practical knowledge gained from experiences in difficult or challenging situations, often those found in everyday life. The term “junkyard” suggests a place of discarded or …

Book Reviews, Junkyard Management, Leadership, Salvaged,

The Power of Stupid Questions

I want to be as constantly stupid as the disciples. Or rather, to ask the kind of stupid questions the disciples ask Jesus.

A trademark of my writing – especially in my books – is to contradict myself. I embrace the contradiction because we need to evaluate, ponder, and understand the wholeness of an issue. Besides, it makes people think.

So this post is going to contradict one of the chapters in my book Salvaged. In chapter 10, Questioning Captain Satellite, I talk about the power of asking good questions. The line, “The best leaders ask the best questions …

Junkyard Management, Random Thoughts,

Deconstructing

A bit of advice for my friends deconstructing their faith.

The junkyard is where things are taken apart. There’s a reason people in the business called them auto dismantling centers! We earned our living by stripping cars of every valuable part, then selling the bits and pieces to our customers.

And what did our customers do once they bought those parts? They fixed their car. They made something better.

I admired our customers. They had a finished product. It ran well, or it looked good, or was more whole. They didn’t just strip something apart in a few moments of …

Generosity, Goble Properties, Junkyard Management, Leadership,

Faith and work

My flight to Philadelphia was scheduled to leave at 11:35 AM. But there was no plane at the gate at 11:30 AM, which was obviously a bad sign. About that time the ticket agent explained the plane was ready and sitting in the hanger about a quarter mile away, but there was no one to move the plane to the gate. A classic worker shortage situation.

The drama continued for a few hours as they scrambled for crew, extra ticket agents, and maintenance staff. Eventually they cancelled the flight. I won’t bore you with the (irritating) details.

There’s a misplaced …