93. Learned young, old done

Dear Gerard

It is always nice to go back and analyze your work experience from your childhood. It’s also good to see that your dream, to make it to a beautiful boardroom, has been achieved. That you don’t use it, I like even better, as you want to sit among your people so as to function optimally.My first work experience goes back to my twelfth year, or maybe even earlier. My father had a farm and the work ethic was instilled into me. During April, May and June, I helped to harvest spinach, lettuce and endives, often before school started. The whole family participated in this and around 8:00 am we had a good crop ready for the auction. After school, I also helped out when possible. Summer was the busiest time on the farm, so this was never the time to go on vacation. I also made a sport of any work to be the fastest: planting lettuce faster, picking strawberries faster, harvesting potatoes faster or scattering tulip bulbs quicker than the others, so as to make sure we were able to finish all the work. I loved to do it and had no need to go on holiday. After all, we never went so I didn’t miss it. A friend of mine went every year with his parents to Spain by caravan for three weeks, but I never thought about going on holiday.
Later, I went to college and got my truck driver’s license to drive at Hoogovens (Tata Steel) in the holiday. A seven in the morning start wasn’t early for me, but the first drink was an obligatory coffee anyway. Then load the truck and bring material around. But at 8:30 you couldn’t go anywhere because it was breakfast time, so I had to wait again. I didn’t like this, because if you wanted to handle things quickly, you just couldn’t.

At the end of my studies, I joined the internal audit department at Hoogovens (Tata Steel) and I had several experienced colleagues that did very little useful work for a large part of the day. The organization was not able to identify and tackle this problem. I went my own way and did as much as I could to make a useful contribution and fortunately there were also positive colleagues. Even then, I did not like big unwieldy organizations and saw no future for that kind of company. Such companies later needed to make cuts repeatedly to stay competitive. However, this should have been done much earlier and should be incorporated as a process in an organization. My intention was to work in small motivated groups, to encourage each other and keep on improving. In addition, keeping people accountable for errors is an important skill to keep everyone sharp. We also chose to help young students get placements and support and that worked really well. Young people are flexible and eager to learn and are not afraid to work hard. Again – learned young, old done and the young people can move forward and contribute to society. We also do not use a beautiful boardroom and we also sit where the information comes together. To avoid too much spending was also one of the key things we learned at a young age. It was not there to spend and it does not take you any further.
Regards,
Jan Stam