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This guy was no hero
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Not the usual story about engineering genius. When George Washington Goethals took control of the project in 1907, he inherited something close to a nightmare. The French attempt had collapsed. Two American chief engineers had already left. The workforce was enormous, multinational and frustrated. People lived and worked in brutal conditions, with disease, landslides, accidents, racial discrimination and constant labour disputes surrounding the project. Goethals was a military engineer. You might expect the usual solution: More authority. More orders. More pressure. He did use all three. But he also did something surprisingly “human”… for those times. Canal de Panama or Panama Canal. Every Sunday morning, he opened his office to the workforce. No complicated process. No ten-page grievance form. No need to move through five layers of management. Any employee could come and speak to the person leading the entire Panama Canal project. They complained about supervisors. Pay. Housing. Working conditions. Unfair treatment. Personal disputes. Goethals listened, investigated and made decisions. These sessions became known as his informal “Sunday court.” Think about the scale of that. He was responsible for one of the most difficult construction projects ever attempted. Millions of decisions. Thousands of workers. Governments watching. The world waiting. And on Sunday morning, he made time to listen to an individual worker’s problem. Please, don’t tell me again that your project is challenging. Or you’re living a nightmare. Well… this “human” behaviour did not make him soft. It made him credible. Workers knew that even when they disliked a decision, they had been heard by somebody with the authority to do something about it. Goethals also travelled through the site. Continuously around the works. By railcar rather than sitting in his office. Something unseen for such a dangerous project. The combination of visibility, access and decisive action helped create confidence in the administration. The canal was completed in 1914, ahead of the programme. There is an important caveat. Ah… There is something more for the revisionist of History. Goethals was not humanitarian hero. He contributed to a system of segregation and racism… But that perhaps makes the leadership lesson more useful, not less: You do not need to pretend that a leader was perfect to learn from one thing they did well. More about leadership. Problem solving. And Sundays where we make useful things… below. ​The Room​ PD 1: If you liked this email, don't keep it in secret and forward it to a friend. They will thank you enormously one day. PD 2: If somebody has sent you this email and you want to receive emails like this yourself, visit vicentevalencia.com PD 3: If you want unsubscribe, click the link below. |
Vicente Valencia
Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
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