On Thursday, I posted this on LinkedIn about my time in the print shop:
“You’ve got to pace yourself. You don’t want to run out of work,” Kenny said. Kenny was an old hand, for sure: he’d been at the printing company since the War, over fifty years before I started.
Kenny ran the t-head sheetfed press across the shop floor but came to help train me to run the web press–web meaning the paper it uses comes from a large roll that unspools as it prints and is cut into sheets at the end as opposed to a sheetfed press which takes sheets cut to size and picks them up one-by-one to impress ink upon them.
A web press more suited my style. Do good work fast. I once ran 70,500 impressions of generic prescription blanks in a day, and I was so pleased that I posted my initials and the high score on the little Didde. If I ran out of orders, Red, the foreman, sent me to the bindery section where I could learn the cutting, gluing, and packaging machines, or I was sent to work with Kenny to learn the t-head press or the giant forged steel Heidelberg press only used to print incrementing numbers on previously printed forms. That ancient Heidelberg was built in the U.S. Zone of Germany–that is to say, after Kenny started at the print shop.
But if you think this is going to be a simple post contrasting the Open Mindset and Closed Mindset which would make me more valuable than Kenny, you’re mistaken.
Because I bounced from machine to machine, and later from job/client to job/client, I have a lot of fodder for synthetic thought. I can bring ideas from outside a particular industry or vertical and can suggest things that people steeped in the current company might not.
Kenny, however, had deep knowledge of the existing technologies and processes at the print shop. He had have insights into how to make the existing processes more efficient based on the facts on the ground, the territory and not just the map.
For real improvement, you’ll need to apply both kinds of insight. And you’ll need an iterative process–maybe not 50+ years, but more than an outside consultant popping in, writing up some procedures, and popping out. The self-help dictum that “Real change comes from within” applies to businesses, too.
On Thursday, Facebook determined I was into prescription blanks:
To be honest, given that the phone number is only two digits, I probably did not print that particular item, but it’s reflex blue alright. Given how far the reach of the print shop was throughout small towns in Missouri and Kansas, I might have printed blanks for that drug store if it was still a concern in the 1990s.
A week ago, I posted a twee review of The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.. And Facebook was like, “Oh, you like that show?”
What will Facebook think I like next? Facebook following me around the Internet? “Like” is not the word I would use.
