CEO Column for the December, 1998
Electric Consumer Magazine

What kind of Company are we?

We are a not-for-profit rural electric cooperative whose mission is to provide quality electric service at the lowest possible price consistent with sound business practices blah, blah, blah, etc.

That’s a good description of what we do, but that’s not the question. The question goes to our values, to how we treat people, to what we are willing to risk to achieve that which is important to us. It’s a question that applies to us all as individuals as well as to this corporation. What kind of company are we?

One of my favorite little poems that I learned early in life while sitting on my granny’s knee has influenced the kind of company that I have tried to be associated with. The poem begins with a story of a man trying to find his way home after having had a wee bit too much Christmas cheer: “My feet began to stutter, so I lay down in a gutter, and a pig came up and laid down by my side. A woman passing by was heard to say, ‘You can tell a man who boozes by the company he chooses,’ and the pig got up and slowly walked away.” What kind of company was this man? This woman? The pig?

There’s another story that brought an entire country into something of a different sort of gutter. You are probably familiar with the circumstances of the nation’s leader that gave in to a lustful affair while in the highest office. As commander-in-chief he then authorized a military action which took the lives of many men, and rumors swirled that his motives had more to do with his personal life than any need to attack. When confronted with his actions, he first denied them, then became apparently remorseful while begging for forgiveness. And this is a man that will always be remembered as one of the most popular and heroic figures of all time. But the question here is not so much about what kind of company this man is, but rather, what does our response to this man say about what kind of company WE are?

The previous paragraph is not about a man named Bill; it’s about a man named David. Yes, King David of Israel—the slayer of Goliath and the namesake of the city where the Christ child was born—had his failures; just like the rest of us. David was held accountable and paid a high price for his indiscretion. He was also forgiven.

Letting folks “off the hook” is often confused with forgiveness. We can be forgiving parents while still holding our children to standards necessary for their protection and growth. We can be a forgiving society while still holding lawlessness in contempt. We can be forgiving businesses while still requiring consumers to pay for their products.

In fact, we MUST be all those things or we will have no good answers to the questions: What kind of parents are we? What kind of country are we? What kind of company are we?

One of the great thinkers and speakers of this century is a man named Oswald Chambers. On the subject of being true to the kind of people, the kind of company, we want to be, Chambers said, “The test is the sixty seconds of every minute, and the sixty minutes of every hour.” Do we take vacations from honesty, from generosity, from integrity or from customer service? Should we?

I’ve never quite figured out the physical dynamics of stepping on all ten of one’s own toes at the same time, but again I seem to have managed it. Maybe I’ll just go back and change some of this article so it doesn’t offend anyone, or myself. But then, what kind of company would that make me?

Merry Christmas to you all, and may you know the reason for the season.

10/31/98