What would Don Williams do?
Leadership / Management
Do you remember from the early 2000’s the acronym WWJD? It stood for “What Would Jesus Do?” People wore bracelets with the acronym WWJD on them. It was a challenge, a reminder to ask yourself in a situation “What would Jesus do?”
I’m not that good of a person. If I ask myself “What would Jesus do?” and then compare that to what I do, I would continually fail and my ego is just too large to accept that kind of never-ending failure. So I set my sights a little lower, but in reality, not that much lower. I ask myself “What would Don Williams do?”
All right, by this point you might be asking who is Don Willams? Don Williams was the president and CEO of Western Tank Company of Odessa, Texas. The photo is of the five Williams brothers. Don is the smiling one on the right.
I worked at Western Tank Company of Odessa from 1977 to 1980 while I was attending Odessa College and the University of Texas - Permian Basin. I was initially the draftsmen and eventually became a sales engineer. I learned a lot about the oil storage tank business and the pressure vessel business but the best lessons were about being a decent person.
Back in that time there were two offices for Western Tank Company of Odessa. There was the business office where Don, his son Denny and the secretaries worked and there was the shop office where Joe, the shop foreman, Budd, the engineer, Larry, the lead salesperson, Mickey, the shop office administrator and I worked (and where the 50 people in the shop who did the real work - building storage tanks and pressure vessels).
Don would come over to the shop office every weekday afternoon to review what work was in the shop, the state of the shop inventory, what new bids we were working, what bids had been won, and other topics. He would walk in the door with a great big smile and if any of us were in the midst of a colorful tale we quickly got quiet and smiled right back.
I was born and raised in Odessa, Texas which basically means that swearing to me is as natural as breathing. I halfway believe when babies are born in Odessa they don't cry but instead let out a string of profane sounding grunts letting the world know they were alive. Don was a bit of a strange duck in Odessa, he didn't like swearing. None of us in the shop office swore in front of Don. We respected him too much to do that.
Don was the first manager I worked for and I learned a lot about management and leadership from observing what he did and said. Don was one of those rare people who walked the talk. He lived true. With most people I really don’t care what they think of me, but Don, and a few others in this world and the next, well, what they thought of me mattered and still matters a lot.
Let me tell you a few Don tales and maybe that will give you a sense of the man.
There were no merit raises at Western Tank. When the company did well every hourly employee, including me, would get a bump in their hourly wage. Joe would hand out the paychecks on Friday as we stood in line to punch out for lunch. Those in the front of the line would open up their paycheck and see their raise and you would hear a satisfied sigh work its way down the line as each person saw they were making more money this week than the last. When the company did well, we did well.
Don wanted you to do your job well but also stretch out beyond your job. If you learned a new skill you would get a bump in pay, as I did when I started designing, pricing and selling tanks, pressure vessels and shear/brake jobs. If things weren’t going so well, raises were fewer and farther between. When the company wasn’t doing well, we all tightened our belts.
A side result of all this was that Don built a real team. We won together. We lost together. There were no stars. We all worked together to get the job done.
Every Thanksgiving every employee received a gift. In the good years it was a coupon for a free turkey from a local grocery, plus a holiday bonus ranging from a week to two weeks pay - just in time to buy Christmas presents. In a year when things weren’t going so well we still got the coupon for the turkey.
Years later Budd told me this tale. When things got real bad in the oil bust of the mid 80’s is when Don shone brightly. As work dried up, people left the Permian Basin looking for steady work, but Don kept the doors of Western Tank Company of Odessa open and anyone who wanted to keep working there kept working there. The work dried up, but people came to work every day. When there were no more vessels to build, they shifted to building storage tanks. When the tank yard was full, they shifted to building parts. When there was no need for parts, they came to work anyway and Don paid them for a full days work. In the worst times of the mid 80’s, when there was no work, the employees came to work five days a week and played cards, hoping the phones would ring and work would start again. I don’t know how much money Don lost during those years, but that’s not the point. The point is Don kept a lot of people employed when there was no work to be had.
Don died in late 2004. His style, his kindness, his smile will never be forgotten. On my good days I live true to his memory. On the other days I strive to learn from my failures.
Every day I ask myself WWDWD.