26 JUNE 2017 • FOGHORN T he good news about business is that just about everything we do can be explained to a ten year old; the bad news is that seemingly each day there are 10,000 tasks to do. The trick is to figure out the priori- ties, and manage around the constant dearth of resources. Do it surrounded by a constantly changing world and hundreds of people. Now that’s hard! Fortunately we are in a fun business, which helps to mitigate that chaos. There is no substitute for hard work and pragmatism. The best leaders don’t speak in jargon or make what they are doing overly complicated. Most of the time my bandwidth is about three PowerPoint bullets, but it’s really deep. Those bullets are centered around my maxim about getting your culture right, growing your farm team, and focusing, laser-like on your key metrics. In the old days, a business would typically have two executives, one focused on the outside, and the other on the inside of the business. The outside world of sales is the first and toughest function in any business. But the ability for a business to grow and scale up hinges on getting the internal team aligned, quickly solving problems and then developing systems. It needs a good operations person who likes both people and projects. When I was younger I was an uber-engineer type focused on projects. I loved shaping them, having autonomy, and the sat- isfaction of moving the needle. And I remember getting frustrated, thinking to myself that I’d get a boatload more done if I didn’t have to spend so much time with people. Boy was that a dumb “insight.” Thankfully an epiphany happened, and I learned that I could get so much more leverage by working with and leading others. I have been fortunate to team with a constellation of great port general managers on both coasts. Their hallmarks are great energy, drive and common sense. They lead by example, are crystal clear communicators, and universally show respect to their crew, peer group and customers. Nearly all grew up in the organization, validat- ing the result of a long-term farm team mentality. They are ambidextrous, with deep institutional knowledge and are the perfect future role models to the next generation. With terrific general Thoughts from an Ops Guy By Bob Shaw BUSINESSMATTERS