Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: The Difference Between Good Execution And Bad Execution

Last week I had two work holiday parties.  One was in Greenville, S.C. for Fabric Editions and the other was in New York City for all the other companies.  Both parties were a lot of fun and all of our loyal employees earned a day to just chill out. 

As my avid followers know, I am not so keen on public speaking, but it is just part of the job.  In any case, I reluctantly made speeches at both parties.  After the usual holiday speech monologue, I went on to tell employees that we expect them to work hard, value our customers, focus on details, question things that don’t make sense, be innovative, think outside the box and to execute properly among other things.  Then I went on to tell a story about the difference between good execution and bad execution and how things could really go awry with a bad execution.

So here goes.  Last year I went with my wife and kids to one of these lodges upstate that are geared toward kids with tons of indoor and outdoor activities.  On the way there, we stopped at a pizza place to eat dinner.  The second we got to the pizza place, my older son had to go to the potty.  After taking care of his business, he gets himself redressed and starts to lift his right leg up to flush with his foot.  I asked him, “What are you doing?”  He said,  “This is what mommy taught me so I don’t touch the germs on the toilet handle.”  I said, “Great thinking!”  The only problem was that the toilet handle was on the left, so he had to lift his right foot all the way across his body and the toilet bowl to complete the foot flush.  Lo and behold, he had an awful execution and his dismount resulted in him putting his entire foot in the toilet.  I won’t bore you with what happened next, but the major point here is that the difference between a good execution and a bad execution is critical.  In this case, my son would have been better off flushing with his hands and getting germs than putting his entire foot in the toilet.  Or, if he just used his left foot, all would have been well and good.   Hope you enjoyed my little story.  Happy holidays from our family to yours!

Scott The Execution Expert