Sermon Central
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Boat Builder Learns About ...
Contributed by Sermon Central on Jul 12, 2010 (message contributor)
Boat Builder Learns about Humility
Skip looked at the group of suspicious stockholders and wondered what he could do to convince them to follow his leadership. He was 35, looked 13 and was third generation rich. He could tell they thought they were headed for a disaster. He told them a story. His first job was drawing electrical engineering plans for a boat building company. The drawings had to be perfect because if the wires were not accurately placed before the fiberglass form was poured, a mistake might cost a million dollars. At 25, he already had two master’s degrees. He had been on boats all his life, and he found drawing the plans a bit beneath him. One morning he got a call at home from a $6/hour worker asking him if he was sure the plans were right! He was incensed to be questioned and cursed. He told the man to pour the fiberglass. An hour later the worker’s supervisor called and woke him up asking him again if he was sure the drawings were right. He was even less patient.
When the call came from the president of the company he finally got out of bed and down to the site. You can imagine the demeaning thoughts he had about the workers. He found the $6/hour worker looking at the plans with his head cocked to one side. He began to explain and then he realized what was wrong. Skip, being left handed, had switched the starboard and port sides of the boat. In other words, right was left and left was right. Well, he got humble real quick. That $6/hour worker had caught his mistake before it was too late.
The next day Skip found on his desk a pair of tennis shoes in a box for future reference. Just in case he got mixed up in the future, they gave him a red left shoe for port, and a green right shoe for starboard. Skip told the stockholders that those shoes don’t just help him to remember port and starboard, but to listen even when he thinks he knows what is going on. As he held the shoebox up with one red shoe and one green shoe the stockholders relaxed. If this young man has learned this lesson about arrogance, maybe he will be humble enough to learn some things about running a business, too.
From a sermon by Ed Sasnett, Fools for Christ, 6/8/2010
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