Ten90 Solutions LLC

Before we go any further here, can I have a word with my cohort, my fellow officers of the line?

Our industry isn't exactly covering itself in or with glory these days, is it?  So I ask you: 

Do you bristle when your boss tells you how to do your job?

Do you bristle even more when someone not your boss tries to tell you how to do your job? 

Do you grit your teeth when your boss tells you how many thing you've done incorrectly? 

Do you grit them even harder when someone not your boss tells you many things you're doing incorrectly?

Do you clench your fists and count slowly to ten when your boss challenges your competence, or your commitment,  or your comprehension, and/or your command?    

I know the operating officers I have most admired do; do bristle and bristle more; do grit and grit more firmly; do clench and count to ten, slowly.   And I know also that the best executive officers were happy, eager even to be challenged (most of the time) by those of us on the line.  My personal favorite among all those I worked for, a president of the railroad no less,  never once pulled rank on me; never told me to just shut up and do as I was told. 

I bring this up because I'm afraid that if you don't bristle, grit, clench, then maybe there's a problem.  Maybe there's not enough personal pride in accepting, and successfully discharging, the professional responsibility intrinsic to  being a  line officer. 

Also, if you don't,  then I'd worry that maybe you aren't your own toughest critic.  That, being your own toughest critic, is 50 percent of the job.  The other 150 percent is doing your homework and showing up everyday to put the lessons learned from the homework into practice. 

Look, I made a career, meager as it might have been, of bristling, gritting, clenching.  And I came close to ending that career several times.  I've been "sat in the corner" with little to do except master all 35,999 games of Freecell. And, hell yes, it bothered me.  Didn't make me regret doing what I did, or change what or how I did after serving my time in the corner, but it certainly wasn't pleasant.

But "pleasant" has nothing to do with what has to be done, and what has to be done is to always look for a better way.  "Find a way" means find a better way.  

You hate it when NTSB shows up on your property and paralyzes your operation; when they help themselves, politely or not, to critical data and information you need to determine what happened and what can be done to prevent it from happening again?  Great.  So don't wait for NTSB.   Take all your measurements, download your event recorders, mark the point of rest before anyone else does. 

Better yet, let's not give NTSB a reason to show up on the property, any railroad property anywhere.   That would be sweet wouldn't it? 

To do that of course we have to prevent stop signal violations; we have to prevent overspeed derailments; we have to prevent collisions; we have to prevent improper operation of switches. 

Most of all we have to eliminate the risk of anyone on a train going from A to X not getting to X safely.

A whole division of NTSB with nothing to do? Sounds good to me.  I bet it sounds pretty good to them.  

  Remember, whenever you're asking a question about the railroad, you're always asking the same question: Who's in charge?

You are. Find the better way.  

David Schanoes 

February 6, 2018

"They can bill me!"--Ripley, Aliens