economicmultipliers_95

Economic Multipliers (95)

Do you know what these are?

They help CREATE wealth in systems.

People who don’t screw around are economic multipliers for businesses and society.

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I have had some unique opportunities in life.

In 2005, I had an opportunity to take an introductory course on ‘the grid’ … the nation’s electrical delivery system.

I had been reading some papers and books on electrical ‘stuff’ but still did not understand some (many) things.

The course didn’t really cover the things that I didn’t understand but I finally figured some of those things out. The course did cover tons of things that I never thought about and did not know.

That led to another opportunity: I reviewed a textbook (The Guidebook for Linemen and Cablemen by Wayne Van Soelen). I was reading his materials anyway, took time to make comments and got review credits.

Then, along the way, I wrote a paper about the ‘stuff’ that I did not understand which ultimately evolved into a mini eBook: Understanding Electricity in the Grid (Just a Little Bit Better). The wavelength helped me understand how the equipment could work (like the electrical bus(bar)). Load balancing helped me understand stray voltage better and led me to identify that ‘curing’ stray voltage makes the electrical system more efficient (which means you need less fuel to get ‘the same’ amount of power). Fun ‘stuff’ for a person like me.

But that is not the point of this article.

Very few people in the world are qualified to be electrical linemen.

• • It helps if you liked to climb trees as a child.

  • You have to go through the training and testing to get certified and work in an apprenticeship program with people who know what they are doing.

  • You need to be physically fit and be able to work in all kinds of weather.

  • You cannot be afraid of heights.

  • You have to want to get continuous education throughout your life.

  • You need to be able to read drawings and assess problem situations.

  • You need to be able to work with the public.

  • You need to do things very methodically with attention to the smallest and largest details (Individuals with attention deficit disorder should not apply.)

  • You need to care about safety so much that you would never purposely put anyone else or yourself at risk.

The last couple items are rather fascinating: Jobs and the people in them have ‘personalities.’

For linemen’s work, you have to check your bad days and any biases you have about other people at the door:

• • You ONLY want to be working with people who can focus on the job (even when they might have a thousand other things going on).

  • You ONLY want to be working with people you could trust with your life (even if they don’t like you for some reason).

In linemen’s work, the life of every person on your crew is basically the same as your life because jeopardizing one person (just to screw around) could jeopardize everyone.

Amazingly, if you really want to be safe in life and aspire to extraordinarily high standards, the best jobs in life might be the most hazardous ones because companies value (and normally train to high standards) people who don’t screw around.