“
I used to work at a factory owned by a Fortune 500 company, and one of my pals was a very competent industrial engineer who was always making suggestions about how to improve our processes. But he was just “good ol’ Joe” with a bald head and a potbelly who wore crummy clothes suitable to walking around in a dirty factory, and everybody blew him off.
But good ol’ Joe had been piling up shares in the company stock plan, and one day after a stock run-up, he walked in and quit because he’d cashed out a quarter of his holdings for $1.9 million dollars.
A few months later, we heard an “efficiency expert” was being paid hundreds of dollars an hour to tour our factory and make suggestions. The expert arrived with a large coterie of top executives from downtown, and when we finally got a glimpse of him through the throng of fawning MBAs, it was… good ol’ Joe, except he was wearing a really expensive suit.
Joe wandered through the factory just saying the stuff he’d always been saying, and this time, all the MBAs were scribbling down every word and saying, “Yes, Mr. So-and-so! Can we get you some coffee, Mr. So-and-So?” When Joe saw me, he gave me a wink, and I almost fell over laughing. And this time, they actually implemented some of his ideas.
”— http://www.linkedin.com/answers/technology/software-development/TCH_SFT/608599-18685503
