August 4, 2025 • 51 mins
In this episode, Keaton Turner remembers Aaron Contreras and shares a segment from the vault. He discusses managing teams, decision-making, and handling incompetence. Keaton recounts a child's perspective on learning from mistakes and a mishap involving fluids. He explores the concept of beige flags, attracting talent in the mining industry, and the benefits of letting go. The episode also examines HR's role in termination decisions, the consequences of ignoring warning signs, and trusting leadership instincts. Keaton reflects on leadership's duty to preempt issues and team dynamics.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hey, guys.
Thanks for tuning back in to the Podcast.
Man, it's with a heavy heart that that I sharethe news that Aaron Contreras, one of our own
Turner Mining Group employees, lost his life ina car accident yesterday morning.
(00:23):
He he was a great young man, 25 years old, hadfive little kids.
A couple of them, I'm understanding, are justgetting ready to start school.
And so took yesterday off of the podcast andshow of support for Aaron and just out of
respect for the family.
(00:43):
It's obviously, if you can imagine, a superhard time.
Aaron was working for us down in Texas, and hiscoworkers had a lot of really nice things to
say about him, so it's just a real bummer.
It's crazy, you know, life life life can bevery short and sudden and changed in the blink
of an eye, and, you know, I my thoughts andprayers go out to his whole family.
(01:09):
So anyway, that is the reason there was noepisode that dropped yesterday.
I, to be honest with you, I didn't even recordone today.
I, I'm gonna pull an episode out of the vault.
It's an episode I recorded a little while back.
It's, it's a full blown rant.
I don't know if that's the best way to jumpright back into the podcast after taking a day
(01:34):
off, but, but it's what I got.
So hopefully, you get a little bit of value,enjoyment, laughter out of it, and, and I
appreciate you guys listening.
(02:15):
This one's fresh.
This one is going to be a rant.
It's a fresh rant.
And and the only reason I ever do these rantsis because I've had to live through something.
(02:38):
I'm never gonna rant on something that's notfresh.
I'm never going to, you know, come on here andbe spicy if it's something that I haven't or am
not currently living through.
And this one's this one's fresh for me.
I'm I'm probably gonna end up throwing thisepisode into the folder that I call the vault,
(03:05):
for my own good, for my own protection.
Because anytime I feel this way, anytime I Iknow I'm gonna do a rant, my worry is always
that it comes across the wrong way.
My worry is that I offend someone.
I say something that I regret.
I say something that I should have framed updifferently.
(03:29):
My worry is always that I wish I would havegiven it the forty eight hour rule, and I
didn't give it the forty eight hour rule.
And so this one, I'm gonna throw into the I'mgonna throw it into the vault.
I'm gonna sit on it for at least forty eighthours, and we'll see.
We'll see if I end up, you know, riding withthis one or not, dropping this one or not.
(03:55):
I don't know.
Welcome back to the Purdium Podcast.
I'm Keaton Turner.
I gotta take a deep breath here.
One of the tough parts about building abusiness, one of the tough parts of leading
teams of people or leading a team of people,one of the tough parts of being a manager or a
(04:21):
boss or whatever word you wanna use to describesomeone, in a position of, influence or control
or power or whatever, one one of the toughestparts about it is that you have to watch people
do things that just make you scratch your head.
(04:45):
You have to watch people on your team everyonce in while do something.
You're like you you think to yourself, did Idid I really just watch that happen?
Did did did a did a human being with a fullydeveloped brain, an adult person, actually just
(05:06):
make that decision?
This is tough.
This is a tough one to deal with.
I've had it every step of the way in my career.
I'll be surrounded by someone, by a group ofpeople, and I'll think to myself, what is
actually happening here?
Is this person that unintelligent?
(05:31):
Did they just have a brain fart?
Did they have a moment in time where the thewires connecting the the the waves in their
brain?
Just the wires maybe short circuited orsomething.
Is the person drunk?
Are they on some sort of illicit drug?
(05:52):
Are they trying to sabotage me and what I'mtrying to do and the team?
Like, you go through these periods of timewhere you watch someone make a decision, a
conscious decision.
They decided to do something, and you watch itunfold and you watch it play out, and you're
(06:14):
like, I cannot believe I just witnessed thathappen.
You have to laugh to keep from crying some daysbecause the tough part about building a
business, building a team, being a manager,being a boss, being a person, you have to watch
(06:34):
other people make decisions and live with thedecisions they made.
You have to you have to trust other people.
You have to give them responsibility.
You have to give them the tools, give them therope, give them the leash, and allow them to
kind of blossom on their own and make their owndecisions.
(06:55):
And a lot of times, it's really fun to watchpeople.
Right?
You see young up and coming guys, and they youknow, they'll make a decision and maybe it's
not the right decision at the moment, but theyfigure it out and they correct it and they
figure out how to solve the problem theycreated.
And then other times you watch people who justhave it.
(07:16):
They got the it fact.
Right?
Everything they do, every decision they make,every word they speak, they've just got it.
They're on point.
They deliver result after result after result.
They rarely screw up.
And when they do screw up, they know they'vescrewed up before they even make the decision.
They catch themselves kind of mid screw up.
(07:37):
I love to watch those people.
I love to deal.
I love to I love to deal with those people.
I love to work alongside those people.
But then you do this game long enough.
You, you manage people long enough.
You manage teams long enough.
You build long enough.
It's inevitable.
You're gonna run across the person where thebrain just doesn't work.
(08:06):
I I don't know how else to say it.
I I I'm trying not to be derogatory and offendmassive groups of people with my comments here.
Again, this one's a rant.
This one's a very subdued rant because I'mtrying not to explode through the top of my
bronco here.
But every once in while, you run across peoplewho just don't have it.
(08:29):
The elevator doesn't work, let alone go to thetop.
It doesn't work.
It doesn't leave the First Floor.
I I used the I used the term this morning in mymessage to the team.
These people are the dullest spoons in thedrawer.
(08:51):
These people are Delberts.
And if your God given name is Delbert, I'msorry.
I feel bad for you.
But every once in while, run across thesepeople who you're like, what is going through
your brain?
What's happening?
What are you thinking?
(09:12):
What are you doing?
Do you even know what you do?
Hey.
Hey, buddy.
Do you even know where you are right now?
Do you know that you're on planet Earth herewith us doing things, like with your hands?
You're making decisions with your brain?
I I don't I don't even know how to navigatethis episode because it never ceases to amaze
(09:35):
me how blown away I am when I watch someone,full blown Delbert moment, when I watch someone
do something, and I'm like, yep.
That person's wearing our logo.
Yep.
That person just did that.
They are wearing our badge on their shirt foreveryone else to see how screwed up we are.
(09:57):
It it never ceases to amaze me how surprised Ican get at the lack of intelligence that some
people naturally display in their day to daylives.
It it I'm blown away every time.
Every time I see one of these moments wheresomebody makes a choice, like, they make a
choice as an adult.
(10:18):
It's not like they're eight years old.
It's not like they're 14.
These are full blown adults getting paid moneyto make choices, and I'll watch some of these
choices, and I'll be just be I'll just besitting there like, this this can't be real.
Someone's punking me.
Someone has got a camera in my office when Isee what we just did, and I hear of the details
(10:46):
of the decisions we just made.
Someone's punking me.
I am getting punked.
Maybe maybe this is true.
Maybe I really am getting punked.
Someone's playing a joke on me.
Someone's playing a prank on me.
They're like, oh, let's see if we can get themto record a podcast episode today on how
screwed up our decision making was.
I might be getting punked in real time.
I I Lord, I hope.
(11:12):
I don't know what to say.
I told you guys from the very beginning of whenI started this podcast.
I was like, this is gonna be cool, man.
I'll get to I'll get to share my wins andlosses.
Yay.
That'll be fun.
I'll get to share the good days and the wins,and, oh, I guess I I guess I probably should
share the bad days too.
I guess I I should probably tell everyone whenI screw up and how I screw up and how big it
(11:35):
was.
Million dollar mistakes, $5,000,000 mistakes.
And then I get to days like today where I whereI don't even I literally don't know how to put
words together to make it make sense.
I'm dealing with two incidents.
No one got hurt.
Nothing nothing crazy.
Phone call, and I'm gonna hit the red button onthat one because that person does not wanna
(12:00):
talk to me right now.
I I no.
Nothing crazy.
Not you know, I mean, obviously, it's crazy.
I wouldn't be wouldn't be ranting the way I am.
No in no injuries.
No bodily harm.
No effects to the customer, no effects to humanlife or anything like that.
(12:22):
These are small, small things in the grandscheme of our business.
And and most organizations, more organizationsour size, guy like me would never even hear
these incidents.
We've got a little bitty, process where anyincident that happens, I'm I'm on a, I'm on
several, lines of communication where I'malerted when we have, you know, what I'll call
(12:47):
an oopsie.
And they can be small oopsies.
They can be big oopsies.
They it can be serious incidents, or it can besomething not very serious.
But I'm telling you right now, and I say thisall the time.
I love starting with the phrase, one of thehardest parts about it.
(13:09):
Like, one of the biggest challenges, one everytime I do that, I'm like, man, how many biggest
challenges are there in business?
How many hardest parts are there?
I think this takes the cake.
I think this new revelation I'm having,watching people make decisions that are so far
(13:35):
from being anywhere close to the rightdecision, this might be the toughest part of
leading teams of people.
This might be the toughest part of being amanager.
This might be the toughest part of being aboss, a team lead, a foreman, a superintendent,
a project manager.
I had somebody reach out to me the other day onthe hotline.
(13:56):
They're like, man, I I I'm on this job, and Iturned my head for two seconds, and these these
freaking guys, they don't know what they'redoing.
They're like, they're digging in the wrong spotand doing the wrong thing.
And I'm like, you know what?
It's a you problem.
I remember giving this this advice.
I'm like, that's a you problem.
You you're the one that hired them.
(14:17):
You're the one that gave them instructions.
You're the one that that's you.
And and now I live through what I'm livingthrough now.
And I wanna get mad at, like, I wanna get madat the people that that make these choices that
(14:38):
that prove their incompetence.
I wanna get mad at the people that make aconscious decision to do something that is so
far from the right thing.
I wanna be mad at them or the layers ofmanagement between me and them.
And in reality, I mean, sure, it's fine.
Get mad for a second and throw your littlehissy fit and preach your little gospel to the
(15:03):
team.
But at the end the day, it rolls up.
It's all me.
It's my logo on the guy's hard hat.
It's my logo on his safety vest.
And and in some roundabout crazy butterflyeffect way, it's it's, you know, my fault that
we have somebody like that on the team.
There's a million examples.
(15:24):
I'm using this one because it's fresh, and Iand I don't know if I really wanna tell the
full story because it's probably a this is thethis is the challenging part.
I'm gonna say this, and this is gonna get me introuble, but that's okay.
It's my podcast.
I can do what I want.
It's usually the nicest people, the biggesthearted people who are the most incompetent.
(15:50):
Usually.
In my experience, it's usually the the guy thatscrews something up so bad that you wonder if
you're getting punked is usually the guy that'sgot a really big heart.
He's trying really hard, but he forgot hislunchbox that day and got hungry, and so the
calories didn't go to his brain, and his brainjust turned off.
(16:12):
Usually, the people that make the mistakes thatyou're like, how is this even possible?
How is how is this even a remote reality in theworld we're living in?
Usually, those people at the center of that arereally good people.
And and this is what makes it so hard becauseyou wanna scream and yell.
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You wanna throw something.
I want to put my fist through the wallsometimes.
It's like the kid that's five years old thatgrabs the Sharpie out of the drawer and draws a
very picturesque farm scene on her wall in herbedroom with the Sharpie.
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You're like, oh, that's no big deal.
I just have to repaint the whole room.
It's no biggie.
She meant well.
It's actually a pretty nice picture.
Pretty cool little drawing, but, you know, it'sin Sharpie, and and it made its way to the
floor to the carpet, and you gotta recarpet theroom.
(17:17):
It it feels like that.
Some of these some of these choices that thatthat our people, our teams, our representatives
have made, at the heart of it, it's like, man,they're a good person.
They want they want the company to win.
They don't wanna screw up, but their elevatorjust doesn't move very far.
(17:39):
This sounds insensitive.
I'm gonna have to listen to this one back a fewtimes to see if I ever even drop this.
But but the reason I share all this is becausethis is what it is.
This is what people deal with when you'rebuilding teams.
Some of the most legit companies out there, thebiggest logos, they deal with this stuff.
They deal with people making decisions,representatives of their company making
(18:02):
decisions that will blow your mind.
Today's decision, or I guess it's been a coupledays now, but we've had I shouldn't say
multiple.
There's two there's been two instances wherewe've made decisions.
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Representatives of our company have made adecision that just blows my mind.
And and I know I know the the intelligentpeople that listen to this will say, oh, well,
there's a process breakdown.
Oh, there's a communication breakdown.
Oh, that, you know, this thing should have beenlabeled that way.
Or, ah, he might've he might've lacked sometraining.
(18:45):
It's a supervisor problem.
It's a company culture problem.
Like, I know there are gonna be people thatpoint to a lot of those things.
And by the way, you might be right about someof them.
We might actually have a communicationbreakdown or a process breakdown or whatever.
Maybe it's a training breakdown.
But at the end of the day, we are a companywith several 100 people, and you have to trust
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people to make decisions, whether there's aprocess in place or not, whether there is an
SOP or not, whether there has been trainingaround it or not, something as simple as and
you guys have seen this.
I know you've seen this.
There's a prank going around.
It was going around a while back where thedaughter of a family, she's like a new driver,
(19:38):
16 years old.
She calls her dad.
She's driving her dad's truck, and it's aprank.
Right?
She's recording herself on the phone with herdad.
And she calls her dad and says, hey, dad.
I put gas in the truck, and it's making a weirdnoise.
The dad's like, what?
What do you mean you put gas in the truck?
(19:59):
It's a diesel truck.
You you put gas in the truck.
She's like, yeah.
I put gas in the truck, and it's making a weirdnoise.
I don't know what's going on.
It's not wanting to go though.
The truck I'm pushing the pedal.
It doesn't go anywhere.
And he's like, what color was the handle of thepump you used?
She's like, oh, it was it was the black handle.
He's like, Sarah, you're supposed to use thegreen handle.
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It's a diesel truck.
She's like, oh, I I just I the other one wascheaper.
The the black handle was cheaper, so I used theblack handle.
And he loses his mind.
It's a prank.
Maybe you've seen this around social media.
This is why I feel like I'm getting pranked.
(20:41):
Have you ever seen someone take a blue handle?
I and again, I don't some of you guys may notbe familiar with how equipment works or
systems, you know, fuel systems, emissionssystems, the blue handle.
Typically, in every operation I've ever seen,the blue handle means it's DEF.
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DEF is d e f, diesel exhaust fluid.
If you ever pick up a blue handle and you'rethinking about doing something with it, you
need to make sure that you put the blue handleinto the hole that has the blue cap, the cap
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that's blue, like blue and blue.
They go together.
You put the diesel exhaust fluid into the tankthat holds the diesel exhaust fluid.
It's I know it might not always seem like oneplus one makes two, but sometimes one plus one
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makes two, and blue handle, blue cap means theygo together.
On heavy equipment, there are these things thatstick onto the equipment.
They're called stickers.
(22:13):
I I I know I'm so spicy in this one.
I I already apologize in advance, but you guysget my good days and you get the bad days.
There are things stuck on equipment calledstickers, and there are stickers that have
orange backgrounds.
Those are called warning stickers, and thosewarn you of something.
Right?
Step here.
Don't step there.
(22:34):
Be careful.
Don't put your hand here because there's amoving part that might cut it off.
Stickers with orange backgrounds and bigexclamation marks or arrows or caution signs
mean you should pay attention to that.
When there's a sticker with a big orange labelthat says death only with a large exclamation
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mark, and you open that little door up andthere's a blue cap, the blue handle and the
blue cap go together, and the machine is happy.
For whatever reason, some people choose to putthe blue handle into the black cap or the metal
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cap.
Next to these black caps and metal caps, capsthat have keys on them, if there's a cap that's
got a key on it and you gotta, like, reallywork it's in kind of a weird spot.
You gotta really work to get it open.
Probably means it's something that that thatdoesn't need a ton of routine top offs.
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Right?
If it's in a hard to reach location, probablymeans it doesn't need topped off very often.
Otherwise, the engineers of the machine wouldhave designed it to be easy easily accessible.
If you ignore all the orange stickers and youignore the colors on the handles and the caps,
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there is a scenario that pops up that's verybad.
And that scenario is when you put the dieselexhaust fluid, DEF, the blue handle, into the
metal cap, the the black cap that says hot oilon it, the big sticker that says hot oil.
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When you mix the blue handle with the cap thatsays hot oil, the machine doesn't like it.
The machine doesn't like it.
When you put DEF in the hydraulic oil tank, themachine doesn't like it.
And Deep breath.
(24:53):
When when we run machines across the countryyear after year, hundreds of machines, We run
hundreds of hours, thousands of hours, tens ofthousands of hours actually of machine hours a
year.
We fill up machines every day.
We cycle them every day.
They come in and get fuel.
If they're low on oil, they get topped off onoil and they figure out why they're burning
(25:16):
oil.
If they're low on DEF, we tap we top them offon DEF, put the blue in the blue.
When we put DEF into the hydraulic oil tank, Ijust have to wonder if I'm getting punked.
(25:37):
I just have to wonder.
And it might have been I don't I have no ideathe guy's name or the gal's name.
Maybe I shouldn't be sexist and assume it was aguy that would make this decision.
I have no idea the name.
Might be a great employee.
Might listen to the podcast and and feel, youknow, two feet tall.
(25:58):
That's not my intention.
We all screw up.
I I've shared my screw ups.
A $5,000,000 mistake is a lot worse than thanputting death in the hydraulic tank.
But every once in a while, when you're buildingteams, when you're leading people, when you're
(26:19):
grinding your balls off to try to hitproduction goals and keep people safe and meet
customer expectations and and really just tryto make a dime, and you see somebody do
something as silly as putting death in thehydraulic oil reservoir, you just have to
(26:44):
wonder, are you getting punked?
Is there a bigger force out there that's, like,testing your your mentals?
I go through this stuff.
This is real.
This is stuff that happens in my life.
This is stuff that I can't make the I can'tmake that up.
I wish I could make it up.
I wish it was a funny story that I'm like, ah,see.
(27:04):
I got you.
You can't make it up.
I can't.
I and I share the story, you know, ideal hopinghoping, a, it makes me feel a little better
that I get that I get this, like, steam blownoff, but I also share the story because other
(27:24):
people I know can relate.
Right?
You can't turn your head for two minuteswithout someone screwing something up.
I I've been there.
I know what that feels like.
But I really share the story for this onesimple reason, and that simple reason is
there's a concept that I've adopted calledbeige flags.
(27:50):
You've heard me talk about this.
Beige flags.
Beige flags are these things that that peoplewave early on after they're hired.
We all have flags.
(28:11):
They're you can't see them.
You can't they're not they're not real.
They're not tangible flags that you can walkaround with.
They are this is a hyperbole.
We all have these flags that we carry around.
And when you hire a new employee, they have apacket of flags, and and there's a green flag.
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And they wave the green flag when when theykill it, when they're doing something to
produce results, and they're driving action andmaking good decisions.
There are red flags that you wave when it'slike, hey.
The guy, you know, it's his first week on onthe job, and he has been a no call, no show for
two out of the four days.
(28:54):
That's that's a red flag.
Go ahead and wave that one around.
But then there's this color between green andred, and it's beige.
It's kinda boring.
It's kinda like a it's kinda like a color that,meh, doesn't really get your attention.
It's not great.
It's not green, but but it's also not terrible.
(29:15):
It's not red.
It's a beige flag.
And people wave these things around like likecrazy.
You hire someone new, and they'll just they'lljust take these beige flags out of their
pocket.
They just wave them around, dancing around theproject, dancing around the site, dancing
around the office.
They're just waving them over their head.
Woo hoo.
(29:35):
The beige flags stack up time after timebecause people ignore them.
People ignore beige flags.
That's why they're beige.
Right?
The no one ignores a green flag.
They're like, man, we hired a rock star.
This is green flags.
Sunshine ahead.
People don't ignore the red flags.
No call, no show two out of the first fourdays.
(29:57):
That's it's hard to ignore that.
People ignore beige flags.
And and what happens when you ignore beigeflags long enough, what happens is you end up
with death in the hydraulic tank.
You end up with someone rolling a half amillion dollar piece of equipment.
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What happens with beige flags long enough isyou completely change the activities that your
crew is doing for the day, And you see one guyoff just driving out in the desert, just
wherever he wants to drive.
You're like, woah.
Wait a second.
The whole crew followed the order.
(30:47):
Timmy is way out there yonder, like, drivingaround lost.
Doesn't know what he's doing.
When you ignore beige flags long enough, itabsolutely ends up kicking you right in the
teeth.
Might take a while.
(31:08):
Might take a month.
Might take six months.
Might take a year.
Sometimes a beige flag, the guy can wave themaround for more than a year depending on the
role that they're in.
But if you ignore beige flags long enough, theykick you right in the teeth.
And and what this looks like is it looks likesomebody that has given you warning sign after
(31:34):
warning sign after warning sign that there is aproblem coming.
Right?
They're maybe it's an attitude thing.
Right?
They show up, and they're, like, a little bitfoggy eyed and, you know, probably, not showing
up looking like they've got it all together.
Maybe their hair is a little bit messy.
(31:55):
Maybe it's the same shirt they wore yesterdayand the day before.
Like, there's a lot of little instances ofbeige flags.
You know?
Maybe for lunch, they're drinking a warm BudLight.
I've had this one happen.
I I would actually probably categorize that asa red flag.
But back then, a little more acceptable.
Might have just been a beige flag.
(32:16):
Guy was 80 years old.
Beige flags pop up, and and they're very easyto sweep under the rug.
They're very easy, especially as a manager.
I I I heard from my team when when I broughtthese issues up and and, you know, got on my
soapbox about how we could be making such sillymistakes.
(32:40):
Like, one of the comments was like, yeah.
But, like, this region we're working in, like,there aren't a bunch of, like, legit people
just standing in line, breaking the door down,ready to come in and do this kind of work.
Like, it's it's a challenge that our industryhas had for a long time.
(33:00):
The mining industry has has really struggledkind of at large.
There's pockets of success here and there.
But at large, the mining industry has reallystruggled to attract the brightest minds and
top talent when you compare it to otherindustries.
And so I get it.
I I I had a guy one time that, you know, man,somebody would do something like this, and he
(33:22):
would just fire the whole crew.
I I swear.
If somebody put death in the in the hydraulictank or death in the fuel tank, he'd just fire
the whole crew.
He'd be like, you know what?
You're all dead.
You're all dead to me.
And that's tough.
Right?
Because then you gotta start from scratch, andyou gotta weed your way through new hires.
(33:43):
But, man, we cannot turn a blind eye to beigeflags.
It's hard.
I I asked the question, why don't we firepeople for doing nothing wrong?
(34:03):
This is a real question.
I don't know if any of you guys have everthought about this.
Why don't we fire someone for doing nothingwrong?
And I know you're you're probably likewondering, where the heck is he going with
this?
Well, we we hire people for doing nothingright.
We do this all the time.
We hire people for doing nothing right.
(34:25):
We hire Timmy off the street.
We don't know what he's done.
We don't know if he's done anything right.
Sometimes we don't call references.
Sometimes we don't have a positive letter ofreference.
Sometimes we haven't spoken to their previousemployer.
We hire people who, for our company, have donenothing right.
(34:47):
So why don't we fire people for doing nothingwrong?
This is this is a novel concept.
To me, beige flags doesn't mean you've donesomething wrong.
A beige flag is just soft enough to fly underthe radar of doing something wrong.
(35:08):
Red flag, you've done something wrong.
Beige flag, you haven't done something wrong,but but something's maybe not quite right.
My advice is to fire people before they ever dosomething wrong.
(35:32):
We have to I mean, this is especially in ourindustry, I don't think there's any I've said
this a million times.
I don't think there's any magic in hiring.
You can you can hire a million people.
Some of them will pull the wool over your eyesand lie to your face and tell you they know
what they're doing and they end up having noclue what they're doing.
Other people will downplay it.
(35:52):
I got a bunch of guys that do this.
They're like, I'm not bad.
And then they get on-site and you're like,dude, you're phenomenal.
What do you mean you're not bad?
Like, you just there is no magic in hiring.
The magic isn't firing.
Hiring fast, firing even faster.
When someone starts waving beige flags aroundand the the leader of the operation, the leader
(36:20):
of the team, the manager, the boss, thewhoever, the decision maker, when he has a
feeling in his gut that this person is notright, why are you waiting for them to do
something wrong?
You hired them and they didn't do anythingright.
(36:40):
So why don't you fire them before they dosomething wrong?
You you've heard this.
I know people have heard this.
They you know, I've been on-site many a timeswhere I'm talking to the leader of the
operation, project manager, foreman,superintendent, whoever.
And I'll be asking questions like, hey.
How's the crew?
You got any bad apples?
(37:00):
Or, like, every time.
Every time I've ever asked the question, arethere any bad apples?
Every time someone will say, well, no.
Not really.
And I'm like, woah.
I mean, what does that mean not really?
Like, you either have bad apples or you don'thave them.
Like, how what how do you what's not reallymean?
(37:20):
It's like, well, no.
I mean, Timmy over there, you know, I'm justkinda waiting for him to screw up, and and then
we'll get rid of him because I I mean, hiswritings on the wall with that guy.
And and I and I sit there, and I'm like, whatwhat are we talking about?
Timmy, who you just said something is not rightwith that guy, but you're gonna wait for him to
(37:46):
screw up something, and then you're gonna takeaction so that, you know, he doesn't screw up
multiple things.
We're just gonna let him screw up one thing.
And and the and the guy kinda looks at youweird, and he's like, well, I mean, he hasn't
done anything wrong yet.
I can't fire like, HR won't let me fire like, Ican't fire him.
(38:06):
He's not done anything wrong.
I'm like, well, you just said he wasn't quiteright.
I'm using your you're the one telling me he's apotential problem.
I don't know, Timmy.
Like, well, I mean, yeah, I guess I mean, hehasn't done anything wrong.
He just hasn't done a whole lot right yet.
It's kind of that weird spot.
(38:27):
I'm like, then why are we not firing him?
Why?
Why are we waiting for him to put death in thehydraulic tank?
Why are we waiting for him to roll his $800,000truck that he's driving?
(38:49):
Why are we waiting for him to injure hiscoworker or worse, injure himself?
Why are we waiting?
If you know something's not right, if you feelin your gut he's going to do something
eventually to get fired, why are we allowingthat to happen?
Never understood this.
Some people say, well, wait a minute.
(39:11):
We got rules.
We got policies like HR.
I'm like, wait.
Wait a second.
Wait a second.
So you're telling me now HR is running yourproject?
Like, do you report to HR?
I know we have again, this is gonna get me introuble.
I know we have rules.
We got systems we gotta follow.
We got steps.
(39:31):
Almost every time I've seen a real incident,almost every time, probably every time I've
seen a real incident, an injury, an accident,something happen, almost every single time
someone has said, I thought that guy was gonnabe a problem.
I knew something was coming.
I just he was on a downhill spiral, like,almost every time.
(39:54):
So if we really do care about keeping peoplesafe, if we really do care about protect know,
we're our brother's keeper and making theindustry better.
If we care about achieving our mission, I'mtalking selfishly now, Turner Mining Group's
mission of making the industry a better place,Why are we waiting for bad things to happen
(40:14):
before we decide to be leaders?
Why are we waiting?
Why are we throwing it on HR's plate for, like,a proper investigation and proper steps?
This is an at will employment.
He can leave anytime he wants as an employee.
We can also ask him to leave anytime we want asan employer, especially if there are beige
(40:42):
flags, especially if there's an attitudeproblem, a culture problem.
Like, I feel passionate about this.
I know there are gonna be people that disagree,and there are gonna be people that are
intelligent, they say, well, yeah, but dueprocess.
You know, you can't fire someone if theyhaven't done anything wrong.
We hired them and they didn't do anythingright.
(41:04):
What do you mean we can't fire them if theydon't do anything wrong?
We can.
Sure we can.
We can send them on their way.
We can help them go get a job somewhere elsethat's less dangerous, that doesn't have big
stickers on equipment.
This is a rant.
I know it is, and and I I know there are gonnabe people affected by this that are good
(41:26):
people.
The challenge is we can't allow a good personto make a bad decision that impacts other
people's families, other people's lives, otherpeople's jobs.
To flush the hydraulic system of a dozer in ourworld is several thousand dollars.
(41:52):
To replace the oil in the hydraulic system isseveral thousand dollars.
So someone made the decision, the consciousdecision, the erroneous decision to wipe away
all of the operating profit from that operationfor that day, maybe even for that week,
(42:17):
depending on how expensive the repair is, thatimpacts families.
Thank goodness nobody was hurt.
Thank goodness it wasn't serious.
But my guess is somewhere, at some point,someone noticed some beige flags and thought,
you know what?
I don't know if that guy should be the oneresponsible for the health and well-being of
(42:46):
this half a million dollar asset.
I don't know if I should trust him to go dothat.
And and by the way, if we can't trust him to gofill up a machine with big old stickers on it,
do we trust him to operate it?
Do we trust him to operate it every day for along time?
(43:10):
Like like, simple and and I get.
I'm I'm maybe overreacting.
Sure.
Maybe somebody just maybe he had something badthat hap happened at home.
Maybe his mind wasn't at work.
Maybe he just made an honest mistake.
I mean, I have made honest mistake after honestI drove away from the fuel pump one time in my
pickup truck and pulled the pulled the fuelnozzle with me for a few feet.
(43:34):
And I'm like, woah, Too much going on in mybrain.
Honest mistakes happen, and I don't mean tocrucify one guy over an honest mistake.
But the point is when beige flags stack up andwe don't do anything about them, we are running
(43:56):
headfirst into a big incident, a big ballkicking, a big punch in the mouth at some
point.
When beige flags keep popping up and gounattended, unaddressed, it's a matter of time
before something terrible happens.
(44:17):
And and and define your terrible.
Right?
This is not this is not that bad of a deal.
Right?
We've got a few thousand dollars to flush thesystem and put new oil in.
No big deal.
We move on.
But it could have been a big deal.
Someone could have gotten hurt.
(44:37):
Someone could have gotten killed.
People actually die in our business.
And and and the and the bummer about that iswhen you ignore beige flags and you accept
someone and mistakes and the lack of awarenessthey're giving to their job, when something
(44:58):
terrible does happen this is this I I know thishurts to say it.
When something terrible does happen and you'rethe one that has ignored all the warning signs,
the beige flags, you will have so much guiltthat you didn't trust your gut and do something
sooner.
It's a bummer.
I know it sucks to fire people.
I've fired hundreds of people over my time.
(45:20):
It sucks every single time.
Never had an I've never enjoyed one of them.
But I definitely don't want to be the guy tocall somebody's family and say, yeah, man.
Sorry about that.
He's yeah.
He's not gonna come home anymore becausebecause I ignored beige flag after beige flag.
(45:43):
There is no magic, and I'm not heartless.
I am I have a huge heart.
One of our core values is a heart for people.
But I'll tell you, in my opinion, the best wayto have a heart for people is to get the wrong
people off the bus, off the team, they don'taffect all the other people.
(46:06):
Having a heart for people means firing people,believe it or not.
I got a heart from our whole organization, allthe families, and all the peep sometimes that
means you have to fire someone to protect allthe other people and protect their finances and
their income and the operation and thecustomer.
I mean, man, I don't feel any better aftergetting all that out.
(46:32):
I don't I don't I really don't feel any better.
I know there's a bunch of people and layers inbetween me and the issue that that I know they
don't feel any better, But this is real.
This is stuff that happens across operations,and this is stuff that I know other people deal
with.
I saw I saw Justin Holmberg post here not toolong ago of a skid steer kind of up on its end,
(46:57):
bucket in the ground, like, you know, rear endand the track the tracks were off the ground.
Like, this stuff happens.
People make choices.
People make mistakes.
Sometimes they're good, honest people who justhad a bad day.
Other other times there are people that justshouldn't be there.
They just shouldn't be around yellow iron.
(47:18):
They shouldn't be in a dangerous environment.
Shouldn't be there.
And if you're a leader and you know in your gutyou have a problem, somebody's listening to
this.
I'm gonna end with this.
Somebody is listening to this right now who hassome responsibility.
He has people reporting to him.
He is running an operation, running a team,running a crew, and he knows in his gut he has
(47:43):
one person that shouldn't be there.
They haven't done anything wrong yet.
They haven't, like, flown any big red flagsyet, but there is one person that in their gut,
they're saying, this guy shouldn't be here.
It's only a matter of time.
There's gonna be an incident.
There's gonna be an accident.
There's gonna be something bad happen.
(48:04):
There's gonna be a major financial issuebecause of decisions they made.
There's gonna be a cultural issue because oftheir beliefs and how they, you know, how they
operate.
Somebody's listening to this with one personthat they know shouldn't be there.
The question is, are they going to do anythingabout it?
(48:25):
Are they just going to let the beige flag slideright under the rug, keep operating, and then
one day, six months from now, pick up thephone, dial the hotline, and say, man, heard
that episode six months ago.
I should've got rid of them then, and just costme half a million dollars.
Just cost me an employee's couple fingers thatgot smashed, cut off.
(48:48):
Like, so goes leadership.
So goes the company.
And every operation, every leader has aresponsibility to put the right people in the
right seats on the bus and get the wrong peoplethat are in the wrong seats off the bus.
(49:08):
I think you can do more good.
This is this is a hot take.
I think you can do more good for an operationby getting the wrong people off the bus.
Sometimes than what you can, just having allthe seats on the bus filled with the right
people.
I would I will take a half full bus with theright people versus a full bus where there's
(49:32):
one guy who's not right, one guy who's in thewrong seat.
I'll take a half full bus knowing that allthose people are in the right seat versus a
completely full bus, and I gotta worry whichone of these guys is gonna fail first.
Which one of these guys is gonna make a hugeaccident incident first?
(49:52):
Which one of these guys is gonna get injuredfirst?
So, man, my my feedback is trust your gut asleaders.
Trust what your gut is telling you.
Pay attention to the beige flags.
Don't sweep them under the rugs.
And and obviously, you know, be empathetic.
Everyone everyone, I think, in some way, shape,or form deserves a chance, deserves a shot.
(50:14):
Some people deserve a second chance.
I'm actually even a believer in in thirdchances.
But some people, regardless of what chancethey're on, should not be a part of your
operation.
I believe some people don't deserve any chancesif they're if they're not qualified or have the
(50:36):
skill sets or the mentality or the mindset tobe there.
So that's what I got.
I man.
I don't know if that's gonna come out or not.
I don't know if that's gonna land right or not.
I have no idea.
But, yeah, pray you're getting your team orwhatever.
Yep.
Do it again later.
Hey, guys.
Thanks for tuning back in to the Podcast.
Man, it's with a heavy heart that that I sharethe news that Aaron Contreras, one of our own
Turner Mining Group employees, lost his life ina car accident yesterday morning.
(00:23):
He he was a great young man, 25 years old, hadfive little kids.
A couple of them, I'm understanding, are justgetting ready to start school.
And so took yesterday off of the podcast andshow of support for Aaron and just out of
respect for the family.
(00:43):
It's obviously, if you can imagine, a superhard time.
Aaron was working for us down in Texas, and hiscoworkers had a lot of really nice things to
say about him, so it's just a real bummer.
It's crazy, you know, life life life can bevery short and sudden and changed in the blink
of an eye, and, you know, I my thoughts andprayers go out to his whole family.
(01:09):
So anyway, that is the reason there was noepisode that dropped yesterday.
I, to be honest with you, I didn't even recordone today.
I, I'm gonna pull an episode out of the vault.
It's an episode I recorded a little while back.
It's, it's a full blown rant.
I don't know if that's the best way to jumpright back into the podcast after taking a day
(01:34):
off, but, but it's what I got.
So hopefully, you get a little bit of value,enjoyment, laughter out of it, and, and I
appreciate you guys listening.
(02:15):
This one's fresh.
This one is going to be a rant.
It's a fresh rant.
And and the only reason I ever do these rantsis because I've had to live through something.
(02:38):
I'm never gonna rant on something that's notfresh.
I'm never going to, you know, come on here andbe spicy if it's something that I haven't or am
not currently living through.
And this one's this one's fresh for me.
I'm I'm probably gonna end up throwing thisepisode into the folder that I call the vault,
(03:05):
for my own good, for my own protection.
Because anytime I feel this way, anytime I Iknow I'm gonna do a rant, my worry is always
that it comes across the wrong way.
My worry is that I offend someone.
I say something that I regret.
I say something that I should have framed updifferently.
(03:29):
My worry is always that I wish I would havegiven it the forty eight hour rule, and I
didn't give it the forty eight hour rule.
And so this one, I'm gonna throw into the I'mgonna throw it into the vault.
I'm gonna sit on it for at least forty eighthours, and we'll see.
We'll see if I end up, you know, riding withthis one or not, dropping this one or not.
(03:55):
I don't know.
Welcome back to the Purdium Podcast.
I'm Keaton Turner.
I gotta take a deep breath here.
One of the tough parts about building abusiness, one of the tough parts of leading
teams of people or leading a team of people,one of the tough parts of being a manager or a
(04:21):
boss or whatever word you wanna use to describesomeone, in a position of, influence or control
or power or whatever, one one of the toughestparts about it is that you have to watch people
do things that just make you scratch your head.
(04:45):
You have to watch people on your team everyonce in while do something.
You're like you you think to yourself, did Idid I really just watch that happen?
Did did did a did a human being with a fullydeveloped brain, an adult person, actually just
(05:06):
make that decision?
This is tough.
This is a tough one to deal with.
I've had it every step of the way in my career.
I'll be surrounded by someone, by a group ofpeople, and I'll think to myself, what is
actually happening here?
Is this person that unintelligent?
(05:31):
Did they just have a brain fart?
Did they have a moment in time where the thewires connecting the the the waves in their
brain?
Just the wires maybe short circuited orsomething.
Is the person drunk?
Are they on some sort of illicit drug?
(05:52):
Are they trying to sabotage me and what I'mtrying to do and the team?
Like, you go through these periods of timewhere you watch someone make a decision, a
conscious decision.
They decided to do something, and you watch itunfold and you watch it play out, and you're
(06:14):
like, I cannot believe I just witnessed thathappen.
You have to laugh to keep from crying some daysbecause the tough part about building a
business, building a team, being a manager,being a boss, being a person, you have to watch
(06:34):
other people make decisions and live with thedecisions they made.
You have to you have to trust other people.
You have to give them responsibility.
You have to give them the tools, give them therope, give them the leash, and allow them to
kind of blossom on their own and make their owndecisions.
(06:55):
And a lot of times, it's really fun to watchpeople.
Right?
You see young up and coming guys, and they youknow, they'll make a decision and maybe it's
not the right decision at the moment, but theyfigure it out and they correct it and they
figure out how to solve the problem theycreated.
And then other times you watch people who justhave it.
(07:16):
They got the it fact.
Right?
Everything they do, every decision they make,every word they speak, they've just got it.
They're on point.
They deliver result after result after result.
They rarely screw up.
And when they do screw up, they know they'vescrewed up before they even make the decision.
They catch themselves kind of mid screw up.
(07:37):
I love to watch those people.
I love to deal.
I love to I love to deal with those people.
I love to work alongside those people.
But then you do this game long enough.
You, you manage people long enough.
You manage teams long enough.
You build long enough.
It's inevitable.
You're gonna run across the person where thebrain just doesn't work.
(08:06):
I I don't know how else to say it.
I I I'm trying not to be derogatory and offendmassive groups of people with my comments here.
Again, this one's a rant.
This one's a very subdued rant because I'mtrying not to explode through the top of my
bronco here.
But every once in while, you run across peoplewho just don't have it.
(08:29):
The elevator doesn't work, let alone go to thetop.
It doesn't work.
It doesn't leave the First Floor.
I I used the I used the term this morning in mymessage to the team.
These people are the dullest spoons in thedrawer.
(08:51):
These people are Delberts.
And if your God given name is Delbert, I'msorry.
I feel bad for you.
But every once in while, run across thesepeople who you're like, what is going through
your brain?
What's happening?
What are you thinking?
(09:12):
What are you doing?
Do you even know what you do?
Hey.
Hey, buddy.
Do you even know where you are right now?
Do you know that you're on planet Earth herewith us doing things, like with your hands?
You're making decisions with your brain?
I I don't I don't even know how to navigatethis episode because it never ceases to amaze
(09:35):
me how blown away I am when I watch someone,full blown Delbert moment, when I watch someone
do something, and I'm like, yep.
That person's wearing our logo.
Yep.
That person just did that.
They are wearing our badge on their shirt foreveryone else to see how screwed up we are.
(09:57):
It it never ceases to amaze me how surprised Ican get at the lack of intelligence that some
people naturally display in their day to daylives.
It it I'm blown away every time.
Every time I see one of these moments wheresomebody makes a choice, like, they make a
choice as an adult.
(10:18):
It's not like they're eight years old.
It's not like they're 14.
These are full blown adults getting paid moneyto make choices, and I'll watch some of these
choices, and I'll be just be I'll just besitting there like, this this can't be real.
Someone's punking me.
Someone has got a camera in my office when Isee what we just did, and I hear of the details
(10:46):
of the decisions we just made.
Someone's punking me.
I am getting punked.
Maybe maybe this is true.
Maybe I really am getting punked.
Someone's playing a joke on me.
Someone's playing a prank on me.
They're like, oh, let's see if we can get themto record a podcast episode today on how
screwed up our decision making was.
I might be getting punked in real time.
I I Lord, I hope.
(11:12):
I don't know what to say.
I told you guys from the very beginning of whenI started this podcast.
I was like, this is gonna be cool, man.
I'll get to I'll get to share my wins andlosses.
Yay.
That'll be fun.
I'll get to share the good days and the wins,and, oh, I guess I I guess I probably should
share the bad days too.
I guess I I should probably tell everyone whenI screw up and how I screw up and how big it
(11:35):
was.
Million dollar mistakes, $5,000,000 mistakes.
And then I get to days like today where I whereI don't even I literally don't know how to put
words together to make it make sense.
I'm dealing with two incidents.
No one got hurt.
Nothing nothing crazy.
Phone call, and I'm gonna hit the red button onthat one because that person does not wanna
(12:00):
talk to me right now.
I I no.
Nothing crazy.
Not you know, I mean, obviously, it's crazy.
I wouldn't be wouldn't be ranting the way I am.
No in no injuries.
No bodily harm.
No effects to the customer, no effects to humanlife or anything like that.
(12:22):
These are small, small things in the grandscheme of our business.
And and most organizations, more organizationsour size, guy like me would never even hear
these incidents.
We've got a little bitty, process where anyincident that happens, I'm I'm on a, I'm on
several, lines of communication where I'malerted when we have, you know, what I'll call
(12:47):
an oopsie.
And they can be small oopsies.
They can be big oopsies.
They it can be serious incidents, or it can besomething not very serious.
But I'm telling you right now, and I say thisall the time.
I love starting with the phrase, one of thehardest parts about it.
(13:09):
Like, one of the biggest challenges, one everytime I do that, I'm like, man, how many biggest
challenges are there in business?
How many hardest parts are there?
I think this takes the cake.
I think this new revelation I'm having,watching people make decisions that are so far
(13:35):
from being anywhere close to the rightdecision, this might be the toughest part of
leading teams of people.
This might be the toughest part of being amanager.
This might be the toughest part of being aboss, a team lead, a foreman, a superintendent,
a project manager.
I had somebody reach out to me the other day onthe hotline.
(13:56):
They're like, man, I I I'm on this job, and Iturned my head for two seconds, and these these
freaking guys, they don't know what they'redoing.
They're like, they're digging in the wrong spotand doing the wrong thing.
And I'm like, you know what?
It's a you problem.
I remember giving this this advice.
I'm like, that's a you problem.
You you're the one that hired them.
(14:17):
You're the one that gave them instructions.
You're the one that that's you.
And and now I live through what I'm livingthrough now.
And I wanna get mad at, like, I wanna get madat the people that that make these choices that
(14:38):
that prove their incompetence.
I wanna get mad at the people that make aconscious decision to do something that is so
far from the right thing.
I wanna be mad at them or the layers ofmanagement between me and them.
And in reality, I mean, sure, it's fine.
Get mad for a second and throw your littlehissy fit and preach your little gospel to the
(15:03):
team.
But at the end the day, it rolls up.
It's all me.
It's my logo on the guy's hard hat.
It's my logo on his safety vest.
And and in some roundabout crazy butterflyeffect way, it's it's, you know, my fault that
we have somebody like that on the team.
There's a million examples.
(15:24):
I'm using this one because it's fresh, and Iand I don't know if I really wanna tell the
full story because it's probably a this is thethis is the challenging part.
I'm gonna say this, and this is gonna get me introuble, but that's okay.
It's my podcast.
I can do what I want.
It's usually the nicest people, the biggesthearted people who are the most incompetent.
(15:50):
Usually.
In my experience, it's usually the the guy thatscrews something up so bad that you wonder if
you're getting punked is usually the guy that'sgot a really big heart.
He's trying really hard, but he forgot hislunchbox that day and got hungry, and so the
calories didn't go to his brain, and his brainjust turned off.
(16:12):
Usually, the people that make the mistakes thatyou're like, how is this even possible?
How is how is this even a remote reality in theworld we're living in?
Usually, those people at the center of that arereally good people.
And and this is what makes it so hard becauseyou wanna scream and yell.
(16:35):
You wanna throw something.
I want to put my fist through the wallsometimes.
It's like the kid that's five years old thatgrabs the Sharpie out of the drawer and draws a
very picturesque farm scene on her wall in herbedroom with the Sharpie.
(16:57):
You're like, oh, that's no big deal.
I just have to repaint the whole room.
It's no biggie.
She meant well.
It's actually a pretty nice picture.
Pretty cool little drawing, but, you know, it'sin Sharpie, and and it made its way to the
floor to the carpet, and you gotta recarpet theroom.
(17:17):
It it feels like that.
Some of these some of these choices that thatthat our people, our teams, our representatives
have made, at the heart of it, it's like, man,they're a good person.
They want they want the company to win.
They don't wanna screw up, but their elevatorjust doesn't move very far.
(17:39):
This sounds insensitive.
I'm gonna have to listen to this one back a fewtimes to see if I ever even drop this.
But but the reason I share all this is becausethis is what it is.
This is what people deal with when you'rebuilding teams.
Some of the most legit companies out there, thebiggest logos, they deal with this stuff.
They deal with people making decisions,representatives of their company making
(18:02):
decisions that will blow your mind.
Today's decision, or I guess it's been a coupledays now, but we've had I shouldn't say
multiple.
There's two there's been two instances wherewe've made decisions.
(18:22):
Representatives of our company have made adecision that just blows my mind.
And and I know I know the the intelligentpeople that listen to this will say, oh, well,
there's a process breakdown.
Oh, there's a communication breakdown.
Oh, that, you know, this thing should have beenlabeled that way.
Or, ah, he might've he might've lacked sometraining.
(18:45):
It's a supervisor problem.
It's a company culture problem.
Like, I know there are gonna be people thatpoint to a lot of those things.
And by the way, you might be right about someof them.
We might actually have a communicationbreakdown or a process breakdown or whatever.
Maybe it's a training breakdown.
But at the end of the day, we are a companywith several 100 people, and you have to trust
(19:12):
people to make decisions, whether there's aprocess in place or not, whether there is an
SOP or not, whether there has been trainingaround it or not, something as simple as and
you guys have seen this.
I know you've seen this.
There's a prank going around.
It was going around a while back where thedaughter of a family, she's like a new driver,
(19:38):
16 years old.
She calls her dad.
She's driving her dad's truck, and it's aprank.
Right?
She's recording herself on the phone with herdad.
And she calls her dad and says, hey, dad.
I put gas in the truck, and it's making a weirdnoise.
The dad's like, what?
What do you mean you put gas in the truck?
(19:59):
It's a diesel truck.
You you put gas in the truck.
She's like, yeah.
I put gas in the truck, and it's making a weirdnoise.
I don't know what's going on.
It's not wanting to go though.
The truck I'm pushing the pedal.
It doesn't go anywhere.
And he's like, what color was the handle of thepump you used?
She's like, oh, it was it was the black handle.
He's like, Sarah, you're supposed to use thegreen handle.
(20:21):
It's a diesel truck.
She's like, oh, I I just I the other one wascheaper.
The the black handle was cheaper, so I used theblack handle.
And he loses his mind.
It's a prank.
Maybe you've seen this around social media.
This is why I feel like I'm getting pranked.
(20:41):
Have you ever seen someone take a blue handle?
I and again, I don't some of you guys may notbe familiar with how equipment works or
systems, you know, fuel systems, emissionssystems, the blue handle.
Typically, in every operation I've ever seen,the blue handle means it's DEF.
(21:07):
DEF is d e f, diesel exhaust fluid.
If you ever pick up a blue handle and you'rethinking about doing something with it, you
need to make sure that you put the blue handleinto the hole that has the blue cap, the cap
(21:30):
that's blue, like blue and blue.
They go together.
You put the diesel exhaust fluid into the tankthat holds the diesel exhaust fluid.
It's I know it might not always seem like oneplus one makes two, but sometimes one plus one
(21:52):
makes two, and blue handle, blue cap means theygo together.
On heavy equipment, there are these things thatstick onto the equipment.
They're called stickers.
(22:13):
I I I know I'm so spicy in this one.
I I already apologize in advance, but you guysget my good days and you get the bad days.
There are things stuck on equipment calledstickers, and there are stickers that have
orange backgrounds.
Those are called warning stickers, and thosewarn you of something.
Right?
Step here.
Don't step there.
(22:34):
Be careful.
Don't put your hand here because there's amoving part that might cut it off.
Stickers with orange backgrounds and bigexclamation marks or arrows or caution signs
mean you should pay attention to that.
When there's a sticker with a big orange labelthat says death only with a large exclamation
(22:59):
mark, and you open that little door up andthere's a blue cap, the blue handle and the
blue cap go together, and the machine is happy.
For whatever reason, some people choose to putthe blue handle into the black cap or the metal
(23:26):
cap.
Next to these black caps and metal caps, capsthat have keys on them, if there's a cap that's
got a key on it and you gotta, like, reallywork it's in kind of a weird spot.
You gotta really work to get it open.
Probably means it's something that that thatdoesn't need a ton of routine top offs.
(23:49):
Right?
If it's in a hard to reach location, probablymeans it doesn't need topped off very often.
Otherwise, the engineers of the machine wouldhave designed it to be easy easily accessible.
If you ignore all the orange stickers and youignore the colors on the handles and the caps,
(24:09):
there is a scenario that pops up that's verybad.
And that scenario is when you put the dieselexhaust fluid, DEF, the blue handle, into the
metal cap, the the black cap that says hot oilon it, the big sticker that says hot oil.
(24:31):
When you mix the blue handle with the cap thatsays hot oil, the machine doesn't like it.
The machine doesn't like it.
When you put DEF in the hydraulic oil tank, themachine doesn't like it.
And Deep breath.
(24:53):
When when we run machines across the countryyear after year, hundreds of machines, We run
hundreds of hours, thousands of hours, tens ofthousands of hours actually of machine hours a
year.
We fill up machines every day.
We cycle them every day.
They come in and get fuel.
If they're low on oil, they get topped off onoil and they figure out why they're burning
(25:16):
oil.
If they're low on DEF, we tap we top them offon DEF, put the blue in the blue.
When we put DEF into the hydraulic oil tank, Ijust have to wonder if I'm getting punked.
(25:37):
I just have to wonder.
And it might have been I don't I have no ideathe guy's name or the gal's name.
Maybe I shouldn't be sexist and assume it was aguy that would make this decision.
I have no idea the name.
Might be a great employee.
Might listen to the podcast and and feel, youknow, two feet tall.
(25:58):
That's not my intention.
We all screw up.
I I've shared my screw ups.
A $5,000,000 mistake is a lot worse than thanputting death in the hydraulic tank.
But every once in a while, when you're buildingteams, when you're leading people, when you're
(26:19):
grinding your balls off to try to hitproduction goals and keep people safe and meet
customer expectations and and really just tryto make a dime, and you see somebody do
something as silly as putting death in thehydraulic oil reservoir, you just have to
(26:44):
wonder, are you getting punked?
Is there a bigger force out there that's, like,testing your your mentals?
I go through this stuff.
This is real.
This is stuff that happens in my life.
This is stuff that I can't make the I can'tmake that up.
I wish I could make it up.
I wish it was a funny story that I'm like, ah,see.
(27:04):
I got you.
You can't make it up.
I can't.
I and I share the story, you know, ideal hopinghoping, a, it makes me feel a little better
that I get that I get this, like, steam blownoff, but I also share the story because other
(27:24):
people I know can relate.
Right?
You can't turn your head for two minuteswithout someone screwing something up.
I I've been there.
I know what that feels like.
But I really share the story for this onesimple reason, and that simple reason is
there's a concept that I've adopted calledbeige flags.
(27:50):
You've heard me talk about this.
Beige flags.
Beige flags are these things that that peoplewave early on after they're hired.
We all have flags.
(28:11):
They're you can't see them.
You can't they're not they're not real.
They're not tangible flags that you can walkaround with.
They are this is a hyperbole.
We all have these flags that we carry around.
And when you hire a new employee, they have apacket of flags, and and there's a green flag.
(28:34):
And they wave the green flag when when theykill it, when they're doing something to
produce results, and they're driving action andmaking good decisions.
There are red flags that you wave when it'slike, hey.
The guy, you know, it's his first week on onthe job, and he has been a no call, no show for
two out of the four days.
(28:54):
That's that's a red flag.
Go ahead and wave that one around.
But then there's this color between green andred, and it's beige.
It's kinda boring.
It's kinda like a it's kinda like a color that,meh, doesn't really get your attention.
It's not great.
It's not green, but but it's also not terrible.
(29:15):
It's not red.
It's a beige flag.
And people wave these things around like likecrazy.
You hire someone new, and they'll just they'lljust take these beige flags out of their
pocket.
They just wave them around, dancing around theproject, dancing around the site, dancing
around the office.
They're just waving them over their head.
Woo hoo.
(29:35):
The beige flags stack up time after timebecause people ignore them.
People ignore beige flags.
That's why they're beige.
Right?
The no one ignores a green flag.
They're like, man, we hired a rock star.
This is green flags.
Sunshine ahead.
People don't ignore the red flags.
No call, no show two out of the first fourdays.
(29:57):
That's it's hard to ignore that.
People ignore beige flags.
And and what happens when you ignore beigeflags long enough, what happens is you end up
with death in the hydraulic tank.
You end up with someone rolling a half amillion dollar piece of equipment.
(30:26):
What happens with beige flags long enough isyou completely change the activities that your
crew is doing for the day, And you see one guyoff just driving out in the desert, just
wherever he wants to drive.
You're like, woah.
Wait a second.
The whole crew followed the order.
(30:47):
Timmy is way out there yonder, like, drivingaround lost.
Doesn't know what he's doing.
When you ignore beige flags long enough, itabsolutely ends up kicking you right in the
teeth.
Might take a while.
(31:08):
Might take a month.
Might take six months.
Might take a year.
Sometimes a beige flag, the guy can wave themaround for more than a year depending on the
role that they're in.
But if you ignore beige flags long enough, theykick you right in the teeth.
And and what this looks like is it looks likesomebody that has given you warning sign after
(31:34):
warning sign after warning sign that there is aproblem coming.
Right?
They're maybe it's an attitude thing.
Right?
They show up, and they're, like, a little bitfoggy eyed and, you know, probably, not showing
up looking like they've got it all together.
Maybe their hair is a little bit messy.
(31:55):
Maybe it's the same shirt they wore yesterdayand the day before.
Like, there's a lot of little instances ofbeige flags.
You know?
Maybe for lunch, they're drinking a warm BudLight.
I've had this one happen.
I I would actually probably categorize that asa red flag.
But back then, a little more acceptable.
Might have just been a beige flag.
(32:16):
Guy was 80 years old.
Beige flags pop up, and and they're very easyto sweep under the rug.
They're very easy, especially as a manager.
I I I heard from my team when when I broughtthese issues up and and, you know, got on my
soapbox about how we could be making such sillymistakes.
(32:40):
Like, one of the comments was like, yeah.
But, like, this region we're working in, like,there aren't a bunch of, like, legit people
just standing in line, breaking the door down,ready to come in and do this kind of work.
Like, it's it's a challenge that our industryhas had for a long time.
(33:00):
The mining industry has has really struggledkind of at large.
There's pockets of success here and there.
But at large, the mining industry has reallystruggled to attract the brightest minds and
top talent when you compare it to otherindustries.
And so I get it.
I I I had a guy one time that, you know, man,somebody would do something like this, and he
(33:22):
would just fire the whole crew.
I I swear.
If somebody put death in the in the hydraulictank or death in the fuel tank, he'd just fire
the whole crew.
He'd be like, you know what?
You're all dead.
You're all dead to me.
And that's tough.
Right?
Because then you gotta start from scratch, andyou gotta weed your way through new hires.
(33:43):
But, man, we cannot turn a blind eye to beigeflags.
It's hard.
I I asked the question, why don't we firepeople for doing nothing wrong?
(34:03):
This is a real question.
I don't know if any of you guys have everthought about this.
Why don't we fire someone for doing nothingwrong?
And I know you're you're probably likewondering, where the heck is he going with
this?
Well, we we hire people for doing nothingright.
We do this all the time.
We hire people for doing nothing right.
(34:25):
We hire Timmy off the street.
We don't know what he's done.
We don't know if he's done anything right.
Sometimes we don't call references.
Sometimes we don't have a positive letter ofreference.
Sometimes we haven't spoken to their previousemployer.
We hire people who, for our company, have donenothing right.
(34:47):
So why don't we fire people for doing nothingwrong?
This is this is a novel concept.
To me, beige flags doesn't mean you've donesomething wrong.
A beige flag is just soft enough to fly underthe radar of doing something wrong.
(35:08):
Red flag, you've done something wrong.
Beige flag, you haven't done something wrong,but but something's maybe not quite right.
My advice is to fire people before they ever dosomething wrong.
(35:32):
We have to I mean, this is especially in ourindustry, I don't think there's any I've said
this a million times.
I don't think there's any magic in hiring.
You can you can hire a million people.
Some of them will pull the wool over your eyesand lie to your face and tell you they know
what they're doing and they end up having noclue what they're doing.
Other people will downplay it.
(35:52):
I got a bunch of guys that do this.
They're like, I'm not bad.
And then they get on-site and you're like,dude, you're phenomenal.
What do you mean you're not bad?
Like, you just there is no magic in hiring.
The magic isn't firing.
Hiring fast, firing even faster.
When someone starts waving beige flags aroundand the the leader of the operation, the leader
(36:20):
of the team, the manager, the boss, thewhoever, the decision maker, when he has a
feeling in his gut that this person is notright, why are you waiting for them to do
something wrong?
You hired them and they didn't do anythingright.
(36:40):
So why don't you fire them before they dosomething wrong?
You you've heard this.
I know people have heard this.
They you know, I've been on-site many a timeswhere I'm talking to the leader of the
operation, project manager, foreman,superintendent, whoever.
And I'll be asking questions like, hey.
How's the crew?
You got any bad apples?
(37:00):
Or, like, every time.
Every time I've ever asked the question, arethere any bad apples?
Every time someone will say, well, no.
Not really.
And I'm like, woah.
I mean, what does that mean not really?
Like, you either have bad apples or you don'thave them.
Like, how what how do you what's not reallymean?
(37:20):
It's like, well, no.
I mean, Timmy over there, you know, I'm justkinda waiting for him to screw up, and and then
we'll get rid of him because I I mean, hiswritings on the wall with that guy.
And and I and I sit there, and I'm like, whatwhat are we talking about?
Timmy, who you just said something is not rightwith that guy, but you're gonna wait for him to
(37:46):
screw up something, and then you're gonna takeaction so that, you know, he doesn't screw up
multiple things.
We're just gonna let him screw up one thing.
And and the and the guy kinda looks at youweird, and he's like, well, I mean, he hasn't
done anything wrong yet.
I can't fire like, HR won't let me fire like, Ican't fire him.
(38:06):
He's not done anything wrong.
I'm like, well, you just said he wasn't quiteright.
I'm using your you're the one telling me he's apotential problem.
I don't know, Timmy.
Like, well, I mean, yeah, I guess I mean, hehasn't done anything wrong.
He just hasn't done a whole lot right yet.
It's kind of that weird spot.
(38:27):
I'm like, then why are we not firing him?
Why?
Why are we waiting for him to put death in thehydraulic tank?
Why are we waiting for him to roll his $800,000truck that he's driving?
(38:49):
Why are we waiting for him to injure hiscoworker or worse, injure himself?
Why are we waiting?
If you know something's not right, if you feelin your gut he's going to do something
eventually to get fired, why are we allowingthat to happen?
Never understood this.
Some people say, well, wait a minute.
(39:11):
We got rules.
We got policies like HR.
I'm like, wait.
Wait a second.
Wait a second.
So you're telling me now HR is running yourproject?
Like, do you report to HR?
I know we have again, this is gonna get me introuble.
I know we have rules.
We got systems we gotta follow.
We got steps.
(39:31):
Almost every time I've seen a real incident,almost every time, probably every time I've
seen a real incident, an injury, an accident,something happen, almost every single time
someone has said, I thought that guy was gonnabe a problem.
I knew something was coming.
I just he was on a downhill spiral, like,almost every time.
(39:54):
So if we really do care about keeping peoplesafe, if we really do care about protect know,
we're our brother's keeper and making theindustry better.
If we care about achieving our mission, I'mtalking selfishly now, Turner Mining Group's
mission of making the industry a better place,Why are we waiting for bad things to happen
(40:14):
before we decide to be leaders?
Why are we waiting?
Why are we throwing it on HR's plate for, like,a proper investigation and proper steps?
This is an at will employment.
He can leave anytime he wants as an employee.
We can also ask him to leave anytime we want asan employer, especially if there are beige
(40:42):
flags, especially if there's an attitudeproblem, a culture problem.
Like, I feel passionate about this.
I know there are gonna be people that disagree,and there are gonna be people that are
intelligent, they say, well, yeah, but dueprocess.
You know, you can't fire someone if theyhaven't done anything wrong.
We hired them and they didn't do anythingright.
(41:04):
What do you mean we can't fire them if theydon't do anything wrong?
We can.
Sure we can.
We can send them on their way.
We can help them go get a job somewhere elsethat's less dangerous, that doesn't have big
stickers on equipment.
This is a rant.
I know it is, and and I I know there are gonnabe people affected by this that are good
(41:26):
people.
The challenge is we can't allow a good personto make a bad decision that impacts other
people's families, other people's lives, otherpeople's jobs.
To flush the hydraulic system of a dozer in ourworld is several thousand dollars.
(41:52):
To replace the oil in the hydraulic system isseveral thousand dollars.
So someone made the decision, the consciousdecision, the erroneous decision to wipe away
all of the operating profit from that operationfor that day, maybe even for that week,
(42:17):
depending on how expensive the repair is, thatimpacts families.
Thank goodness nobody was hurt.
Thank goodness it wasn't serious.
But my guess is somewhere, at some point,someone noticed some beige flags and thought,
you know what?
I don't know if that guy should be the oneresponsible for the health and well-being of
(42:46):
this half a million dollar asset.
I don't know if I should trust him to go dothat.
And and by the way, if we can't trust him to gofill up a machine with big old stickers on it,
do we trust him to operate it?
Do we trust him to operate it every day for along time?
(43:10):
Like like, simple and and I get.
I'm I'm maybe overreacting.
Sure.
Maybe somebody just maybe he had something badthat hap happened at home.
Maybe his mind wasn't at work.
Maybe he just made an honest mistake.
I mean, I have made honest mistake after honestI drove away from the fuel pump one time in my
pickup truck and pulled the pulled the fuelnozzle with me for a few feet.
(43:34):
And I'm like, woah, Too much going on in mybrain.
Honest mistakes happen, and I don't mean tocrucify one guy over an honest mistake.
But the point is when beige flags stack up andwe don't do anything about them, we are running
(43:56):
headfirst into a big incident, a big ballkicking, a big punch in the mouth at some
point.
When beige flags keep popping up and gounattended, unaddressed, it's a matter of time
before something terrible happens.
(44:17):
And and and define your terrible.
Right?
This is not this is not that bad of a deal.
Right?
We've got a few thousand dollars to flush thesystem and put new oil in.
No big deal.
We move on.
But it could have been a big deal.
Someone could have gotten hurt.
(44:37):
Someone could have gotten killed.
People actually die in our business.
And and and the and the bummer about that iswhen you ignore beige flags and you accept
someone and mistakes and the lack of awarenessthey're giving to their job, when something
(44:58):
terrible does happen this is this I I know thishurts to say it.
When something terrible does happen and you'rethe one that has ignored all the warning signs,
the beige flags, you will have so much guiltthat you didn't trust your gut and do something
sooner.
It's a bummer.
I know it sucks to fire people.
I've fired hundreds of people over my time.
(45:20):
It sucks every single time.
Never had an I've never enjoyed one of them.
But I definitely don't want to be the guy tocall somebody's family and say, yeah, man.
Sorry about that.
He's yeah.
He's not gonna come home anymore becausebecause I ignored beige flag after beige flag.
(45:43):
There is no magic, and I'm not heartless.
I am I have a huge heart.
One of our core values is a heart for people.
But I'll tell you, in my opinion, the best wayto have a heart for people is to get the wrong
people off the bus, off the team, they don'taffect all the other people.
(46:06):
Having a heart for people means firing people,believe it or not.
I got a heart from our whole organization, allthe families, and all the peep sometimes that
means you have to fire someone to protect allthe other people and protect their finances and
their income and the operation and thecustomer.
I mean, man, I don't feel any better aftergetting all that out.
(46:32):
I don't I don't I really don't feel any better.
I know there's a bunch of people and layers inbetween me and the issue that that I know they
don't feel any better, But this is real.
This is stuff that happens across operations,and this is stuff that I know other people deal
with.
I saw I saw Justin Holmberg post here not toolong ago of a skid steer kind of up on its end,
(46:57):
bucket in the ground, like, you know, rear endand the track the tracks were off the ground.
Like, this stuff happens.
People make choices.
People make mistakes.
Sometimes they're good, honest people who justhad a bad day.
Other other times there are people that justshouldn't be there.
They just shouldn't be around yellow iron.
(47:18):
They shouldn't be in a dangerous environment.
Shouldn't be there.
And if you're a leader and you know in your gutyou have a problem, somebody's listening to
this.
I'm gonna end with this.
Somebody is listening to this right now who hassome responsibility.
He has people reporting to him.
He is running an operation, running a team,running a crew, and he knows in his gut he has
(47:43):
one person that shouldn't be there.
They haven't done anything wrong yet.
They haven't, like, flown any big red flagsyet, but there is one person that in their gut,
they're saying, this guy shouldn't be here.
It's only a matter of time.
There's gonna be an incident.
There's gonna be an accident.
There's gonna be something bad happen.
(48:04):
There's gonna be a major financial issuebecause of decisions they made.
There's gonna be a cultural issue because oftheir beliefs and how they, you know, how they
operate.
Somebody's listening to this with one personthat they know shouldn't be there.
The question is, are they going to do anythingabout it?
(48:25):
Are they just going to let the beige flag slideright under the rug, keep operating, and then
one day, six months from now, pick up thephone, dial the hotline, and say, man, heard
that episode six months ago.
I should've got rid of them then, and just costme half a million dollars.
Just cost me an employee's couple fingers thatgot smashed, cut off.
(48:48):
Like, so goes leadership.
So goes the company.
And every operation, every leader has aresponsibility to put the right people in the
right seats on the bus and get the wrong peoplethat are in the wrong seats off the bus.
(49:08):
I think you can do more good.
This is this is a hot take.
I think you can do more good for an operationby getting the wrong people off the bus.
Sometimes than what you can, just having allthe seats on the bus filled with the right
people.
I would I will take a half full bus with theright people versus a full bus where there's
(49:32):
one guy who's not right, one guy who's in thewrong seat.
I'll take a half full bus knowing that allthose people are in the right seat versus a
completely full bus, and I gotta worry whichone of these guys is gonna fail first.
Which one of these guys is gonna make a hugeaccident incident first?
(49:52):
Which one of these guys is gonna get injuredfirst?
So, man, my my feedback is trust your gut asleaders.
Trust what your gut is telling you.
Pay attention to the beige flags.
Don't sweep them under the rugs.
And and obviously, you know, be empathetic.
Everyone everyone, I think, in some way, shape,or form deserves a chance, deserves a shot.
(50:14):
Some people deserve a second chance.
I'm actually even a believer in in thirdchances.
But some people, regardless of what chancethey're on, should not be a part of your
operation.
I believe some people don't deserve any chancesif they're if they're not qualified or have the
(50:36):
skill sets or the mentality or the mindset tobe there.
So that's what I got.
I man.
I don't know if that's gonna come out or not.
I don't know if that's gonna land right or not.
I have no idea.
But, yeah, pray you're getting your team orwhatever.
Yep.
Do it again later.
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