Curiosity

During my grade school years, I was curious about how things were made, how houses were built, what things were made of, how did rocks turned into metal. I enjoyed chores like painting, pouring concrete and cutting the grass because I could see the results. I learned to cook to become self-sufficient.

I was also curious about how people succeed, why aren’t problems solved, why do companies put up with unions and corruption.  I knew that I would eventually learn the answers to my questions.

In high school I enjoyed things like painting my own car, changing the oil and refurbishing swimming pools, But I spent most of my time studying, working as a musician and being on stage in plays, singing in musicals and winning speech meets.

I was a leader in my high school and recognized that our football and basketball teams were good enough to capture state championships and so did everybody else. I wanted to try an experiment to increase student support of these teams, so I worked with the poster club team and the band to initiate parades of decorated convertibles to away games and formed a Dixieland band to ride and play music at all away games. It worked. Our players on these sports teams were quick to thank me for the support. We did win these championships throughout my years in high school. This was one of the skills I wanted to apply to manufacturing companies.

Knowing that employee morale, teamwork and performance were needed in the manufacturing workforce, I was convinced that my early plan to become a Personnel Director in manufacturing was doable.

My Freshman homeroom teacher asked the class if any of us knew what we wanted to be. Two of us replied. I said I wanted to become a Personnel Director in manufacturing. 

I first became interested in labor relations when I was 10 years old and saw a newspaper article about a Union President who had been assassinated in a car bombing. I concluded we were doing a lousy job in labor relations. My instinct was to fix things that were broken and I believed we needed to fix labor relations. I was right.

Years later, when I was living in St. Charles County, I had another hunch that voters would support the formation of an association of subdivision HOA presidents. St. Charles County was the fastest growing county in the US in the late 1960s. I wrote the bylaws and sent them to other HOA presidents. 300 of these presidents agreed and helped me form the St. Charles County Council of Homeowners’ Associations representing 68,000 home owners.

This experiment was about ensuring the right balance of voter control over property rights and win-win strategies to protect home values for homeowners and ensure good economic development. We were conservative champions of property rights and that won us the trust and respect of developers.  We opposed central planning, but encouraged collaboration. Each development needed enough autonomy to succeed.

I maintained the list of presidents and phone numbers and used this to get information on zoning issues to the County Presiding Judge (the elected county CEO). The Zoning Board never knew how he knew so much about all the zoning issues we were resolving. This worked because we were focused and honest.

Curiosity was the motivation for me, but I also used intuition to identify opportunities I believed were worth seizing. I also had to judge the honesty of the St. Charles residents and leaders. I simply set up a real-time method for finding out what the people thought and passed that on to the elected officials.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader