Rural electric industry leaders define success.

• Author: Strickland, E.E., Jr.
• Position: Berkeley Electric Cooperative Inc CEO attributes business success to good business management and personal leadership

Robert W. Bryant President and General Manager Golden Spread Electric Cooperative, Inc.

An early mentor displayed what I thought at the time was an uncommon skill for charting advantageous business courses in unfamiliar territories. Favorable outcomes were the norm from decisions made months or years earlier. Failures or shortcomings were recognized early and course adjustments made quickly to achieve defined goals and objectives. He had a voracious appetite for gathering and analyzing information and was a master at creative thinking. I came to realize that his "vision" followed from his information-gathering process.

On one wall of my office hangs a photograph of the Blackbird, the once supersecret U.S. Air Force SR-71 strategic reconnaissance aircraft. It serves as a constant reminder that gathering and analyzing the right information rapidly and accurately is a cornerstone in developing winning strategies.

But winning strategies and successful outcomes depend on people, and I learned early that it can be very difficult to succeed alone. Whether gathering and analyzing information or developing and implementing processes or projects, people are a critical ingredient in achieving successful results.

Building long-term relationships with others and seeking ways to utilize their strengths can amplify your results. Generation and transmission cooperatives are a classic example of distribution systems combining their strengths to achieve greater results than individual systems operating alone. Many G&T systems have leveraged their strengths through relationships with other organizations to reach higher goals. Building personal and professional relationships works in creating successful results.

While good information, competent people, and the necessary technical skills are essential to achieving successful outcomes, you must be able to sell yourself and your ideas. That means developing good oral and written communication skills. As a young mechanical engineering graduate I believed that calculations and technical report writing were the principal tools for the job. One of my first assignments involved presenting complex technical information to non-technical people, and I quickly realized that my communication skills needed help. I learned that equal in importance to the technical skills were the skills and talents needed to communicate the merits of my ideas to others.

A second reminder hangs on the wall opposite the SR-71. It is the U.S...