Page 300 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

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B CHAPTER TEN

Self-Engagement

The Employee Side of the Equation

I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone,
Arizona. It says: “Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest.” I
think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have—when he gives every-
thing that is in him to the job he has before him. That is all you can ask of
him and that is what I have tried to do.
—Harry S. Truman

: STEVEN’S STORY: WEATHERING THE PERFECT STORM

Steven wondered how he’d gotten himself into this mess. There he
was, rolling along nicely in his career, when, according to friends and
colleagues, his “ship began to take on water.”
Steven always loved computers, even before computers were “cool.”
He fondly remembered long nights at the university computer lab
in the late 1970s, readying boxes of punch cards he’d carefully pro-
grammed, so he could haul them around campus. Steven just knew
the effort would pay off, and for the first 20 years of his career he

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