In 1986 I worked for Placid Oil Company, owned by the famous heirs of HL Hunt: Bunker, Herbert, and Lamar. It’s is a sad testament to the crumble of their empire I cannot find a Wikipedia article I can link to PlacdOil and the articles on the brothers are very brief. But during this time I had a manager by the name of Tom Culwell. Tom was an interesting man who loved to pontificate on various subjects. Being very young in my career and already being in management as a supervisor, Tom became a mentor of sorts. He would write me and my fellow supervisor long memos on various subjects and spend hours in his office sharing his wisdom.
Tom was only at Placid a short while before he moved on, but I filed his memos away as gems I might re-visit one day. So now I have decided to use these memos as the basis for a series of blogs I’ll call The Culwell Memos. He began on February 26, 1986 with these words in a memo title, “Effective Supervision”:
As we recently discussed, it takes a great deal of knowledge about a variety of topics to be an effective supervisor. In addition, to the areas that are directly related to data processing we will work towards increasing our skills in the following areas.
1. The management process and the unique role of the supervisor.
2. Establishing and maintaining effective working relationships.
3. Communication necessary for effective participative management and increased productivity.
4. Improving communications with employees, peers, and supervisors.
5. Understanding leadership and developing an effective leadership style.
6. Effective employee discipline.
7. Resolving employee complaints.
8. Establishing standards and assessing employee performance,
9. Employee counseling.
10. Time management.
11. Conducting effective meetings.
In addition to the above, there are a number of other topics I would like to cover at the appropriate time; however, for now we will start with these.
If any of my old compatriots ever wanders across these musings and can tell me what ever became of Tom Culwell, I’d like to know.
Photo by Charl Folscher on Unsplash