A/N: A pre IR moment between Jeff and Lucille
It was a snowy evening at the Tracy farmhouse. The older four sons were sprawled in front of the fireplace, heads on pillows, draped in blankets and drowsing peacefully before the crackling log fire. The youngest was fighting the tail end of a late winter sniffle and asleep on Lucille. She in turn was half lying on the big recliner, one arm cradling the blanket-wrapped Alan while she tweaked an engine manifold design with her free hand, her tablet balanced on the broad armrest of the chair as she made adjustments with the stylus. Jeff was lying on the couch next to her, his tablet on his chest as he worked his way through the last of the day's emails.
Lucille glanced over as something made her husband snort, the projected display of his tablet jiggling with the movement. "What is it?" She asked absently, her stylus dancing through the design.
"Oh, this email from the faculty at Harvard." Jeff craned his neck to look at her. "They've got me doing a presentation and Q&A for their business students next week and asked me to send them my notes beforehand, guess they've had people spouting all sorts to young and impressionable minds." He explained. "They just emailed to ask me to adjust a few things. Apparently in answer to the question 'how do I keep staff morale high and turnover low?' telling them 'If my wife hears I've let middle management treat staff like they're disposable, she'll skin me alive and my mother will help' isn't appropriate. And to 'How do you maintain your code of ethics in business in spite of outside pressures?' I'm supposed to say something more highbrow than 'My parents taught me right from wrong well before I got to your age and I stuck to it.'" Jeff snorted again. "Ever since they made ethics optional for the business degree their quality's gone way down hill."
"Oh I agree." Lucille nodded. "They're quick to distance themselves and put the faculty of law to work every time one of their alumni gets jailed for tax evasion or fraud though."
"Got that right, beautiful." Jeff scowled as he scrolled through the email and the other alterations that had been requested. "Apparently The Golden Rule isn't considered 'Harvard School of Business Appropriate' either. I'm half tempted to go full 'Kan-sas coun-tray farm boy' on 'em in the presentation." He added, deliberately broadening his latent drawl to cartoonish levels. "That'll shock the socks off of them."
"So what will you tell them?" She asked, saving her work and shutting down her tablet. In her arms, Alan snuffled and shifted before resettling his head on her chest and she stroked his hair gently.
Jeff put both hands behind his head and started up at the ceiling for a minute, gathering his thoughts. "I learned the mechanics of being a businessman in college, but I learned how to be a good businessman on my way to space." He began. "Everyone looks at the astronauts because we're the ones up front, but I'm not going any further than I can jump without every single other person involved, from designers to engineers, astronomers, mission control and programmers to the testing team, janitors, drivers, custodial and IT support."
"Name any major company you like, any single listing on Wall Street or Fortune 500 and I'll tell you something about that company: take out their support staff, manufacturing staff and everyone at the proverbial coal face- janitors, cafeteria, cleaners, maintenance, factory line, shipping, executive assistants, receptionists, data entry, call centre- take all those people away and that company will be dead in the water within the day. C-suite, executives, management, they can't do a thing without the rest of the company in place. I'm nothing, and TI is nothing, without those people. That's been my guiding philosophy from day one- The Golden Rule all the way- treat your people well, look after them. If you wouldn't accept the working conditions, why should they?"
"In addition to that you've probably heard this before- people don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers. That's literally on the wall in the executive level at TI. All my executive staff have a direct and personal responsibility for the hiring, training and the performance of all their managers in their departments."
"A really common mistake I've seen elsewhere is promoting people based on their current job performance, not if they have management potential, so I've got some people with Bachelor's degrees managing people with PhDs because their strength is in management of people, the degree just gives them an understanding of the work their people do. And yes, TI's got a long recruitment process, but we make that clear up front because I want the right people in the right place, not just 'good enough'. When we get them we train them well, we pay them well, we value them, look after them and give them the tools to not only do the job, but do it well. Because of that most of them don't leave. If your business model requires you to underpay your staff to stay afloat and you 'can't afford' to have a safe, comfortable working environment for them, you're not a business person. At best you're a scam artist cheating people out of their time, money and ideas. At worst you're a criminal." Jeff concluded, looking at her with the sharp edged grin that meant he was looking for trouble. "What do you think?" He asked.
"You're never going to get invited back there." Lucille noted with not a little amusement, smiling broadly at him.
"Good." Jeff grunted and went back to clearing emails. "They should have asked you to speak. I'm the pretty face who knows how to wrangle people and make speeches, you're the brains of the operation. I told 'em that, but they didn't believe me. Bunch of patriarchal idiots."
Lucille smiled at that, cuddled her littlest closer and listened to the crackling fire, the sounds of her children as they slept and her husband muttering to himself as he attacked the last of his emails.