In this issue:

• Orlin Tirrell - Landfill Operator

This is our regular e-message to people who are interested in leading their lives with passion. We send you a short note with information, stories, examples, and practical things you can do to lead your life, work, and organization with passion. Leading With Passion We like the term "leading with passion" because it has two very significant, but related meanings. The first suggests leading off with passion. That is, making the very first priority in your life to live, work, and play passionately and to fully embrace every possible moment. Second, it means that we can lead our organizations, teams, and projects with passion - creating passionate work environments by transferring our own enthusiasm for the organization to others who come into contact with it.

Orlin Tirrell

In class one night a student remarked that his uncle was passionate about working at the landfill. That was just too tempting. Does the notion of passionate work apply to all occupations? Or just to people who work in offices, have high profile jobs, or run large companies? We decided to find out.

Orlin Tirrell lives a mile east of Rigby, Idaho, a small farming community of around 3,000, just north of Idaho Falls. We met him, 84 years old and married for sixty-two of them, at Me - n - Stans restaurant.

What joy can you find in the work you are doing now?
He grew up living on a dry farm, giving him enough experience to qualify for a homestead after he got out of the military. There he farmed 160 acres, growing dry peas, potatoes, malt barley and hay. "I loved the farm," he told us, "but I didn't feel like I could expect my sons to like it just because I did." Selling the farm and the farm equipment was hard. While on the farm, crops were destroyed by hail and wind and frost. "You would walk across the field and there would be very little left and that would be hard to take sometimes."

But he liked it. "I believe it has to be a kind of attitude that you have. If you like something, you kind of stick with it, and if you don't, you had probably better look for something else."

"Most of the time people can find joy in the work that they do. I had this opportunity to work at the landfill and I was in my late 70s when we started that."

Working at the Landfill
Starting at the age of 79, Mr. Tirrell worked in an industrial landfill. He operated the bulldozer and buried the material that was dropped off. He made sure nothing would be harmful to the ground water.

He lent people a hand when unloading their material, checked their loads, and gave them back what the landfill couldn't accept. Sometimes he had problems with members of the public, who didn't realize that the landfill was not for household materials. He tried to help them to understand. Sometimes they were not pleased. "I always tried to end up as friends," he says. "It seemed to work out and I don't think we had many enemies. They all kept coming back anyway."

"What made it enjoyable and the part I enjoyed a lot was the people."

He also took pleasure in driving a bulldozer. "I liked the dozers," he said. On the farm he had grown up being on tractors. During his service in WWII he helped to develop the Alaskan Highway. That winter, in freezing Alaska, he was the only one who knew how to drive a bulldozer. The rest of the personnel were from back east - New Jersey and New York. So he volunteered. It was cold. "We had a military truck with a tarp over the back and we had a little stove with a stovepipe up through the center of the truck so we could burn wood and keep warm. I was fortunate to be the truck driver. Anyway, I got to drive and sit in the nice cab where I could keep warm. The other boys kind of suffered."

As the operator, he pushed down trees, moved snow and ice and asphalt, and supported civilian construction. Did he like it? "It was fun to see all that power up against a big tree. This big machine could do it. It was quite interesting to be able to accomplish so much with a big machine. It was interesting and I enjoyed doing it and it needed to be done.

At the landfill, the same was true. "You could change a lot of things in two minutes."

It comes down to attitude
Orlin Tirrell has enjoyed all the kinds of work he has done. "I think it has a lot to do with attitude," he says. "If you are doing a job, you might as well learn what's good about it and enjoy it. If you don't like it, maybe it's time to move and do some other things. The people I have worked with are loyal friends. You get to love them."

"At the landfill people would come in and it might be a housewife whose husband was off to work. She would come in with a load of stuff to get rid of, so we would help her get unloaded and would visit. One lady brought a skill saw in and it was like new. She said, ‘My husband died a few years ago and I don't need this skill saw. I don't even know how to run it, but if you can use it, I would like to give it to you.' That was a nice fringe benefit."

Orlin Tirrell found meaning in all of the various jobs he has had - creating a new highway, putting food on others' tables, or keeping the ground water safe from hazardous materials. He knows the importance of continual learning and has found work, no matter what it entails, is rewarding because of his joy of working with others.

Orlin Tirrell has had a variety of jobs and found pleasure in them all. Why? Because he made them enjoyable. Are you doing the same? What joy can you find in the work you are doing right now? What gives you a sense of "moving things" in your work? Do you get pleasure from the people you work with every day? Every job has the potential to be nurturing, enjoyable, and meaningful. How can you help your employees find satisfaction in their jobs?

Leading with Passion is a regular communication from Michael Kroth and Patricia Boverie. Michael and Patricia have been researching passionate work since 1999, and their book, Transforming Work: The Five Keys to Achieving Trust, Commitment, and Passion in the Workplace, is about the indispensable necessity of passion for personal and organizational success in the workplace.

© Copyright 2006, All Rights Reserved Patricia Boverie and Michael Kroth