Kingsport Spirit

Back at the beginning of my career in the mid-1980s, our community’s largest employer, Eastman Chemical, was going through a transformative process in total quality management. It was based on the management principles that helped Toyota rise from being viewed as an affordable alternative to American-made cars into a global benchmark for reliability, quality, and affordability—the trifecta.

The concept didn’t stay confined to manufacturing. It expanded into other parts of the Kingsport community, including healthcare. But when Pal’s Sudden Service entered the conversation as a fast-food company, it really caught people’s attention. Even my granddaughters recognized before they were eight years old that Pal’s almost always got their order right, while others routinely didn’t. That wasn’t luck—it was the result of a carefully designed process.

Eventually, the conversation turned to government. Too often, the default response to a problem was to add a program, hire more people, and buy more equipment. Each new employee came with a salary and benefits package that carried lifelong implications, especially since local government provided defined pensions for employees and their survivors. What looked like a small decision in the moment often had far-reaching consequences.

Through a series of elected mayors and aldermen, city leadership pressed us to follow the example of organizations like Pal’s and Eastman, believing there were efficiencies to be found in local government as well. Eastman agreed to loan a quality management expert to guide us through the process, and managers from across city departments gathered for the initial sessions.

Some private-sector language felt foreign in a public-sector setting. Terms like “delighted customer” and “repeat business” came up frequently. A police officer raised his hand and asked, “Why would we want repeat business in police work?” The expert replied—paraphrased—“If a private business misses its budget, do you think they’d like the authority to raise mandatory rates to cover the shortfall?” That response stuck with me. Taxes aren’t optional, and failure to pay them can ultimately lead to the loss of one’s property. From that point on, I viewed tax decisions as a sacred responsibility. It’s easy to dismiss an increase as “just a few more dollars,” but for some people, those dollars are the difference between buying groceries or medicine that week.

Over time, I also learned something else: efficiency matters, but it isn’t the ultimate goal. In government—and really in any kind of leadership—the human heart is the point. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. That means slowing down enough to spend time with people, ask questions, and truly listen. Good processes can reduce waste and prevent unforced errors, but compassion is what builds trust. And trust is what makes any system worth having in the first place.

One example from that quality management process has stayed with me ever since. The expert told a story about the Jefferson Memorial. Bird droppings had become a serious problem, and custodians responded by increasing the frequency and intensity of cleaning, which began to damage the stone. The traditional solution would have been to hire more workers and buy more cleaning products. Instead, they paused and asked a more fundamental question: Why did this start happening?

The custodians—those closest to the problem—were able to pinpoint when the issue began. Further analysis showed it coincided with changes in how the memorial was lit at dusk. The lighting attracted swarms of midges during their peak activity period, which in turn attracted birds. The solution was simple but counterintuitive: delay turning on the lights until after dusk. When the lights came on later, the insects didn’t swarm, the birds moved on, and the problem largely resolved itself.

The lesson was clear: address the source, not the symptom. The custodians could have scrubbed the memorial endlessly and never achieved a different result. It would have been the very definition of futility. That insight reshaped how I thought—not just about work, but about life. Over time, I realized that lesson wasn’t limited to management—it applied to how we deal with fear, conflict, and even how we understand life itself.

Recently, while reading Living Fearless by Jamie Winship, I was reminded of that same principle. He uses the metaphor of a trash pile attracting rats. You can spend all your time trying to kill the rats, but as long as the trash pile remains, they’ll keep coming. Remove the trash, and the rats disappear.

In Winship’s framing, the trash pile represents the lies we believe—false narratives that keep us fearful, distracted, and divided. My faith teaches that we are offered access to the eternal power of God, yet we often live as though this life is all there is, clinging to control rather than trusting what comes next. When we confront truth at the root—rather than reacting to fear at the surface—we stop fighting endless battles and begin living freely, wisely, and fearlessly, grounded in faith and trust in what God has already promised.

When my brother was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2003, it moved quickly. He learned at Easter and was gone before Christmas. He was only 54. It hurt me and our family immensely. But it also caused me to reexamine life and death. That was the first time I remember truly realizing that no matter how long we live on this earth, it’s only a nanosecond compared to eternity. It brought clarity. It was a vivid reminder that death isn’t the ending; it’s the beginning. And it has allowed me to live optimistically, not fearful of what’s lurking around the next corner.

After all, we’re only here for a nanosecond, but what we do with that time echoes far beyond it.