So I started looking for jobs in the Seattle area. I have worked for 26 years on computers that were originally (and still) called AS/400s, so one of the best sites I found was GetAS400Jobs.net. It became apparent pretty quickly that aside from some short-term contracting positions, the big players were Costco Wholesale and REI. I saw positions for both and applied for both. I knew that if God wanted me to get to Washington, He had the ability and desire to get me a good job in Washington. I didn’t hear from Costco.  The first “bite” that I got was from REI, a company that Fortune magazine says is one of the “top 10 companies to work for in the US.”. I’d have to learn some new software, but it was just RPG programming language. I’ve been doing that for decades. I could do this job!

After a couple of interviews with a really great HR recruiter named Cindy, I thought, “This must be the great job that God had intended for me”. The only downside is that they wanted me to start a month before my daughter was due to go back to her mom’s (6 months with me/6 months with Mom) . I made it through three interviews and by then was told there were only 2 other candidates. The next call would be REI calling to say they’d fly me out for a face-to-face interview.

Here comes my lesson in humility:  I did get the call from Cindy. But not the one I expected. I think she was sincerely disappointed. But they decided to go with somebody local. He had been out work a while, and some of the REI programmers had worked with him before. I was so sure that this had been the great job God had planned for me, but it wasn’t.

It makes sense that they went with somebody they knew.  I know that, in the past, I have been able to get good jobs in Michigan because of somebody I knew.  But I didn’t know anybody in Washington.  But I didn’t know anybody in Washington.  So my first thought was that I needed to make my social network include people in Washington.  As far as I knew, the only person that I knew in Washington was Cindy, the REI recruiter. So I asked her if she would be part of my Linked-In network.  She was more than gracious and indicated that if there was anybody that I wanted to know in her (extensive!!) network, just ask and she’d introduce me.   And she did introduce me to somebody who had a contract job.  As it turned out the job, would be at REI!  So I thought: there’s a way that God can get me into REI.  But here’s the problem:  I was trying to make things happen to reach my goals.  I wasn’t letting God take care of things.  Eventually, it because apparent to me that a contract job was not what God had intended.  I let go and let God and resigned to just keeping my eyes open for jobs on the internet.

Then one night, I saw a posting from Costco for a Turnover Administrator.  ”Turnover” is software that runs on an AS/400 that basically makes sure that two programmers are not working on the the same program at the same time.    Now, seven years ago, we had started using Turnover at DENSO and I was their administrator.  I really like the software.  When we first got it, the people that make Turnover said that it is pretty complex and we should have somebody come in and train us.  So we hired a Turnover consultant named Greg King to come in to teach us Turnover.  He was only there for about 2 days (and that was seven years ago).  Fast-forward to 2012, Greg is now a Turnover Administrator for Costco Wholesale.  He is moving to a different position within Costco and they were looking for somebody to take his place.  They showed him the resumes of the applicants and he looked at mine and said, “that name seems familiar” and “we should talk to him”.  Greg went back to his old consulting records and confirmed that I was, indeed, the guy he remembered from Battle Creek, Michigan.   Costco sent me an email to let me know that I had a telephone interview with people from Costco and one of the names was Greg King.  I saw that and said, “that name seems familiar” so I called the help desk for Turnover and confirmed that Greg was the guy that had taught me how to set up Turnover.   So God had provided somebody in Washington who knew me!!   The telephone interview went great.  Greg and I both acknowledge that we remembered each other.  After the interview, Costco set up an all expenses paid trip for me and my wife, Sherry to come to Washington for a weekend and have a face-to-face interview.   The weekend was fantastic (it was warm and never rained!) and eventually they called and offered me a job.  Roughly three weeks after that, I started as a Costco employee.

The basic premise is

that you ask “why” 5 times and you will come to the root cause of a problem. Many times you can get to the root cause in less than 5 questions. I’m told that this is very similar to a method that was employed by Socrates, but, the Japanese have been around a lot longer than the Greeks, so I suspect that the Japanese learned it first.

Here’s an example that shows how it works: (and this just made up):

Q1. Why was the part defective?
A. Because the machine was not calibrated correctly.

Q2. Why was the machine was not calibrated correctly?
A. Because the regular maintenance was not performed.

Q3. Why wasn’t it performed?
A. Because Bob was out sick and he’s the only one who knows how to calibrate that machine.

Q4. Why is Bob the only one who knows how to calibrate the machine?
A. Because we never trained anybody else on that machine.
Q5. Why haven’t we trained anybody else?
A. Because we haven’t given Bob the time to train anybody else.

The conclusion: Provide time to train other employees and we can avoid defects like this in the future.

It is a great technique and often you can find more than one root cause. For example, question 4 could have been “why was Bob sick?” Asking the right questions takes practice.

Try it out. See if it works for you. Let me know if you have success!