“He is wanted in every city, town and village - in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such; he is needed and needed badly - the man who can.”
Written by Sarrah Abdulali and Tori Custer
A Message to Garcia is sent to every new hire at Hard Yards. The story depicts a soldier who is ordered to deliver a message and goes about doing it without hesitation, showing great initiative and determination to “get the job done, done right, and right on time.”
There is some irony in this fact, as we did not read it. We found ourselves in a meeting with Jason Lamb, the founder of Hard Yards and an A Message to Garcia enthusiast, who asked us what we thought of the book. With flustered looks plastered on our faces, we admitted our guilt. We were thinking surely he would tell us we should read the book and why. He looked at us as if we had two heads. “Are you shitting me? The whole point of the book is to find your own meaning.” Needless to say, we made a great first impression.
This moment was pivotal to our experience as interns, and as you can imagine, we made it a priority to read the book. Every day since, we have made it a point to embody the principles of the book by taking initiative, challenging ourselves, and doing whatever it takes to achieve our goals as marketing and data science professionals, respectively. However, the mistake, for the most part, had slipped from our minds. As we reach the end of our internship and begin to reflect back on our summer at Hard Yards, we have come to realize that what we thought to be a small piece of a care package was actually one of the most important takeaways of our internships.
When we look back at that humble beginning with Jason, it was not the only error we had made. There were times when challenges seemed insurmountable, and deadlines were hard to meet due to a variety of circumstances. Producing high-quality work on time while also having to fill big shoes from past high-performing employees was intimidating. Having to adapt to the changing needs of clients and stakeholders was difficult. Helmet fires were not uncommon. Perhaps, one of our greatest obstacles was simply inexperience. Despite extensive training with Forge and a great education at UVA, we are still, for the most part, beginners in our field and have a lot to learn when it comes to handling curve balls in the real world.
However, the more we worked with Hard Yards, the more we saw how every person embodied Garcia’s work ethic every day. Jim makes it a point to send interesting current events articles and even provided resources to Sarrah as she was learning about business visuals. Jason Carver reached out to us and asked us if we had access to Wiley for an article related to DevOps benefits, being resourceful in completing his goal. Mark made it a point to ask everyone for points of contact regarding commercial clients so the business can develop. Doug goes out of his way to write many blogs, to be a helping hand for technical jargon, and to always make time for others. April makes it a point to empower women and teams, in general, using her “sticky,” hands-off approach to agile, and Soyoung spends time developing visuals that will help teams understand their current level of productivity. These are just a few small examples of how members of the team are always going above and beyond.
Overall, despite busy schedules and large workloads, the Hard Yards team is constantly making strides to achieve their goals, doing what it takes to be successful, and working together to get it done. Everyone carries their weight, and we quickly understood the importance of the book as we saw it put into action daily. Mistakes are only part of the process, a symbol of progress, and a part of the path to success. The important part was taking the initiative to achieve that goal and doing what it takes to solve any problems we encountered.
These are values that Hard Yards not only puts into practice in their day-to-day but are also effectively used in their training practices. Our agile coaches stay away from slides, actively engaging the class and pushing them to practice what they’ve learned. While this is great for our culture, it also provides a better experience for people in the class. According to ispring solution, people forget 70% of what they have learned within a day. By putting what you learn into practice, you are far more likely to benefit from what you’ve learned. It’s one of the ingredients that make the Hard Yards accelerators so effective in the way the team solves problems.
The challenges we faced early on are barely challenges anymore. After much troubleshooting via python, Sarrah got the hang of constructing datasets that are useful for business visuals such as cumulative flow diagrams and straight-line forecasts. Tori developed an organizational system for marketing and is constantly exploring and experimenting with new ways to promote the business. There is power in changing your mindset and realizing that you really can do anything you set your mind to. It is up to you to figure out the how and to take the first daunting step forward, even if that first step means reading a twenty-page book.
And it all started by taking initiative and showing up eager, and ready to learn. In the face of fear, and other obstacles, one must stay loyal and obedient to indeed…
…deliver the message to Garcia.