Purposive Drift

Listen for the music

Another great quote from Thomas Johnson:

"Scania is a company owned by the Wallenberg family, a wealthy family that owns much of Swedish industry. The parent company, which goes by the name Investor, has held all kinds of companies, like Scania, for many years. Investor has always been run by a member of the Wallenberg family, up until this past year.

One of the great leaders of the family in the post-World War II period, Marcus Wallenberg, was very close to his companies. He regularly would go visit all the companies. He was not a person who sat above the clouds and studied his companies by looking at spreadsheets. He went down to the companies, like Scania, and when he did he invariably visited the shop floor. You can imagine, this is not the chairman of a board, this is the chairman of the chairmen of many boards. He would go down in the shop, where he would talk with workers and engineers. I believe he was trained as an engineer, so he understood what he was looking at. Someone asked him once, 'How do you know, when you go into a shop, what to look for? What is it that tells you when things are right?' And he said, 'I go into the shop, because thats where what matters takes place. And when I go there I listen for the music.' That was his expression. 'I listen for the music. And if I hear the music I know everythings all right. But if I don't hear it, then we go to work.'"