My thought here is an adaptation of a verse that is repeated a number of times in the book of Judges in the Bible: “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” It is a wonderful thing when men do what they firmly believe to be the right thing. Yet when each man’s idea of what is right is based solely upon his own experience and the limited information available to him, the result is often confusion and conflict.

Thirty years ago, I worked in a large auto parts factory, and spent an hour each day in meetings. Perhaps your first though upon reading that was “What a waste of time! Why weren’t you out there doing something productive?” But those meetings were essential to the productivity of the whole enterprise.

The first meeting of the day was the Production Meeting, which brought together representatives form all departments. I was the guy designated by the Quality Assurance department. We would begin with the list of parts required by the auto assembly plants over the next few days. Those numbers were updated every morning. Then we would discuss how to get those parts built and out the door. Did some tooling need to be changed, some workers reassigned? Was some equipment undergoing maintenance and not immediately usable? Were there problems with incoming materials? Were problems occurring on the factory floor? Decisions would be made and we would leave that meeting, report to our own departments, and everyone would know their part in meeting the production requirements.

For the Quality Assurance department there was a half hour overlap between the day shift and the afternoon shift. That half hour was used each day for a meeting where we would share information about concerns that had arisen during the day, things that needed particular attention, and special tasks that needed to be completed. These were highly worthwhile meetings, enabling the incoming QA people to know what they would face during their shift.

One morning in the Production Meeting we were told that an auto assembly plant was finding damaged engine mounts in our shipments. There were three machines that assembled these engine mounts and they operated for two shifts each day, giving six people as potential culprits. Most everybody in that meeting immediately suspected Sally, a young lady who was the fastest worker of them all. I suspected it was actually Greta, but didn’t say so in the meeting. I just asked for permission to look through the finished parts awaiting shipment.

The transmission mounts were packed in layers in triple walled corrugated cardboard containers fastened on top of wooden pallets, about 500 to a box. I found a container that had been assembled by Sally and asked for it and an empty container to be moved to the QA sorting area. I pulled out, examined and repacked every one of those 500 parts without finding a problem. I went to shipping and receiving and told them the container was ready to go and asked for another container packed by Sally to be brought to the sorting area. All the parts in the second container were also good.

Then I asked for a container packed by Greta. Jackpot! It didn’t take long to find a part where the bracket had been damaged during assembly. I searched the whole container and found two more. Three bad parts out of 500 may not sound like a lot, but the car company didn’t want any and we didn’t want to be sending them any. I reported my findings at the production meeting the next morning and Greta was quietly moved to another operation without as much potential for things to go wrong. People were often moved around like that because of production needs and no one on the factory floor had any idea what had happened.

And Sally’s reputation with plant management went up a notch. I probably spent more time on the factory floor than most of the others in the management meeting and had more opportunity to observe workers on the job. Hence my hunch that Sally was just super alert and super organized, and that Greta was trying far too hard to match Sally’s output. There was no point trying to argue my opinion with the managers, but the evidence that I brought to the second meeting led to a decision that resolved the problem.

We recently observed something similar in a hospital. A patient, a relative of mine, had been brought in for one health problem and the nurse on duty had no information about a second health condition. He tried to tell her something wasn’t right, but she could not see any problem. That finally led to an emergency intervention the next day when the doctor made his rounds.

Communication is vitally important: in health care; in industry; in congregations; in any group endeavour. A lack of communications can lead to problems being overlooked, efforts being duplicated, the wrong thing being done and then needing correction. Communication is a time saver, not a time waster.