Start Where You Are by Chris Gardner

Author:Chris Gardner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-05-22T04:00:00+00:00

LESSON #22

Wizards Begin as Blacksmiths

KEYWORD: Transferable Skills

Anvils? Blacksmiths?

You might be thinking something along the lines of what I’ve been asked by several friends and family members: “Hey, Chris, what’s up with all this talk of hitting the anvil? Why the fascination with blacksmiths?”

I usually explain that it’s not all that far-fetched for someone who grew up, as I did, in a steel town like Milwaukee with the hum of industry all around, with its ample waterways for powering the mills, foundries, and other metal and ironworks. In my mind, the blacksmith has always been the everyman or everywoman who represents the hard work ethic I saw in people all around me—whether they worked in the steel business or not. The attitude wasn’t just Do it! but rather Do it and enjoy it! And get good at it!

Out of this atmosphere, I grew up with an appreciation for tradespeople and the different levels of skilled labor, as well as the many stages needed for developing skills. This was evident not just at the steel mills, but in all the local industries—the brickyards, breweries, tanneries, meatpacking plants, and automotive factories. Every place had its own structure and stages of production, but generally I understood that no matter what specialized skill you might attain, everybody had to start at the bottom, becoming familiar with basic nuts and bolts—that is, turning raw materials into finished goods. Along the way, you could move on to proficiency, either staying at that rung or developing a specialty. That, too, could become your highest conquered level of skill, or you could move further by diversifying and finding methods of innovation, and eventually you could arrive at mastery.

Long before I knew what a blacksmith did, these various industries allowed me to see the general steps to mastery that could be pursued regardless of the endeavor. Eventually I also discovered the coin of the realm for ascending those steps: transferable skills. Before I had come to learn that term, that capacity was something I was already using in my everyday pursuits.

As I began to see how knowledge and skills can be transferred, not only in the working world but through the stages of growth in general, I finally decided it was time to do some research about the stages of mastery that are relevant to blacksmithing. For starters, I learned that the job requires proficiency in the use of the three necessary tools of the trade: 1) the fireplace or furnace in which to heat the iron or other black metal (hence the word blacksmith) to be forged, (2) the anvil on which to hit the iron and shape it to its desired dimensions, and (3) something to use for hammering and hitting the metal. Other steps are involved: learning how and where to obtain the ore; doing research in metallurgy and alloys; analyzing composition of the elements; studying the chemistry of temperature change needed to transform the metal’s molecular structure; figuring out the physics impacted by the size of the hammer and its force and speed.

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