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"I won! Oh, wow," crows Susan, our soft-spoken new bookkeeper, when her name gets drawn from the basket. A rousing cheer fills the lunchroom.

Business is good. We're on our 18th week of linear shipping, meaning that we've shipped a steady, combined target amount of our products -- trace-moisture analyzers, repair units, and parts. Once we complete three consecutive weeks of success, the $300 drawings to reward employees' discipline and hard work start during Friday afternoon break. The odds are favorable: Each winner has his or her name removed from the basket until everyone wins. My name is not in there, but I love those drawings more than anyone. It feels so good.

IN A HOLE
By contrast, a year ago we had only bad news for the employees when we gathered in the back of the plant for our weekly open-book meeting. The Asian financial crisis and the downturn in the semiconductor industry had ravaged our major markets. Worse, we were still recovering from our own private catastrophe: an aborted sale of the company that stalled market momentum and left our management ranks depleted.

At the time, the possibility of achieving our linear-shipping goal seemed so farfetched that some managers urged me to drop it. They said it just made people feel bad. But I knew MEECO had pulled through much harder times than these. In fact, when I started at the company in 1982, I worried about whether we could ship product at all. My father's illness had prompted an unplanned retirement that left the company with no experienced management whatsoever.

SLIDING DOWNHILL
My father's paranoia, compounded by his secret struggle with cancer, drove away manager after manager and alienated customers. Long after his death, I would still encounter people who harbored a grudge over the way he treated them, yelling at their queries and hanging up when they called for service or parts.

His behavior also emboldened competitors. "We figured you'd be out of business in a year," one told me when I encountered his company's oddly familiar looking units at my first industry trade show. "So, we just copied you." That kind of thing made me determined to prove them wrong.

Many grievances were easy to correct. I instituted a two-ring phone policy, and if no one else answered, I did. We shipped parts right away, no questions asked. Still, the competition had a point about our prospects when it came to manufacturing.

A SPRING CLEANING
My first production manager, Ken, was a capable, hard-working fellow, with 20 years in the military. He did a great job of helping me clean out the debris-laden plant and unload the freeloaders who spent their days fishing, drinking, and napping on bare mattresses under their workbenches. "The doctor couldn't say no to a kid who walked in looking for a job," recalls Terry Lasher, a veteran employee of that era. (The employees always referred to my father by his degree.) "They took advantage."

Terry, along with several other middle-aged plant ladies, maintained pristine workstations, good work ethics, and a consistent level of quality despite the mayhem around them. They loved Ken. At last, we had order in the plant, but no guarantee we could get orders off the floor.

Only my father knew how to make our equipment. There were no drawings, no procedures, no documents whatsoever -- his paranoia scotched that. Besides, I don't think it ever occurred to him that he wouldn't be around to run the show. Now, terminally ill and in severe pain, he was too medicated to help. "I don't remember," he whispered, shaking his head sadly when Ken carried one of our units to his bedside.

There was only one alternative. Each production worker knew his or her own part. Trouble was, my father had warned them that if they shared information, they would be fired on the spot. Yet that was exactly what I was about to ask them to do.

PUTTING OUR HEADS TOGETHER
Nowadays, nobody thinks twice about coming up to the front office for our many routine meetings. Back then, the cinderblock wall separating the front office from the plant was more than a physical impediment. The seven production experts I called into the mahogany-paneled library were scared and uncomfortable. They, like I, harbored the fantasy that one day my father would magically return to the helm. Heads would surely roll. Still, to their credit, they slowly began pooling their knowledge, documenting procedures, and unearthing the techniques that make sensor manufacturing reputedly a "black art".

MEECO's long-suffering customers applauded our more uniform quality and two- to three-week lead times. (My father's delivery ran six months!) Sales began to pick up. The employees made it happen. Just like they did a year ago when the bank flung us into the workout group, and they managed to transform a huge loss into profits over the last quarter.

Of course, I'm not saying they're better than anyone else's employees. But they do like a challenge. That's why I've never hesitated to set high goals. Then again, I've come to expect miracles.