A few years back, I had the opportunity of working with a Fortune 100 company in the paper manufacturing environment. The process of getting hired and making it through just the initial interviews was, to say the least, a grueling experience, all three months worth. Then after having made it that far, I was required, with 42 other potential candidates, to spend three weeks in "pre-employment training."

This was in addition to the last three 'one-hour' interviews, and the final 'one-hour' interview, with the Facility manager. No, no fun at all. But as the Lord has continued to pour His blessings upon me, I made it, and was chosen to work on the machine which made paper.

Now, understand this, the machine and the facility hadn't even been built yet. That's right they had just started breaking ground when the process of finding employees/associates had started. After being hired to run a machine that hadn't even been built yet, and to work in a facility which had only partially been completed, we were shipped to other facilities. Spending a total of eight months, yes that's right eight months in training, of which, 10 straight weeks in actual classroom instruction, was required.

Why? What was the purpose of this type of training? What were they hoping to accomplish by this type of regimen? The machine in which we were going to be operating wasn't even built yet! We were studying concepts of the machine, concepts of making paper, prior to even seeing the actual machine. Well, after a period of over a year, we actually made our first roll of paper. It was a very interesting process of learning to do what had to be done from that which didn't exist yet.

What were we doing all that time? What were we learning all that time? We were learning the language of our new career. It's a language that only those who work in that profession know. I could tell you some things about making paper that you would never understand, due to the different words, particular to the language I would use in describing the process. We all know a language; we all speak the language of our life and the language of our work.

It is different for all of us that don't work together. But for those of us who do work together, it is, essentially, the most vital part of our being successful.

Imagine working in an environment where one mistake could cost you millions of dollars, and I'm sure some of you are working in that type of environment now. That's the way it was for me. I was hired to be a process operator on a machine that cost over $100 million dollars to construct.

It was almost as long as a football field and the total floor space was four stories high, although the actual machine was mainly on one floor. Being a process operator, I was vital to the communication process with the people working "on the floor". I was in a room (called the "Control Room"), much like that of Star Trek. I couldn't see the whole machine, nor could I visually see where my "teammates" were when they were "on the floor."

Communication was of unparalleled importance in the type of environment we worked in. I was running things from the Control Room, through computer screens, and communicating to my team on the floor via headset radios. One small mistake could cost us a life, not to mention thousands of dollars in a matter of seconds.

This is what all the training was for. We were running the most technologically advanced tissue making machine in the world. Our language was so vital, so critical to the success of the project, that we spent all those months in training to make sure that when we hit the floor we knew what we were doing, we knew what we were talking about, and we could communicate to each other in the minutest detail any number of things involved with the paper making process. We learned to work together as a team, knowing each others' every move and never moving without communicating to each other what we were doing and where we were at all times.