What Old and Buzzman are saying is correct, unfortunately. Don't ask how I know.
When I worked for PCA, I had a dairyman customer who wasn't doing well. The obvious reason was that he was a box of rocks (inheriting a farm isn't merit-based).
One time, he asked me to come out and go over everything with him, and try to come up with ideas on how he could improve. "Now be honest", he said.
Well, even I wasn't stupid enough to tell him that the main problem was operator cluelessness. But I did go over some stuff with him- one thing I recall is that he spent his time feeding cows and heifers (with a cumbersome enough system that it pretty much took all his time), while hired men milked the cows. I even tried to stroke him a little, by saying "You're the one who has a stake in how those cows are milked, and have the experience to do it right." Of course, both of us knew that the reason he was the "outside man" is that he hated milking.
I hadn't even got back to the office before he called my boss and said "I never want to see that guy again." Boss called my in, I told him the story. He just smiled, and then told me how the world worked. "When someone says give it to me straight", they probably don't mean it. But my biggest mistake was doing this in front of his wife. Turns out I was saying the exact same stuff as wife had been telling him, and once I left, she really started in on him. Boss said if you ever are put in that position again, tell the guy, "lets go out an look around, and we'll see what we come up with", even if you don't care a whit about whats out there. That way, the guy can filter it the way he wants, and you're not insulting him in front of his wife.
Pretty much the same way in the chain of command. Sam Walton could make it work because you can bet he didn't rat out the stock boy on what he said about his local supervisors. But most places are slaves to the "chain of command", and you get the results that Buzzman and several others spoke of.
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Today's Featured Article - Hydraulics - Cylinder Anatomy - by Curtis von Fange. Let’s make one more addition to our series on hydraulics. I’ve noticed a few questions in the comment section that could pertain to hydraulic cylinders so I thought we could take a short look at this real workhorse of the circuit. Cylinders are the reason for the hydraulic circuit. They take the fluid power delivered from the pump and magically change it into mechanical power. There are many types of cylinders that one might run across on a farm scenario. Each one could take a chapter in
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