September 2026 | Will You Carry the Message When It Matters?

By Sean J. Vanslyke | sean@gosemo.com

My Book of the Month is A Message to Garcia by Elbert Hubbard. It is a short book, but its message still matters more than 125 years after it was written: When something important needs to be done, can people count on you to see it through?

Hubbard tells the story of a military officer named Rowan who is entrusted with delivering an important message to General Garcia. Rowan accepts the responsibility, works through the obstacles and completes the assignment.

The lesson is not about blindly following directions. In the utility business, asking the right questions can improve our work and even save a life. The lesson is about taking ownership. Once the mission is understood, dependable people find a way to carry the message.

My wife and I were recently reminded of how much we depend on utility services. On a Sunday morning, our electricity was out for more than nine hours, and our broadband service was unavailable for nearly 12 hours. During another situation, we were without water for six days. Those experiences were inconvenient, but they were also good reminders.

Electricity, broadband, water and natural gas all depend on physical systems. There are poles, wires, fiber, electronics, pumps, pipes, valves and countless other parts. Storms happen. Trees fall. Vehicles strike poles. Animals damage equipment. Mechanical parts eventually fail.

No utility can honestly promise that nothing will ever go wrong. What we can promise is that we will prepare, respond safely, communicate honestly and keep working until the job is finished. That is where Team SEMO carries the message.

When an outage occurs, someone answers the call. Crews leave their homes and families, sometimes in the middle of the night or during dangerous weather. Member and subscriber service representatives answer questions and provide updates. Behind the scenes, employees manage maps, materials, vehicles, technology, billing and dozens of other details required to keep our systems operating.

I was reminded of personal responsibility recently when I was randomly selected for a drug test. As CEO, I am in the same testing pool as every other member of Team SEMO. There is no special lane for the CEO—and there should not be. If we expect employees to report to work prepared to perform their jobs safely, that same expectation must apply to me. Policies only mean something when they apply to everyone.

You do not prepare for a random drug test when your name is drawn. You prepare through the choices you make every day. The same is true of outages, emergencies and difficult assignments. We cannot wait until something goes wrong to become dependable.

We will never be perfect. Equipment will fail. Outages will happen. Mistakes will be made. The true test is what happens next.

At Team SEMO, the message may be an outage call, a member’s question, a safety concern or a family waiting for service to be restored. Whatever the message, someone must accept it, own it and carry it through.

That is the kind of cooperative we are working to build—one filled with people you can count on, especially when the pipes, wires and equipment do not cooperate.

Keep pushing forward.

Vanslyke is general manager and chief executive officer of SEMO Electric Cooperative and GoSEMO Fiber.