The popular humorist known as Larry the Cable Guy is perhaps most recognized for punctuating his blue-collar yarns with a great American phrase, “Get’er done!”   The expression is his brand.

It’s a wonderful idiom conveying a can-do attitude toward a particular challenge or task.  “Get’er done” has several synonyms depending on the setting.

A soldier translates it by saying “hooah.”  For Marines, Navy Seals and the Coast Guard, it’s “hoorah” (pronounced “OO-rah”).  In the Navy it’s “Aye Aye.”  In the eighteenth Century, it was “huzzah.”

Though these military phrases have other uses, too (the Army’s Lt. Gen. Ben Freakley says, “Hooah means anything but ‘no’.”), “hooah” in reply to a command or a challenge clearly means, “I’ll get’er done” – with enthusiasm.

You bet.  No sweat.  Will do.  Consider it done.  I’m on it. Let’s roll. Count on it. Can do. No problem. I’ll take care of it. These are all “get’er done” expressions.

In 1899 Elbert Hubbard wrote a “get’er done” essay called Message To Garcia.  It took the management world by storm.  An estimated 40 million copies were printed.

Hubbard’s first run was self-published.  A New York railroad magnate read it and asked to reproduce 500,000 copies.  A Russian railroad owner read one of those, had it translated and copies distributed to each of his employees.

Noticing the essay, the Russian military made copies for every soldier it sent to the Japanese front. The Japanese found one on a Russian prisoner.  They translated it to Japanese and distributed copies to every member of the Japanese government.

During the years I served in the U.S. Congress, I expected each member of my staff to read it.  The essay is about “a fellow by the name of Rowan” who was asked by President McKinley to deliver a message to the leader of the Insurgents, a General Garcia, on the island of Cuba.

Rowan didn’t ask questions. He didn’t ask for supplies or money. What he did was travel to Cuba, find Garcia and deliver the message.

Hubbard portrayed Rowan as a superhero along with anyone inclined to perform similarly whether on the job or in leadership.  Hubbard called on his readers to consider the example of Rowan, to follow it and, in one’s daily work, to metaphorically get the message to Garcia.
More than a century later, the essay is still a superb and powerful commentary on the American quality of honest hard work.  We at LPR urge all recipients of today’s newsletter to read Hubbard’s Message To Garcia essay and heed its lesson.

Will there be a test?  No; but we have confidence you’ll get’er done.