Most important, it is a job that’s close to 75% about people and 25% about other stuff. I worked with some of the smartest, most creative, and competitive people in the world — many a lot smarter than I was.
There is no perfect business story. I believe that business is a lot like a world-class restaurant. When you peek behind the kitchen doors, the food never looks as good as when it comes to your table on fine china perfectly garnished. Business is messy and chaotic. In our kitchen, I hope you’ll find something that might be helpful to you in reaching your own dreams.
I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.
There is no straight line to anyone’s vision or dream. I’m living proof of that. This is the story of a lucky man, an unscripted, uncorporate type who managed to stumble and still move forward, to survive and even thrive in one of the world’s most celebrated corporations. Yet it’s also a small-town American story. I’ve never stopped being aware of my roots even as my eyes opened to see a world I never knew existed.
You punk! If you don’t know how to lose, you’ll never know how to win. If you don’t know this, you shouldn’t be playing.
It lets you take greater risks and achieve far more than you ever thought possible. Building self-confidence in others is a huge part of leadership. It comes from providing opportunities and challenges for people to do things they never imagined they could do — rewarding them after each success in every way possible.
My mother served up the perfect excuse for my stuttering. “It’s because you’re so smart. No one’s tongue could keep up with a brain like yours.”
Getting into a less competitive school, rather than the Columbia or Dartmouth I wanted, would in the end give me a tremendous advantage. The caliber of the competition I faced at UMass in those days made it easier to shine.
Ever since that time, differentiation has been a basic part of how I manage. That standard raise I got over 4 decades ago has probably driven my behavior to an extreme. But differentiation is all about being extreme, rewarding the best and weeding out the ineffective. Rigorous differentiation delivers real stars — and stars build great businesses.
When people make mistakes, the last thing they need is discipline. It’s time for encouragement and confidence building. The job at this point is to restore self-confidence.
I felt like throwing him in the hole. I wondered what I had gotten myself into. We were way ahead of ourselves. This was a $10M investment in a business that the company didn’t really understand. Now it became clear we didn’t have a working product for the plant to produce. Even worse, the scientist who invented the product had no idea how to fix it.
It took 6 months before we worked our way out of the problem. I practically lived in the lab during that time. We tried everything. We were sticking every compound we could think of into PPO to see if it would stop the cracking.
I couldn’t believe it. There I was, thinking I was bigger than life, and smack came the reminder that brought me back to reality.
What an ass I was — so completely full of myself. Without regard for any of the previous leaders of the business, I claimed we would break all the sales and profit records. Those who read the article must have damn near choked. Fortunately, I was below the radar, insulated from the GE bureaucracy.
I thought we could take on the world and was cocky enough to say so.
Nevertheless, the future looked very bright. This was a time when forecasters believed that plastics would be the fastest-growing industry over the next decade — faster than computers and electronics.
We wanted to replace every metal part in a car with Lexan, from the trim on the dashboard to the crank handles on the windows. Because our 5-person office in Detroit was competing against DuPont’s 40-person office, we had to be faster and more creative. We took on the big chemical companies and did well because we could outrun them. We were using the strength of a big company and trying to run with the speed of a small company.
We were flying. By 1970, we had beaten my boastful prediction by more than doubling the plastics business in less than 3 years. Despite the obvious success, I was clearly ruffling the feathers of some powerful people at corporate headquarters.
“On the other hand, he is somewhat arrogant, reacts (or overreacts) emotionally — particularly to criticism — gets too personally involved in the details of his business, tend to overrely on his quick mind and intuition rather than on solid homework and staff assistance in getting into and out of complex situations, and has something of an “anti-establishment” attitude toward GE activities outside his own sphere.”
I’m glad I found this evaluation later or I might have done something stupid — even if he had some pretty good points. At the time, I probably wouldn’t have accepted the criticism. Johnson chalked up my “limitations” to “youthfulness and lack of maturity” but fortunately didn’t block me for the division job.
If I learned anything about making this easier, it’s seeing to it that no one should ever be surprised when they are asked to leave. By the time I met with managers I was about to replace, I would have had at least 2 or 3 conversations to express my disappointment and to give them the chance to turn things around. I would follow up every business review with a handwritten note.
I really felt like the big fish in a little pond. I didn’t want to give it up. Pittsfield had another advantage: It kept me out of the rat race at the headquarters.
Eventually, I learned that I was really looking for people who were filled with passion and a desire to get things done. A resume didn’t tell me much about that inner hunger. I had to “feel” it.