Now, when I say department heads I mean the folks who had overall responsibility for each of the company’s functional units—Communications, Human Resources, Information Technology—things like that. Getting them all together was more difficult than it may sound, because in the complicated hierarchy of the company, some of the ‘heads’ reported to me and some of them didn’t.
The company had twenty or so clients back then, and either Mary or Don personally served as the account executive for each of them, unwilling to relinquish that kind of control to anyone else. Most of the clients were fairly small, and could easily be managed in just a few hours a week, but one of Mary’s clients was huge, with far more programs than any of the others. To help her with this burden, she had created a deputy executive role for that client—the only one like it in the company—and that was the job I had recently been promoted to. With this structure it wasn’t clear whether the department heads were above, below, or at my level as the only deputy exec. And it didn’t help that some of the heads actually reported to me, but most of them reported directly to either Mary or Don.
Look, if you want me to I can draw a map of all the solid and dashed lines that made up our stupid organizational chart. In all the years I worked there, I was never able to explain this to someone and have it make sense to them on the first try. I always felt like I needed to provide one of those character maps that accompanied some of Shakespeare’s political tragedies—you know, something you could refer back to when cousins, stepbrothers, and adopted sons started bumping each other off to keep clear on who was next in line for the throne. But for our purposes it’s probably not critical that you understand all these connections in detail. Suffice it to say this was not a group of people I could bring together on a moment’s notice. Although I had been put in charge of the project, I wasn’t in a position to just call a meeting and get it going. In many cases I had to ask politely and drop Mary’s name in order to get a commitment to attend.
The group I was finally able to assemble comprised seven individuals—eight, including myself. There would have been nine of us if we had come together before Susan’s resignation, but by then I was already wearing Susan’s hat as well as mine. Three of these folks I’ve already mentioned. Peggy Wilcox was there as our director of Human Resources, as was Bethany Bishop and Gerald Krieger, the two people I described trading timesheet war stories with back when Mary first took over the company. Oh, and one other person I guess I mentioned before, but not by name. That would be Scott Nelson, the guy they tapped to take over the Accounting department after Mary moved from there to the President’s office. The three other people were Jurgis Pavlov, the cadaverous Russian immigrant who ran our IT department, Angie Ferguson, a hard-nosed and bullet-shaped woman who negotiated all our vendor contracts, and Michael Lopez, who headed up our Communications department.
If ever there was a project designed with Michael Lopez in mind, it had to be the Staff Qualities. He was a young guy—like a lot of us, not yet forty—athletic and hungry. He had worked for some big clients at a couple of PR agencies before coming to us. He was good at what he did, and he knew it. Somewhere in between workouts he had gotten an MBA—something that had endeared him to Mary, who loved nothing more than a staff with a bunch of little initials after their names. Michael had a knack for branding, a good eye for design, and wrote by far the best ad copy of anyone in the company. He could sell you your own shoes and you’d walk away feeling that you’d gotten him to give you the best possible price. But what he did best, the strength he really brought to this project, was his ability to brainstorm.
Gerald had another word for it. It also began with a B.
“Alan,” he had told me when I had invited him to come to the meeting. “If this is another one of those make-work projects that gives Michael a platform from which to spew his bullshit, so help me…”
I sympathized. Brainstorming was like a drug to Michael, and like a ballplayer doped up on steroids, when ideas started getting bandied about the imitation mahogany table, he’d wind up taking bigger and bigger risks, talking more and more out of his ass, looking for that elusive prize that would allow him to both solve the problem and take all the credit for it.
“No, this is serious,” I had told Gerald, choosing to address his concern about make-work rather than promising to rein Michael in. “Mary wants us to come up with a draft. It has to be in place before we start hiring to fill Susan’s position.”
Secretly, I was happy Michael had so readily agreed. In the days it had taken me to get the group together I had spent some time thinking about what Mary had asked me to do, and despite Jenny’s pessimism about it, I had come to see it as a real opportunity to make some positive change in the organization. I was still upset over the way Susan had been treated, feeling that her supportive and inclusive management style was something the company desperately needed. If we could somehow define that as the standard for the organization, and then begin hiring people based on that standard, I thought we might actually have an impact on the company’s miserable and soul-crushing culture. And although I had a clear understanding of what I wanted to do, even as we assembled in the conference room for our first meeting, I wasn’t sure how much of that I should reveal to the department heads, or how we were possibly going to get there.
But Michael was quick to volunteer an idea.
“Why don’t we just start listing off all the attributes we think are necessary for success in the company?”
“What?” I asked.
“Sure,” Michael said. “We’ve all worked here long enough to know the kind of people we’re looking for. Let’s just start throwing out some ideas. We can edit them later.”
I looked around and tried to quickly assess everyone’s initial reaction to the idea. They had greeted me with a whole lot of silence after I had introduced our task a few minutes before, so I was hopeful that Michael’s suggestion would be accepted as a way of getting the discussion flowing. Gerald, of course, was feeding me a scowl, but I judged that everyone else appeared either willing or indifferent to the proposal.
“Come on,” Michael said, getting out of his padded chair and taking up a position beside the flipchart standing like an unknown soldier in the corner of the room. “I’ll get it started.” He uncapped one of the markers and quickly began writing across the top of the paper. “A successful staff person is someone who…” he said as he wrote, pausing a moment to underline the title and placing a bullet point before his first contribution, “…shows initiative.”
Michael turned back to the group, the anticipatory twinkle of his next fix already in his eye. “Who’s next?” His dress shirt was open one button past the collar and I could see the slim gold chain he wore around his neck. “Bethany, how about you? When you think about the qualities of a successful staff person, what comes to mind?”
We all turned our attention towards Bethany, someone I thought Michael had correctly perceived as more enthusiastic than apathetic.
“Ummm…” she said, crinkling her misshapen nose and biting her lower lip, looking like a child trying to decide which flavored toothpaste to get at the dentist. “…supports the mission of the organization?”
She sounded uncertain but Michael accepted it readily. “Good,” he said, writing her idea quickly on the flipchart. “What else?”
“Completes assignments on time,” Angie said, as usual, her voice just a little louder than it needed to be.
Michael nodded, his marker squeaking its way across the paper.
Several more ideas came in quick succession. Jurgis thought the ideal staff person should be able to “solve problems.” Peggy thought they should be a “team player.” The momentum was starting to build and I decided it was safe for me to contribute an idea of my own—something I hoped would start steering us in the direction I wanted to go.
“Thinks creatively,” I said, oddly satisfied to see several approving nods from around the table. Bethany especially beamed at me, as if I had read her very mind.
“Excellent,” Michael said, as he worked to stay with the flow. “Let’s keep it going. What else?”
But despite this encouragement, a sudden silence filled the room.
“Come on, now,” Michael said, turning to face us with his eyes darting about like a quarterback in a huddle. “Who hasn’t said something yet? Gerald, how about you? A successful staff person is someone who…”
“…kisses Mary’s ass.”
It was like hitting a brick wall at sixty miles an hour. Gerald’s hostile tone was startling, but not as much as the way everyone else in the room shut down and turned guardedly toward me. If I’d thought I could let Michael run this meeting, I’d just discovered my mistake.
“Gerald,” I said. “Come on, be serious.”
“I am serious, Alan. With all the other tripe you’re putting up there, you might as well just cut to the chase and save us a lot of time.”
“Gerald,” Michael said, his muscles twitching nervously under his shirt. “We’re brainstorming. You’re not supposed to criticize other ideas when brainstorming.”
Gerald ignored Michael’s reprimand. “Look, Alan,” he said, speaking to me as if he and I were the only two people in the room, “you told me this wasn’t going to be another make-work exercise. Exactly what is it you think we can accomplish with this?”
Gerald was being less hostile, but his question was still a direct threat. Everyone knew he was a kind of lone wolf, notorious for his boldness and his ability to get away with things no one else could—like not showing up for meetings unless he thought they were worth his time. The last thing I needed was to have him openly boycotting this process.
“I thought I stated that fairly clearly at the beginning of the meeting,” I said assertively, not trying to intimidate him, but at least hold my own in the eyes of the others. “We need to identify the qualities most associated with success in the company.”
“Why?”
Because Mary wants us to. That was the response that came immediately to my mind, but I chomped it back, knowing instinctively it wouldn’t serve my purpose. Mary was the club I had used to bring this group together—her desire to see this project done—but I had to be careful not to tie Mary too closely to our effort. No one liked Mary. That was universal. But most people in the company were also afraid of her, including, I knew, several of those sitting around our table. If I wanted them to help me re-invent the company’s culture, I had to keep Mary’s name out of this as much as possible. In a way, I knew Gerald was right. No one was going to contribute any revolutionary ideas as long as her spirit was floating over us.
But right now I had a bigger issue to deal with. Out of the corners of my eyes I could see everyone looking at me skeptically, like a pack of young dogs eyeing the aging alpha male, curious to see how I was going to handle Gerald’s open defiance.
“Because we’ll use those qualities to help us screen new candidates for employment,” I told him calmly, and then I said, “Look,” with sudden passion, using my body language to dismiss Gerald and reach out to all the others around the table. “Don’t you see what a tremendous opportunity this is? Let’s assume we are able to come up with this list of traits, these qualities that define the ideal staff person for the company. It doesn’t have to be a list that describes any existing individual. I’m not looking to enshrine anyone who currently works here as the model we should all aspire to. It’ll be an amalgam of all the best traits of all the best people who have worked here over the years. Once we have that list in hand, HR can start using it to screen applicants. The people they hire will by definition be closer to that ideal standard than they have been before.”
I glanced over at Peggy at the mention of her department and was rewarded with a motherly nod. Encouraged, I went on with even more excitement. “And what if we all start using the same list to conduct our personnel evaluations? Those who strive to embody the traits will be rewarded. Bit by bit, hire by hire, evaluation by evaluation—we’ll start affecting the very culture of this organization, transforming it into something better aligned for success.”
I waited, looking anxiously from face to face, trying to determine who was with me and who wasn’t. Some folks liked working there, but most didn’t—and I was gambling that the majority would be willing to try and change things if they could.
“It sounds great, Alan,” Gerald said softly, tipping himself back in his chair and studying me through the lenses of his designer eyeglasses. “It really does. But what about Mary?”
Like a flash I knew I had to tackle this head on. “What about her?” I shot back, before the mention of her name could suck all the energy out of the room.
“Is she on board with all of this?”
“Why wouldn’t she be?” I said. “She asked me to lead the project, didn’t she? If we do this right, all we’re going to do is make her company more successful and more competitive. Why would she be opposed to that?”
There was a long silence as Gerald and I sat looking at each other, broken only by the sound of Michael repeatedly removing the cap of the flipchart marker and snapping it back into place. The pause gave me ample opportunity to replay the words I had just spoken in my mind and wonder where the hell they had come from. Did Gerald just do that to me? Did he just maneuver me into making a promise only Mary could deliver on? I did the best I could to keep the doubt I was feeling out of the expression on my face, knowing that Gerald and I were playing a kind of chicken and the one who looked less sure of himself was going to lose.
“Well, I’m in,” Bethany said suddenly, and when I turned towards her I found her eyes looking at me warmly. “Let’s give it a shot.”
“Me, too,” Michael quickly added, still standing in the corner and looking a little disappointed that he hadn’t had anything to write down in the last few minutes.
I looked at some of the other faces in the room. I knew I hadn’t won yet. Any one of them could sink me by splashing cold water on the project the way Gerald had. But if they were all willing to follow me, then maybe together we could convince Gerald to play nice.
“Scott, what about you?” I asked, thinking he was the biggest wild card of those who remained uncommitted. He was a quiet one around the office—small and slight and almost certainly closeted. But as Mary’s hand-picked successor as the head of the Accounting department, it was generally assumed he did most of his talking in Mary’s office, reporting back on almost everything he heard. As usual, he hadn’t yet said a word in our meeting.
“Sounds good to me,” he said. “Let’s see where this thing goes.”
“Angie?”
“Count me in.”
“Peggy?” My heart quavered just a bit as I realized she was even more a direct line back to Don as Scott was thought to be to Mary.
“I love this idea.”
“Jurgis?”
“Da.”
I turned back to Gerald, a smile tickling the corners of my lips, no longer fearing the inside straight he was trying to build because I had a full house arrayed against him. He was still tipped back in his chair, his fingers steepled in front of his face. In a moment, he allowed his chair to fall forward and he placed his elbows confidently on the table.
“Okay,” he said. “But if we’re going to do this thing, let’s do it right.”
+ + +
“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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