with resources efficiently and effectively. Clearly and comfortably delegates both routine and important tasks and decisions with responsibility and accountability; Good at figuring out the processes necessary to get things done; Excellent at delegation, goal formation, managing employees, and meeting management.
Roadblock – Has low detail orientation; lets things fall through the cracks;
A warm handshake and “Thank You” from my exec was worth the long hours it took to win the Space Station contract. What he said next, was not “… and I would like you to work for ____ now to help integrate the teams.” A few of my peers had had the “opportunity” to work for him already, and we had heard about his use of Power in not complimentary terms over weekend beers. Luckily, my own network had offered me a path forward that would give me a front-row seat to what Power really is … and isn’t…
Our design danced to life “right on schedule”, a Clever way of saying we made it just in time. After struggling for weeks, our 2nd Line manager had “offered” that if we didn’t have it running soon, they would fly in some “real” engineers from our main site to “help” us. As you might expect, it was not music to our ears … and that type of management triggered exactly the response he wanted. Maybe not the TONE he expected, but it had gotten our system running, and mostly on schedule. A good thing, as I was now the Project Manager…
As I watched the fog roll across the bay, the Golden Gate Bridge was the first to disappear. Then San Francisco became just a soft glow. Now the fog was over Berkeley and coming up the hills where it was 3 am. Completely covered now, the moon was just a glow, and I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I stepped back inside just in time to help my partners change out the current device for the next one in our testing. I was standing inside of one of the world’s most powerful devices – yes – inside…
“Don’t be ridiculous. I have just invested $15 Million dollars in your development. Now get back to work”. With that, the young executive exited the CEO’s office with his letter of resignation torn in half and handed to him. He had gone from one of the top executives in the company to losing the current equivalent of $200 Million dollars. Thankfully not me, but that investment Rightly paid off as he was our Executive… and an outstanding and Effective manager 25 years later when I joined his team in Houston.
As I was standing in the shower, where most of my clearest thinking comes from, suddenly it hit me. I yelled out to no one in particular – “DPAT – Data Processing Aptitude Test!!!” I had driven down to Clear Lake, Texas for an interview with IBM’s group that was working on the Space Shuttle. A lovely dinner with a person my age had managed to calm my nerves, but now, I realized the very first thing this morning was a test…
Charlie’s Angels was one of the top shows when I was a freshman, and everyone had “THE” poster of Farrah Fawcett in the mostly not swimsuit on their walls. And there was a girl in our sister dorm that was her spitting image. To get people to know each other, there were “mixers” between the floors, and this night it was the typical loud music and beer, and not really my scene, so I went downstairs… and there she was sitting on the steps. I didn’t really Know what to do, but I sat down and asked her if she was not enjoying the mixer? “Not really my scene – I would rather be out dancing.” I said I knew how to dance (those lessons came in handy…), and once she learned I had a car, we were off.
“The bullet stopped just half-an-inch before the backbone, and if it had stopped a half-an-inch earlier, it would have lodged in a major artery. Either way, this dog is lucky to be alive”… and with that, the lights went out. I awakened a few minutes later in another room on a soft couch with a cold rag on my forehead… I had no idea how I managed to get there…
Screaming from the back of our Team was the most passionate member of the team. The bad news is that he was from Peru, spoke very little English, so we rarely understood what he was saying. HOW he was saying it was CRYSTAL clear. His energy was contagious as he lectured us on the sideline at halftime, which I delegated that Time to him, and simply observed how he renewed the Team, words not really being needed…
“Johnny try harder!!” One of the shorter members of our team was not able to keep up with the boys as they were becoming young men. His parents were hoping their voices would “help” him to be a more PERFECT player… and I could Count on it making him execute worse. He knew that there was no way to catch these bigger kids, and eventually, he left the team. Having been short my whole life, I understood, but that didn’t make it easy for me…
“Play the Simple Ball”. Standing on a field that cold March morning, it was my admonishment to the young men preparing to play the game they love and qualify for the Finals – if we could win this match. We had jelled well this season, but this last hurdle was to beat our archrival – the wonder of which were mostly our close friends, including the Coach of the other team…
“Could you possibly finish a thought?”. If you know mathematics, you would observe my sentences involve a lot of “open parentheses” – the start of something, and then something else, and then something else. Closing parentheses, which allow thoughts to be processed and considered – those are not easy for me to do. What I look for in teams are people who observe that, and “help me” Focus … and be more PERFECT…
Walking into our Executive’s office that afternoon, we were in big trouble, summoned by our boss to join him – NOW. As we came in, we were scolded that the Safety Engineer had turned us in with a memo. A large computer Terminal was on top of our bookcase – 6 feet in the air – and weighing nearly 60 lbs, had a coax cable wrapped around it that was about to be caught in the door, which could have killed us…
I had reached the point in the day’s interviews to meet with the Senior VP who would potentially be my manager. It was a large company, growing fast, and more than likely, you are reading this from a server that is hosted in their cloud. I asked: “How do you handle mistakes?” His confident reply – “The people we hire do not make mistakes”. I did not take the job…
“What you are reading is PERFECT!” You know that is Looney Tunes – and if I could get you to read that in my favorite character, Foghorn Leghorn, “It’s a joke son! You missed it!” it would be perfect. Early in life, I ran across many characters like this, and eventually came to be a student of them, adopting some of their best (and worst) mannerisms, including what people say about me all the time: “Often wrong, never in doubt”.