The New Chief of Staff

The New Chief of Staff

As our family is beginning to settle into our new neighborhood in Kettering, Ohio, my business life gets very interesting. First, a word about the neighborhood. It is a very friendly and close group. The school our children attend is a block away and they can walk to school. The swim club we belong to be also a block away and the girls started to swim competitively there. Our neighbors were very friendly and helpful. In fact, it was our neighbor, Ron, an IBM employee, who took my wife Jan to the hospital the give birth to our third daughter Karen. We had some great times in this neighborhood.

As the new chief of staff, I was sort of on my own. My old mentor Bill was still around, but my newest mentor Mike and left the company. Non-the less he was able to help my by phone.

Let me first describe my new environment. I was now managing the Domestic Marketing Division planning, budgeting, and administrative staffs and acting as a liaison with the three major Division VPs that reported to my boss. They were the VP of Industry Marketing, the VP of Product Marketing, and The VP of Systems Development. This probably sounds fairly routine. What made it interesting and challenging for all of us was my boss’s work routine. A company limousine picked him up every Monday morning and delivered him to either the Dayton airport or the NCR airport hanger for his weekly trip to either LA, Washington, New York, or other locations he wanted to visit. To make it easier for him the company provided apartments in the major cities, which he kept supplied with clothes and toiletries. The only thing he needed to travel with was his brief case. He returned on Friday evenings and held a staff meeting for all is direct reports and myself every Saturday morning at 9:00AM. He and I met at 8:00 to brief him on significant issues that I felt he needed to deal with in person or issues that required my input prior to his meeting with the team.

One of my early projects was the re- organization of the division. This new organization elevated the three VPs from their previous Director positions and organized the division into three disciplines. Each new VP including my boss was allowed to select their own office locations and decorate those offices any way they desired. In Owens case and one of the other VP’s their wives had a very strong hand in the decorations. I had the challenge of supervising the actual construction, redecorations, and control of the budgets.

While that was going on we were developing an new strategic plan for the Domestic operation. As we came closer to the finalization of that plan, Owen did spend a little more time in Dayton. He also curtailed his travels during the Holidays. He and I spoke at least once and many times two or three times a day by phone depending on the situation. He also felt free to call me frequently at home. Unfortunately or fortunately this was before cell phones and he had to send messengers to find me on the golf course and take me to a phone to talk to him. This happened twice when I was helping entertain company guests during the week.

As you can imagine, with Owen’s travel schedule, I became the liaison and confidant to both Owen and the VPs who reported to him. It was a great experience and I learned a great deal about high-level relationships and management from a corporate point of view.

From time to time I would also have the privilege of going to lunch in the famous NCR Horseshoe room in the main office building. These were usually times when a domestic or international retail customer wanted to learn more about our product or systems plans. I could represent the entire repertoire in Owens place. The Horseshoe room was a very special experience. By tradition the company’s Top executives ate lunch there everyday and the group often included the Chairman and or the CEO. There were often guest speakers and always a short movie on NCR history or current company activities. If you can imagine the seating was at a giant horseshoe table with a capacity of over 50.

There were also times that I traveled with him. If he was making speeches I was always on hand to write and revise those scripts. Once he called me at home at 11:30 PM to ask me to get on the company plane the next morning to fly to Montreal and rewrite a speech he was delivering the next evening. What a trip and what an experience these two years were. I often had to call Mike or go visit Bill to get advice.

Lessons learned:

1. Never lose track or contact with your mentors.

2. How to walk the line between the boss and his direct reports without losing your own credibility.

3. How to lead without a title.

4. How to understand the perspective of the overall company.

5. The value of spending quality time with your family whenever you can.

A New Career Path

I became so intrigued and involved with the Strategic Planning Process that the Staff Director of the Domestic Marketing Division recognized me. Bill asked me to join his staff and head up the planning efforts of the entire division. As you will see Bill played a role in several succeeding career positions. I agreed and became the Planning Guru.

There was one small detour about a moth later that lasted about two weeks. NCR experienced its first labor dispute in an organizing effort. The members of the company went on strike to be allowed to form an independent union. The company could live without our machine production but service parts had to be made. All able bodied non-union personnel were pressed into duty. Because tunnels connected all the buildings on the campus, we could arrive at our normal office locations, change into work clothes in the men’s room and travel to our production stations via the tunnels without being seen by the union members picketing outside. It took about a day and a half to learn how to operate a screw machine and the same productivity level as the union workers and we were able easily to satisfy our parts requirements. In fact we did so well we only had to work two to two and half days a week to accomplish the same level of output as the regular operators. Although this experience was satisfying from an accomplishment point of view, it left me with mixed emotions. I had just demonstrated to the manufacturing organization why costs were so high and the tactics that had brought us to this situation by the faulty attitudes of our workers. I did not understand these kinds of attitudes. I would later learn that they are very real and pervasive in our manufacturing environments. I thought it was a sad situation for our economy.

After that episode I spent the next six months coaching, reviewing, revising, and finalizing the first NCR Domestic Marketing Plan. The process significantly changed the thinking and direction of NCR in the US from a mechanical cash register company to a sophisticated systems provider. It helped integrate the Computer, Software, Electronic Cash Registers and Accounting Machines, Systems, and Service into a powerful market force in the US. We were also able to significantly change the sales philosophy and organization. Unfortunately I was not able go witness the implementation of the entire plan because I left NCR before it was completed.

At this time my boss and a lifetime mentor, Mike, left NCR to become the Assistant to the President of Diebold, Inc. The Vice President of the division, Owen, then asked me to take Mikes place as Director of the division staff. I agreed to do this on one condition. I wanted to get involved in line management. I felt too much time in staff positions would hamper my overall career goals.

Owen agreed to watch for appropriate opportunities for me if I did a good job for him. What I did not realize at the time was the tremendous exposure to the overall management of a company that I was about to experience. The next year as Owen’s Staff Director is worth a chapter of it’s own.

Lessons Learned:

1. Some mentors are with you for life.

2. Good strategic planning can influence amazing positive changes in behavior.

3. The importance of a well-communicated plan of attack.

4. The potential negative impact of misdirected union attitudes.

5. Good, conscientious, quality work gets recognized when you least expect it.