Thoughts for the Week

1.  Leadership

I am starting to think that the number one quality of great leaders, and great people, is selflessness. 

2. Lessons from a Recent Search

This week I was reminded, yet again, about the importance of “fit” when it comes to hiring leaders.

My Caldwell colleagues and I recently completed a project that had dragged on much longer than the normal search.

What I appreciate most is how our client handled this situation. I did not realize, at the outset of the search, how difficult it was going to be to find candidates who matched the “ideal candidate” profile, as the client was looking for someone who would mentor their successor for three to five years. Thus, we were searching for candidates who would join our client for a finite period of time, and serve as a bridge to their own successor.

What did I learn from this search?

• Most people, when they are three to five years away from retiring, are not looking to take on a new challenge or assume a great deal of “career risk” by trading a known (their current job) for an unknown.

• If you can find that individual who is three to five years away from retiring, and could be that bridge to the future—he or she still needs to fit with the culture of the organization, and have the requisite “chemistry” with all relevant stakeholders.

• Good things take time! Patience is a virtue! Don’t do what is expedient - do what is best for the long run interest of the organization.

3. Letters from the Waiting Room

Taking one’s car in for servicing can be a mind-altering experience. It is kind of like you are in a dream state, transported into a strange land, your fate in the hands of people who speak a language foreign to you.

When you arrive in “The Service Department” of a car dealership, you are asked by The Service Advisor: “What’s wrong with your car? What are you in for?” which is quite fitting, as you will be incarcerated in the waiting room for 3 to 5 hours. How do I know what’s wrong with the car? All I know is that there are a bunch of lights flashing on the dashboard—I don’t know what they mean!

The Service Advisor, whose name is Leroy, feigns empathy, as he knows the pain that comes from administering what my late father called a “financial enema.” Money will soon be draining from my corpus. Leroy stifles his glee about what will soon be his financial windfall.

“Would you like to get anything out of the car before we take it away?” Leroy says. The last time that I heard Leroy’s tone of voice was when the veterinarian was about to put our dog to sleep.

I bolt to the waiting room, where other life passengers await the fate of their mode of transportation.

I wish my daughter had never named this car. The car is named “Tina.” The same rule should apply to cars as that applies to any cows or chickens that you might own – you do not name them. They will eventually be eaten.

Tina is driven away. Her fate, and the inheritance of my children, is now in the hands of The Service Technician. I have never seen a Service Technician, as they operate behind multiple levels of security. I think the term “service bay” is an apt term, as there is a drawbridge over a moat that leads to an eerie castle on a hill, where, in soundproof rooms, the nameless, faceless, service technician will perform unspeakable acts to Tina.

The Service Technician performs the same role in the U.S. economy as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Open Markets Committee. The service technician can create money, by finding things on Tina that need to be replaced, filled, or fiddled with.

I sat in a waiting room with a cross section of concerned car drivers, each of us awaiting the diagnosis from the nameless, faceless Service Technician. The elderly lady sitting across from me reads a book about spirituality. It is too late for thee, I think to myself; God will literally throw a wrench in her finances. A heavyset middle-aged man stares into his cell phone with a blank expression, scrolling incessantly, looking for stocks and bonds in his portfolio that can be liquidated. A young man pulls his sweatshirt over his eyes and rests his head on the table in front of him. He looks forlorn, knowing that his net worth will soon be below zero.

“Mr. Perkey, your car is ready,” Leroy whispers. Oh my, Leroy looks grim. This can’t be good.

Leroy sits me down and speaks to me in hushed tones. “I know that we said that this service would only cost $130.61, but when we got under the hood it was obvious that we needed to put some epiglutimus in the car’s pedagorius, and you needed to put a new cap on the whatchamacallit, and the whatchamacallit is really hard to get to, so with parts, and labor, and then our mental anguish charge, you need to fork over $679.99.”

Ah, yes. I have to pay the money. This is a hostage situation. Tina is being held against her will, and Larry holds the key to my mobility. I hand over my credit card, and think of my father, and the painlessness of my painful monetary suppository. Life can be hard, but man, They make it easy to spend $679.99!

Tina hums all the way home. She knows she is loved.