Best Business Advice

When I was a young, second-line manager at IBM, I made a major presentation to my boss's boss's boss's boss on a big project I wanted funded. It was a big deal for me, and I worked a long time on the presentation. I thought it was absolutely terrific; it was slick; it was right; and it was the right thing for the company to do. But I was running against a tide I didn't really understand at the time. IBM was having a rough quarter, and there were some political issues afoot, and I couldn't get the full attention of the division president when these other things were on his mind; he was too distracted. He liked it, but he wasn't going to fund it just then because he couldn't afford to put it in the budget. So I got sent home to do some more work and more study, and come back in six months to see if we could do it then.

I was bummed out by this and probably a little surly in the next few meetings I had that day, and I was a little distracted myself. The next morning, I was a little overly curt in a meeting with my staff. My secretary at the time had been with IBM for 25 years, so basically I reported to her - she knew more about the company than I did. She had worked for a lot of very senior IBM executives on their way up through jobs like the one I was in, so she knew everybody. After that morning meeting, I went back to my office and was working on some e-mails, when she came in to ask if she could talk to me for a second. When she had my attention, she looked me right in the eye and said, "You have 120 people reporting to you. When you have a bad day, they all have a bad day. Knock it off." And then she left.

Hers was exactly the right advice. People who are in positions of leadership and authority have a duty and responsibility far beyond what they feel like personally. There's a continuity issue associated with it: Leadership requires that you stay on your game all the time. I used to joke with my wife that every time I'd go with her to the mall in blue jeans on a Saturday morning, I was absolutely certain to run into someone I knew from work. There's never a private moment, and that's an important business message. You're always on.