Me one and Harvard Business Review
C A S E
S T U D Y
Bulwark Securities' new managers get a five-pound policy manual They need a lot more.
When a New Manager Stumbles,
Who's at Fault? i ll
liiilll!!!!! '
by Gordon Adler
Everything was fine until Paul
MacKinley, my manager at the Minneapolis, Minnesota, branch of Bulwark Securities, waved me down in the parking lot. It was June 1995. He was standing directly in the hright
Sim, so I had to squint to make out his features. "Goldstone," he said,
"there's a management slot opening up in the Framingham, Massachusetts, hranch."
I parked the car and found him ten minutes later, hunched over a spreadsheet. MacKinley cared ahout the bottom line, you had to give him that. He was fond of saying. Just do your joh and don't saddle me with lawsuits. He looked up at me. "If my memory serves me right, Goldstone
[he never called me Rafferty], you've
22
got an M.B.A. from Kellogg, eight years under your belt as a sales rep, and you've heen at play in the fields of management, so to speak."
"Uh-huh, I've heen coordinatcir of the Centurion Graphics account, I was Frank Arnold's mentor, and I was a member of the task force for improving sales calls."
MacKinley nodded. "Management's where it's at-power, prestige, money. Are you 40 yet?"
"Thirty-eight."
"Good, young enough to want it bad, and too young to know better."
My father used to say leaders are horn, not made. I'd wanted to test his theory for a long time-find out what it was like to take charge. For some time, I had resented MacKin-
ley hounding me about quotas and compliance; after all, I'd been one of the top three reps, averaging
$300,000 per year. I dreamt of having
MANAGER on my door. My view back in 1995 was this: I understand sales and the Bulwark line of products. I understand reps. That's all it takes.
That night, my wife, Jane, said that she wasn't sure it was a good thing for us or for Jamie, our son.
I remember her exact words.
S T U D Y
Bulwark Securities' new managers get a five-pound policy manual They need a lot more.
When a New Manager Stumbles,
Who's at Fault? i ll
liiilll!!!!! '
by Gordon Adler
Everything was fine until Paul
MacKinley, my manager at the Minneapolis, Minnesota, branch of Bulwark Securities, waved me down in the parking lot. It was June 1995. He was standing directly in the hright
Sim, so I had to squint to make out his features. "Goldstone," he said,
"there's a management slot opening up in the Framingham, Massachusetts, hranch."
I parked the car and found him ten minutes later, hunched over a spreadsheet. MacKinley cared ahout the bottom line, you had to give him that. He was fond of saying. Just do your joh and don't saddle me with lawsuits. He looked up at me. "If my memory serves me right, Goldstone
[he never called me Rafferty], you've
22
got an M.B.A. from Kellogg, eight years under your belt as a sales rep, and you've heen at play in the fields of management, so to speak."
"Uh-huh, I've heen coordinatcir of the Centurion Graphics account, I was Frank Arnold's mentor, and I was a member of the task force for improving sales calls."
MacKinley nodded. "Management's where it's at-power, prestige, money. Are you 40 yet?"
"Thirty-eight."
"Good, young enough to want it bad, and too young to know better."
My father used to say leaders are horn, not made. I'd wanted to test his theory for a long time-find out what it was like to take charge. For some time, I had resented MacKin-
ley hounding me about quotas and compliance; after all, I'd been one of the top three reps, averaging
$300,000 per year. I dreamt of having
MANAGER on my door. My view back in 1995 was this: I understand sales and the Bulwark line of products. I understand reps. That's all it takes.
That night, my wife, Jane, said that she wasn't sure it was a good thing for us or for Jamie, our son.
I remember her exact words.