This morning, I was asked to contemplate a positive role model. I thought I’d share my observations.
In a prior job, I used to comment that my boss was a “Teflon Don” – nothing bad would stick to him (and I mean that in the most positive light) and he could get away with things with his superiors that no other manager would dare try. I often wondered what it was about him that gave him those powers over his superiors . . . but, before long, I was doing everything I could to try to emulate him. Here is one quick example.
Every year, we would have to write a new business plan for our unit. Other managers would struggle with a back and forth process with their bosses with long drawn out reports with pages and pages of narrative and graphs and scenarios. My first year on the job, I asked to see a copy of Teflon Don’s report from the prior year. I was shocked. It was one page long in a Word table with three columns (1: Where We Want to Be; 2: Where We Are; 3: What We are Going to Do To Get There). Under the first column, he listed the top 5 things that were vital to the success of our department. The next column assessed if we were at a stage to reach that desired successful state. Finally, the last column listed the resources or changes we needed to make to achieve this success. I was dumbfounded. In a single page, he summarized exactly what needed to be done in the next year. It is important to note that his summary did not lack detail. He had all the important points like sales targets and staffing needs, but the detail didn’t get lost in the minutia of a 15 page report.
Therefore, I learned that he was a Teflon Don for a reason. He was good – no, he was awesome at his job! I learned that to get what you want in an organization, you have to prove that you deserve to be there. I cannot tell you how many times I have used his model for writing a business plan or the countless other tricks of the trade that he used.