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Personal Responsibility: The Bucks Stop Here

Guest post by: Michael Hume

Article Overview: I could relate plenty of stories about times, throughout my career, when I failed to live up to my personal aspiration to be an inspirational leader continuously driven by personal responsibility. Instead, this is a story from early in my career when I had one of my triumphs - and started to "get it."

Personal Responsibility: The Bucks Stop Here

Inspirational Leaders Provoke Boldly, And Back It Up I could relate plenty of stories about times, throughout my career, when I failed to live up to my personal aspiration to be an inspirational leader continuously driven by personal responsibility. Instead, this is a story from early in my career when I had one of my triumphs - and started to "get it."

Decades ago, I worked as a classified advertising salesperson for a major daily paper. After several months of diligence and hard work, I was promoted to a "contract desk" where I'd have the opportunity to serve major commercial classified advertisers.

That was the good news. The bad news was that this particular territory had a clear reputation as a meat-grinder - only the best people got to take a shot at it, but most lasted no more than six months before they resigned, or begged to be transferred to another job.

The reason was this: the territory consisted of basically one account, and that account was one of the newspaper's largest and most valuable... and most labor-intensive. It was a specialized ad agency run by a single, driven, hard-charging entrepreneur - I'll call her Elizabeth. She had a reputation for demanding perfection (and not worrying too much about being "nice" about it). She would flood you with faxed-in ads for Sunday's paper, just before the Friday afternoon deadline, and then call Monday morning and demand exorbitant credit for the slightest errors... thereby increasing her profits at the newspaper's expense, and filling her representative (that was now me) with the type of anxiety that makes it very difficult to perform at your best.

I'll never forget the first fax I received from Elizabeth's agency, late in the day on the Thursday upon which I was granted my new job. It was not a long or complicated ad, but in the remarks section she had printed: "Here's your first ad from me. Don't screw it up. -E." In fact, the language may even have been more colorful than that.

I had never met or spoken with Elizabeth. I was not-quite-27, but I had been working in the newspaper business since I was 14, and had become fast, thorough, and accurate at this sort of work. I remember thinking "Let the games begin," and, having been warned at length about Elizabeth by my predecessor, knew the game was going to be one of intimidation.

I put in the ad. I checked it. I checked it again. I checked it a few more times, and finally convinced myself it was perfect. Then I phoned the agency.

"Is Elizabeth there?" "No. Who's calling?" "This is Michael, I'm your new rep at the newspaper." "Oh, Michael! She's been waiting for your call... I assume you received our first ad? One moment."

The next voice I heard was that of the infamous Elizabeth. "So YOU are my next little minion at the newspaper, huh? Good luck. I suppose you've been briefed by Janet (she was my boss at the paper) about my expectations?"

I remember thinking, life comes down to a few moments, and this is one of them... how I handle this will set the tone for a very important business relationship. I decided to gamble, realizing I needed to establish a peer-like, trust-based relationship or it would not be worth keeping this job... and I decided I would not be another six-month victim of Elizabeth's intimidation.

"Yes," I said, "Janet told me you expect nothing less than perfection, which is why she assigned your account to me. I'm humbled and honored to be your rep."

"Sure you are," Elizabeth said. "Did you manage to put in that simple ad I faxed over?"

"I did," I said. "It's perfect."

"I'll be the judge of that."

"You will, but I assure you, it's perfect. In fact, I bet my paycheck you can't find an error in it."

A brief silence followed, and I wondered if it might have been the first silence Elizabeth ever allowed.

"By the way," I continued, "did Janet fill you in on my expectations?"

Another silence.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Yes," I said. "My expectations. I gather from your reputation that you have never really been pleased with your rep here at the paper. I expect to change that. I surmise that you've always felt the need to micro-manage your newspaper reps, because it feels like your clients are always micro-managing you; your expectations reflect theirs. And I imagine that if you had ever had a representative as good at this as I am, you never would have had to worry as much about the accuracy of your clients' ads, and you would've been able to focus more on building your business and making more money. So I expect to create a different relationship from any you've had with our paper before, based on mutual respect, and I expect to prove to you that I'm the best classified-ad talent there's ever been. I expect your respect, and to have you trust me to help you build your business exponentially."

After another silence, she allowed as how no one had ever spoken to her in this way, and that I must be the most arrogant person she'd ever met. I then asserted that it wasn't arrogance, but a confidence born of more years' experience than anyone else my age, and a true desire to help her.

The next day, Elizabeth flooded me with advertising for the Sunday paper. I stayed very late and did my best to put through every order with accuracy. When Monday rolled around, she called me first thing... she announced that we'd be going through her Sunday ads and she'd be telling me how much error credit I would be putting through for her. I could tell she was trying to regain the upper hand in the relationship, but didn't have much ammunition. Other than a couple of very-minor typos, her ads were clean.

Early in the discussion, she asked for more credit than she should get. The error was very minor - something like "teh" instead of "the" buried in an ocean of text - but she wanted 50% off the ad. I told her no.

"What do you mean, no?" she roared. "You need to get with Janet for some more training on this account, because that's not how this works. I tell you what the error's worth, and you say 'yes ma'am' and put through the credit!"

"No," I said again, "that's how it used to work. Now we're starting fresh, with a new fairness, and I guarantee you're going to love the new way a lot better. Let me ask you, Elizabeth: overall, how did the accuracy of your ads yesterday compare with the sort of Sunday you're used to?"

"That's not the point."

"I think it's very much the point. They were pretty clean, weren't they?"

"I'm sure you put your best foot forward. Every one of my reps has had their best week first, and I know it's all downhill from there."

"Not this time," I said. "I told you, I'm the best there is. So you're going to worry less about accuracy - I've got your back on that - and you're going to spend more time with your clients, selling more advertising. That means I can spend less time on the phone with you, negotiating inappropriate credits, and in the long run your business will benefit greatly from how good I make you look."

She was stunned. "Transfer me to Janet, right now!"

"No," I said.

"What do you mean, 'no'?"

"Look, Elizabeth, you can call back and talk to Janet any time you want. I'm well aware that you can have me fired before lunch. I'm just warning you that you will regret it. You need this newspaper, and we need you. I'm the best rep you're ever going to have, and you're the best client I'm ever going to have. So I think we should decide right now to have a great relationship, be friends, and build your business together. Believe me, you're going to love me."

It was fun, looking back, to be this bold. It was a first for me. And I knew I was going to have to back it up. But I also knew that, if I could do that, there was a real chance here to change a crucial relationship for my employer... and for me.

Elizabeth was still shocked at my temerity... but she agreed to a one-month trial of the relationship, promising she'd have my job in four weeks if she wasn't convinced things were working to suit her. I told her that was all I could ask.

To make a long story a little less long, we ended up being friends. She built her business dramatically, and that meant more profits for her and more compensation for me. The account actually became much less labor-intensive, because hours on the phone in argument were replaced by trust and mutual respect. We even met outside work for lunch or drinks a few times, and I learned that Elizabeth had some of the same interests my wife and I had.

Through my experience with Elizabeth, I learned a valuable lesson about leadership: it builds the relationship (and even adds inspiration) if you are willing to be boldly provocative and can back up your claims with action. Where all my predecessors on the account had been cowed victims, I tried to break the pattern through hard work and personal responsibility. I learned it's a much better foundation for a business relationship than victimhood.

It must have been a good eight months later before she caught me with a real error in one of her ads - I had transposed a couple digits in the response telephone number, rendering the ad useless. But because of the newfound trust between us, Elizabeth hadn't been micro-managing her ads for some time, and it was actually I who called her first-thing Monday. I made her aware that her client would not be happy, gave her full credit for the ad and offered to run a corrected ad the following week for free. I also volunteered to call the client and take the heat.

"Well, that's a first," she said. "I've never had a newspaper rep call ME to give me free ads!"

"I'm happy to hear that," I said.

"Just one thing I'm still disappointed about," she said, and I could hear a little laugh in her voice. "I wish this were the ad you'd bet your paycheck on. I could use the extra money."

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Article Tags: inspirational leadership, life is too short, personal responsibility, successful entrepreneurs



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