You Can Get There from Here by Bob Knowling

Author:Bob Knowling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2011-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

Westward Bound

CHAPTER SEVEN

Go West, Young Man

I needed a method to sort out my job offers. There were few people I could talk to about this situation because I didn’t have a network of friends outside of Ameritech. I obviously could not talk to anyone senior in the company. Then I thought about Gary Drook. I called him, and he invited my wife, Angie, and me to come to dinner at his house on Sunday night.

I was about to learn about the Ben Franklin decision matrix. I was also on the way to adding another long stretch to that life bridge that would carry me far beyond my comfort zone and a great distance away from a company where I had been immensely successful, productive, and, best of all, schooled in understanding all the facets of the business. The opportunity would carry me away from everything that had been so familiar to me—Indiana, Illinois, the midwestern phone companies and how they worked—to a new and challenging executive position.

But not before I figured out which opportunity to pursue.

Gary had a flip chart in his home office. Down the left-hand side of the chart, he told me to list all of the things that would be very important to me in considering a new job opportunity. I came up with a dozen or so important considerations (geography, schools, churches, pay, equity, city diversity, job title, realm of responsibility, CEO succession, etc.). Then we listed all the potential jobs across the top. Then I rated each consideration on a scale of one through five, based on the opportunity. Before we added up the totals, Gary told me to look at the considerations and ask myself if there were some things that were a lot more important than others. In those cells, you give the consideration two times its rating. There were five potential job opportunities. For three of the five, I had a job offer in hand. For the other two, offers were imminent. Using Gary’s rating system, I rated the dozen or so considerations for each job opportunity, and when I added up all the columns, I had a clear-cut winner.

US Worst.

That’s how US West was known inside the Bell System. The company had had its share of turmoil, and while we never treated them seriously at Ameritech in terms of recruiting talent or getting best practices from them, Bell Operating Companies were very similar in how they were both structured and run. In fact, I felt that my only challenge in joining US West would be just getting to know all the people. My understanding was that I would replace the operations and technology executive vice president. The chairman and board considered me a CEOSUCCESSION candidate.

Sol Trujillo had been CEO of US West for six months. He had been in marketing at Mountain Bell before it became US West. In recruiting me, the chairman, Dick McCormick, said he wanted to build a strong bench in the event Sol didn’t work out or if he left the company.

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