BloggeRhythms

The past few posts compared former part time manager, Dick Stetson's, inept  performance to the leftist's Congressional quandary. Showing that for some suddenly thrust into positions of authority eons beyond their capabilities, costs and losses for employers can be enormous. Particularly when fill-ins are self-impressed, arrogant and/or merely overwhelmed by new found, unmanageable, power. A lot like Biden or the barmaid from the Bronx.

By accident, heredity or simply pure dumb luck, according to Stanford-Binet and later Johnson O’Conner’s two long IQ sessions, my scores reached very high quadrants. Posted to support premises value, they're also why "Stetson's" met here and there can be run into intellectual walls or down blind alleys fairly easily. Like Rush used to say, “I'm your host, Rush Limbaugh, with half my brain tied behind my back - just to make it fair.” While density wasn’t Stetson’s fault, it was simply natural, stranding self-impressed incompetents cerebrally is truly fun.

More good fortune came through a greatly enjoyed professional career, discovering that, the 80/20 rule, known as the “Pareto principle” also applied personally. The rule states ”that 20 percent of [a] company's sales people will generate 80 percent of [its] sales revenue, presenting  “a challenge for businesses that need every sales-team member generating as much income as possible.” However, meeting or managing significant numbers of industry salespeople over time, the percentage of true skills among them seems more like 90/10.

Larger acquisitions tend to be unique. A printer needing a one and only, business lifeblood, five or six color press, a physician a costly x-ray machine. For them, infrequent financial decisions can be, and usually are, enormous. Salespeople, then, particularly if traveling elsewhere, must thoroughly understand and handle complete transactions themselves, inception to finish. In fact, reading this paragraph back just reduced the truly outstanding performer percentage to more like 98/2.

That means, superior sales performers gain significant employment “insurance.” Hard to replace professionalism provides huge license for freedoms, jobwise. More importantly still, whereas transactions speak for themselves, once located, funding “homes” for them can be found relatively simply. Employers, then, become conveniences. Staffs and personnel available for day to day administration, paperwork, legalities and such. But, as noted in my book, “Until somebody sells something, nothing happens at all.”

Customers themselves, rarely, if ever, care a whit about who providers may be. Most, simply want funding for equipment needs, or perhaps selling and leasing back to raise capital. Most often, little or no attention at all is paid to  sources contractual names whatsoever, "lessees" needing the dollars involved. 

Almost always, then, it's individual salespeople impressing prospective customers, one way or the other, that is paramountly important, not the employer. No competent principal, advisor or responsible operator, is going to accept overbearing terms and conditions, or perhaps considerably higher costs, simply to get a preferred providers “name” on the paperwork, the premise financially irrational.

That means highly productive leasing salespeople most often choose desired employer themselves. My own opportunities arose over time to join four industry legends, the very top of the top. Saul Steinberg/Mike Morrell at Leasco Capital Equipment Corporation, Harvey Granat at Sussex Leasing Corp. and Paul Gass at Eaton Financial Corporation, later becoming AT&T Capital. Working side by side with those virtual geniuses, not only a distinguishing honor, but proving as incredible personal pleasures, as well. At the same time, only two outstandingly superior managerial leaders come to mind over forty plus years involving literally hundreds of personnel, Jerry Ennella at Sussex and Rene Lefebvre at Eaton, both possessing genius of their own type.

Nonetheless, while the leaders  above were indeed lightyears beyond all others professionally, people in their employee didn’t always click. Early on at Leasco, for example, my boss, Regional Manager, Tom Coughlin, instead of focusing on sales, found fault with attire. Saying it "wasn't his doing” but “coming from upstairs, suits and ties be worn," odd jackets "entirely unacceptable.” Hearing enough, I finally replied, “Tom, I don’t know if you’ve ever been “upstairs” but I have. We’re on the top floor of a four story building, nothing up there but a roof, a chimney, some antennas and a flock of birds. So, here’s the deal. If you stop pestering me  about my clothing, I won’t tell "senior management” that you think you report to pigeons." 

Leasco being production guided, my soon new title was “Regional Manager, Northeast,” Coughlin, gone without a whisper, seemingly evaporating at some point, much like vapor into thin air.

By simple circumstance, the first Leasco managerial task was termination of another manager, poorly operating the New England office. In Boston next morning, taking him to lunch, circumstances were obviously impersonal, having never met. Understanding completely, accepting the happening, he took it quietly in stride.

On my return, concerned about how this new and sudden responsibility had been handled, our president along with the VP of Sales, asked how Boston went. I replied, “I asked everyone in the Boston office to stand against the back wall," saying "Everybody working for Leasco right now, please take one step forward. When they did, I told the manager,  ‘Not so fast, fella!’” To this very day, although happening many, many years ago, neither knows exactly what took place in Boston that day.

Also way back, happening with industry giant, Paul Gass. When a major client had financial problems caused by Jimmy Carter’s recession, Paul needed to learn about slowing payments. As Paul began inquiry, an “International Airline Guide,” sat in a bookrack on the corner of the company chairman’s huge, otherwise bare, desk. I surreptitiously pointed to the volume, perhaps the defaulting chairman planned to skip town. Following my finger-point, noticing the book himself, Paul began quietly chuckling to himself about the situation, then louder, losing control, finally laughing openly hard out loud. Convinced he was dealing with a pair of lost clowns, the chairman stood up, abruptly leaving the room. We had to follow up with a staff accountant later on.

One more Leasco situation occurred almost immediately upon my joining the organization. Heading for an appointment, two or three six-figure unclosed transactions with me, a fellow named Don Andrews, responsible for “big ticket deals” wound up in the same, crowded elevator. There, Andrews loudly informed me that he’d heard of my applicants and that, according to company guidelines, all such opportunities were to be given to him for handling, and that rules being what they were, to not do so, he said was “tantamount to kicking company chairman Steinberg in the b----'s.” I replied that were I in fact to kick Saul Steinberg, or Andrews himself, in the b----‘s, they’d be on their way to intensive care in some hospital or other, and therefore, I wasn’t "really concerned all that much about what either of them thought or felt about my deals.”

A few weeks later, Andrews was gone, sinking on his own.

In these types of situations, talents, skills, superior capabilities always override supposition. Outstanding performance always supersedes "standard procedure", whereas opportunities are hard to come by in a competitive world. That's why top producers gain significant license in behavior, frequently marching to their own rules when employers benefit from the results. And, at the same time, the opposite occurs as well.

Overstepper's, find themselves tested far beyond capability quite often. Responsibilities unmet typically because the hirer either overestimated their potential, or perhaps simply bought fabrications. In any case, incompetents jobwise soon face unemployment, due to shortcomings, arrogance, or both, which the Bronx barmaid will encounter herself as well, come early next November. Biden will have to wait three more years.

That’s it for today folks.

Adios

PS: A new reporter in the White House Press Corps was able to corner Joe Biden in a hallway, without his teleprompter.

The reporter introduced herself and asked, “Sir. Have you made any further decisions as to whether or not you’ll send more aid to Ukraine?

The president replied, “Huh?” “What?” “Have you seen my tricycle?” “Is this Delaware?”