If you achieve success, you will get applause, and if you get applause, you will hear it. But my advice to you concerning applause is this: Enjoy it but never quite believe it.
Robert Montgomery, Actor (1904-1981)
A certain amount of “clout” accrues to anyone who has the backing of a company like R. J. Reynolds. There are tremendous advantages in dealing with customers, suppliers, the media, government, and other stakeholders in the enterprise. There is also one major disadvantage that goes with all the attention, and sometimes flattery. Ego can get in the way. It’s easy to forget that the position commands people’s attention, not the person in that position.
As the pension officer for RJR from 1977-86, I was acquainted with many people in the pension industry. Although not exactly true, many viewed me as someone who had $4 billion to allocate to investment advisers. This represented more than $30 million in annual fees to them, certainly enough money to draw attention.
Occasional flashes of recognition in public made me feel, momentarily at least, like a rock star. I was in the lobby of a New York hotel when a young man walked up and said, “You’re Gene Hoots.” I had no idea who he was, but he explained that he was the marketing person with an investment company on the West Coast that wanted to do business with RJR. He had seen my picture in a trade magazine, and like any good salesman, he made the most of that moment to introduce himself.
Another time, our consultant Jim Hamilton and I were sitting on a bench in Hyde Park in London on a Sunday morning when a young man jogged by. He stopped, came back to us, and said, “Aren’t you Gene Hoots?” He was with the Morgan Bank’s London office and he also happened to see my photo in a magazine. This was heady stuff, and easy to make you think you were far more important than you were.
But for a staff person like me, RJR’s clout went well beyond occasional recognition, especially when I traveled with my bosses. Jim Hamilton and I were with CFO Joe Abely and my immediate boss, Treasurer John Dowdle, in San Francisco and we were on our way to Los Angeles in a company jet. Dowdle said that one of the major Los Angeles banks had discovered that we were on the West Coast. (Bankers just seemed to keep track of where people like Joe Abely and John Dowdle were at any moment.) The bankers insisted on having us join their Vice-Chairman and their Chief Investment Officer for dinner. We landed at LAX at the height of rush-hour, and I thought, “We will never make it downtown for dinner.”
I need not have worried. I hadn’t counted on the lengths to which bankers would go in wooing RJR’s business. When we taxied to the private aircraft terminal, we parked beside a helicopter. We exited the plane, got into the helicopter, flew downtown to the bank building, and landed on the roof. We walked down one floor to the penthouse dining room where dinner was waiting. That’s the kind of service that makes people think they really are special.
In another situation RJR’s financial muscle did prove very useful. My pension group had a computer program that helped us manage stocks. Certain input data were critical to that program. By chance, the only two companies that supplied this information merged. The new combined company held a seminar for its customers, and the vendors explained that “nothing would change” now that they had merged.
Of course, not a surprise, that wasn’t the case. Very shortly the critical information we needed went missing from the data they sent us each week. My calls became more and more frantic, trying to convince the vendor of their error. However, the people I was dealing with in New York insisted that the data were there.
Then, I learned that a giant Manhattan Bank had acquired this small vendor. I went to our Assistant Treasurer and asked if we had a representative calling on us from that Bank. Of course we did! Every bank had a representative trying to lend RJR money or underwrite our securities. The AT called the Bank and explained my problem - trouble communicating with the people in their subsidiary.
Within ten minutes I got a call from a man who said, “Mr. Hoots, I am the CEO of Data Supply Company. I just got a call from a very disturbed Senior Vice-President at the Bank who wanted to know why I am jeopardizing the Bank’s relationship with R. J. Reynolds and his prospects of financing RJR’s next acquisition. How can I help you? You have my undivided attention.” The data feed was corrected immediately.
Someone said, “People think that beauty is a passport. It is not; it is a visa. And it will expire sooner than you think.” The same can be said about your job. It is only a visa, and you will find that many doors cease to open when it expires.
NEVER CONFUSE THE JOB YOU HOLD WITH WHO YOU ARE.
Love this - found this very true during a short detour working in politics years ago. Once you leave your position, you are nothing to them.
Enjoyed this blog today, Gene. We can all benefit from the reminder that we are all defined by so much more than our jobs.