A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE IS INCONSISTENT ■ 87
president to replace him. I never learned the problem from him, but after
my experiences as a headhunter, I saw others in senior management who
had encountered similar problems. It was really pretty simple. Bosses are
all different and they are all human. Some bosses are more secure than others.
I was never disrespectful, but I was young, brash, and much too confident.
Without intending to, my attitude threatened my boss. My success
in the job, rather than mitigating the problem, probably made it worse.
I didn’t suffer from the fear of loss of my job. Maybe I should have. It
would have made me more humble and less cocky, and I might have had
a better relationship <strong>with</strong> my boss. He might have even been more inclined
to make me a vice president. But that’s all speculation, and it is certainly
different from the path I took.
This experience gave me an idea of what my classmates had meant
when they indicated that the fear of loss of employment was not to be dismissed
so lightly.
Why Wasn’t I Afraid?
When I had returned from overseas, I had conducted a successful, if
somewhat unorthodox, job campaign. It had taken seven weeks from
start to finish, and I got the job primarily by what I later learned was
called a direct mail campaign to people who never knew I existed, not
<strong>with</strong> a resume, but <strong>with</strong> a sales letter. My target market consisted of individuals
who had the direct authority to hire me, rather than the personnel
or human resources manager. After I left my previous company, I
became a headhunter for six months and I knew how to run a much better
organized campaign because of this experience. I began a new job
campaign. At the end of this campaign, I had several companies seeking
my services. I got a job in charge of high technology marketing, reporting
to the vice president of marketing of a major corporation, McDonnell
Douglas Astronautics Company, now a part of the Boeing Corporation.
As I’ve mentioned previously, I lived in Pasadena, California.
McDonnell Douglas was in Huntington Beach and better than an hour’s
drive south. To avoid boredom, I often listened to tapes in the car. I also
thought a lot. One of the things I thought about was <strong>Drucker</strong>’s contention
that performance was inconsistent <strong>with</strong> fear of job loss. I knew he was
right. I also knew that the managers who had spoken up in class that day
knew what they were talking about, too.