A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

WE’RE ALL ACCOUNTABLE ■ 143
<strong>with</strong> the student, and left town <strong>with</strong>out him being able to speak <strong>with</strong> her
or her contacting him further.
The student tried <strong>with</strong>out success to communicate <strong>with</strong> his boss during
her trip, by both telephone and e-mail. She was always unavailable
when he called and never returned his calls. He asked others, and even her
boss, about the assignment. No one knew anything more about the presentation
than the information the student had already been given.
Knowing that his boss expected a completed presentation ready to go, he
did the best that he could <strong>with</strong> the sparse information he had.
His boss returned and immediately asked to be briefed on the presentation.
He went over the presentation <strong>with</strong> his boss. “This is a terrible
job,” she said. “This isn’t what I wanted at all. I’m leaving tomorrow
morning. Now I’ll need to stay up the entire evening putting together a
presentation myself.”
The student resigned from his internship on his boss’s return from this
second trip. “I admire the fact that you know when you are in over your
head,” his boss said.
On graduation, the student got a job <strong>with</strong> another company where he
was a great success. When last heard of, he had gained early promotion to
vice president.
Peter told us a similar story. Then he added: “I wish I could say that
such instances of subordinates being treated grossly unfairly were rare, but
unfortunately they are not.”
I raised my hand. “I believe I can top your story,” I said. Peter looked at
me. This was unusual. I rarely volunteered myself in this way. “Proceed,”
he directed.
How Miscommunication Got an Engineer Unfairly Fired
The story I told in class that day involved my then new job at McDonnell
Douglas Astronautics Company. My job as a marketing manager was to
support our high-technology engineers and scientists in marketing to the
U.S. government. I set up appointments <strong>with</strong> each of the chief engineers
and introduced myself so that I could meet each one personally. They
would know me better and I could gain some immediate understanding of
their problems in the area I was going to be responsible for.
John Fletcher, one of the chief engineers, told me the account of his
first day of work as an engineer back in 1940. This was the story I told