Freedom, Inc_ - Brian M. Carney [84]
After he succeeded in getting the sales business off the ground for the western half of the United States, Chase realized he needed more people to keep it growing. So one day, he phoned Bill Gore.
“I have no experience at all [in finding people]. What should I do? Help! Send me somebody,” Chase said.
“Well, you know, I don’t have anybody to send you. Why don’t you just hire somebody,” Gore replied.
“How do you do that?” Chase wondered.
“Why don’t you figure it out? You know how people get jobs and such things. Figure out how to hire.” As you may have noticed, “figure it out” was a favorite refrain of Gore’s.
There’s no question that Gore was taking a risk on Chase, especially given his discouraging results on the insurance sales tests. He could have botched the whole project (he didn’t). The alternative—taking Chase’s “monkey,” telling him how to hire and, how to run operations—would have traded the risk of Chase’s making mistakes for the certainty that he would neither grow into his new role nor take ownership of it. What’s more, if Bill Gore practiced “how” management with Chase, that would show Burt Chase how to treat the team he was to assemble out west. According to Chase, in a future leader, Bill Gore was expecting “the capability but not experience.” Gore did not offer leadership roles to people he did not think capable of assuming them. Yes, Chase had failed those insurance company tests, but Gore no doubt felt that they were measuring the wrong things. The fact that Chase had taken them showed that building a sales team was something he wanted to do, which Gore likely saw as more important than Chase’s thinking he knew how to do it (especially since he didn’t). Gore, according to Chase, was “giving you confidence, and saying ‘You’re going to get a new experience, it will help you grow, help you be stronger and if you have to hire somebody else, you will learn how to do it more effectively, more efficiently…. Figure out how to train them and get them some experience.’
“And,” Chase clarified, “there was an expectation, ‘Please communicate with us, tell us what you’re doing, tell us what’s happening out there. We need to know, because if there is help [required]…we need to know about it. We need to know when we should come out and visit, and when one of our technical people should come out and visit the customer with you… Use us to help gather the information you need, but then you make your decision; don’t turn it over to us.’” In other words, Gore didn’t want to feed Chase answers, but he didn’t want him “out of sight, out of mind” either. The headquarters was there to provide help—but not to take his monkeys off his back.
As Chase developed into a leader within Gore, the business that he’d been sent west to build grew. At a certain point, Chase got the idea that many of his prospects and clients expected to see the magical word “manager” on his business cards instead of the simple “associate” that was on everyone’s cards at Gore, in accordance with Bill Gore’s prohibition on titles in the company. On his next trip to headquarters, he explained the situation to Bill Gore, outlining why he believed his lack of a title hurt sales, and asked for help: He wanted Gore to allow him to put the title “regional manager” on his cards. That request exhausted Bill Gore’s patience. Chase received a rare lecture from Gore—which lasted half an hour, according to Chase—about titles and how most of the time they exaggerate one’s capability.
“The word ‘manager’ just doesn’t tell you anything,” Chase recalled Gore telling him. “What do you manage, where are your strengths? Is it leadership, administration, organization, planning, analysis?