Freedom, Inc_ - Brian M. Carney [92]
The Disney executives were clearly impressed that Szulevicz could call his chairman at home late in the evening Paris time and get a response like that. Seeing their reactions, he added, “We’ll book a suite in Prince de Galles in Paris for one month and will iron out everything there.”
“This would really surprise me,” the U.S. boss replied. He liked this posh Parisian hotel on the Champs Elysées very much but was always frustrated when trying to book there; the hotel was full months in advance—a frustration Szulevicz was aware of from his Euro Disney sources.
“Yes, we’ll start with booking you at Prince de Galles and move from there. We’ll work day and night and get it done,” Szulevicz repeated confidently.
Back in Paris, Szulevicz dropped by his chairman’s office.
“We have a chance if we do this and that and that,” as he detailed all the things he envisaged to nail down the contract with Euro Disney, Prince de Galles included.
“You’ve got some nerve, haven’t you?” reacted Raiman.
“We have to go for it,” Szulevicz said, and got his chairman’s nod.
“He’d always accept my initiatives,” Szulevicz later told us. “He trusted me. And it was damn important. It redoubled my energy when he’d say ‘I trust you’ with committing the company, so much of its money and all. You fight then with such energy.”
So after booking the Prince de Galles through a connection, Szulevicz and his two colleagues arrived every morning at 7 a.m. and worked with their Disney counterparts in a suite till 2 a.m. They even decided to eat only sandwiches when hungry, a revolutionary initiative for French businesspeople, though easily accepted by their American counterparts. Szulevicz made a point of calling Raiman every time there was any doubt in the eyes of the Americans so they could hear the full support he had from his chairman and the authority he enjoyed.
In reality, Szulevicz did not have full authority on every detail and would coordinate some contract elements behind the scenes with Raiman and a special task force at GSI. And Szulevicz, like any other GSI employee, had to behave according to the company’s “rules of the game,” which had been in effect since Tillard’s seminars in the early 1980s. One of these rules was the duty to consult for any decision with serious impact on the company (recall Gore’s similar waterline decision principle). However, after the consultation, it was up to Szulevicz to make a decision, to inform the consulted persons about it, and to assume responsibility for the outcome—good or bad. But the fact that Szulevicz could decide many things by himself and get an OK by a simple call to his chairman not only moved things along quickly but also made a big difference in the eyes of the Euro Disney negotiators. Compared with the slowness of EDS, which had to refer every single point up through their hierarchy and wait days for an answer, GSI’s nimbleness was impressive.
The month ended and the contract was ready, with the stamps and signatures on all the clauses validated by both parties. GSI became eligible to bid for the whole Euro Disney IS business. In the end GSI “won it all,” just like Chairman Raiman had asked Szulevicz to do—all $300 million a year. The contract continued years after both men had left the company.
Could Szulevicz have failed? Of course he could have. But this story would still be valuable because it illustrates the kind of initiative and risk taking that is possible for a natural leader in freedom-based companies but unthinkable in “how” companies. It is an example of a business situation in which an opportunity was felt by only one person in the company, the salesman Jacques Szulevicz. And it was felt at the gut level, not through calculations. As he remarked to us later: “From the management control point it was a fundamental error and if a controller had said to me, ‘Jacques, you’re completely crazy’ he would have been right; I would never be able to rationally convince him. All I had was just a feeling.” Yet at freedom-based