How - Dov Seidman [112]
Then one day, I got a voice mail from David suggesting a meeting. “At the time I called,” David explained, “LRN was developing something that was new, advanced, different, and no one else had. I am not dogmatic in my beliefs, nor do I think I’m infallible. As I grew into my position and became part of the community, I started to understand more of what I didn’t know. I took as my mandate that Altria needs to have the best possible program, so I reached out, despite our past. I saw it as the principled thing to do.”
Although I was still smarting after all those years, I thought, “no harm, no foul.” It was a new chapter. So we created a strong presentation customized to Altria’s needs, and began a series of meetings between our teams. David kicked the tires, and then dug deeper into our approach and specific solution. We developed a rapport, and David extended me the honor to speak at one of Altria’s global leadership conferences. “At that point,” David said, “we had put aside the past, and we were proceeding on a professional, on-the-merits basis. Within my own team, it was a big deal to invite Dov to speak at one of our leadership meetings, and I was conscious of that on two levels. One, I thought there’d be learning, and that was the main thing. And two, I thought it was useful to say to the troops, ‘I, David, am capable of learning, and we should not be standing on personal principle or history or anything else when it comes to doing the right thing for the company. We may have had an unfortunate experience with LRN, which left whatever scar tissue it left; but that was a few years ago, and we’re still about doing the right and smart thing.’ ”
After the conference, our teams sat down and had a long dinner. During it, David got very open about his thoughts about leadership and what it was like to be a young executive officer with Altria and go work overseas and come back. It was a very sharing dinner about perspective and views on big business, big companies, and leadership. We got to know each other a little bit more just in the exchange of perspectives that night. David showed a lot of power in his ability to be vulnerable and reflective in front of his colleagues, and a lot of humility.
A couple of weeks later, he and I had dinner together, just the two of us, and during the meal, I had my briefcase open (I think I did it on purpose). At some point, I pulled out a copy of LRN’s Leadership Framework, the constitution around which our company was built, and got very passionate. I shared our ideas about values-based leadership, our commitment to our beliefs, and how the framework governs all that we do. It was a great meal, where we both really opened up with each other. “As we were leaving the restaurant, I had my epiphany,” David said. “I stopped Dov on the street and said, ‘You know, it just occurred to me that you really believe in what you say, and that you were truly acting on principle back then, and I don’t think I really believed it until right now.’ ” It was at that moment I felt complete closure. David and I stopped seeing each other as human doings, and started believing in each other as human beings. At that moment, Altria and LRN stopped being companies in business together, and started doing a Wave.
In the ensuing months, David and I began to nurture a wide-ranging relationship of collaboration and innovation. During that same time,