The Third Man

That's Davy with me on the night he hosted a great farewell dinner for me. He became the third head of the company when I left.

Thinking about the transition to a new head for the company, I think my timing was just a bit off. If I had just waited three more months to retire, I would have realized that I could do a mini-Blagojevich and make some money by having the people who wanted my job pay me to recommend them as my successor to the owner of the company. But, as the Illinois governor lamented of the Obama team, all he could expect from them was appreciation.

Actually, I would settle for a little appreciation from Davy but his comments today to an earlier post make me wonder if he is in that frame of mind any more. Rather than make you chase them down, here they are:

Davy Adams has left a new comment on your post "SPECIAL POST: Behind the Scenes at Fourth Quarter":
"4Q"...guess it makes a change from "TITSWC". Actually, I thought this blog was all about IDG's 4th quarter. Was there fine print? Was it assumed knowledge? I guess there was always the connection because you chanted "TITSWC" all the way through Q4 and I muttered "4Q Don..4Q" in October when I realised what I'd got myself in for :-)
Posted by Davy Adams to Fourth Quarter at December 16, 2008 4:43 PM

In case you have forgotten, TITSWC stands for "tell it to someone who cares" and 4Q is just the abbreviation for this blog, Fourth Quarter. But from his comments, a few things are becoming quite clear to me.

First, I now know who is yelling that at me when I drop Linda off at work.

Second, Davy isn't setting a good example by replying to silly posts like this while at work (4:43pm!). That's actually a joke because Davy was one of the people with whom I used to be able to play e-mail gotcha. That's where you send an e-mail to someone at a ridiculous hour, say 2am on Friday night, and they reply immediately to let you know you can't catch them asleep at the wheel. That's scored as a Gotcha and they get double points for being online at even crazier hours than you. Mind you, once you are retired, none of this counts anymore because it is just assumed you are an old fart who is having trouble sleeping.

Third, based on the things he wrote, it's pretty clear that the honeymoon period for his new job is just about over. Given that the guys running banks and car companies are being vilified and humiliated continually over their businesses, I guess it is to be expected that this little computer publishing company here in Oz will be doing it tough, too.

It does take the fun out of your first time to be the Big Kahuna (a metaphor, in Davy's case). Even though it was more than 20 years ago, I can remember the sense of accomplishment when the guys in Boston asked me to run one of their then least successful international businesses. And the international bit is what's key.

It's kind of spooky to realize you're in a job for the first time where your boss not only isn't in the building, they are not even in the hemisphere. Even the time zones are wrong, so you really don't have lots of chances to talk things over.

For some of us, that turns out to be good. I used to tell my bosses in Boston that I made the company start each day with a prayer thanking God for making the Pacific Ocean as big as it is. Strange how few of them thought that was as funny as I did.

But not having a boss close by has some serious disadvantages, as well. Few realize it, but the chief advantage of having a boss is having someone with whom you can share the blame when you stuff up. Think about it. If you haven't told your boss about something and it all goes horribly wrong, your boss gets to yell and scream at you and maybe even sack you.

But if you've shared it with them --- well, guess who gets a bucketing then from the Really Big Kahuna (and with him that's not a metaphor). Your boss may still fire you since the creative ones usually know how to point fingers at underlings better than at themselves. But at least they will have had their ears boxed for the effort.

At least when you read his comments to my post, you can see that Davy is a quick learner. When I left I shared lots of my secrets with him. One that I learned early seems to have sunk in. I told him that you only get about 12 - 18 months of blaming the guy who came before you for all the problems in the company so don't waste the opportunity by being nice about it.

I have a sense of pride that I have trained him well.