1) Management Experience:

What is the most number of people that have reported to you in previous work experiences? Reporting to you means you were their boss responsible for their performance reviews, talent development, and managing them as your team or business unit worked on projects.

Approximately 12 (Donnelley software team)

2) The mentor situation:

Part 1: Do you have a mentor that has helped you develop your mangement skills? Part 2: Please describe this person in detail. (in addition include their name, title, where they work, and how long they have been a mentor for you) Part 3: How did you begin working with them? Part 4: What have they taught you? Part 5: Is there anything you disagree on? Part 6: What is their current evaluation of you?

I have always had good friends that helped me. Early in my career, a man named Jim Lawlor was the senior management supervisor for my R&D team. Not day-to-day, we had a manager for that. Jim's big contribution was the idea of removing excuses. He was good at identifying the barriers to accomplishment and focusing our attention on removing them. When I got my first management assignment (supervising a software development team), I would work with people to identify the things that held them back.

Another was named Dave Clark. He was a technical genius, perhaps the smartest person I've ever known. He taught me how to solve problems in an orderly way. Under his influence, I got better at collecting information and devising solutions. He was very patient and showed me how to wait for completeness before making a decision.

There are others but the one that I considered 'mentor' most directly is named Terry Millington. He is presently National Sales Manager for a company that sells quality control systems to printing companies. I worked with and for him for several years at Scitex. I was a technical sales support rep and then Manager of the National Accounts group technical sales support team.

We were hired into the company at about the same time. We liked each other and sold a lot of equipment together. He would find the clients and I would do the analysis, write the proposal and, usually, make the presentations. He was eventually promoted to National Accounts Sales Manager with the instruction to fix an otherwise failing organization.

Terry asked me to help him. He sort of saw this as an example of what we normally did with customers: understand their needs, devise a solution, convince them that it was a good idea and then make it work. While he worked the halls of power, I set to work figuring out what was wrong with the old organization and developing a plan to go forward. When it was done, I was promoted to be the Manager of Technical Sales Support for the group.

Terry's dominant characteristic is kindness. He is the rare sales person that has no trace of exploitation in his relationships with people. He seems to truly want to help and works as hard as he can to do so. The other thing that has always struck me about him is that he is able to speak emotional truth to people. Many times I watched him talk to customers and bring them to a good place, even though what he was saying, in the strictest sense, didn't really seem convincing to me. Lesson one from Terry: Managing relationships is not about facts and logic.

Once our plan for the National Accounts group was accepted, we had a group meeting. Twenty people from around the country converged on our office to meet the new bosses. As the meeting opened, Terry asked everyone in the room to get out a piece of paper. He instructed us to write the word 'ego' on it. Then he put a wastebasket on the table and told us all to crumple it up and throw it into the can.

Of course, it was corny and hilarious. We made jokes about each other's throwing skills. It was also a master stroke. A group of people suspicious about the new regime were turned into a group of friends with a common experience. It also gave him an opportunity to discuss our new mutual reliance.

There are two main aspects to Terry's influence on my life and style. I have been empowered by his trust and I have been moderated by his example.

In addition to our time at Scitex, we worked together at another company. In both places, he offered me challenges and accepted my solutions. During in-process discussions, his style was to ask me what I thought of ideas as they came up. He would encourage me to convince myself that ideas were good or, sometimes, to talk myself out of them. He never seemed to be imposing a viewpoint on me. This trust caused me to do some of the best work of my career.

The other thing is that he has helped me damp my enthusiasm a little, moderate the strength of my viewpoints, and be more willing to hang back and wait for others to establish themselves. The 'emotional truth' idea I saw him use effectively with customers is valuable in most interactions but especially with employees. He taught me to hear beyond their words, to allow them every opportunity to develop their own viewpoints and to trust them to do well.

Disagreement? Politics.

Current evaluation? He was amazed by my accomplishment in building Restorion. He has been helpful in my job hunt. He is a friend that I count upon with confidence.

Recruiting:

Part 1: In previous roles were you responsible for picking these team members or asked to take over as the manager for an established team? Part 2: If you were responsible for hiring a team what did you do to find A players? How do you evaluate people's ability and capability?

When I have had hiring responsiblity, the qualifications for the job have always been fairly clear. Software expertise at Donnelley. Trade skills at Laser Colour. Willingness to sign on to a garage business at the start of Restorion.

At Donnelley, we hired all of our programmers right out of college. Because we were inventing, there was no place to seek experienced digital imaging people. Because Donnelley was Donnelley, they weren't going to pay for some hotshot programmer from Sun Microsystems.

Within my constraints, though, I needed to choose the best people. It started with 'Career Day' interviews at universities. During those interviews, I tried to ascertain the basic niceness and smartness of the people. I always talked about life outside the classroom and technology. Watched to see if they were comfortable people or if they were fearful. I tried to see if this was a person that, given some kindness, would expand to be a generous contributor on my staff.

Eventually, some would make it to the internal interview process. My boss would talk to them. I would have one of my programmers talk to them. When I talked to them, my favorite thing to do was to discuss an actual problem that we were facing at the moment. In a casual way I would explain what we were doing and introduce the thing that had us stuck. If there was an aspect where current college classes might have offered some special insight, I would ask if there had been any pertinent teaching. Eventually, the person would be engaged in the problem. Or not.

I'd watch to see if the person engaged the process with interest (in those days, everything we did was interesting to a computer person) or with suspicion; tried to actually apply their imagination to the problem or felt like they needed to protect their position; generosity or fear. Of course, I also evaluated their technical knowledge and problem solving approach but these kids all knew a lot.

My goal in hiring has always been to form a team. I want smart people that care about the mission and whose nature will cause them to identify with and support the group.

Management Experiences:

In the past I have:

Promoted people within my group

Fired people

Fired vendors

Hired vendors

Been fired

Been promoted from managing a small team to a large team

Favorite Employee:

Who is the best person you ever managed? Tell me about this person.

I have two.

John Field was a programmer. He was the sort of person that would accept an assignment and do it. He was fun to talk to and engaged as well as anyone when his project needed to be reviewed but he was otherwise completely self-sufficient. He quietly did ingenious stuff all the time. He seemed to have no need for flamboyant ego. He never bragged, even though he was clearly one of the best programmers. He was helpful to others and never caused any problems.

Even better, though, he went on strange vacations. He hiked Angel Falls (the world's tallest waterfall) in South America. He built trails in Appalacia. He kayaked with whales in Alaska. He also made ground horseradish using an old gasmask he got somewhere. He was an amazing guy.

The other is a woman named Rebecca. She worked for me as a technical sales support rep when I managed that team for National Accounts at Scitex. She was young and new. She was also very worried about her technical expertise and she had some reason to be. She had made some mistakes.

I liked her because she was open to learning. Her performance was not excellent and, as her boss, that was my responsibility. It's too long past to recall details, but we discussed the issues. I suggested things she could do to bolster her knowledge and her confidence (that was an important part of her problem). I offered (not commanded, but offered) to help her problem solve when she felt she needed it.

The amazing thing was: She took me up on all of it. She actually did the extra study that I suggested. She actually called me up to ask for advice when she ran into problems. She actively and sincerely took advantage of the resources and suggestions I offered.

Of course, the story is improved by the fact that it worked. She became a better analyst and happier employee.

Management, leadership, self-help:

Part 1: What business, management, leadership, or related books have you read? Part 2: From the books listed above which of them do you fully understand and could explain in detail if questioned about them? Part 3: Which do you agree with and which do you disagree with? Part 4: Have you applied any concepts from these books? If so explain how it was applied.

I'm OK, You're OK by Thomas Harris

Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill

The Science of Selling (a class, not a book)

Using the Franklin Day Planner (a taped seminar, not a book)

Blink, the power of thinking without thinking by Malcom Gladwell

Many parenting books when my children were small

I read a lot. There are others over the years. I don't remember them.

I can explain the Science of Selling in detail. I can explain the use of a Franklin Day planner in detail. I can discuss Blink in detail (I read it yesterday).

For me, the most important of them is Using the Franklin Day Planner. Though nominally about the specific organizer, I learned how to think about organizing and prioritizing my life. With that experience, I changed from being a fairly competent person to being a fairly competent person that could make a commitment to accomplish something with the confidence that it would be done. The key ideas of spending some time in the morning actually planning and the focus on evaluating activities based on their relevance to goals were critical to whatever successes I have since had.

Nearly as important is the Science of Selling. Obviously, the context is selling but the real lessons are how to engage with people to understand what they are really saying. It taught me about things like 'active listening' and how to feed information back to people as a way of insuring accurate understanding as well as to validate them and show respect to their ideas. The Science of Selling also added a substantial component of personal organizational practice. I learned to take a moment for explicit planning before a meeting. I also learned to ask people for their commitment, never to dishonor them by assuming I know what they think.

Blink is a book that focuses on the unconscious processes that influence our thinking. It seems to refer to a book from the seventies called something like Consciousness and the Rise of the Bicameral Mind. Clearly one's brain has the ability to operate separate from our conscious thought process. That only makes sense, of course, since consciousness is clearly an add-on to the brain structures of those mammals that show no signs of self-awareness. It doesn't seem likely that the instinctive processes would go away and, according to Gladwell, they haven't.

Everything influences me. I agree with all of them and disagree with all of them - at least in part. Books are too big an element to summarize that way, at least for me.

From I'm OK, I came to understand at an early age that interactions with people include the need to win and lose in tiny increments. That each experience includes conceding points and being accepted. I learned that it is important to allow those processes to occur. I learned not to try to win in every sentence.

From Think and Grow Rich, I came to understand the importance of visualization. Hill presents the idea as if it's some sort of magic but, for me, it turns out that visualization is a form of conception and planning. When I have visualized well enought to satisfy Hill, it looks more to me like I have finally figured out enough to really see what needs to be done.

For The Science of Selling, I learned that moving a project forward is a process of developing a mutual view of the goal and working with the people involved to insure that they are engaged, signed on and understand what needs to be done. It also changed my ideas about project documentation.

My Franklin Day Planner taught me how to get up in the morning and decide what to do.

Honestly, I can't figure out what the author of Blink wants me to do. The anecdotes are interesting but I can't tell if he thinks that subconcious thinking is a good tool or one that is too easy manipulated to be useful. I have always relied on background processing to help me solve complex problems but rarely am comfortable acting on impulse.

Parenting books taught me to engage people with honest sympathy. Though there are a million practical relationship techniques that transfer from bringing up small children to engaging other people in a project, there is one that strikes me most: When a person is in pain or complains, they don't need you to explain the situation, empathize or even try to help. When a person has a problem, they want to be heard, validated and listened to. This is a key technique for working with small children and has never let me down with an adult.

High Growth Business:

For how many years have you worked in a high growth business environment?

five or more years

Improving production organizations:

Rate your experience setting up systems and processes to streamline operations of a PUBLISHING or MANUFACTURING business.

I am a serious expert in this area and have spent much of my career analyzing production systems.

At Donnelley, I worked with JC Penney to completely reinvent their catalog publishing system. I was the primary author of the plan and was closely involved with its implementation. I worked with Scientific American Magazing, Farm Journal, and Family Circle Magazine (at the time the largest circulation in the country) to help them improve their production as well. I was responsible for evaluation and improvement of the performance of the two multi-million dollar digital imaging production systems we created for in-house use.

At Scitex and Krause America, my primary job included technical sales support. The main task in that job was to analyze production systems and recommend ways to improve them. At Scitex, their product line was comprehensive. As a consequence, I often recommended completely new workflows, staffing changes, etc. I also helped clients develop budgets, return on investment analysis and subsequent performance metrics.

Salary:

In your last full time position what was your yearly salary not including any benefits like health insurance?

Consistent with that offered.

Previous Reports:

For each position you have previously held please write the name and role of your boss and any direct reports that you managed.

Jim Mason, Manager, R.R. Donnelley & Sons*

Jim Lawlor, VP, R.R. Donnelley & Sons*

Dave Clark, business partner, Laser Colour*

Terry Nosal, Manager - Central Region, Scitex

Terry Millington, Manager National Accounts, Scitex*

Ken Moody, VP Sales/Marketing, Krause America

Joe Donahue, Owner, Sonoran Scanners

Bob Vollen, business parther, Restorion*

*These are companies where I had employees or supervised workers in some other context. I can't list all the employees.