David Batstone writes for Worthwhile Magazine and produces an e-newsletter called The WAG, Worthwhile and Gain. In an August issue of WAG, David plucked a particularly relevant story out of Fortune Magazine. It was the experience of A.G. Lafley, the Chairman and CEO of Proctor & Gamble, who nearly left P&G twenty years ago. There are days when some of the typical work BS becomes annoying and I think of chucking it for another organization. Then, I consider Lafley’s experience and think again:
I almost left P&G in my sixth year. It was 1982, and I decided to go to one of those boutique consulting firms in Connecticut. I was getting out of P&G because I thought the bureaucracy was so stifling…I was an associate – between a brand manager and a marketing director – and I was running a bunch of laundry brands. Steve Donovan was in charge of the soap business, and I handed him my resignation.
He tore it up. I said to him, ‘I made a copy.’ He said, ‘Go home. Call me tonight.’ Which was smart, not to negotiate with me right there. When I called him that night, he said, ‘Don’t come into the office for the next week. Come and see me every night.’ So every night, I went to his home, and we’d have a beer or two. He kept working me over until he got to the root of my problem with P&G…He said, ‘You’re running away. You don’t have the guts to stay and change it. You’ll run from your next job too.’
That really ticked me off. I stayed. And from then on, every time something didn’t work, I spoke up. I realized that you can make a difference if you speak up and set your mind to changing things.
I think it’s a natural instinct to want to run from trouble. The only question is whether we have the ‘guts’ to stay and change it.
boohoo, that might have been another way to take the article. I can only make assumptions at this point, but I figure that Steve Donovan saw something in him - or something in the circumstances Lafley's desire to resign - that he needed to probe further.
I do think that the actors are secondary to the theme in this case: if you're going to run from trouble, have a good reason for it. Move on only when you've exhausted your options. There are days when my own work provokes a strong desire to pick up my toys and leave. Yet I'm reminded by Lafley's lesson that if I leave my current organization because of initial frustration, I'll likely run from the next place, and the next place after that. There will be a time to move on, but it needs to be on my terms and only when I have done all that I can to improve my current situation.
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