Chairman and CEO of P&G.
“My mom, a strong, proud Irish woman who died last year at 82, told me to have the courage of my convictions. She encouraged me to be independent and to be myself, and her advice was in my mind when 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 even bought a house in Connecticut. I was getting out of P&G because I thought the bureaucracy was so stifling and the change was so slow. 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, which was the bureaucracy. He said, ‘You’re running away. You don’t have the guts to stay and change it. You’ll run from the 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.”
A reminder for us in these tough financial times.. :)
A Learning a Day 