Today’s post is part of a fun, though time consuming, series to write. It is somewhat career auto-biographical in nature—though am focusing on memorable stories that are entertaining to tell and, I hope, to read. As I ended the last post, I had just been schooled by Jane, the not-so-eager union technician in the Illinois Bell Naperville garage. As part of the “Class of 1986” Management Development Program, my inaugural assignment was coming to its natural end. My next assignment—I headed to the Division Staff office of a 4th level by the name of Campbell. My primary job was putting together the budget for Campbell’s 2,000 workforce region.
The first thing I recall about this assignment is a change in behavior from those in the Naperville garage, including Joel Moseley the 2nd level. I was not part of Division staff, and it is good for these folks to have friends at staff. Joel made it clear that it was his support that got me this plush assignment.
The staff office was in La Grange, a beautiful suburb about 20 minutes from downtown. That is, 20 minutes if you were making the drive at 3am. At any other time, the city was 1.5 hours away. The staff was about 7 people, each of whom was highly experienced in their discipline. Except me. These 7 were also well respected across the region. Except me. I was just a college puke being run though the Management Development Program.
In this assignment, I learned what marketing people did in a monopoly telephone company. Remember, my job was budgeting. It turned out that marketing’s primary job in the company was to forecast line counts. That was it. Were access lines going to grow by 2.3% or by 2.4%? It was a little harder than just coming up with 2.3% versus 2.4% because they had to do this by region. And marketing’s decisions on where to project growth is what generated the budgets for each geography. Since all Illinois Bell District Managers wanted to be “da man” (there weren’t women in those roles in those days), an extra .3% of access line growth was a big status symbol.
My job was first to represent Campbell—the Division Manager—in arguing that marketing understated the growth that was taking place in Campbell’s division. “How do we know they understated it?”, I innocently asked. Perplexed with my question, Campbell tried to explain that I was missing the point. They expect us to argue for more so if we don’t, we won’t have enough money in our budget.
Over about a three month period of time, Campbell’s access forecast was negotiated to closure. Then came the fun part. My next job was to divide the forecast into Campbell’s four districts. John Mitchell, the much-feared district manager, all of a sudden became my friend. So another 3 months were spent fussing with which division was credited with which growth.
Then a big flood hit the Chicago suburbs… (to be continued)
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