Dennis, Ray's immediate supervisor, pokes his head though the door of Ray's office after the team meeting and says, "Come by when you can," which translates into "In my office in five minutes, please."
He goes to the bathroom, comes back to his desk long enough to grab his notebook and takes the stairs to Dennis's office two floors up. There is a single receptionist guarding the doors to the executive offices. Ray's is a familiar enough face that she smiles when she sees him, pushes the button on her desk releasing the door lock and turns back to her phone conversation. As always, Dennis is sitting behind his desk doing email. When you reach upper level management, you are expected to spend the majority of your time doing email, responding to voice phone messages and attending two to three meetings a day. Dennis has risen quickly through the ranks because he understands better than most that a key trait of a good manager is the wisdom to know when and how to create or, as importantly, avoid a paper trail.
Without taking his eyes away from his email he says, "Have a seat."
There are two chairs facing Dennis's desk. Ray takes the one closest to the door. For the next minute he watches his supervisor fire off one email after another in rapid succession — a staccato of keyboard clicks, followed by a mouse click, the process is repeated again and again, without hesitation or apparent reflection.
With a final flourish of his mouse his supervisor stops what he is doing, swivels in his chair, smiles, and says, "So, what do you think?"
"I love this society."
"You mean our country."
"No, I mean this society. We do things collectively as a society that all the smartest people in the world couldn't figure out in a million years."
"Like what?"
"Like how we continually create new markets for people's attention. Sometimes we call it entertainment. Sometimes we call it education. Sometimes we call it politics, or business or religion. But regardless of what we call it, we never allow people to become complacent in their response to the stimuli around them. We are always introducing new categories of stimulation and stimulus response. That is why the world loves our culture and wants to emulate us. Even when they hate our government, they still love our culture, our capacity to make people watch TV, for example."
"I certainly feel that way about you."
"Me? What do you mean?"
"You are a fountainhead of stimulus. Each time we talk, I am stimulated more than I can say."
Dennis is always willing to let a subordinate participate in a discussion in whatever way seems best. He almost always invites his direct reports to start the conversation as a way of giving them some ownership in the outcome. That is what makes him a good manager. If things go sideways or over-the-top, he never hesitates to say something along the lines of, "I'm going to refocus the conversation now. Remember that we are discussing such-and-such policy, goals, issues, outcomes, action items, etc ."
Dennis has ten minutes available for this meeting and only needs five, "I can tell you're not done. What's the takeaway?"
"Not only do we create entirely new markets for stimuli on a nearly daily basis, we have finally figured out how to turn them into transactions and increase their velocity so that everyone in this society is continually consuming transactions. That is why we are the richest society in the world and will probably remain so for the next century at least. There is nothing this society cannot convert into a consumer product and a corresponding financial transaction. Random events, even. Once you can connect random events together in real time and charge money for it, there is no escape. Everybody becomes an alimentary canal for an endless buffet of financial transactions."
Dennis mentally admits to himself that his conversations with Ray are different from most other conversations in too many ways to count. They are interesting for one. Nevertheless, Ray's time is up. "If you don't mind, I'm going to direct the discussion for a couple of minutes. Are we ready for the meeting this afternoon?"
The response is immediate. "Yes. Unless you want to make some changes, the presentation is finished. I thought we might hand out a written agenda they can look at as we talk. It gives us a chance to skip items if necessary without losing anyone."
Dennis received the PowerPoint presentation and the agenda the previous Friday. He has not bothered to look at either one. He trusts Ray. Even more, he trusts his judgment where Ray is concerned. "Sounds good. Anything else?"
"No. That's it for me."
"Two things to keep in mind throughout the meeting. One, ownership. The purpose of this meeting is to establish ownership of the project. Not by me, not by you or your team, but by the Board and the CEO. The best ideas are their ideas. If someone says something you don't agree with, don't argue. If someone says something you agree with, repeat it. If they see something they like, they will say so. The moment that happens, we're gold. Two, don't lock us down with any promises, deadlines or deliverables. If someone is insistent, I'll take care of it. The meeting will start at one. Just come to the large conference room and wait outside. I'll come out and get you when it's time." Dennis flashes a grin, goes back to his email.
At the door Ray turns to ask, "Open or closed?"
"Open."
