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Conference 7.286::digital

Title:	The Digital way of working

Moderator:	QUARK::LIONELON

Created:	Fri Feb 14 1986
Last Modified:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	5321
Total number of notes:	139771

23.0. "MAIL ROOM ?????" by FRSBEE::KLEINBERGER () Sun Mar 10 1985 00:27

I know this is not about Digital...but I think it has maybe (?) a lot of
wisdom in it. It has been taken from the book WHAT THEY DON'T TEACH YOU AT 
HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL, and is written by Mark H. McCormack. It is a very 
enlightening book, and I recommend it to any professional person. Can I 
have your comments on it please????? thank-you

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               WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM WORKING IN THE MAIL ROOM

	You won't learn humility. You won't learn respect. You won't learn 
the company inside out or from the bottom up.  What you will learn is 
something very important, and perhaps a bit frightening about yourself.

	The people who get ahead have a need, are driven to perform a task 
well, no matter what the task is or how mundane it may actually be.  They 
bring to any job an attitude which transform the job into something 
greater.  Carpenters who become contractors at one time had a need to drive 
a nail straighter and truer than anyone else.  Waiters who end up owning 
restaurants were at one time very good waiters.

	Some executives, had they started in the mail room, would still be 
sorting mail -- and misrouting most of it.



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T.R	Title	User	Date	Lines
23.1		PRSIS4::DTL	`Mon Mar 11 1985 07:18`	17
	This can't occur in Europe, to my feeling, because we have a totally different way of accessing to executive positions in management. If you don't come from a high school, you will never access such high place, so you will never start working in a mail room. I know perhaps only ONE company in France who may give that training to its 'high level' managers, Michelin, which boss, Francois Michelin, has a very special idea of management. A good friend of mine, who got an MBA from the NY university after Sciences Politiques in Paris, started within Michelin Co in a plant as a worker, putting screws and other stuff along an assembly chain for two months, then in another plant, making tyres, etc... But that is an exception. You, over there, are, to me, the only place where someone may access high level management from nothing, because someone is juged from his/her competence, not from his/her diplomas.
23.2		USRCV1::KINNEYD	`Tue Apr 09 1985 11:13`	13
	I have read the book and found it also to be very interesting. McCormick (sp) is a very interesting man with even more interesting personal habits, most of which are unsuitable to the average person. He is also an executive with a position that is unconventional to say the least and defies definition. I began in this industry from the bottom, as a data control clerk and come up through the ranks and have learned much of the business from the bottom up. I dont know if that is a real advantage or not, because when I graph my career in terms of salary,formal training , and benifit value the turning point on the curve is the day I got a degree in Business. This occured a full three years after I began working and was the deciding factor to moving into middle management, not where I had been before. Of course very little of this happened at digital. where is this going...?
23.3	The Secret of my Success	LEROUF::GLIGOR	`Sat Jan 30 1988 11:52`	7
	I have two copies of the book that were given to me over the last 2 years by different friends -- but I have not yet had a chance to read it. The first thing that came into my mind, however, was the movie, The Secret of my Success starring Michael J. Fox where he goes from the Mail Room to the CEO in a few months. A really NEAT movie! (Ok, I'll admit that I've seen it 4 times!)