One Company – Four Men: Part VI

Charles was promoted from Division VP to Division President after Joseph was fired, after which Sammy became VP and I shortly thereafter became assistant to Sammy.

Because of the diverse nature of my position I had a lot of interaction with Charles and worked with him on special projects – in a sense I reported to both Sammy and Charles.

Charles was 6 feet tall, around 240 pounds and had the energy of a nuclear power plant. Whereas Joseph had been affable and reserved, preferring to let his vice presidents imbue the division with energy, Charles was the source of energy for our division. Sammy, vice president of operations, and Charles were like Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippin on the basketball court, they were both high-energy and working with them was electric. The vice presidents of marketing and finance, whose predecessors were fired along with Joseph, were overshadowed by Charles and Sammy.

Charles had come up through the ranks and we had many people in the division with whom he had worked for a number of years. Charles was loyal, but his loyalty was without accountability on the part of the people to whom he was loyal. This was finally too much for me and led to my resignation. One of our key managers was known to have stolen from the firm, but Charles not only retained him, but promoted him. True, his promotion was in a position in which he would not presumably be able to steal, but I thought it unconscionable that Charles would promote this person when we had other qualified and honest people for the position. 

Since I had assisted the firm through significant litigation, and since I had helped Charles on special projects, Charles was also loyal to me and gave me many opportunities professionally and educationally. We had a pretty open and frank relationship; he knew, as Sammy knew, and as Mike before him knew, that I would always look out for him. These guys knew that I’d tell them the truth, they knew I’d disagree with them, and they knew that I’d look out for the firm and for them.

In spite of my misgivings over Charles’s personnel decisions, it was fun working for him and Sammy. I probably had the most pure fun and exhilaration in that part of my career than I’ve ever experienced. We worked hard, sometimes into the night when a quarter was closing and we needed production. We pushed ourselves, our people, and our vendors and contractors – we loved what we were doing.