Who’s the Boss?
Some days you just get on a roll. You’re on top of the world, you’re in the zone and you’re making things happen.
I had just opened a seminar of about 23 people who had come to take a 2-day business writing class. I like to visit my classes occasionally to see who actually comes to take my courses. When I do, I usually kick off the session by welcoming everyone, telling them a little bit about what to expect, and then introducing their instructor to them. When I’m on a roll, I can usually bring the instructor up to the front of the room accompanied by enthusiastic applause.
When I left the classroom to go back to my “real” work, I passed by our customer service desk, which was fairly quiet now that all of the students were settled into their classes.
There was, however, one man standing there with his young son. They had just walked in off the street to inquire about our seminars. The woman at the customer service desk was still busy checking in a late-arriving student. So, still on a roll, I asked the man if I could help him.
What the man wanted was some literature. He came to the right place. Believe me, we have tons of literature. Anyone who has ever taken one of our seminars can tell you about how much “literature” they receive in the mail from us.
So I walked the man and his son over to our literature display while asking him what kind of training he was interested in. I determined that what he really needed was a general seminars catalog, but as luck would have it the display was out of them.
By now the woman at the front desk was free so I asked her if we had any catalogs left. She cheerfully said we had some down the hall at another display—and then ran to get one.
With his new catalog in hand, the potential new customer and his son and I headed for the elevators. While waiting for the elevators he asked me, “Are you the boss?”
“Are you the boss?” Hmm. Presumably he thought I was the president of the company.
This is not the first time I have been mistaken for being the big man. For one thing, we are both about the same age. We also both usually wear cufflinks. And on this day I was also wearing my favorite Italian double-breasted suit. So in these days of casual dress, I was looking my executive best.
But I dress this way pretty much everyday—except for Fridays. Yet people don’t mistake me for the president every day of the week. So what was so special about last Thursday morning?
In Arnold Patent’s book, You Can Have it All, he wrote a chapter called “Owning the Level.” I first read that book over twenty years ago and this is the one chapter in it that I still keep thinking about. The premise of owning the level is that once a person achieves mastery of something, he owns the level attained by that mastery.
People tend to stay at the level—or station in life—they have mastered. When they move around in the work world they stay at the same level. For example, when an administrative assistant needs a new job, she will tend to look for administrative assistant jobs because she owns that level. A marketing manager will look for another job as a marketing manager—or possibly a job as a marketing director if she feels ready for the next level. But eventually, the theory goes, we all settle into a level and then own it.
Accordingly, CEOs go from being CEO of one company to CEO of another—even though the businesses may be totally different. They don’t start all over again at the bottom of the ladder and work their way back up. They own the level of CEO.
What level we own, Patent said, is determined by how we feel about ourselves. I think what he was saying is that if we perceive what we are doing as being of great value, others will as well. And they will react to us at the level of the value they perceive. So the level we are projecting is the level that is reflected back to us.
Many days I feel like my daily routine is of little or no value. It consists of doing so many mundane things just to keep the business going—majoring in the minors, I like to say.
But on Thursday I was acting like a CEO doing the most important thing a CEO can do—helping a customer get happily involved with the product.
In 20/20 hindsight, when the man asked me if I was the boss I shouldn’t have said, “No I’m just . . .” I had already slipped a couple of levels.
I should have said, “Not yet.”
Some days you just get on a roll. You’re on top of the world, you’re in the zone and you’re making things happen.
I had just opened a seminar of about 23 people who had come to take a 2-day business writing class. I like to visit my classes occasionally to see who actually comes to take my courses. When I do, I usually kick off the session by welcoming everyone, telling them a little bit about what to expect, and then introducing their instructor to them. When I’m on a roll, I can usually bring the instructor up to the front of the room accompanied by enthusiastic applause.
When I left the classroom to go back to my “real” work, I passed by our customer service desk, which was fairly quiet now that all of the students were settled into their classes.
There was, however, one man standing there with his young son. They had just walked in off the street to inquire about our seminars. The woman at the customer service desk was still busy checking in a late-arriving student. So, still on a roll, I asked the man if I could help him.
What the man wanted was some literature. He came to the right place. Believe me, we have tons of literature. Anyone who has ever taken one of our seminars can tell you about how much “literature” they receive in the mail from us.
So I walked the man and his son over to our literature display while asking him what kind of training he was interested in. I determined that what he really needed was a general seminars catalog, but as luck would have it the display was out of them.
By now the woman at the front desk was free so I asked her if we had any catalogs left. She cheerfully said we had some down the hall at another display—and then ran to get one.
With his new catalog in hand, the potential new customer and his son and I headed for the elevators. While waiting for the elevators he asked me, “Are you the boss?”
“Are you the boss?” Hmm. Presumably he thought I was the president of the company.
This is not the first time I have been mistaken for being the big man. For one thing, we are both about the same age. We also both usually wear cufflinks. And on this day I was also wearing my favorite Italian double-breasted suit. So in these days of casual dress, I was looking my executive best.
But I dress this way pretty much everyday—except for Fridays. Yet people don’t mistake me for the president every day of the week. So what was so special about last Thursday morning?
In Arnold Patent’s book, You Can Have it All, he wrote a chapter called “Owning the Level.” I first read that book over twenty years ago and this is the one chapter in it that I still keep thinking about. The premise of owning the level is that once a person achieves mastery of something, he owns the level attained by that mastery.
People tend to stay at the level—or station in life—they have mastered. When they move around in the work world they stay at the same level. For example, when an administrative assistant needs a new job, she will tend to look for administrative assistant jobs because she owns that level. A marketing manager will look for another job as a marketing manager—or possibly a job as a marketing director if she feels ready for the next level. But eventually, the theory goes, we all settle into a level and then own it.
Accordingly, CEOs go from being CEO of one company to CEO of another—even though the businesses may be totally different. They don’t start all over again at the bottom of the ladder and work their way back up. They own the level of CEO.
What level we own, Patent said, is determined by how we feel about ourselves. I think what he was saying is that if we perceive what we are doing as being of great value, others will as well. And they will react to us at the level of the value they perceive. So the level we are projecting is the level that is reflected back to us.
Many days I feel like my daily routine is of little or no value. It consists of doing so many mundane things just to keep the business going—majoring in the minors, I like to say.
But on Thursday I was acting like a CEO doing the most important thing a CEO can do—helping a customer get happily involved with the product.
In 20/20 hindsight, when the man asked me if I was the boss I shouldn’t have said, “No I’m just . . .” I had already slipped a couple of levels.
I should have said, “Not yet.”
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