I had a lot of “first day on the job” events in my life and got better at them as time went on. ÿFirst impressions are important – my worst was showing up 3 weeks after my start date with full leg cast for a broken knee-cap, and the best was being “reassigned” back to [...]
Lessons Learned – Starting a New Job
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May 032010
Lessons Learned – Finding a Business to Buy
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Mar 082010
I learned a lot about prospecting and persistence in my process of finding a business to buy. ÿ Following the now popular HBS ÿ”zip” code theory of career location, I drew a 50-mile radius around my home in the Boston area for a geographic search.ÿ After purchasing a directory of companies in that area, I [...]
Lessons Learned
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Mar 012010
As the years have progressed, my views about equity and partners have changed. I had to work to pay my way through college and was hired by a start-up owned by an HBS grad that maintained mailing lists and printed computerized direct-mail campaigns for clients ranging from local hospitals to national automobile companies and from [...]
Lessons Learned
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Feb 222010
Determining how much to offer to pay for a company took a long time to get comfortable with.ÿ600 companies were on my target list, I got positive responses from 60 and decided to make offers on 12 of them.ÿ The first one took 3 weeks, the last one 3 days!ÿ PE companies make hundreds of [...]
Lessons Learned
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Feb 082010
Valentine’s Day is special for Debby and me; it was the evening of our first date! Working together for 20 years was challenging but contributed significantly to providing balance between family and work-life, strengthening our relationship and accomplishing shared objectives while having fun! ÿWe were partners in raising our 3 children, supporting each other’s individual [...]
Lessons Learned
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Feb 012010
When regulators from Government agencies showed up I learned to listen rather than resist my basic instincts. Early on, I was resistant to “State Inspectors” who would show up at our door, asking for IDs and being generally uncooperative.ÿDebby (CFO & Spouse HBS ’81) quickly intervened and announced that Environmental and Compliance visitors should be [...]
Lessons Learned-Fishbowl
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Nov 162009
As president, general manager or new owner, I learned that it was my actions that had the most impact on the organization, not my words. As such, everything that I did was observed, reported on, discussed behind my back and evaluated – I was in a “Fishbowl.” In most of the positions I held, I [...]
Lessons Learned
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Nov 092009
Layoffs were never easy for me; they always had a significant impact not only on those laid off, but their families and on the organization and since I felt personally responsible as the owner or President/General Manager, the decision was never made lightly.ÿ Over the years, it never got easier, but I did develop a [...]
Lessons Learned
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Oct 192009
When I worked for large companies, the concept of sharing profits was limited to the upper echelons and was generally in the form of annual bonuses that were mysteriously calculated, paid 3-5 months after the end of the year and generally reserved for the “fat cats” in the organization! Payments never happened below the Department [...]
Learning the Lesson that I was the most effective “face” to our customers took me a long time and was critical to our ultimate growth and profitability. In my Product Manager positions at GE and later as President of small Machinery Divisions I was often “trotted” out by the sales force to meet customers. Sales [...]
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