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That's a little harder. I can remember my hardest one, the funniest one. You know as
you think about that, I'll tell you one of the most endearing ones and it was very funny
is I was, one day I was walking in the hall at my office and I didn't have my jacket on.
So I didn't look quite as official perhaps as I normally did. And one of my hourly employees
and we had a hundred and fifty of them so I didn't know them all personally and they
didn't all know me, came up and we just started chatting and we had a conversation. And about
two or three minutes into the conversation he realized that by what I said that I was
the CEO of the company. And his eyes lit up and it was just a, it was interesting to watch
his reaction. And he said oh my, I'm talking to the man, and he just got all excited and
it was very, it was very interesting. And so we ended the conversation and he went back
up to the floor where he worked and the other hourly employees were. And within thirty minutes
it was all over the floor that this young man, had been, had spent some time with the
man, that he'd talked to me. And so that sort of reaction you get, when you think of yourself
as being pretty normal that other people don't necessarily see you that way. You're an important
symbol to them. And the lesson it probably taught me that I've kept is that as a CEO
you can't keep yourself apart and separate and you have to look for sort of natural opportunities
to talk to people and meet them to the other, sort of the official things you do every day.
Well that certainly was a very satisfying one. Really every success that the firm had,
when we landed a contract, or where we, there was just a great meeting, or teams really
accomplished something, or we developed a new product or idea together, or solved a
problem, even a customer problem, we were very much sort of customer driven in the sense
that if there was a problem we got together and worked on it. And when it came together
and we were able to solve it, that was wonderfully satisfying. But then the recognition that
those are not things I did. In most cases I was fortunate that I was able to get the
people I did together, and they stayed together and get that sort of effort from them. And
it really is, it's all about, it sounds sort of hokey, it's all about we and not about
I. If you make it about I, everything falls apart and what you can accomplish is much
less. If you make it about we, and really develop people, it's a terrific, terrific
job.