What Will Be Your Takeaway?

Years ago I was fortunate to have been granted an hour with Irving Rudd, a legendary sports publicist in New York who recounted for me his time in ticket sales for the Brooklyn Dodgers and the importance of being appreciated by an employer. Working for nearly two years without a raise, he approached the team’s notoriously tight-fisted owner – Walter O’Malley – about the possibility of receiving a larger paycheck.

To his surprise, O’Malley smiled, put his arm around Rudd’s shoulder in an avuncular manner and escorted him to to his office window that overlooked Montague Street in Brooklyn. 

“Irving, do you see all those people down there?” O’Malley asked pointing to the heavy pedestrian traffic. After Rudd nodded, O’Malley then asked him point blank, “If we went down there and asked each one of them, how many do you think would immediately trade places with you to work for the Dodgers at your present salary?”

That more or less ended the negotiations.

We’ve all been there at one time or another.

Nevertheless, Rudd revealed that he’d learned an important lesson about management and learning from thereof.

Nowadays the chic term for that is “takeaway” and I have maintained that whether your direct report is a good or bad manager, there’s always something you can learn from their style – or take away if you will.

In fact, in my three decades plus in the workforce, I have only identified five managers that I came away with absolutely nothing to enhance my skill set and three of them have the dubious distinction of being from the same company.

It was at my last position for those keeping score at home.

For CPA firm owners and principals, have you ever wondered what your takeaways will be for your younger charges?

Is your management style rooted in past generations with a philosophy of “they should be happy to have a job in this economy,” or will you make a sincere impact on the future direction of their respective careers?

A friend of our daughter who is spending the summer studying for her CPA license before beginning with a Big Four firm in October, told us she has already been assigned a supervisor/mentor at the firm who periodically meets with her and monitors her progress.

It’s a not-so-subtle sign that she’s already valued at the firm and has yet to begin Day One.

I’ve spent a lot of time in this space with advice about the importance of getting younger members of a firm involved in strategies and projects, so they don’t feel stagnated in a cubicle doing Type 1 tax or audit work for days and months on end.

And to augment that with sound management guidelines, the kind that will help them progress and more importantly, learn.

Because there are far more options for them today than Mr. Rudd unfortunately had in the late 1940s and with the focus on talent recruiting and retention, they will hardly have to worry about employers resorting to tactics like trading places with passersby.