Power Corrupts, absolute power...

You know the rest of the story. I have always had the opportunity to lead. From the days of my youth when I led my little gang of guys, to the Boy scouts where I was Junior Assistant Scout Master, and all through High School and College, where I held various positions of power, I have almost always been out in front. But I got my real first taste of Power while working for one of the World's top computer manufacturers during the early 90's. I started at this company as a Technical Support Rep, part of a massive hiring of a hundred or so of us. Within 90 days of joining the company I was promoted to Team leader with a Team of 12 other Techs working for me.

My Team was the 5am-2pm shift and within a couple of months we were producing the highest productivity and customer satisfaction ratings in the Service Group. The key to our success was Teamwork. We focused on working as a team and working to develop our individual skills. I created the first teams of specialist within the group, investing my own money to build a library of technical manuals and commissioning one of my team members to create a knowledgebase of technical issues and solutions. By creating specializations and passing complex calls off to specialist in the area of the problem, everyone was able to respond to routine calls more rapidly.

We had a tradition of taking lunch (in our case breakfast together daily), and every morning I bought in donuts for the whole team. That our team produced better results was a direct result of these efforts, and people began to take notice. We called ourselves "The A Team," and our slogan, published in flyers posted around the company was, "In War it is the Marines who are first to hit the Beach, Here it is the A-Team. The highlight of that Period was when the Company President held a company wide meeting, and during his speech, declared himself a member of "The A Team."

Within another three months I was promoted to Supervisor of the Technical Support Groups with 75 Employees and five teams. I appointed five of my original Team members as leaders of the new teams, and my Group continued to outperform other groups within the Service Organization. It was the beginning of what became known as, "The Anderson Way." Six months later I was promoted to Manager of Technical Support, which was followed a year later by promotion to Director of Technical Support. My boss at the time had a Mantra, "You can get anything you want in life, as long as you are willing to help others get what they want." I practiced what he preached religiously. Every time he was promoted, a promotion for me quickly followed. He was a mentor, a father and a boss all rolled into one, and I loved and respected the man.

During my nearly 5 years of working for him, I helped him build a global network of call centers and built a Technical Support organizations all over the world. My personal staff at its hight was close to 1000 technicians and service people. During the same time I led the development of one of the first Knowledgebase products in the PC Support Industry, conceptualized the first "Third Party Desktop Interface for Windows," and created the first 900 number for Software Support.

I also grew arrogant and reckless. My list of indiscretions is as long as Rip Van Winkle's beard, so I wont go into detail here. Suffice it to say, I was a party animal, a power freak and a Superstar in a young industry. I flew all over the world First Class. I founded Call Centers in Amsterdam, South Africa, Australia and Mexico, and I partied like it was 1999. I contributed to the destruction of two marriages, and I dated whomever I wanted, whether they worked for me or not, sometimes more than one at a time, and sometimes on more than one continent.

In 1994, the Northridge Quake destroyed the Support Center and Nearly the company. In perhaps one of my finest hours as an Executive, I moved the entire Support Operation to Utah from California in less than 30 days. In Salt Lake City I was a minor celebrity. I got a chance to meet NBA star Karl Malone, who... get this, counseled me on what it was like to be a Black Man in Mormon Country. I attended concerts and basketball games in the Delta Center, as the guest of the head of Utah's biggest bank, and I lived like a prince. Such a lifestyle did little to put my expanding ego in check. I had went from being one of the best and most innovative managers in the business, to being a mini despot, rewarding those loyal to me and ruthlessly punishing those who I perceived as not. Despite this, I was one of the most popular managers in the company, and this was proven when I left the company by the huge turnout at my farewell party.

I will never know what I really did to deserve a lot of the love I got from those people, the ordinary grunts who worked in the trenches, but it was real, and it is something I will never forget. I suppose that even as an occasional ass, I always appreciated what my team did, and never failed to reward them for their hard work, or take a few minutes to praise someone, regardless of their position on the food chain. I treated my front line personnel with respect and dignity, and always rewarded good performance.

Some would say that those who I slammed deserved it, but with 11 years to think about it, I can see where and when I was out of control. It was a learning experience and a heady one for a 34 year old child of the Ghetto who was suddenly earning a six figure income, partying with NBA stars and celebrities and living like a, "player," before the term was even invented.

At one time I had a budget of several million dollars a year, and met frequently with the President of the company. Once I was dating a person from Human Resources, despite the disapproval of the Manager of HR, probably more than anything because she was afraid of what inside information I might get access to, but likely also because the woman in question was married when I started seeing her. We became like the royal couple of the company, with her decorating my office with a ton of confetti and Hershey's kisses on my birthday, and me serenading her in front of half the company on Valentines Day. When we broke up, the President of the Company called me to his office to console me and give me a bit of fatherly advice about love. I will never forget that meeting, or what it meant to me.

It was four and a half years of the most exciting time of my life. In that time I learned everything I would ever need to know about what makes a good manager... and what makes a bad one... unfortunately I often did it at the same time....

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