I am a people watcher. I like to examine the characteristics of successful people. Take my wife Gillian, for example. Gillian climbed from the secretary pool to Group President of a large, publicly traded software company. How did she make it to the top? By having a bias for action and building strong loyal teams.

I am absolutely convinced that building a strong loyal team is the key to success. This is the single most important ingredient for success. A highly functioning team foreshadows success for the team leader. Another way to look at it is - great leaders build great teams, and great people want to work for great leaders.

Allow me to share a true story (the names are changed for personal reasons). Here goes...

Fifteen years ago, Boeing (the true company's name is not Boeing) hired two engineers out of college - Steve and Carl. For the first two years, the engineers shared an office, building a strong professional relationship. Over the years, Carl moved up to a mid-management position, with a portfolio of $250 million in annual business and a team of twenty-five program managers.

One of the program managers is Carl's ex-officemate, Steve. Steve pursued and won a $350 million program. Steve established strong customer rapport and during the first year of the program all commitments were met on time and within budget. During the second year of the program, the team incurred program overruns and the schedule slips.

Steve was not able to get the program back on track. Carl decided to make a change and replaced Steve with a new program manager. Steve was assigned other duties, but was not transferred out from under Carl's chain of management. Mistake number one has just been made.

The point here is Carl should have moved Steve to a new manager to allow Steve to recover and grow again.

A month later, Steve, with Carl's blessing, decided to look for a new position in another division. Steve accepted a new position with a nice promotion. Steve's start date was established.

In the meantime, Carl had two programs that were in serious trouble. In spite of this, Carl was promoted to Vice President. About this time shortly before Steve's transition to his new job, Carl's boss (the COO) heard about Steve's promotion and overturned the promotion. Steve was allowed to transfer, but without the promotion. After all, what will the troops think? Steve messes up and gets a promotion - this is a terrible precedence, so the COO argued to Carl.

Well Carl didn't do the right thing and caved to his boss. The company reneged on Steve's promotion. Mistake two has just been made. Understandably, Steve was very upset and began to think about leaving the company.

Mistake three is about to happen - losing a great and loyal employee because the company failed to do the right thing.

A great employee will seek out a great leader. It is inevitable. And the shame - Boeing will lose that great employee and they do not have to.

Pierre Cutler
The Sacramento Executive