11. CHAPTER 2 - Don't Keep Score
Let me give you an example.
When I was at Deloitte, I was working on a project for the largest HMO in the country, Kaiser Permanente, forcing me to travel between their two headquarters in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and back to my home in Chicago on the weekend. It was clear to me early on that I hoped to use the consulting world as a gateway into some other field.
Since I was in Los Angeles, I wondered how I might begin to create inroads into the entertainment industry. I wasn't looking to accomplish anything in particular; I just knew that I was interested in the industry, and when the day came to move on, I wanted to break into Hollywood without having to deliver some agent's mail. Ray Gallo, my best friend from my undergraduate days, was practicing law in Los Angeles, so I called him to get some advice.
"Hey, Ray.
Who do you know in the entertainment world that I can talk to for some advice about breaking into the industry? You know any people who'd be open for a short lunch? "There's a guy named David who I know through mutual friends who also went to HBS.
Give him a call. David was a smart entrepreneur doing some creative deals in Hollywood.
In particular, he had a close connection with a senior executive at one of the studios whom he had also gone to school with. I was hoping I might get a chance to get to know both of them. David and I met for a cup of coffee at an outdoor cafe in Santa Monica.
He was dressed in very dapper casual L.A. attire. I wore a suit and tie, befitting the buttoned-down Midwestern consultant that I was at the time. After a good deal of back-and-forth, I asked David a question.
"I'm thinking about transitioning into the entertainment industry at some point.
Is there anyone you know who you think could lend some helpful advice?" I was a good friend of a close friend of his. This seemed like a mild request given the strength of our meeting. "I do know somebody," he told me.
"She is a senior executive at Paramount. "Great, I'd love to meet her," I said excitedly.
"Is there any chance of arranging a quick introduction? Maybe you could pass on an e-mail? "I can't," he told me flatly.
I was shocked, and my face showed it. "Keith, here's the situation. It's likely that at some point I'm going to need something from this person or want to ask a personal favor. And I'm just not interested in using the equity that I have with this individual on you, or anyone else, for that matter. I need to save that for myself. I'm sorry. I hope you understand. But I didn't understand.
I still don't. His statement flew in the face of everything I knew. He thought of relationships as finite, like a pie that can only be cut into so many pieces. Take a piece away, and there was that much less for him. I knew, however, that relationships are more like muscles—the more you work them, the stronger they become. If I'm going to take the time to meet with somebody, I'm going to try to make that person successful.
But David kept score. He saw every social encounter in terms of diminishing returns. For him, there was only so much goodwill available in a relationship and only so much collateral and equity to burn. What he didn't understand was that it's the exercising of equity that builds equity.
That's the big "ah-ha" that David never seemed to have learned. Jack Pidgeon, the headmaster of the Kiski School in southwestern Pennsylvania, where I went to high school, taught me that lesson.
He'd built an entire institution on his asking people not "How can you help me?" but "How can I help you? One of the many times Jack came to my aid was when I was a sophomore in college.
I'd been enlisted to work during the summer for a woman who was running for Congress against a young Kennedy. Running against a Kennedy in Boston, and for Jack Kennedy's former congressional seat to boot, was for many people a lost cause. But I was young and naive and ready for battle. Unfortunately, we barely had time to don our armor before we were forced to wave the white flag of surrender.
A month into the campaign, we ran out of money. Eight other college kids and I were literally thrown out of our hotel room, which doubled as our campaign headquarters, in the middle of the night by a general manager who had not been paid in too long a time. We decided to pack our duffel bags into a rented van, and not knowing what else to do, we headed to Washington, D.C.
We innocently hoped we could latch onto another campaign. Boy, we were green. In the middle of the night, at some anonymous rest stop on the way to Washington, I called Mr. Pidgeon from a pay phone.
When I told him about our situation, he chuckled. Then he proceeded to do what he has done for several generations of Kiski alums. He opened his Rolodex and started making calls. One of those people he called was Jim Moore, a Kiski alum who was the former Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan administration.
