Don't Look Down
A series of interconnected short stories from my 2018 collection "Degrees of Separation"
Don’t Look Down
(June 2008)
“Be early.” That’s what they had told him. “Be really early.” Of course, he didn’t know what ‘really early’ meant. He figured fifteen minutes would be plenty early enough.
They had chosen a small Italian restaurant around the corner from the hotel.
“Isn’t that a bit ‘low key’?” he had asked.
“The Old Man said that he doesn’t want a fuss. He thought it would be, you know, nice for his last meal - sounds ominous! - his last ‘official engagement’ to be one-on-one with the guy who’s taking over from him.”
“Even if I’m young enough to be his son.”
“You said that; he didn’t.”
And yes, Andy had said that - but he was pretty sure Brian had also thought it at some point. Wouldn’t be human not to. He’d known ‘The Old Man’ for a few years now; not closely at first - why would they have been close? - but much more so in the recent past, especially when it became clear that he was one of a small number of people - maybe two or three - who had been identified as possible successors. Andy had assumed it wouldn’t be him who was chosen, partly because he was the youngest, and partly because he wasn’t American. But what did he know?! Enough not to need to be told that he had to be early.
He checked his watch as he turned the corner. About a hundred yards ahead, Brian was standing outside the restaurant looking his way. He raised his hand to acknowledge the younger man.
“Shit”, Andy said to himself. Fifteen minutes had been nowhere near early enough. It was too late to matter now.
Being June, it will still light enough for Andy to get a reasonable impression of how Brian had chosen to dress for their dinner. Sartorially, he was one of the smartest guys Andy had ever met; it was a matter of pride as much as anything else. Brian knew he had a reputation for being a sharp dresser; his colleagues talked about his fastidiousness. Andy was keen to see what Brian’s “let’s keep it casual” translated into.
He was surprised. At worst he’d expected chinos pressed to within an inch of the fabric’s life, and if not a collar and tie then an expensive polo - Gucci or Galliano maybe - probably accompanied by an impeccably matched blazer or sports jacket. Andy had seen Brian dressed ‘smart casual’ before. What actually confronted him was a trim, greying man on the very verge of retirement, belying his sixty-five years, wearing a loose college sweatshirt, jeans and Nike trainers.
“Brian, hi,” Andy said as he extended his hand.
Brian smiled.
“I said casual, young man…” He’d always been brilliant at reading other people, interpreting a glance, the meaning behind a furrowed brow. Evidently Andy had been completely transparent.
“I just thought…”
“Don’t worry about it!” He placed his hand on Andy’s right shoulder. “This is me in transition. So I thought, why not take this old sweat for a spin on my last official night? I’ll probably be living in it from tomorrow onwards!”
Andy looked at the two big green letters stitched onto the front of the sweatshirt.
“‘W’ and ‘M’?”
“William and Mary, my Alma Mater in Williamsburg, Virginia. This isn’t one of the originals I used to wear all those years ago of course, but I like to support them, you know. And they invite me over to give talks from time to time.”
“I’ve heard of Williamsburg, I think.”
“Colonial Williamsburg? Very British. You’d love it!”
Andy laughed.
“Shall we?” Brian released the younger man’s shoulder and gestured towards the restaurant’s open door.
*
“I’m afraid I won’t, Andy.”
They had just been seated and were looking through the menu. Andy had suggested that, as he would be paying, Brian could go to town if he wanted. After all, hadn’t he deserved it?
“I know what they’ve told you. ‘Take the Old Man to that nice Italian place - the one where we have the deal with the Manager, Franco - and just treat him. Whatever he wants. We’ll pick up the tab.’” He paused, seeing Andy beginning to smile. “Am I right?”
“Pretty much.”
“And about ‘the Old Man’ thing too, because I know that’s what they call me when they think I can’t hear.”
Andy laughed.
“It’s affectionate.” He hesitated briefly. “We all do.”
Brian nodded.
“Well don’t worry, no offence taken. At all. And you should hear what I call some of them when they’re not listening!”
His laugh was rich and infectious; not in a superficial way but as if it were valuable, suitable, appropriate, because of his experience and the knowledge that lay behind it. When Brian laughed you got the impression he was doing so because it was the right thing to do. It gave you confidence. The guys loved him for that.
“What about me?” Andy asked.
“You?”
“What did you call me behind my back?” It was a playful question, one that Andy would never have dared asking under normal circumstances. But then these weren’t normal circumstances: Brian was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.
“You really want to know?” The older man noticed the change in the tense Andy used. It was a sign that things were at the tipping point. He let it go.
“Sure, why not? If only because then I’ll know what the others will be calling me.”
“Because they’ll have taken my lead?” Andy nodded in reply. “At least two good lessons right there. I can see we made a smart choice.”
“Lessons?”
“Don’t take yourself too seriously; number one. Number two; leadership starts at the top. As the boss, whatever you do everyone else picks up on. You can have all the motivational visionary posterised BS you want, but it’s what you do that counts.”
Brian glanced back at the menu. Andy thought it was pretty standard Italianate fare - a bit pricey because it was London, but maybe somewhat better quality that you’d normally enjoy in town. And Franco was a straight enough guy - Andy had met him - he didn’t mess you about.
“That spotty English kid,” Brian said suddenly.
“Sorry?”
“What I used to call you - at least at first. Of course, you weren’t spotty, but you seemed so young - to me, anyway. Don’t worry, I don’t think the guys picked up on that one!”
Andy laughed.
“Which one did they pick up on then?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Sancho Panza, probably.”
“Who?”
“The guy from ‘Don Quixote’. The tilting at windmills one. I’ve never read it mind, so my reference may be way off. Received wisdom - or semi-popular culture at best maybe. Anyway, that’s one of the things I liked about you: never afraid to take something on, try something out. Even when others thought it might be a pipe dream, you had a reputation for giving it a go. So, Sancho Panza and the windmill thing.”
“Should I be flattered? I’m not sure.” Andy laughed again.
“You should, absolutely. Panza was a really wise guy. It’s another reason why I think you’re the right man for the job. Prepared to try things out; not paranoid about failure; learns lessons. Happy to take the knocks when things don’t work out.”
“And some didn’t.”
“Sure. But how do you know that unless you try? And, by the way, from where I sat most of them did work out. Even the ones that went wrong or missed the mark, they moved us forward as a business. We needed that. You need that still.” He corrected himself. “Having some safe Johnny in the hot seat is the beginning of the end.”
Andy thought of Ross, the Texan he had been certain would inherit the mantle from Brian. Ross had been with the company all his working life, knew it inside-out. For most people he was that safe pair of hands; the right kind of person to entrust with Brian’s legacy and keep it going. He wanted to know why they hadn’t given the job to Ross but wasn’t sure how to ask.
*
“I love gnocchi,” Brian said once they had ordered. He had chosen gnocchi in a pesto sauce for his starter. “We just don’t do it well enough in the States - at least not in the places I’m used to eating.”
“Not with all that Italian ancestry over there?”
“You’re right, it’s not all Mafia and pizza. I’m sure there are some places in the big cities where you can get good gnocchi; maybe I just haven’t found one.”
“I went to a great Italian with Ross in Houston once. We were doing the rounds, visiting the service centres, warehouses. It was his home turf, so knew exactly where to go.”
“Did they do gnocchi?”
“Can’t say for sure, sorry.”
“Well he never took me anywhere that sounded that good when I was in Houston with him.”
There was a slight pause as they took sips from the wine they had ordered; based on Brian’s experience, a good white burgundy was also a rarity in the US. It was, he told Andy, going to be his one true indulgence of the evening.
“He’s a good guy,” Brian suggested, slightly hesitantly.
Andy sensed him fishing.
“I’ve always liked him. I think we get on well.”
“That’s good, because you’ll need to lean on him. Knows more about the business than anyone - including me.”
“That’s what I’d thought. To be honest, I thought he’d get the job.”
“Your job.”
“Yes,” Andy smiled. “Our job.”
Brian raised his glass in recognition of the compliment.
“Ross is a great number two - I love the guy. He was best man at my wedding; my second one, that is. But he’d make a lousy number one. And all he knows is our business. Man and boy. He’s got no outside reference points; has nothing to compare us with, no experience of anything external. If you don’t have that, you just get more of the same - only less so.”
“No Sancho Panza then?”
“Not even close.”
*
“Don’t make the same mistakes I did.”
The starters had come and gone, the gnocchi broadly living up to Brian’s hopes for it. They had chatted idly; a little more about Ross, restaurants in America. He had asked Andy when he next planned to be in the US.
“Mistakes? Surely there weren’t many?” Andy asked.
“But there weren’t none. And you always make mistakes; everyone does. Or at least things that you see as mistakes because with the benefit of hindsight you can think of better ways of tackling them.”
“I agree there, of course. But mistakes?”
“OK,” Brian paused, weighing up examples. “I never spent enough time in Europe. Or enough time out of the US. It’s a common enough mistake that most Americans make. Lots of us don’t really understand the rest of the world very well.”
“But you were here in the UK and in Europe regularly. We must have seen you six or eight times a year. That hardly smacks of getting it wrong to me.”
“You’ll see. It can never be enough. Never. And you’ll have the same challenge I did, Andy. You’re everyone’s CEO; no matter where they are, they all think they have a right to a slice.”
“Which is fair enough, isn’t it?” Andy asked.
“Sure, sure. But there isn’t enough time - isn’t enough of you to go around. My advice - if you want it?”
“Please.”
“Make a realistic plan; let people know about it early - to set expectations; then don’t disappoint. Don’t say you’ll be in Houston four times a year when you know that’s going to be a stretch. Say you’ll be there twice, and be there twice. If you get the chance to pop in a third time, or fourth, then great. Same story everywhere. Who’s your EA?”
“Barbara Wills.”
“I know Barbara. Really smart cookie. Have her hook up with Jeanie; she’ll be able to tell her where I went wrong with my scheduling, then she’ll be able to advise you on what the travelling’s really like. Boy, there are some skeletons in my closet when it comes to travel! Stuff I’d planned but never saw through.”
“Surely not?”
“You’d be surprised!”
There was an undercurrent in Brian’s tone which, for the first time that evening, gave Andy a sense of what the older man was going to miss. Currently, the sweatshirt and jeans were for show, for Andy’s benefit; they weren’t yet representations of who Brian was going to be next.
“What else? What other mistakes?”
“How long have you got?” They both laughed. “Early days? Thinking I knew it all, had all the answers. Wanting to do things to make my mark, to prove that I was in charge. All that Alpha Male type stuff. It’s all crap really. Window dressing at best. Actually that’s an area where Ross can help. Bounce ideas off him; he has a pretty good radar, and he’ll tell you when you’re just plain wrong.”
“Which may be quite a lot of the time in the early days.”
“It will be quite a lot of the time,” Brian agreed. “I didn’t see that. And I didn’t see until a while later that the way you become good at this job is by increasing the contribution that everyone else makes. That’s how to make an impact. Look for people who can do more, who want to impress, who have talent, ideas, vision. Give some of them an early boost, a chance; they’ll love you for it.”
Andy allowed a slight pause as he took another sip of wine.
“So who will you miss then, Brian?”
“People-wise?”
Andy nodded.
“In addition to Jeanie and Ross? I don’t know. Just about everyone I guess. When they start to feel like family, then you know you’re beginning to do the job right.”
*
For the rest of the meal they alternated between work and non-work topics. Andy wanted to get as much from Brian as he could, yet didn’t want to overwhelm him - and it was Brian’s show anyway; he could talk about anything he liked. Occasionally they tried to steer away from the company and tiptoed into safe subjects like sport, holidays, family; but here the conversation became a little forced. It was as if there was a formula to which they were trying to adhere, a convention for meals when guys were just supposed to be ‘shooting the breeze’; but Brian only came alive when he was able to find a way of diverting their various threads back to the business.
So a conversation on beer and the merits and demerits of US craft ale led on to the ‘Cheers’ TV show, from there into a discussion about Boston, and then - having established the geographic location - the challenges for the company’s plant just outside Foxborough, and the plans for redevelopment there. It was one of many as yet unfinished initiatives that had been Brian’s baby. Andy could see his fingerprints across the business and, in doing so, realised that just changing the nameplate on the door of ‘the corner office’ didn’t mean he would be in charge right away. The transition would carry on long after Brian had left the building. Loyalty didn’t transfer automatically; Andy knew he would have to earn that.
But as he listened to Brian talking about how he had arrived at his decision with regard to Foxborough (it had been an ‘invest-or-close’ binary choice), Andy knew that taking the company out of Brian would be harder than extracting Brian from the company. He knew Brian would never walk away emotionally; he would be a company man as long as he breathed, and Andy found himself envying that - even wondering if in twenty years time he might be in the same position.
It was a romantic notion. As hard as he might find it to step up, it would be many times harder for Brian to step out. The sweatshirt fooled no-one.
“You’ll have to keep a close eye on that one,” Brian was telling him. “Greg’s a good guy and it should be fine, but the business case is a little tight and so any slippage won’t be great.”
Brian looked up from his espresso to find a slight smile on Andy’s face. He nodded slightly, more to himself than anyone else.
“I know, I know. You don’t have to say anything.”
“About what?”
“About how tough it’s going to be letting go.”
“You’ll be checking the share price every day, thinking ‘What’s that idiot Andrew up to?’!”
Brian laughed.
“Well, the first part’s probably right, at least.”
He finished his coffee and allowed himself a slow glance around the restaurant. Andy recognised it as one of those ‘last time I’ll be here’ kind of looks. He could almost hear doors starting to close.
*
They paused outside the hotel.
“I know guys,” Brian began, “who spend their lives looking forward to this day; the day when you can draw a line under work, of doing something for someone else. They imagine what the new dawn will bring them, the freedom it represents; they think that it will be great being able to get up at whatever time they want in the mornings, not to have to go to meetings, to spend quality time with their families.”
“And won’t it be? Won’t all those things be good?”
“Sure. But if you’ve worked as much for yourself as you have for a business then you realise that you’ve been free enough all along. At least that’s what I think. I did as much in my job for me as for the company.” He paused. “That makes me lucky, I guess.”
“And it probably helped make you great at what you did.”
Brian sighed. To Andy, he suddenly seemed as if he had shrunk a little; as if the man he was leaving on the steps of the hotel was somehow not the same man he had met outside the restaurant just a couple of hours ago.
At some imperceptible sign, they both glanced down and extended their right hands forward.
“I guess we’re both a little nervous right now,” Brian said as he released the younger man’s grip. “The safety net’s gone. Come Monday that office is yours. When you look up, you won’t see anyone there any more.” He laughed, sharply. “And when I look down, I won’t see anyone there either…”
For links on where to buy Degrees of Separation, click here.