Finding True North

Early in my career, I experienced one of those profoundly uncomfortable moments that established my true north - a compass heading I have since embraced.

I was in the office of our marquis and largest commercial customer. They were large and much sought after Fortune 100 clients. We had tortured them with a protracted outage on our shiny new fiber-optic network that rendered their data centers impaired for a long time - too long. I was there with the account executive, hat in hand, to receive the thrashing for our poor service.

My customer not-so-patiently listened as I presented the timeline for the outage and our plan to be better. He sat like a statue, eyes boring through me, not speaking a word. There's something powerfully disconcerting about presenting to a stoic and unmoving body. The tension hung thick in the air— oppressive like a hot August night.

When I finished, he pushed back in his chair, crossed his arms, and looked out the window. He remained silent for several excruciating moments.

"Listen to me," he began. "You may have gotten me fired.  If I had chosen AT&T as our telecom provider and this happens, we would all think, 'hey, it's AT&T - the biggest telecom outfit in the world.' But I didn't choose the safe course. I recommended we move our entire data center network to Sprint. I took a huge gamble on you guys."

And then the thunderclap.

"I bet my career on you. You have let me down."

Whoa! All the blood left my body, along with other fluids. My poor account exec nearly fainted. She had more riding on this than I as she was commissioned and this account was her meal ticket.  

The outage was not my doing. I was not the farmer that dug up our fiber or the engineer that failed to configure the alarms correctly. None of that mattered, however. Even back then, in my lump-of-coal stage of development, I knew I was representing the Sprint team and that we lived or died as a team. I would bear the beating and go home to report.

Still, I took it very personally. I felt I had failed. I had to do better.

I will never know if our client was telling the complete truth or not. Was he embellishing to make a point? I doubt it. I do know what an impression he made on a young lump. 

We managed to save the account thanks to the hard work of a bunch of dedicated Sprint'ers. For me, it was a catharsis. 

Since then, I have been on a life-long journey - never betray a customer's trust again. That has been my north star for 35 years.

It became a core part of my value system. Never missing a commitment is the ongoing legacy of that experience. The word 'commitment' has evolved to no longer being only a customer-facing expression. I choose to apply it far more broadly and understand that it is a team activity in the context of business. Which is to say that for a business team to be strong at honoring commitments, it must be part of the value and cultural system of everyone.

There have been many other blood draining events in my life that have conspired to form my value system. Each has a war story and a scar to remind me of the lesson. 

For me, core values are not some pithy, academic, touchy-feely 'this is how I am supposed to feel' thing.  My core values are my North Star. 

I earned every one of them with blood, sweat, and tears.

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