William F. McNagny, RIP

Early this year, my father-in-law William F. McNagny, an exceptional trial lawyer, passed away at his winter home in Naples, FL at age 98. Toward the end of his life, he was wheelchair-bound, had total hearing loss, had difficulty eating, and was suffering from a bronchial infection. His passing in his sleep was merciful for him and his family. We were not there, because he died in the middle of the night. Because of Covid-19, there was no funeral or memorial service until an event was hosted on November 2, 2020, by the Allen County Indiana Bar Association. This is the obituary posted online at the time of his death.

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/naples-fl/william-mcnagny-9016425

His former colleagues at the Barrett & McNagny law firm spoke eloquently at the virtual memorial service about his magnificent and unequalled skills as a trial lawyer. (I had my own story about my one opportunity to retain him on a small litigation matter.) They also shared details about his incredibly broad and deep commitment to the Ft. Wayne, IN, community and about his deep and obsessive passion for continuous learning. They commended him as a great husband (his wife of 65 years Joan McNagny died in 2013), father, friend and colleague.

I had the chance to reflect on an additional dimension of the man who simply wanted to be called "Dad" by his sons-in-law and his daughter-in-law. That dimension changed my life, the trajectory of Pitney Bowes, and, undoubtedly, the lives of many people who worked for me or whom I mentored and coached after I got to know him.

In 1979, three months after my wedding to his daughter Joyce, I began my journey from Chicago to Stamford, CT, to start work at Pitney Bowes as a Counsel. I stopped for an overnight in Ft. Wayne. I sat in the library with Dad and asked his advice about how best to succeed in a publicly held company. He was on the Board and chaired the Executive Committee of the Lincoln National Bank, then the oldest and largest bank in Ft. Wayne, and a publicly held company.

He gave me three pieces of advice, which he repeated many times over the next 30 years during my Pitney Bowes career. Whenever we talked about my career, he would restate these three pieces of advice.

Buy and accumulate company stock. Never sell a share while you are at the company.

No financial advisor would have endorsed this advice because it would create too much financial risk for me and my family. In fact, I probably should have sold shares upon exercising options to pay the taxes on the gains on the acquired shares as I was transitioning toward retirement. As a financial strategy, his advice was flawed.

But Dad understood something about my career at Pitney Bowes that financial advisors could not have: accumulating company shares communicated to senior management, the Board, the employees and, when I became CEO, the investors, that I believed that the company was the best possible place to invest my money. It made them more confident that I was unconditionally committed to the company's success and caused them to invest. For employees, it caused some of them to stay during more challenging times.

He understood that investment decisions signal values well beyond maximizing financial return. It signals old fashioned loyalty and commitment. It is an "old school" way of thinking, but, in hindsight and on balance, it was the right decision for me, even though the diversification strategy I could have employed would have made us significantly richer.

Accept the thankless, low prestige jobs, if that's what the company needs.

In 1990, the CEO offered me the job of combining the General Counsel and the top HR position at the company. Every local mentor who was a CEO, Wall Street firm partner, or consulting firm partner recommended that I not accept the job. They uniformly told me that HR jobs are high-risk and low prestige, and there was little upside.

My own Dad, who was a high-school dropout during the Depression, and Dad McNagny recommended that I accept the job. Using different language, they both said that the CEO and the Board would be grateful to me for taking on the assignment. My Dad made the humorous, but insightful, comment that if the job were so unpleasant and high-risk, and no one wanted it before it was offered to me, it actually was a highly secure well-paying job, since no one else would want it after I took it on.

Dad McNagny, as a Director at a public company, made an additional observation: The company is grooming you for a bigger job. Do this one as well as it can be done. My predecessor George Harvey told me that he took on a collections management job which was important to his success, even though he thought he was ready to be named the company's Treasurer.

Dad McNagny was right. Not only was it a springboard to my first group president officer position, and, eventually, to the CEO job in 1996, but what I learned about employer-sponsored health and healthcare initiatives has been the basis of much of what I have done in my post-Pitney Bowes career.

Get deeply involved in your local community.

Although Dad McNagny was the Chairman of the Board of the Ft. Wayne Urban League and enthusiastically endorsed my decision to join the National Urban League Board in 1997, a Board on which I served for 13 years and which I chaired from 2002-2007, he was most enthusiastic about my local community service.

When I moved to Connecticut in 1979, Fairfield County was 2nd or 3rd among all counties in the number of Fortune 500 companies headquartered there. The CEOs in place at that time, along with the CEOs of the local banks, were actively involved in the local community.

As the private equity takeover tidal wave of the 1980's hit these companies, the sources of wealth in Fairfield County changed from large corporations to financial services firms. The partners of these firms were focused on the global footprint of their investments, as were the CEOs of the remaining Fortune 500 companies. They were in Connecticut, but not of Connecticut. CEO participation in government and community affairs virtually evaporated, but Pitney Bowes stayed focused on the wellbeing of the towns and cities in which we had facilities or our employees resided.

My resolute commitment to the local community paid an unexpected dividend in an improbable setting: a 2004 Congressional hearing on Postal Reform. As was customary, the member of Congress in whose district Pitney Bowes was headquartered, Christopher Shays, introduced me. 2004 was an uncomfortable year for Fortune 500 CEOs. Senator John Kerry referred to any CEO who took any jobs offshore for any reason as a "Benedict Arnold CEO." For those not familiar with American history, Benedict Arnold was the most infamous traitor during the Revolutionary War. We had outsourced 75 IT jobs to India, not a large exodus of employees, but one which caused us to make the Lou Dobbs "Exporting America" list.

In that setting, Congressman Shays commented that, unlike other CEOs, I had remained strongly committed to his district and had actually added 210 jobs to the most economically depressed city, Bridgeport. His remarks reminded me of that 1979 conversation and many others in which Dad McNagny counseled me to stay anchored to my local community. All of the Government Operations Committee members of both parties who heard Congressman Shays were welcoming over the next 2 1/2 years and gave me access I might not have gotten.

My wife Joyce and I received many other benefits from our community engagements. We made many friends who helped us in other ways. Our children followed our example and have had happier, richer lives as a result.

His advice not only benefited me, but it became a touchstone on how I recruited, evaluated, coached, and promoted talent, and how I mentored anyone who asked about the secrets of success. Surprisingly, so many people in every organization (including some at Pitney Bowes) believe that the right way to get to the top is to look out for themselves, not the organization. When I asked one otherwise intelligent executive whether he would accept an overseas assignment, his question was: "Will this be good for my career?" Regrettably for him, the values that question signaled were not good for his career.

Another executive, whom we offered a position in Europe, accepted the job, and told me that his wife and 13-year-old son were supportive. When he was leaving my office, I asked him when he would be leaving for Europe, he said "Tonight." When I noted that the relocation package had not been finalized, his response was telling: "I trust that it will get worked out. I want to get going to tackle the challenges on the new job." His career skyrocketed after that.

There are many pressures on employees of all ages to cash out of their company's stock, hold out for a more prestigious assignment or spend more free time playing golf or attending to other personal pleasures. I was blessed with someone who entered my life at the right time and gave me very different advice.

William F. McNagny was not a perfect human being. None of us are. But I am eternally grateful to him, and he had an impact far beyond what he could have imagined.