Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story : The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the Wo by Laton Mccartney (books to read to be successful TXT) 📕

Shultz’ professorial style also served him well in conferences with his fellow executives. “It soon became clear that Shultz could outshine most people,” recalled an admiring colleague, “but he did it in a way that was never offensive. Typically, management meetings are very volatile, with engineers letting off steam and shouting at each other. In contrast, George spoke beautifully. He was always logical and very much the calm, collected professor. He proved highly effective.”8

Shultz, who pronounced himself delighted to be at Bechtel-“After shuffling papers for a long time,” as he put it, “it’s nice working for a company where you can point to results”-scored more points by downplaying his status, through such symbolic measures as choosing an Oldsmobile for his company car rather than the Cadillac to which he was entitled. With Helena “Obie” O’Brien, his wife of thirty years, and their five children, he lived unpretentiously in a modest, Colonial-style house on the Stanford campus, where he enhanced the professorial image by teaching courses in management and public policy.

Shultz the teacher also showed himself willing to learn, particularly the ways of Mining and Metals, the division of which he had been put in charge. With Shultz’ eager acquiescence, the division’s senior engineers put their new boss through the equivalent of a crash course. “At 170

SECRETARY SHULTZ

least two dozen of the division’s engineers,” said one of his “instructors,” “made presentations to Shultz over a period of several months.

Even though Shultz was continually being called into other meetings or receiving important phone calls through all of this, he really took an interest in each presentation. In the end, we gave him a graduation certificate in the form of a shredded blueprint and his own hard hat.

He thanked us all with a totally improvised speech that was delightful. “9

Shultz faced a potentially more critical audience in Bechtel’s finance committee, whose members-Jerry Kames, Bob Bridges, Bill Slusser and pipeline division chief Jack Lynch-had known and worked with each other for years. “The four of us were old buddies,” as Lynch put it. “We could just look at each other and know what the other guys was thinking. And we knew exactly how far we could go with each other. “10

Not so, however, with Shultz, the nonengineer, whose arrival from outside the company ranks had been unsettling to the committee, whose members now found themselves reporting to the former Treasury secretary. Before deciding whether or not to accept Shultz, they put him to a good-humored test.

On the Friday before the first committee meeting Shultz was scheduled to chair, the four friends gave him a Bechtel briefing book summarizing the company’s monthly and year-to-date financial activities and told him to review over the weekend. “Did you read the briefing book?” Jerry Kames, the committee chairman, asked Shultz, as soon as the meeting got under way Monday morning. Shultz said that he had.

“W hat did you think?” Kames inquired.

“I’m impressed,” Shultz smilingly answered. “I never realized that a company could have so much cash.”

“That’s right,” Kames said. “Now Bob has something to tell you.”

Bridges tried hard to keep a straight face. He, Kames and the others had rehearsed this conversation and it was progressing exactly as anticipated.

“Well, George,” he began, “what Jerry wants me to tell you is a couple of things we’ve all learned the hard way around here. Number one, we know how to make money. Number two, we