Being a leader is more than dynamic presence, creating vision and executivng strategy.  It’s also riding to the top of the administrative mountain.  But sometimes, the process chairlift jams and it’s better to jump!

“Can you believe he’d ask me that?” Karl laughed into his cell phone while driving home after a long day.

“What did he say?” asked his assistant Carol.  Fifteen years had passed since Gary’s wedding and she’d been with him through ten of them.  Carol had gotten off to a rough start.   His predecessor had hired her and quit a week later.  They’d transferred her to Karl’s boss who was away for a summer Executive MBA program at Harvard.  Left alone, Carol was lost until they reassigned her to Karl.  He’d had a heart to heart with her about the job right then and there and been together ever since, through upsizings and downsizings, through reorgs and transfers.  Carol wouldn’t have survived under an executive demanding an efficiency Nazi but Karl didn’t want that.  He needed an assistant that he could trust.  Ten years later, he and Carol were friends.  He’d attended her wedding, seen the birth of her son and daughter, helped her through rough times when her husband was out of work and brought Hulk comics to her son in the hospital.

Karl could hardly contain himself.  “I saw the plaid elbow and knew that he was hovering.”

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