A Convenient Career Decision

Well, there are smart guys and there are smart guys. Art is Smart.

Art(hur) was brought in as an "outside sales consultant" almost two years ago by our newly installed Exec Team. What does an "outside sales consultant" do? Well, in our context he draws down a salary for advising our Exec Team on What This Company Is Doing Wrong and How I Can Set It Right - while remaining anonymous to the current company sales force.

Not surprisingly, after a half year or so, Art's advice led the Exec Team to the logical and well-considered conclusion that We Need Him.

As a Valuable Asset, though, Art negotiated a contract that preserved My Ability To Perform. Notable clauses included: * Only occasional appearances at the company per se (he needed to stay based at his out-of-our-state home in Austin to Maintain My Contacts), * Managerial powers of I Say-You Do to whichever staff he chose for his flexible Impact Teams, * Freedom from the restraints of administrative responsibilities, such in-the-way things as market analyses and specs.

The next months were a bullet train ride of activity and increasing anticipation of the New Fields We're Entering. Art had us drop the core products, amend the current pipeline and - most important for Our Future - start The Big One.

The Big One. This would be the breakthrough to spawn an entire line of high profit margin products. Art didn't originate The Big One - the core idea came from our newly-created R&D department (a VP Art had worked with previously - curiously, one of the Exec Team who recommended Art). No, Art didn't come up with the idea, but he recognized the gold there.

For the past 18 months, then, Art's Big One has been the motivator behind hiring from scratch the R&D staff (curiously, almost all the same people the VP and Art had worked with previously), then putting all the company's resources behind developing an entirely new manufacturing model, and - while Art was out Developing The Field - designing our marketing strategies as he saw necessary. Was it mentioned that Art worked from inspiration, without the bureaucratic drag-downs of Marketing product specs? So we had to re-design the molds a few times to meet his evolving concept of The Big One, big deal: the Sales Projections were impressive.

And we did it. Late last month, as may have been read from the Deadline series of entries in these Notes, we plowed through hell and high water to Make This Happen. The Big One will be unveiled this month. Art will go out to a series of industry trade shows and deliver The Big One that he has told us they are all eagerly anticipating for the past year and a half.

Art resigned last Thursday.

He didn't feel the company was Behind Him Enough. The Big One doesn't Meet His Expectations.

It was a career move, nothing personal. Art won't hold it against the company that he Lost Time Treading Water while we got our act together.