Don’t let them give up on you
Procter & Gamble Chairman and CEO A.G. Lafley tells a tale of getting down to core issues when a valuable employee wants to leave.
It happened when Lafley once resigned from P&G. His boss, Steve Donovan, tore up the letter of resignation.
“Go home,” Donovan told Lafley. “Call me tonight.”
“When I called him that night, he said, ‘Don’t come into the office for the next week. Come and see me every night.’ So, every night, I went to his home,’ Lafley recalls, “and we’d have a beer or two.
“He kept working me over until he got to the root of my problem with P&G, which was the bureaucracy. He said, ‘You’re running away. You don’t have the guts to stay and change it. You’ll run from the next job, too.’
“That really ticked me off. I stayed.”
— Adapted from “The Best Advice I Ever Got,” Julia Boorstin, Cora Daniels, et.al., Fortune.
It happened when Lafley once resigned from P&G. His boss, Steve Donovan, tore up the letter of resignation.
“Go home,” Donovan told Lafley. “Call me tonight.”
“When I called him that night, he said, ‘Don’t come into the office for the next week. Come and see me every night.’ So, every night, I went to his home,’ Lafley recalls, “and we’d have a beer or two.
“He kept working me over until he got to the root of my problem with P&G, which was the bureaucracy. He said, ‘You’re running away. You don’t have the guts to stay and change it. You’ll run from the next job, too.’
“That really ticked me off. I stayed.”
— Adapted from “The Best Advice I Ever Got,” Julia Boorstin, Cora Daniels, et.al., Fortune.
