Robert Hargrove

I hopped a 6 AM plane to Atlanta yesterday to meet with Bill Scott, VP at Georgia Pacific in charge of Operational Excellence. I took Marta (not a person but a state of the art metro train system) that landed me at Peach Tree Center and the huge granite GP building.

The long and the short of it is that I don’t much like getting on airplanes and staying in business hotels and renting cars…and Marta kind of made my day go a lot better.

The meeting with Bill went, well, peachy. He is on a lateral leadership assignment designed to build a world-class supply chain for GP that will save the company a substantial amount on costs on an annual basis.

The challenge has been to find solutions that are based upon building on the strengths of business profit centers, while at the same time, benefiting the corporation with cost savings associated with center-led, shared services…in this case, logistics services.

Bill has spent the last 6 months or so creating the business case to get his ideas accepted. My coaching involved now getting Bill to shift from a supply-chain wizard to the opposite foot and become a master politician who can drive his ideas through.

I coached Bill on upcoming meetings with the Chairman and the EVP during a stopover at his house, which looks like a petite French chateaux turned into a work of art by his wife Carol, a superb decorator.

“She makes every point a focal point,” Bill said as he pointed out the buffalo head he hunted which sits over the fireplace only a few feet a way from a Chinese-made, black, grand piano.

We sat in Bill’s backyard patio smoking Cuban cigars, drinking a fine triple-malt scotch, and listening to classical music, while continuing the dialogue started back at the office. A good cigar seems to make the conversation flow in an easy, relaxed manner and the scotch makes the conversation positively pleasurable.

“All your life you have been a performer, Bill, doing the boss’ bidding and you have come a long way. Now it’s time to become a master politician.” Bill’s fat little dog, a sausage-like beast not more than 8 to10 inches high howled when I said that.

The hours passed and soon I was back on Marta on the way to catch my 6 PM flight to the airport. Just another long day in the life of a masterful coach.