Photo By: Jonathan Cutrer
While at a faith conference, I heard Erwin McManus say this: “Most people need permission to start, but almost no one needs permission to quit.”
I agree absolutely with this statement, but I’d like to break it down today and talk about the first part—needing permission to start. What if you don’t wait for permission? What if you work at being proactive, rather than reactive, at the office and outside of it, too?
That certainly worked out for a man named K.S. “Boots” Adams, who, at age 38, became one of the nation’s youngest leaders of a major corporation when he succeeded founder and president Frank Phillips at Phillips Petroleum Company in 1938.
From Bottom to Top
Adams started at the company as a clerk in the warehouse department in 1920 after dropping out of college. Twelve years later, Phillips promoted him to fill the newly created position of Assistant to the President. All of this is detailed in Oil Man: The Story of Frank Phillips and the Birth of Phillips Petroleum. While the book is about the larger-than-life Phillips, Adam’s own rise in the ranks is interesting, too.
At first Adams thought the assistant job was a “glorified secretary,” and he was aghast. He knew that Phillips’s secretaries didn’t last very long, and he didn’t want his own career to end that way. But Phillips assured him that it was a true assistant position, an executive position, and Adams finally accepted.
Then Phillips just left Adams alone. Literally. For three weeks, Adams sat in his new office, at his new desk, and received absolutely no communication or directives from Phillips. At the end of those three weeks, Phillips came into Adams’s office and snapped: “Well, what have you been doing?”
Adams reached into his desk drawer and took out a file. He told Phillips it contained a list of everything he would do if he were president of Phillips Petroleum.
That evening Phillips summoned Adams to his home and told him he liked everything on the list except for one thing: Adams’s suggestion that a budget committee for long-range financial planning be headed by a specific company executive. Phillips said he would approve the whole thing except for that. He then crossed out the name Adams had suggested to head the budget committee and wrote in Adams’s name instead.
Despite opposition from the executive staff, Adams thrived in his new position of power. On April 26, 1938, after Phillips retired, Adams was elected president of Phillips Petroleum Company by the unanimous vote of the company’s board of directors.
What Are You Waiting For?
I’d like for you to consider what you would have done in Adams’s situation during those three long weeks. Would you have asked for direction? Would you have wanted permission before getting to work? Would you have had the audacity to imagine yourself in the president’s chair?
The next time you are given an opportunity, take advantage of it. Don’t wait for direction or permission. Don’t waste time “getting ready.”
Assess. Act. Achieve.
Boots Adams didn’t need permission to start. You don’t always need it either! Take your opportunities when they come your way, and make the most of them. That’s how you Do What You Do Better.