To Brown-Nose or Not To Brown-Nose?
I rarely have opportunities to engage with the CEO of a billion dollar company, but one such chance arose this past Monday when John Donahoe, brand new CEO of ServiceNow and former CEO of eBay, and I passed each other in the hallway at the company’s Santa Clara, CA headquarters, where we both work.
It was Mr. Donahoe’s first day at the company. It was my 86th day. Both of us are Silicon Valley veterans, though his career has been a million times more illustrious than mine. Still, we’re both human beings and put on our pants one leg at a time. (This is an assumption, but I doubt John Donahoe has a couple of servants who hold open his pants while he climbs a step ladder and jumps into them every morning.)
To be honest, I didn’t know who John Donahoe was on the day he was introduced to the employees at an all-hands meeting a few weeks before. Clearly, I’m not a “real” Valley business guy. I have a Drama degree from UC Irvine and feel fortunate to have been able to make a living for a couple of decades in the Bay Area writing marketing copy for high-tech companies, large and small.
I would soon learn a lot about Donahoe. At the risk of sounding like a dopey high school kid, I have to say Donahoe seems like a “really cool guy.” At the introduction meeting, he was very engaging, charming, funny, vibrant, and unpretentious.
The week before Donahoe’s first day, the San Jose Mercury News ran a profile and Q&A on him. Of course, ServiceNow’s PR department made sure every employee’s inbox contained an email with a hyperlink to the story. What jumped out of the piece for me was Donahoe stating his admiration for Van Morrison. He called the Northern Irish singer/songwriter “a creative genius” and revealed that his favorite Morrison album is “Astral Weeks.”
As a Van fan, I was delighted to find out that my boss’s boss’s boss’s new boss was a fanatic, too. My favorite album is “Moondance.” I am pretty sure we have nothing else in common, but in this one slice of life, I saw a deep connection between me and this multi-millionaire business superstar.
Flash-forward to Monday morning. It was just he and I, headed towards each other. My thoughts raced: “Is that him?….Yeah, that’s him!…Oh, boy, it’s just us…He’s coming this way…Should I say hello?…Will he acknowledge my presence…Damn, he’s tall…Should I say something about Van Morrison?…Nah, that would be such a kiss-ass thing to do…”
I have a pretty profound aversion to sycophancy. There’s probably nothing wrong with sincerely engaging or complimenting a person of influence, but it’s something I find incredibly uncomfortable doing for fear of being seen as a toady. I can imagine industry leaders like Donahoe experience lots of obsequiousness and kowtowing every day and don’t appreciate it. So no way am I going to offer this new CEO anything more than a professional nod and a serious smile.
Then John Donahue says, “Hi!” My first instinct is to look behind me to see who’s talking to. But it’s gotta be me ’cause no one else is there. Wow. Impressive. What a cool guy, right?
Then I shock myself by seizing this opportunity and before he gets past me, I blurt out, “Van Morrison’s the best!”
My thought process now: “WTF! You just spoke to this guy who has no idea who the hell you are and he is going to be totally baffled by this out of the blue reference to Van Morrison…Stupid, stupid, stupid!”
Before I could get further into self-deprecation for this lapse in judgement and protocol, he says, “Yes!” I stop and look at him walking away from me. He has his fist in the air. I laughed and continued on to my desk.
Rarely am I satisfied with attempts at improvisation, but this incident was not one of them. I was pretty, pretty, pleased with myself. I hadn’t let the opportunity pass me by and I didn’t embarrass myself. Did I make an impression on Mr. Donahoe? Doubt it. He’ll probably still fire me if I do something monumentally dumb or lay me off if the business fundamentals require it. But we had a moment of camaraderie. And at the end of the day, isn’t that all you can ask for in your workaday life beyond making enough to pay the bills and doing something you enjoy?
When I conveyed this story to one of my co-workers, he called me a “big brown-noser.” I couldn’t deny it. Guilty as charged. What had I become?! When I told another co-worker, she said, “He is probably hearing that from everyone in the company. We’re all Van Morrison fans now — ”
“No! No! I’m the only one who’s made that connection with him!” I said forcefully. “It was special. Just he and I.”
She quickly backtracked and said, “Oh, sure. Sure. Right. Sorry.” Of course, in respective, methinks I doth protest too much. I brown-nosed therefore I am a brown-noser. I’m no better than any other employee who wants to share a moment with the big boss. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Right?
