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Excerpts from Cracking the Corporate Code

One supporter has appeared at different times in Bruce Gordon's career, each time wearing a different hat. He first met this supporter in the late 1960s just because he wanted to express his moral outrage. Martin Luther King, Jr., had recently been assassinated, and Gordon regretted that he was not directly involved in the civil rights movement. His response was to apply to Crozier Seminary, King's alma mater, for a masters in social change. He wanted a night job at Bell, even janitor, to help finance what he thought of as his sabbatical, and he obtained several levels of approval. "So all my momentum was building. I was really excited. I was sure I was going to go. Then the word came down from the VP for human resources, 'Absolutely not. You ain't going.'

"People thought I was really crazy, but I walked into the lobby of the headquarters building, called him and said, 'My name is Bruce Gordon. I hear you're the guy who made the decision I can't go to Crozier. I'm disappointed, and I'd like to sit and talk to you about it.' He said, 'That's fine, come on up.' So straight to his office I went. He said, 'I didn't hire you to get a masters in social change. I hired you with the expectation that you would become a business manager some day, and you're on course to do that. If you take a year off to get this degree, I don't see what good it does me. it certainly doesn't get you any closer to being a manager. It's up to you what you do, but I'm not going to support that.' That was pretty direct, and I understood it, so I decided to stay at Bell. We sat there for a while and talked about other things. I kind of liked this guy, and I figured we had a relationship. I just bumped into him from time to time over the years, but it turned out I had created a presence with him. He was crucial to my career. He later became COO and then CEO."