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Excerpts from Cracking the Corporate Code

Consider Margaret Jordan's achievements in light of these questions. Was she rewarded for turning around Kaiser's Dallas region? No. "Kaiser got a new CEO, someone I had come in with. I considered him a good friend, and I had been a supporter of his when his name came up for CEO. But after he got it, he talked to me twice about taking what I call 'totin' and fetchin' jobs.' He said, 'We are getting ready to go into health reform, and we need someone with your national connections.' Another time he said, 'I'm thinking of putting human resources and information technology together, and I'd like you to be over all of it.' Well, no way. The power of the organizations is in the line, and I am a seasoned executive. I was so disappointed, especially when I found he didn't even want to make the position a senior VP. It was just going to be a VP.

"Then something else happened that really made me receptive to leaving. First he raised his salary. I can honestly say the prior CEO had an artificially depressed salary, so everybody else's salary was depressed. The new one went the opposite way, and that prompted a look at all the other officers' salaries. I found I wasn't even on the first step of my salary range, which means I was not where I should have been before either. I was furious. When you are feeling this way, when these things happen, you start listening to the headhunters when they call. One call then got me the best job of my life."