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Excerpts from Cracking the Corporate Code

Here is how Mannie Jackson realized he would never become the Honeywell CEO. "You're raised in a company with a peer group, so I knew what my seven or eight peer guys had done, and I knew what I had done. I knew their strengths and weaknesses, and I knew how fast I could run, how high I could jump. I knew I was better than half of them, a toss up as to a couple, and then there were one or two I knew were better than me. I knew that. I was one of seven people on the executive committee, the chairman's right-hand person. And I knew I could do his job at least as well as he did. But I realized the culture - the corporate culture - has to make the decision that it wants you to be successful. It has to intervene to start preparing you to succeed, or it will be very difficult for that ever to happen. I knew there was no way they were going to make me CEO, and I knew they were eventually going to pay me off. I just knew it, could feel it intuitively, and so I no longer set being Honeywell CEO as an objective. Race was partially an issue, but I wasn't just window dressing. I earned every penny I made, and I made a lot of pennies from the company.

"I think the culture - not an individual - had a grand plan for me, but the plan wasn't that I'd be one of the two or three contenders for the top. Their idea of success for me would be number two or number three guy, get the title of president, make a lot of money and be respected in the community and go to all those functions and be the breakthrough. They probably thought I should have been very happy and they probably think I am very happy with my final position. But I wanted the culture to prepare me to be the number one guy. There were opportunities that I didn't get, and I said to myself, 'Why wouldn't they send me to do that assignment? That's the assignment you need before you do this, before you do that.' Then I knew it wasn't going to happen.

"Merit, whatever that is, is something, but there are many intangible qualities, qualities having nothing to do with anything measurable, that go into the decision of who is chosen CEO. A non-traditional package, like race, is one of those. It's tangible but not exactly measurable. A lot of people work hard, do great work and are rewarded well. The company has invested ten to twenty years in all those people, and most of them aren't going to become CEO. You are not a bad person if you don't make it, and the company should not be labeled racist if you don't get it. Those stars have to line up just right. It's as simple as that. But if we've got enough of us in the pipeline, eventually the stars will line up for a few of us."