Interview to my father
My second interviewee in this amazing journey I am going through was my father. It was definitely special to interview him and to go through his career in a conversation that lasted over an hour. It was really interesting for me to reflect on things that I have seen through my childhood, as a teenager and as an adolescent, now with a couple of more years on my back and through the lens of the Linchpin book.
My father, Jose Martin Pisani or Giuseppe Martino Pisani, was born in the province of Cosenza, Italy and moved to Argentina with his Mother, Father and sister at the age of 2. As many other families that where escaping from the war in Europe, his family arrived in Argentina with nothing but hope for a brighter future than the one Europe offered at that time. They were a low-income family but very much willing to work hard to progress.
When I think about my father and his connection to “Linchpin” I think about servant leadership and what Seth Godin describes as the Gift of attention. People are desperate for human connection and my father has always leveraged that in a very natural way. He was a servant to his employees and he was a servant to his customers in a way that you don’t often see.
The choice
The first big choice for my father was at the age of 19. After graduating from an industrial / engineering high school he made a 180 turn to start his career in commercial operations. At that point, he felt he found what he liked. He was looking for an activity where we can flourish, and he was able to find one where he could develop himself. It was the photocopier machines industry. He saw an opportunity to improve things in that specific industry and he went ahead and started his own business.
Since he was coming from a situation of poverty, one of the success factors was to reinvest all of his earnings in the business. That, coupled with outstanding customer service and a mentality of continuous improvement were the key to his success. He was also very good at looking at society and understanding how things work and how people were able to achieve things while others failed. This was how he understood how to become indispensable.
While working on the photocopier machinery business, he decided to found another company. Their core business was graphics, from stickers to machine labels in different materials. When he started, some people told him he would not even survive 6 months. Today, 44 years later, the company still exists. He was not only able to build the company and the business from scratch but he was also the one who solidified it. He did the recruiting, he taught everyone how to operate as a team and how to be customer centric. Respect for the customer and delivering on their promises were the core values for this company: On time delivery, excellence in post-sale service and fair pricing among others. After 10+ years in this company, he decided to divest his part and let his partner continue as he focused on the photocopier machines business.
But those were not the only choices in his professional career. There was another one which is my favorite. There was a time in his life when he was already working independently and he was offered to join Segba, Argentina’s biggest electric utility company. People had different opinions about this opportunity: Some said it was a unique opportunity (They used to say Segba is as unique as your mother) and some others said he would be better off in his entrepreneurships. He decided to try and see who was right. Without giving up his activity as an entrepreneur, he joined Segba. Once he was in the company, some of his peers would try to encourage him to leave or he would never do it. Others tried to persuade him to stay. This is the typical example that Seth Godin describes as a choice to stay in a place where somebody else owns the map and you just follow the rules and the manual or to draw and follow your own map. My father chose the latter. He left Segba and continued his path as an entrepreneur. 50+ years later, he strongly believes it was the right thing to do.
The Resistance / Lizard brain
My father believes that age and experience are very important when we have to make bold decisions. He acknowledges he was very courageous and confident at times but he also knows that his obsession about doing things with excellence helped a lot. He was also very good at reading and understanding the market driven by knowledge and intuition. This is how I think he was able to win over the resistance and the lizard brain. This was particularly evident when he decided to open a new and second office for his business in a different location. It was a bold movement. He invested a lot of time finding the right store, the right people and lots of new and good equipment. Executional excellence was always at the core of his plans.
Humility
When my father and I discussed the concept of humility, he came up with several examples of what he thinks humility is and what it represents. The first thing he mentioned as a reaction to what Seth Godin says about humility as “an attitude that allows us to acknowledge when things go wrong and to learn from it” was that he has always assumed all costs and responsibility coming from failure without pulling anybody else. But as we continue to talk, he felt strong about humility and its connection to customer service. He definitely has an obsession with this. He has been always willing to collaborate and solve all of his customers’ problems. He mentioned another definition for humility that is the ability to acknowledge that things can be better than what they were before, the willingness to listen to people and apply learnings. Last but not least, he believes humility is key to build effective teams. You can see a humble leader in the way he treats employees, in the way he integrates them into the business and the company, motivating them and offering opportunities for development.
The gift
As I said in the beginning, I think my father really offered all his customers the gift of attention. It was always much more than the business transaction; it was about the connection and the relationship he was able to build over time. And, as Seth Godin says, the market gives back when you offer a gift and, in this case, he believes that what he got back was the loyalty of his customers. He had many customers that lasted for over 30 years. On the employee side, his generosity with the people also had a return. People would stay in his company for long periods of time. But this was not the only thing. He also believes that he got his gift back when people that he had shaped opened their own companies later on. He sees that like a tree that gives its fruit.
I wanted to go deeper on the topic of building teams and shaping people. One of the things he shared with me is the importance of leading by example. People are observing us leaders. Our behaviors, our attitudes, they look at us every day. And smart people learn from this observation and the more interested they are in what they observe, the more they learn and the more capable they are to implement the learnings. In many cases, they even outperform the person they have learnt from. My father has also been a fan of “training for the big game”. I will never forget the emphasis he has always put on preparing ourselves, his children, for the future. He would also agree that there is no place for the lukewarm, that we have to better ourselves and shoot for a place that is always above average. That is a big piece of the equation for success.
Creating his own map in an ever-changing environment
It was interesting to hear what my father had to say when I brought up the concept of the map, creating our own maps and avoid navigating other people’s maps to become indispensable. His head automatically went to all of the different situations he has gone through in his life in a country like Argentina which is very volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) and where the rules of the game change all the time. “It takes a lot of realism, anticipation and intelligence to take advantage of the crisis as you navigate your map. The map is not a picture, it is a film that changes depending on the time, the place and the environment”. In his case, the map has always been very dynamic, with changing rules that required a lot of flexibility to adjust and change together with the map. The key is to take advantage of the opportunities and minimize the risks.
As we went deeper on his map, I asked him about how he created his map and how he was able to transmit the Linchpin concepts and attributes (without knowing it) to his children. He said that he has always had one clear vision. As a person that was very poor in his childhood and that did not had the chance to finish his college studies, his first objective was to raise a family and have his children exceed him so that they didn’t have to go through what he went through. That was his map and guiding principle to every choice that he made in his life. This was evident when he gave up college to go work leaving the college degree “dream” for his children. He wanted to be economically solid and he couldn’t afford to continue in college since he needed to spend his time working. He knew he would not have access to high income jobs so he had to go on his own. And in the end, he accomplished what he wanted, he was able to give his children the freedom to do whatever they wanted with the right level of education and preparation to go over the average and try to become indispensable.
The superpower
As we finished the interview, I asked him about his superpower, that thing or things that make him different and indispensable. He didn’t hesitate, he said this is something people have told him before. It is his mark: Leadership, strength and determination. His obsession about customer service and delivering on the commitments. He has always tried to impact people, he wants people that reach out to him to get something from him, he wants to provide value. And along these lines, it was reassuring to hear that he was a pioneer when it comes to hiring people with special needs. Last but not least, his superpower was also about his ability to bring people together and to be a good host. All of these superpowers made him stand out and become a Linchpin.
Thank you dad for your time and for embedding the Linchpin attributes in my DNA! It has definitely paid off!
