by Herman Cain
About two weeks later, Bob called me and asked if I would return for a visit with his boss and a couple of other people. When I asked why, he said I had exceeded his expectations during our meeting, and he was trying to convince his boss to create a position for me. He succeeded, and I came aboard.
After nearly four years of working at Coca-Cola in Atlanta, I started to suspect that a vice presidency was not in my future there. I enjoyed the company while working on some great projects, but I felt like I was stuck in neutral. I knew I had to make some changes because I observed how Coke's then-current vice presidents had ascended to such prestigious levels in the company.
If I wanted a chance at becoming a vice president at the Coca-Cola Company, I could remain with the company for a long time, get a position in fountain sales or marketing, and then work my way up, or I could go to another company. I chose to go to another company if the opportunity came along, because just as there were low expectations of the "chauffeur's son" prior to the interview with Bob Copper, my suspicion was that the same attitude would persist during my climb at Coca-Cola no matter how well I performed.
Sensing limited opportunity at Coca-Cola, I happened to read an article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal about Bill Spoor, the chairman and CEO of the Pillsbury Company (TPC). Spoor boldly stated that in five years TPC would grow from $1.5 billion in revenue to $5 billion. This objective seemed extremely aggressive to me, since it had taken TPC 107 years to get to its then-current sales level. Even without knowing how he was going to turn this dream into reality, I could envision the potential opportunities presented, and problems caused, by such a rapid growth rate.
Ironically, Bob Copper, my boss at the Coca-Cola Company, resigned about two weeks after I saw that article and joined TPC. I thought Bob either had impeccable timing, or he was just one smart dude. A few months later, Bob made me an offer to join his group at Pillsbury. I chose to join Pillsbury to put myself in a better position to get to corporate vice president, since I had already concluded from reading the Wall Street Journal article that my chances might be better there than at Coca-Cola.
When I joined Pillsbury, I was thirty-two years old. My next decade goal was to reach vice-president by the time I turned forty. I was not sure if it was going to happen at Pillsbury, but at least I would be in a better position if I were there. I chose forty as my objective because forty-five was a typical age for corporate vice presidents, and I had hoped I would at least be within shouting distance of that lofty perch by the time I was forty. And, if I were not close by that time, I would have to consider changing my deadline. But I never considered changing the dream itself.
My hunch about Pillsbury was right. Bob Copper had hired me to help him establish the Corporate Business Analysis function as a well-respected decision support entity within the company. We did just that, and in the process I learned a lot and gained a lot of exposure to many of the senior executives in the company.
About eighteen months later, Bob was promoted to Vice President of Strategic Planning for Pillsbury. At the same time I was promoted to Director of the Management Information Systems (MIS) Department of Pillsbury's largest division. Today MIS is called information technology in most companies.
As head of the MIS department, I was reporting directly to the president of the Consumer Products Division and reporting functionally to the corporate Vice President of Systems, John Haaland. My biggest leadership and technical test came when Pillsbury acquired the Green Giant Company. I was responsible for integrating its MIS department into the Consumer Products Division's MIS Department. There was obviously a lot of redundancy in systems and positions that had to be eliminated without disrupting the services to the businesses. Many executives, including the chairman and CEO, Bill Spoor, were nervous that if we did not execute the integration smoothly, we could shut down the day-to-day operations of the largest and most profitable division of the company. Gulp!
The integration went as smooth as silk. Less than a year later, John Haaland called to let me know that he was resigning to pursue his dream and that I had been selected to replace him as corporate Vice President of Systems. It also happened that the Pillsbury World Headquarters Project was behind schedule and over budget, and administrative services needed a home, so John recommended that those functions report to me as well. Bill Spoor agreed, and I was appointed to be the newly titled Vice President of Systems and Services.
When Pillsbury appointed me vice president, I was thirty-four years old, which was six years earlier than I had dreamed. My biggest challenges in the job were to get approval from the Pillsbury Board of Directors for a new multi-million-dollar computer facility, get it built, get the new computer installed, and get all the systems running smoothly. We met all those challenges.
Simultaneously, I was responsible for leading the completion of the Pillsbury World Headquarters Project. This was a decision-making, coordination, communications, and logistical nightmare. My previous boss, John Haaland, had told me that the new computer project was well-planned and well-staffed and, because it was moving along smoothly, it would require little of my time. But he also told me that the World Headquarters Project was a mess and would require all of my time and more.
It took about two years to complete the new computer facility and to complete the World Headquarters Project. The World Headquarters Project was completed ahead of schedule and below budget. Two years later, I was presented a Symbol of Excellence in Leadership Award by the Pillsbury Company. Mr. Spoor himself made the presentation.
Things were now running so smoothly that I started to get bored. I needed a new dream.
Vice President Again!
One day while in my office on the thirty-first floor of the Pillsbury World Headquarters building, I started to reflect on what I had enjoyed the most over the previous two years. It was the excitement of making decisions that made things happen.
I also started to imagine the excitement of being in charge of a business instead of being in charge of a project or large functional area. I knew I was not afraid to be in charge, nor was I afraid to take charge when I had to do so. I also thought about my father's failing health and how, starting from nowhere, he had touched so many lives in a positive way. I started to imagine the chauffeur's son as president of something. I said the words out loud, and my new dream was born.
Once again, though, I had to put myself in position to turn that dream into a series of goals. This led to the bumpy Burger King fast track program. It was bumpy because I had to survive resentment from within Burger King, sabotage, and a plot to get me fired by some higher-ups who were threatened by my performance and reputation for results.
The resentment came from the fact that, as a former vice president with the parent company, Pillsbury, I was going to deny a Burger King veteran one of the coveted regional vice president positions. Never mind the fact that Burger King's top management wanted to broaden the experience base of its regional vice presidents or that tenure alone was no guarantee for success.
The sabotage happened when I became a restaurant manager for the first time. One of the assistant managers purposely removed $50 from the store's cash receipts to cause the daily settlement report to be short. When I counted the cash and compared it to the register receipts, the cash was short by exactly $50.
I stayed there all night trying to figure out what was wrong, counting and recounting and recounting, asking myself if I'd done something wrong or if the register tapes were incorrect. It drove me nuts! I didn't leave until the opening manager for the next day arrived. I finally gave up and reported the shortage on my daily report. I closed the following night and guess what happened? Now, the cash was $50 over, which I also indicated on my report. During my last week as restaurant manager at this restaurant, the assistant manager who had removed and then replaced the $50 confessed and apologized to me for what he had done. He felt badly about it because he had come to respect me for what I had done to help the restaurant succ
eed and for my sincerity when dealing with people. I accepted his apology. He also explained that it was common knowledge throughout the Minneapolis region that the vice president of the region wanted me to fail. This was confirmed by several other people who worked in the region as I was leaving to become the Philadelphia region vice president.
The plot to get me fired played out during my tenure as vice president of the Philadelphia region. It involved my Pillsbury background, a direct report, a franchisee, and a higher-level officer of Burger King who felt threatened by my performance. Following a reassignment of region reporting relationships, my new boss, Bill DeLeat, then an executive vice president of Burger King Corporate, came to visit my region to determine firsthand how things were going. The financials were all exceeding our annual targets, but as Bill put it, "There are a lot of people in Miami [corporate headquarters] who do not like you and want you fired."
I felt crushed since after only a year and a half as regional vice president, my region was exceeding its performance goals. After spending about three intensive days in my region, Bill also told me that it was unquestionably one of the best regions, if not the best region, in the company.
Bill started a campaign in corporate to correct the unfair and inaccurate perception of my performance. Bill DeLeat was one of those angels for whom you can only be thankful, especially when things are so unfair. Since the corporate attitudes toward me were personal and not performance based, they did not change much, but Bill provided strong support and watched my back while I kept doing my job. If handled differently, the entire episode could have ended my corporate career. Period.
After three years of running the Philadelphia region, I received a phone call from Jeff Campbell while attending a regional vice president's meeting in San Francisco. Jeff had been president of Burger King before being promoted to an executive position at Pillsbury, where he was in charge of all the restaurant companies. Jeff was my boss's boss's boss, and although I knew him and had a good relationship with him, he didn't have time to be calling me out of a meeting just to say hello. I returned Jeff's call and after the usual small talk, he said he wanted me to meet him in Miami to talk about taking over as president of Godfather's Pizza, Inc., another newly acquired restaurant company. I said, "Did you say 'president'?" He said yes. Another flashback!
President
I took over as president of Godfather's on April 1, 1986, at the age of forty! I was now twenty years ahead of plan, and I was loaded with "frequent dreamer miles." I headed Godfather's for ten years, which included buying the company from Pillsbury, because it did not believe Godfather's could survive (another likely situation for an unlikely candidate). I was also asked to join several corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies, which was an unexpected experience and benefit of becoming president of "something." When dreams turn to a series of goals, you sometimes find some unexpected "goal dust."
I did not have a new dream in 1996 when I was asked to become president and CEO of the National Restaurant Association. I had already exceeded my wildest imaginations throughout my career. The association job seemed like it would be a challenge for a while, and for the two and a half years I was there, it was a challenge. I felt good about our accomplishments.
I had always been goal-oriented ever since I wanted to help Dad with his night janitor's job to make spending money. The concept of decades goals had to be God-inspired to keep me focused, because I realized long ago that God put me on a fast track of success for reasons that are still unfolding. Sometimes those reasons include an unanswered question.
The Question
The series of events and their amazing sequence that led up to my decision to run for the Senate can only be explained as divinely directed.
It started with the birth of my granddaughter, Celena. On January 20, 1999, while attending a National Restaurant Association Board meeting in Maui, Hawaii, I received a call from my wife Gloria. Our daughter Melanie, she said, was about to have her baby, so Gloria would be flying from Omaha to Atlanta that day (a Wednesday) to be with her.
I told Gloria I would finish my meeting in Hawaii and head to Atlanta, too, but that I would probably not arrive before Melanie delivered her baby, since I had an important previously-scheduled get acquainted meeting on Friday in Austin, Texas, with then-governor George W. Bush. I got to Austin on Thursday and stayed overnight, as planned. I continually called Gloria to make sure everything with Melanie was going normally and to find out if I had become a granddad yet.
Melanie's doctor, I learned, had sent her home several times from the hospital, each time because, in his opinion, she was experiencing false labor pains and did not need to check into the hospital yet. Each time Melanie, husband Dobie, and Gloria returned home, Melanie would feel more pains and they would take off to the hospital again. This continued until Friday morning, when the doctor finally admitted Melanie to the hospital. I was still calling in for frequent updates.
After my meeting on Friday afternoon the 22nd, which lasted from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m., I rushed to the Austin airport to catch the first nonstop flight to Atlanta. I arrived in Atlanta at about 9:00 p.m., rented a car, and drove to the hospital, arriving there at 9:30. My son Vincent was in the waiting room, and he told me that the baby had not arrived yet but that everything was still going okay.
At 9:56 p.m., Celena Patrice came into this world. A few minutes later, Gloria came out and told Vincent and me, "We have a granddaughter, and Vincent has a niece." We were excited, but Gloria wore a somewhat exasperated look on her face.
When I asked what was bothering her, she explained, "I have been with this girl for three days, going back and forth to the hospital. I have been in the delivery room with her, dealing constantly with hospital personnel. And then you show up and the baby is born." I told her that Celena was just waiting on Granddad before making her appearance. Gloria said, "I know, and I will have to hear this story for the rest of my life."
A few minutes later, I was allowed into the delivery room. Melanie was doing fine, a small blanket wrapping the new bundle in her arms. I smiled as I looked at Melanie and said, "My baby daughter has a baby daughter." Melanie, a big smile on her face, asked me if I wanted to hold my new granddaughter. Of course I did!
When I took Celena in my arms and looked at that tiny, fifteen-minute-old face, the first thought that ran through my mind was not "How do we give her a better start in life?" as our parents had done for us, and we had done for our children. My first thought was "How do I make this a better world?"
That question resonated in my head and impacted every decision I made from that day on. I did not know the answer, but I could not forget that question. During those moments as I looked at Celena's little face, I thought about all the other little faces around the world and the kind of world we would leave to them. Though we were blessed to live in the greatest country in the world, our greatness was slowly slipping away for a lot of reasons.
In the last fifty years, this nation had made a breakthrough technological achievement by landing on the moon. That achievement started with a strong declaration by President John F. Kennedy that we would land on the moon by the end of the decade of the sixties, and we did so in 1968. The determined leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. touched the heart of America and the world, which resulted in the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. President Ronald Reagan's persistence against Communism resulted in the wall crumbling down in 1990. We survived two wars, a nuclear threat by the then Soviet Union, and several terrorist attacks against our country's installations abroad. These and other accomplishments would not have been possible without strong leadership, a strong national resolve, and a strong and resilient economic infrastructure.
Yet, in that same fifty-year period we did nothing to improve the structure of the burdensome tax code, the coming Social Security crisis, and a Medicare system that overpromised and overspent decades ago. We had succeeded at keeping these structures on life support with one band-aid after another, bu
t we were now about to enter at the twenty-first century. More importantly, we were about to leave Celena and all our grandchildren a mess.
For three and a half years I would not be able to answer the question of what do I do to make this a better world. But I would often reflect on the words of the prophet Isaiah (40:31): "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles . . . ."
The Answer
In 2000 my wife and I moved back to Atlanta after thirty-five years of successfully "climbing" the corporate ladder. I had sold my equity in Godfather's Pizza, Inc., and had refocused my energies on keynote speaking, writing another book (not this one), serving on several corporate boards of directors, and playing more golf to improve my game. In fact, we even bought a house on a golf course so I would have the convenience of practicing and playing on a regular basis.
Moving back to Atlanta also had the added benefit of living near our adult children and our grandchildren. At the time, both of our mothers were also living in Atlanta and were getting up in age, and we knew that our time had come to help care for them. My father and Gloria's father had both passed decades earlier.
Together, we had achieved a life at fifty-eight years of age consisting of no worries, no drama, and no stress except for the minutia of day-to-day living. To say that we were truly blessed was an understatement. This is what we had worked to attain in all of our thirty-six years of marriage.
But in May 2003 a series of unexpected events started to happen. Steve Moore, a friend and fellow conservative and president of the Club for Growth, called and suggested that I run for retiring Senator Zell Miller's seat since I had come back home to Georgia. I told him I was flattered that he would make that suggestion, but I didn't come back home on the "Midnight Train to Georgia." Why would I want to run for the U.S. Senate? Why would I want to get involved in the insanity of politics? Coincidentally, several other acquaintances also called and asked me to consider running, so I at least thought about it for a few days. More importantly, I prayed a lot about the idea.
