The Wall

McManus was stunned to find himself in the pages. "It was like Adizes was reading my palm," he says. He copied passages from the book and sent them off to all his advisers. "Isn't that us?" he asked, as if sharing the results of an unbelievable session with a fortune teller. He felt inspired to take action. But what kind? In Corporate Lifecycles, Adizes advises hiring an "administrator"--an executive to establish systems and procedures, someone not like the impetuous founder. "The founder," says Adizes, "must pass the baton to the administrator at the right time...when the company is doing well."

Magellan's was doing well, but the going still wasn't easy. The process of searching for a top professional manager seemed daunting. McManus called his personnel agency and got it on the project. To his surprise, the agency got back to him fairly quickly with a candidate who on paper seemed ideal; he even had experience at companies both large and small.

But the McManuses dragged their feet. This was a big move. McManus wondered if they couldn't make it a little longer without bringing on a high-level executive. Neither of them had given any thought to the equity question, much less to whether they'd have to pay this administrator more than they paid themselves. (Yes, they would.)

Finally, in early 1997, with the no-growth option dismissed and with things getting worse, not better, the McManuses interviewed and hired the recruiter's top choice. Bill Wilmer joined in March 1997. Wilmer was hired to take over many administrative duties. One of his first assignments was to help staff up the call center and create a formal training program. But he was also charged with putting together a strategic plan that would encompass establishing new policies and procedures, salary schedules, compensation committees, employee reviews, and more. Wilmer, by his own account, took to his job with relish.

To hear the McManuses tell it, though, he spent most of his time planning, even planning how to plan. "It felt like everything he did was on a scale for IBM," says Gloria. "Everything took too long. I couldn't cope with it."

John McManus felt so dumb. "How could I have hired someone so wrong for Magellan's?" he asked himself over and over. "This was the first time we'd done planning in eight years, and enough people hated it to think about leaving."

The cultural divide between the just-do-it style of running a company and Wilmer's careful, professional method seemed too wide to bridge. Yes, life with an administrator was everything Adizes described. The clashes in style, the quick distrust. But it was one thing to read about it. Now, to his horror, McManus was living it. Once again there seemed no way out of the endless hours and the final responsibility for everything.

Says McManus, "With Bill, I felt I didn't have any hope of getting my life back."

Heroes Die Young
But the McManuses' blinding pain had the effect of making their hearing more acute. At a conference in May 1997, when the couple heard entrepreneurial counselor Lanny Goodman describe another way to think about growing their company, they were on the edge of their seats. Though whipped and desperate, they were still seeking solutions, and Goodman suggested a perspective-altering premise: think about yourself and your personal needs first, and your company's demands second. Goodman even promised a kind of miracle: think about yourself first, he said, and you will actually serve your company better, too. Quit trying to be a hero, he said. No one cares.

Two months later, in July, the McManuses went to Albuquerque, where Goodman met with them privately in his office for two days and listened--until, late on day two, he began offering prescriptions.

He said, "I want you to announce to the company, 'We're cutting back to 50 hours a week.' And I want you to tell your controller, 'We will now be paying ourselves a higher salary.'"

"How can you say that?" they cried.

He said it again.

They were shocked. What cut the deepest? The idea of working so much less--or paying themselves so much more? Neither concept fit their image of what owners did--or abstained from--in the name of building a company. They just couldn't imagine it.

But Goodman could. As he listened to John and Gloria McManus make their confession, he knew something had to change radically.

Their confession went something like this: "For nearly eight years now," the husband and wife explained, "we've worked 80 hours a week. Sometimes 20 hours a day." They were a little embarrassed, hesitant. They stopped and started. "We haven't taken a real vacation since 1989," they said. Slowly, the details came out. "We can't sleep, we're so tired. We wake up at 3 in the morning thinking about work. It's what we think about in the shower. We started this business to enjoy some of life's fruits that were rotting on the vine, and here we are, working 80 hours."

"It was obvious," Goodman recalls, "these were sweet, kind, loving people--and it shows in their catalog and in their customer service." However, he says, it was equally apparent they had paid a hefty personal price. "So many entrepreneurs end up working for their companies instead of having the company work for them. And John and Gloria were no exception."

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