11 - Another Tall Order

Summary

If there is one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own.

—Henry Ford

In the world of sports, the best teams are not necessarily the ones that contain the greatest number of star players. For every Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski, for every Larry Bird and Kevin McHale, there were many players whose blood, sweat, and tears made for championship efforts but who never became household names to those who were less than hardcore fans.

As a company, Kronos played that unheralded, backroom role for most of its history within the sport of business success. Customers who utilized the Kronos time clocks, and later the myriad of solutions that contributed to their running better, more cost-effective businesses with a healthy and rapid return on investment, knew the name. But the average consumer, upon hearing the name Kronos usually replied “Who?” unless they were Greek mythology buffs.

Likewise, within Kronos itself, there were marquee names, but there would have been no championship run without the guys who did the blocking and tackling or the boxing out and rebounding.

Mark understood this as clearly as he knew right from the start that he was not going to be the person who physically designed those initial time clocks. Mark had the idea and the business savvy. But without a Larry Baxter in the mix, the idea would have stayed where most earth-altering, life-changing ideas usually reside: in someone's head.

Now, with product shipping, a sales network comprised of both dealers and in-house staff selling and increasing revenue, and a burgeoning stable of engineers charged with perfecting and reimagining the clocks, Mark took on the tall task of finding someone to ensure that Kronos’ own accounting was taken care of properly.

The search had proved fruitless to the point where the ever-frugal Mark had opted to engage a search firm to assist in the quest. But that too, had not borne fruit. That is, until the day he looked up, both figuratively and literally, and laid eyes on a six-foot, seven-inch, former Farleigh Dickinson University basketball player named Glenn Bolduc.