esrosedotblog

This guy was one of my star trainees in a public group that I ran many years ago.

Hamish Maxwell, Philip Morris Empire Builder, Dies at 87

An old client had become manager of training at Philip Morris. This was a little before this guy became President but he was a power to be reckoned with and he wanted to see the program before they bought it.

This is the kind of guy he was. He was his own guinea pig.

My friend and client nearly chewed his nails off with concern.

Hamish came to a public program so that people from his company would not be distracted. He had a great time. He was a wonderful participant. No nonsense. And he got a lot out of it apparently because they bought a whole lot of training from us.

The only drawback was that he had the idea that I was the only one who could train it so, as a result, I became their trainer. They never adopted a trainer training program as we wanted them to.This was an old problem for us. A lot of people wanted the authors or the principals. We were trying to grow and spread it out.

Eventually, Hamish forgot his original condition and we put other trainers into the mix.

I would not say that we had a thing to do with his ascension to the top but I certainly had to do with his affection for the program. I liked him a lot. I don't remember many participants, even the bigwigs, but I remember him.

Hamish put together the Philip Morris empire which now is being dismantled a piece at a time. But in its heyday it included a lot of companies. He started with General Foods for gods' sake. Another former client. But I always worked with the tobacco division.

Did I have moral qualms about the company? No. I didn't have moral qualms for the most part. I was a smoker at the time. It would have been hypocrisy to be choosy.

Labels: business, history, training