Monthly Luncheons at Agustinas 1389
Swent : What was the address?
Haldeman: Agustinas 1389. It still has on the top part of the concrete,
that not even Allende took away, that is in intaglio, indented
Roman letters, "Braden Copper Company."
I had the apartment turned into a nice big dining room, an
office suite, another executive office, and a secretary's
office. We had it all redone. We started the invitations for
about sixteen people, 1:15 or 1:30 for cocktails in my office
room, and the best catering service we could get. Then we'd go
in and have lunch. We had oysters, lobsters, the best wine. At
that time you were able to get good cigars. Of course the
Chilean politician likes to live well, and I invited all the
political parties. I even invited Mr. Allende, but he never
accepted. When Alessandri was president, he accepted. Gonzalez
Videla accepted, and, in fact, he invited me.
Chilean President Jorge Alessandri
I started to know the political leaders of the country--, all
political, economic, social, banking, et ceteraand I mixed
them up. Mario Illanes was a wonderful diplomat; he knew how to
handle them. Of course, the first lunches were just as dry as
could be. They were waiting for me to ask for what I wanted,
and nothing happened. I just asked a couple of questions, "What
do you think about this?" and so on. Word got around that these
were just social lunches, and they had good food, the best
liquors you could imagine, nice cigars, there were a lot of
enjoyable people, and Haldeman didn't want anything; he just
wanted to know.
It got to be that Mario had a waiting list to be invited.
The guys would stay around until 5:30 and 6:00 and booze. The
radicals were the biggest bon vivants of the lunches. I got to
know people who to this day are still my friends. That's why I
was able to open doors,
I could even call up ministers and so on . . .
Byron E. Grant; Modernizing the Management
Haldeman: I had come to Santiago in 1955 as head of the company
(Kennecott's Braden Copper Company--RS). About
that time I needed a second man, and I started to interview
people who were recommended through Kennecott, other executives
who had Latin American experience and Spanish or something.
After a couple of attempts at hiring people and not being
satisfied, which took about a year or a year and a half, I came
across Mr. Byron E. Grant. He was the man whose last experience
at that time had been in United States Smelting and Refining in
Utah. He came down for an interview, and we talked together.
About this time I became very aware of the need for
incepting modern management methods in the company. We had been
quite archaic, and the world was slipping us by, being so far
away from the modern world. Harvard had started up, and
industrial engineering became the fad, and new organization with
all of the frills. And Mr. Milliken was quite a bug on
management .
Kennecott President Frank R Milliken
I talked it over with Grant, as I was very enthused about
the idea of becoming a bit more modern and bringing ourselves up
to date. Mr. Grant accepted the job. Of course, I was in
Santiago, and he, being in Coya, had the day-to-day business
with the seven or eight thousand people involved. I was in the
political arena with the government authorities and the likes,
trying to get our image corrected in the country. Maybe two
times a month we'd get together and plan out what we wanted to
do.
We decided at that time to incept all of the new tools that
were out on the market- -wage and salary administration, job
evaluation, reorganization, warehouse controls, training
programs. We started to plan on how we would send our
supervisors, superintendents, and second-in-lines abroad to get
some training and mix with the rest of the world that was
spinning around above us. We were too far away.
No comments:
Post a Comment