alexpgp | LJ Idol 6.1: The only truly empty gesture...

I put down the handset and stared at the phone for a minute. Then I got up, crossed to the window of my hotel room, and looked out at that part of the late-night Moscow skyline that I could see. I was lost in thought.

I had just gotten off the phone with my new boss, Philippe Kahn, who had called to have me arrange a midnight limousine tour of central Moscow for himself and some VIP friends. I had gotten the call because I was the “go-to” guy on our team for all things Russian.

Our team, from Borland International (a widely known software publisher known - among other things - for its hugely popular Turbo Pascal programming language) was in Moscow for something called the First International Computer Conference and Philippe, our CEO, was our team lead. I had managed to create a place for myself on the team, despite being a relatively new hire, by my knowledge of Russia and the Russian language, and by demonstrating an impressive single-mindedness on the job in achieving important goals.

This was a problem, because despite the fact it was 1990 and a great many things had changed since I had worked in the USSR fifteen years previously, I knew - with no doubt in my mind - that one didn’t just pick up the phone in Moscow at 10:30 pm and arrange to have a limousine pick you and some friends up at midnight just so you can drive around and catch the view from Red Square.

I knew this because when I had worked in Moscow fifteen years previously, I had come up against a set of fixed rules that affected just about everything. Changing those rules was simply not in the cards for merely mortal beings. Schedules were set in stone and “impossible” was not just a word, but a way of life. No deviations - no exceptions - this means you.

That knowledge had been driven home particularly hard back in the day while escorting a tour group consisting of retail merchants and their spouses. The leader of the group complained about everything. The group didn't want tea, he said, they wanted coffee with their meals. They didn't want eggs and toast for breakfast, he whined, they wanted something “Russian.” Ballet was boring, he insisted, people wanted to go to the circus.

The man was an irrepressible fountain of suck.

For the sake of form, I brought up the first few complaints to Intourist (the USSR's state-run travel agency) but the answers were all the same: “Impossible!” After a while, I stopped asking, because I knew what the answer was going to be. I recall that somewhere along the group’s itinerary, my nemesis took a break from complaining to observe that I seemed to have been beaten down by The System.

“You always assume they’ll say ‘no’, and that’s self-defeating” he said, adding: “Faint heart never won fair lady.”

Whatever. I smiled and said something inoffensive, but deep down, I knew he just didn’t get it. This was the Soviet Union, for Pete's sake, not Philadephia, and one simply had to face the realities of the situation.

The reality of my situation fifteen years later was that Philippe has assigned me a clearly impossible task. I toyed with the idea of sitting on my hands and then calling Philippe back to say I couldn’t arrange the limo, but instead - don't ask why because I can't explain - I decided to make an empty gesture and place the call, so I tracked down the number of the limousine service at the nearby Ukraine Hotel, and dialed it.

The call was answered on the second ring, which surprised me, as it was nearing 11 pm. I introduced myself, explained the situation, stated that expense was no object and was told in no uncertain terms that the limo would be at the hotel entrance at the appointed time. I was stunned, and Philippe and his friends had a great time checking out the nocturnal side of Moscow from the back of a stretch Lincoln Continental.

Early in their careers, successful sales professionals learn that only actions reliably produce results. You want an appointment? Ask. You want to close a sale? Ask. You want to get something done? Ask!

The emptiest gesture is not one that produces no result, but one that is never made.