My work group in the Solid State Department at RPS, about 1980

From Livelihood and Meeting Mary

To help decide what to do next I worked through the exercises in What Color is Your Parachute? which led me to the big book by Peter Drucker called Management . Reading both books I decided I wanted to be a “business manager”. I looked in the want ads in the LA Times for management trainee positions, and didn’t like what I saw. I decided to go back to work as a temporary typist to make money while I was looking for work as a management trainee.

One of my temporary office assignments was typing orders into a device connected to the Texas Instruments factory in Dallas. The company was RPS (Radio Products Sales), a small  distributor of electronic components. After a week or so they offered me a job, to be the Product Manager for Texas Instruments semiconductors. My first response was to ask, “What’s a product manager and what’s a semiconductor?” Once I understood, it sounded like the perfect opportunity. I was immediately immersed in a self-designed crash course in the concepts of integrated circuits, microprocessors, and all aspects of business management. I worked there for 2-1/2 years (8/78-5/81), until the company re-located to Orange County, and I got a job with the dominant company in the industry, Avnet. 

During my time at RPS, Maezumi Roshi strongly encouraged my affinity for corporate management. He became my career coach as I transitioned from burnt out hippie to upwardly mobile company man. Japanese zen temples at that time were doing corporate trainings in the ascending semiconductor industry, to create tough samurai warriors to battle the American industry. I was his one man project to hand carve the zen warrior American company man. He took real delight in every step I took to master the corporate maze. Next step was from the minors to the major leagues. On to Avnet.