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0, PEOPLE IN DH&S:
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Phil Sandmaier
When the page is turned to the firm's
new fiscal year this coming June and a
fresh class of partners and managers
take on the new responsibilities that
their promotion implies, the record will
show one retirement of more than
passing interest to hundreds of people
in Deloitte Haskins & Sells. Phil
Sandmaier, now the partner who
supervises the U.S. operations of the
firm, will be taking early retirement at
age 60 and saying farewell to the
daily routine.
It is not simply his present supervisory
position that has made him so widely
known from one end of the firm to the
other. Nor is it just the fact that he has
served in seven offices of the firm
(Executive Office twice) that has
brought him into contact with so many
of us, although his travels have certainly
helped. Nor is it even the fact
that he is one of the most interesting,
most natural public speakers among
the firm partners, with a rare gift for
mimicry as he acts out his anecdotes
with humor that often brings down the
house with laughter. It is more the
kind of person he is that makes him
memorable.
Phil has always gone more than halfway
with everyone to make friends, to
inspire confidence and to motivate
others to their best professional performance.
Through the years, many
younger people in the firm have come
away from a meeting or discussion
with Phil determined to work their
heads off because they like the
man. Some might say that it's a neat
trick if you can do it. Those who know
Phil realize it is no trick. It's just the
way he is.
In a large organization of professionals
with similar basic training, there is the
tendency at times to assume that any
of a number of candidates can carry
out a given job (or "fill a slot") with
equal chances of success. Under this
assumption, the emphasis is on working
hard and applying one's intelligence
to a situation in an impersonal, systematic
way. But what this view leaves
out of consideration is that human beings
are as different in their makeup as
snowflakes are in design, and the
executive who ignores individuality
cannot be a successful manager of
people. He may crack his whip louder
than a Simon Legree or roar commands
like a Captain Bligh. But he will
be oblivious to Phil Sandmaier's basic
rule: "I always try to look at things
from the other fellow's viewpoint."
It is as a humanist, a person who cares
about the motivations of other people,
that Phil has made his special mark in
our firm. His expert touch as a manager
and a leader who gets things
done was developed over a good many
years. A look at his record may be instructive
to those with the desire to follow,
if they can, in his footsteps.
Philip J. Sandmaier, Jr. was born in Buffalo,
New York in 1919. His early childhood
and youth were spent there and
in Youngstown, Ohio, where his father
worked for Republic Steel Corporation.
Some of Phil's early memories, as he
looks back on those days, bring back
his father's thoughtful counsel to him in
looking ahead toward a working career.
The senior Sandmaier had started out
in a steel mill at age 13 as a helper
tending an open-hearth furnace. By
applying himself to learning more about
the job of steelmaking than most
others around him cared to know, he
worked his way up through the supervisory
ranks and into the front office.
Phil recalls his father's discussing various
occupations, including that of
metallurgist, which occurred naturally
to a young man growing up in a steel
town. But in the bleak 1930s as the
time for college approached, Phil was
particularly impressed by his father's
saying that although he knew of a good
many engineers and metallurgists out
of work during the Great Depression,
he had never known of an unemployed
accountant. So Phil decided on accounting
and entered the College of
Commerce of the University of Notre
Dame in the fall of 1936.
Four years later, in June 1940, he
graduated with a number of distinctions.
He had the leading academic
record in the College of Commerce,
and was only the third student with an
overall average of 95 or above since
the college was founded in 1920. He
was valedictorian of his class. And
what was more fortunate for him and
for the firm, he was one of two Notre
Dame students recruited by Haskins &
Sells that year. In those days campus
recruiting was just barely starting, and
our firm, General Electric and Burroughs
were the only employers who
visited the campus the spring that Phil
graduated.
The scene shifts to the report department
of the New York practice office,
where Phil was introduced to the fine
art of comparing and proving in the
fall of 1940. By this time the Selective
Service Act had become law, and a
few weeks later Phil found himself
holding "a very low number" in the
draft lottery. So it was a race with time
to see how much he could learn, how
much experience he could absorb, before
he was called.
"We all had a chance to see how a
good audit report should be written,
and we learned to work under pressure,"
Phil says, looking back on those
report-department training days. "And
I'll never forget the impression it made
on me when a partner or a manager
extended himself to thank one of us
beginners for our work, or to pay a
compliment for a job well done. I
especially remember William Bell's
coming around from one desk to
another one evening to thank each of
us when we were working under great
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