Cliff and I were waiting for the rain to stop so our airplane could take off. I hadn’t seen him for several years, but he hadn’t changed much. At 40 or so, he still had no gray hair, no wrinkles. He still looked like the wholesome boy next door. A little shorter than six feet, he was dressed in a conservative suit and tie. If his tie was red, it was certainly not bright red; if his suit was blue, it was certainly not pin-striped. Because clothes were not his thing, he could easily pass for a high school math teacher. No one could have guessed he was a new vice president of Dun and Bradstreet, a billion-dollar company providing business information, services, research and software to clients around the world.

We talked. It rained. We talked some more. It stopped raining. After the sun began to break through the dark clouds, we boarded the tiny commuter turboprop with my head full of questions: “How do you like Florida and what’s it like working for D and B?” I wondered how he would respond.

Although Cliff appears to be an extrovert, he seems to have trouble opening up. Actually, he borders on being an introvert, keeping much of what he knows and feels to himself. His remarks are carefully chosen to provide a part of the answer, maybe most of it, but not quite enough to feel as if he has told the whole story. He is especially cautious about revealing his success. In a word, he is modest. Consequently, Cliff works hard to make his listener feel as if the listener is as important as, or more important than, the speaker himself. He maintains good eye contact, but also, he carefully positions himself so that a listener feels as if he is in a kind of huddle with Cliff. Somehow, he tries to screen out the rest of the world, making a listener feel this conversation is special.

He responded to my question about D & B with a story. “There I was standing at the end of the long table, talking to a group of key executives who were looking up at me. I was the new kid on the block. I had heard about many of the people in the room, but I had never met them.” He had a puzzled look on his face. “I remember being very jittery, not about my presentation, but about operating an overhead projector. I was told that everyone was expected to use one. It was management style or protocol or something.”

Standing before the distinguished group, he placed a transparency on the glass top, and turned on the light, revealing four scribbled letters: P F F P. “I want to introduce myself,” he began. “Does anyone know what these letters stand for?”

His audience looked puzzled. He waited a couple more seconds and answered his own question: “Pig Farmer From Peoria. I’m just a pig farmer from Peoria, so don’t ever expect me to use one of these machines again. I hate them.” The small audience was mildly shocked.

The truth is that Clifford Bateman is a former pig farmer. Born on a small farm about five miles north of Elmwood, Illinois, a small country town north and west of Peoria, Illinois, he lived in the center of the state. His father worked in logistics at Caterpillar, the large earth-moving manufacturer, but also farmed a few acres, raising some corn and soybeans and feeding a few hogs and cattle. After school, Cliff did some chores, throwing hay out for the cattle, and corn for the hogs. Sunday was reserved for family outings, including services at the Elmwood Methodist Church.

His efforts were scrutinized, not by his father, who was a quiet, easy-going fellow, but by his mother who had extraordinarily demanding standards. “Clifford, if you finished 100 rods of fence yesterday, you could do 150 today. If you cleaned out one barn yesterday, you could finish two on Friday.” If she demanded little, she got little; if she demanded a lot, she got a lot, even at school. Cliff was an outstanding student. I asked one of his classmates what she remembered about Cliff. “He was smart, very smart. I think he was president of the class, but I don’t think he was an athlete, but he sure was smart. Quiet. Kept to himself. Don’t think he ever dated.”

When I talked to his high school math teacher, I heard something very similar: “In over thirty years of teaching, I had probably 3,500 students, half male and half female. No question about it, Cliff was the smartest male student I ever had. What set him apart was that he was not only good at math, but he loved the subject.” The teacher, now in his 80s looked and acted ten or fifteen years younger, glancing off into the distance, obviously recalling some pleasant days in the classroom. “Cliff took four years of math in high school and even enrolled in a college correspondence course in calculus. He used to come out to my farm and I’d help him with his homework. He acted ten years older than what he really was. He was smart.”

Purdue University accepted him into the College of Engineering. With an almost perfect SAT score in math, his advisor was more than willing to ignore somewhat lower scores in other areas for someone who would blossom in math and science. He would design motors, build buildings, engineer a better world. It took a little while, maybe three or four semesters, but Cliff Bateman’s “train went off the track,” as his high school math teacher described the situation. After years and years of straight A’s, Cliff Bateman was academically dismissed by Purdue University.

He was depressed. His mother was raising Cain. His father sat quietly in the corner, wondering what had happened, what could be done. Somehow, they all felt as if the situation was out of control. For the next few months, Cliff wandered back home, looking for direction.

In the fall of 1965, like others who had had similar experiences, he joined the U.S. Air Force, which recognized his aptitude and put him in the emerging field of computers. After several months of training, he was so good, so talented, that he became a trouble shooter on main frames at bases around the country. In this new field, Cliff was often the first one in the seat.

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At the end of his tour of duty, Cliff was eager to return home and secure the education that he needed for a future. Again, like many before him, he enrolled in a new kind of college, a community college, called Illinois Central, which allowed him to start over academically. While going full-time to school, he worked on the college’s computer for 15 to 20 hours a week, commuting over 60 miles a day, and raising hogs. In two years, Cliff finished with straight A’s.

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Cliff’s first full-time job was running a computer for a large consolidated school district in Central Illinois. One of his college instructors said, “To tell you the truth, I didn’t think he could handle the work at that school. I didn’t think he knew enough. He sure fooled me.” His job was creating the software for both enrollment and financial records and actually running the system. After a couple of years, he was ready to strike out on his own.

The firm’s name sounded impressive: Bateman and Associates. At the beginning the company name described just two people — Cliff and a secretary – located in a two-story house in Peoria, the first floor for his office, the second for his living quarters. His primary clients were companies and county governments. For companies, he served as a consultant, creating or purchasing software and equipment. For the county governments, they counted punch cards after elections across the Midwest. Within months, he moved to larger quarters, the staff grew from a handful to almost 100, and before long he was so busy consulting that he needed an airplane to service his clients. Not long thereafter, he merged his firm with another in Iowa and renamed it Fidler-Bateman.

Cliff’s success can be explained quite simply – he threw out the tried and true. He hired good people and treated them fairly. Whenever possible, he preferred to hire only people he knew, generally those who lived in his hometown; he was familiar with their backgrounds, their parents, their children, their reputations. He was, in many cases, less interested in what they knew than in what they could learn and do. He could teach them what they didn’t know, but he couldn’t make them into something they weren’t or didn’t want to be. His management style was unorthodox: he was more interested in getting the job done than in controlling his staff, more interested in rewarding them for their efforts than in taking advantage of them.

Only pragmatic people like Cliff would be secure enough with his staff to allow them to develop their own work schedules. He offered “flex-time” before the term was ever used. One employee might come early in the morning, leaving in the afternoon to go to school. Another might take his kids to school, work until an hour or so after lunch, and leave early to meet them after school. The options were endless.

No one on the staff was special, privileged. There was no reserved parking, no distinction between the boss and the employees. There were guidelines, but no rules, no absolutes. Cliff wanted to do what worked – for the company and for the employees, including raises. Who ever heard of giving raises on the spot, whenever they were deserved, not six or twelve months later?

By this point in his career, Cliff explored the possibility of taking his fast-growing company public, of selling shares on the stock market; instead he sold Fidler-Bateman privately. He began looking for new challenges. He explored the academic world, where personal computers were being used for instruction. He cast that idea aside when an insurance agent asked him to consider developing software for life insurance agents to use on their personal computers, thereby passing home offices to speed up the sales process.

For a period of weeks, Cliff and his partner developed a piece of software. Unsuccessful in their attempts to sell their products directly to large insurance companies, they appealed to individual agents at a large insurance convention. Day after day, agents crowded around the machines, wanting to know where they could buy the product. One special person returned each day hoping to talk to Cliff who was busy demonstrating the software. Persistent, the stranger said, “We need to talk. Can we set up a time when I can meet with you and your partner?” He handed Cliff his business card, “President, Dun and Bradstreet.”

In a matter of weeks, Cliff headed for Tampa to demonstrate their product, hoping to sell it to D & B. Cliff was surprised with the offer: “We’re interested in the product, but we’re really interested in you. We’d like you to go to work for us.”

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The rain clouds disappeared, and the ride to the Peoria airport went smoothly. As the wheels touched the ground, Cliff was finishing his story. “I’ve enjoyed my years at D & B, but I really don’t like all the time I’ve had to spend away from Mary and the kids.”

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Years later, I saw Cliff again. By this time, he was a senior vice president of D & B, commuting to work between his home in Florida and his office in New Jersey. On the outside he looked a little different; on the inside, he was just the same. I asked how he was doing. “Karl, I made a big decision not long ago. I was offered the opportunity to head Dun & Bradstreet, but I turned it down. I’d have to live in New York City. My family and my life are more important than that position.”

And I suppose there’s an ordinance against raising hogs in New York City.

Clifford Bateman is a 1963 graduate of Elmwood Community High School.

Karl K. Taylor, Copyright 2019